I can't relate to 99% of humanity--Steve Buscemi in "Ghost World"
20 January, 2003 :: 7:22 a.m.
So I did the confrontation thing and it left me...confused. What's new? My gut keeps saying, "This will end badly." I'm not sure whether I'm being stupid or just choosing to turn a deaf ear to my gut...I mean I registered the warning, I'm trying to keep my guard up and not get fucked over, but there's that part of me that wants to say, "Hey, you're just being overly pessimistic and you need to just relax."
What is the source of these conflicted feelings? Why Teri, of course. No, I'm not hung up on her and wanting to get back into a relationship with her, I just want to know what the deal is with our supposed friendship. She brought up the idea after we broke up of being friends with benefits, of continuing the sex without continuing the relationship...I said, sure. And so a couple times she came over and we had sex and things were fine...we didn't really talk much outside of work other than that, but at work we were back to joking around and getting along really well...the times she came over, we didn't just fuck, we talked and we had good times. Then all the sudden last week she turned into a cold fish...she went from wanting to get together, hang out, talk to acting like she was trying to avoid me. She made some comment a week ago, right before I started back to school of, "Well, good luck with school, I guess I won't be seeing you much anymore." I was like, "What? Why?" She said that she figured I'd be busy and tired and wouldn't have time to hang out with her or talk to her...so I asked what her days off were and she told me she had Tuesday and Thursday off which I also had...and she had expressed trouble with the fact that we would only be getting together when we planned to have sex...so I asked if she wanted to get together, and while she didn't flat out say No, she said, "Well, I have Hannah both of those days..." and acted like she basically was trying to come up with an excuse for us not seeing each other...but I didn't really think about it much after that...until I talked to her Wednesday night and found out she was dropping Hannah off at a friend's house and going out with other friends the next day...WTF??? She couldn't do that when I was willing to get together and at the same time she doesn't want the three of us doing things because she doesn't want to confuse Hannah...I can see her point of view on the Hannah issue, but why can you drop her off to do something with other people, but not me? So then Friday I walked in, smiled, said hi to her (and brought in her hair dryer she said she was going to keep at my apartment for nights she stayed over, but then called that night to say she needed)...she got all weird and was like, "Are you mad at me?" "Why do you seem pissy and seem like you're ignoring me?" WHAT? Other way around...and when I didn't stop to talk on the way through the second time, she was already talking to Greg... So then she came over and I started trying to tell her that nothing was wrong (honestly I wasn't even thinking about her going to the mall with other people by that point)...anyway, Hutch stopped and asked me something and when I turned back, Teri had disappeared. Then she walked by several times giving me upset looks and then she left with Greg all giggly and joking and shit...she's never, ever waited for Greg to get off work before. Greg also gave her a $100 gift certificate to Old Navy for Xmas...so that started my wheels turning...so Saturday when I was at my parents' house to drop off their new computer, I signed on to old one to check my mail...she was on and started talking to me like everything was peachy. So I did that for a while and then finally was like, "What the fuck was last night all about?" and asked if she was seeing someone. She's perfectly free to date, but part of the fuck buddy deal was that if one of us started seeing someone else, we would cease to be fuck buddies...and now she's acting weird and not wanting to hang out and acting different around Greg (she also asked when we broke up that I not date any of her friends and that it would be difficult for her and hurt her if I dated anyone at work...I said OK as long as she gave me same respect and she agreed, Greg would be a violation of this agreement). Saturday she denied being interested in anyone or seeing anyone, especially Greg. I asked if she was still going out Saturday night with her friend Amy and she said no, her sister was up visiting and she would stay in with her most likely. Then last night, she walked up to talk to me at work and I see a stamp on her hand...so I ask her where she went and she gets all weird again, defensive..."A dance club...(long pause)...in Corning..." To which I respond, "Oh, the only dance club I know in Corning is Lando's, where is there another one?" And she says, somewhat defensively and pissily, "I went to Lando's." WTF???again...Why the hell don't you just fucking say, I went to Lando's?! I know where the fuck it is...just be fucking up front and honest with me...so now of course I'm thinking the only reason for her to be shady about it would be if it was some sort of date she'd been keeping from me. Why the hell else would she, on the spur of the moment, decide to drive an hour to go out? It makes no sense.
This is what I mean. So I gave her a long speech about what friendship means to me, that I only consider real friends to be people that I share quality time with that I'm not forced to spend with them (i.e. work...yes, I have work friends, but we don't really hang out outside work and I don't consider them to be close friends even though I see them often and talk to them a lot...which isn't to say I would be opposed to becoming friends with some of them--I do on the other hand consider people like Erin and Alicia, neither of whom I've ever met, to be friends because we've shared the bond of these diaries and chatting online when we could have done other things if we'd wanted to). I told her that I ask for honesty and respect (which I guess to me is how I define loyalty). Don't make me feel like a fucking back-up friend...someone that is there in case nothing better comes up. I don't deal well with that shit. I told her I'd be just as pissed at Pat or Chuck or anyone else if they gave me some bullshit excuse for why they couldn't hang out with me and then I found out they were out doing shit with other people. So she said ok, she understood and still says she hasn't started seeing anyone...but I'm wondering in the back of my head if she's using Bill Clinton logic (which would mean Karma coming around to bite me on the ass yet again, and damn it if I'm not getting tired of that, damn if I'm not sick of admitting, yes, I screwed up, only to still have it rear it's ugly head once I've learned the lesson and tried to move forward)...meaning, she went on a first date Saturday night and since she doesn't consider it something serious, therefore she can tell me, no, she's not seeing anyone. I hope that's not it, but it's not going to surprise me if that's what happens...I've just been getting the feeling that she's not telling me everything, that she's holding something back from me. I started wondering if she's just trying to keep me interested in her so that I don't go out and meet someone and that way, if she doesn't find anything better, she can say she wants a relationship again...I'm not gonna be played that way.
So I'm still feeling things out and cautiously seeing where things go...I'm ready to cut my losses if I have to, but as I said last entry it would mean that yet again I put faith in someone, believing they were more than they are only to be let down, disappointed...and eventually this is going to start to cloud my judgement so that I'm not going to want to give people the chance to get inside my wall. That's how I was up through high school and it was a lonely fucking existence and I really don't want to feel like that's the only way to save myself disappointment. It's not really protecting myself if I fall back into that, it's just trading one pain for another and that's shitty.
I'm trying to adopt a new motto and believe it: Why take shit so seriously? It's only life.