Burg, Part 2

I am finally finishing this Burg saga. See here for Part 1.

I wrote Burg, Part 1 when I clandestinely discovered that Burg and his Slut Asian girlfriend of about a year had just recently broken up. At that point, I thought that I had actually come to a closure regarding Burg. When I started dating Broadway back in March, who ironically is fairly food friends with Burg, I started going to things with Broadway at which Burg and Slult Asian also would be.

I actually talked to Slut Asian a few times and decided that whatever, I was over the whole thing. Thinking nonchalantly is so differently from actually being nonchalant about the whole thing. When I found out about the break up, I was shocked. All sorts of possibilities ran through my head, as if I had been pining Burg still after all that time had passed.

I even rehearsed crazy silly soap opera scenarios in my head about dumping Broadway and going after Burg, and how after both of our independent attempts at romance with other people, we would still find true ultimate love in each other. What a great love story to tell our kids if they ever ask how their mom and dad met, I thought.

I know, I was way gone on that thought.

The news of their breakup also came at a time of lows for Broadway and me, which certainly didn't help my sense of stability in my current relationship. I remember shooting off an email to Best Friend asking her what she thought as soon as I found out about the breakup. (She was there with me through all of the Burg garbage two years ago).

As usual, she reality-checked me and said that I needed to make a decision about Broadway once and for all and not because of Burg's freshly acquired bachelor status. As for Burg, I needed to just chill the F* out and stop playing out these silly fairy castle scenarios. Yeah ... Best Friend's always got a better head on her shoulders than I do. I took her advice and just let it go.

The funny thing from all of this is that I feel sorry for the Slut Asian girl. She's probably not really a slut, just one of those outspoken girls who has no problems being crass and hanging with the boys. Objectively speaking, Burg was a terrible boyfriend to her, not because he was trying to be a jerk, but just because Burg is who he is. He's such a typical guy sometimes.

The other funny thing is that Slut Asian and I mutually stalked each other for a while right after she started dating Burg. I read her blog religiously, equating her crassy words as slutty. In return, I kept seeing hits from her internship company on my public blog. I guess she was just as curious about me as I was about her.

I wonder what she thought of me? Was she pity me as the poor girl whose love she stole?

no summer frisbee?

I met with my boss this afternoon to discuss 1) my current (lack of) progress, and 2) where I'm headed, project-wise and person-wise. My contract is due to expire sometime in 2009 (right now it's for June, but it can probably be extended a few months easily if I wanted), so I have to start thinking about just what it is that I want to do with myself post-cushy-job-contract.

Haphazardly, I decided a few months ago that I would like to look into a more policy-driven position, perhaps even government policy down in DC. So today's meeting with my boss was when I planned to drop the bomb that I may 1) cut my contract short before 2009, or more probable, 2) take a few months' (most likely summer + part of fall) leave of absence to try a policy stint in DC.

The Boss was supportive, as I expected (bless me for at least having decent supervisors to work for), which just means that I now can't use "tough boss" as an excuse for not getting off my butt and finding a stint, which means I probably do have to think this through rather thoroughly:

1) This would mean some months of separation from Broadway and a short-term long-distance relationship. The couple of times I've bounced the idea off of him, he'd expressed general unhappiness about my needing to be absent from Big City.

2) Summer time is prime FUN frisbee season, as opposed to the competitive fall and spring seasons. I can't believe this is even a factor, but I have a serious mental block for leaving Big City during the summer because I want to play frisbee here. I love my summer team, and given my contract ending in 2009, this may even be my last summer in Big City and thus last chance to play with this team.

So the question really is whether I value my long-term career ahead of frisbee (oh, and Broadway)?

anonymous blogging

There are a few blogs that I read regularly. They are all anonymous blogs, though to differing degrees of anonymity. As much as I love blogs (reading and writing), I crave the personal connectivity to someone. I went to San Francisco about six months ago, and if it had been completely up to me, I would have written the SF anonymous blogger and asked to meet for coffee. In a way, I feel like these people are all my friends, and I want them to be my friends in real life. Because of the connection I feel to them through their most private thoughts, I find it hard to restrain myself from tapping that connection further and bursting their anonymity bubble, even knowing full well that the bubble is a safety barrier for me, too.

I have been reading one particular anonymous blog for a little over a year now, and I just have so much respect for the author that I've always wondered her true identity. Despite almost always vague about things including the city she lives in, her posts seem to mention things that resemble people and places around me that it always made me wonder just how closely linked we actually are.

Recently, she mentioned something rather specific that seemed possible for me to google and to deduce her true identity. Seizing on this opportunity last week, I went searching in local papers for news that may match the cameo mention from her blog. As luck would have it, even though some of my assumptions were wrong, I came upon a news article that led very quickly through a couple of additional searches to her real identity.

My curiosity has definitely been satisfied, and I'm super excited to now concurrently read her public blog along with the anonymous one, but I can't help feeling slightly uneasy. I wasn't exactly privy to the knowledge of her identity, nor her public blog. In an ironic way, I feel like I am trespassing on her life and her thoughts by now reading her non-anonymous blog and by knowing who she is.

I then think back to my own blogs: my public one that had gathered an audience, a semi-anonymous one that didn't really work, and now this one. I finally killed my public one after three years of writing in it after realizing that I was no longer writing for myself but rather for my readers. The things I wanted to write for myself couldn't be written without sacrificing my much-wanted personal privacy. The semi-anonymous blog didn't work out as I didn't know how to say no to friends (acquaintances) asking for the url, and it degenerated into a semi-public blog.

As for this one, the verdict remains to be seen. I sometimes wonder if I'm being too restrictive and evasive about generalizing things here, so much so that it hinders my writing because I spend more time figuring out how to disguise elements of a story to de-couple it from my real life than just writing what's on my mind.

For the time-being, I am still writing here for me, which fills the right void for me.

death

The bond I feel to my parents is inexplicable, akin to nationalism where you can't quite explain why you feel so strongly about your own country. I feel tied to them, and I love them, and I would only wish the best for them, and it is so incredibly crippling to me to imagine them ever being gone.

One of my strongest memories from childhood is of laying in bed one night balling my eyes out because it occurred to me that one day my father would die. I went to bed fine, happy, but as I layed there, one thought led to another and before I knew it, the tears just wouldn't stop. I pulled the covers over my head so as to muffle the sounds as much as possible. I was just 7 or 8. I wasn't afraid of my own death, but I was deathly afraid of the one day in the future when my father would die.

As I have gotten older, I no longer irrationally cry about my parents dying. I internalize it more and more as I see them getting older and more frail. A couple of tears would flow out of the corner of my eye, but I keep back the rest in an attempt to not cry about the inevitabilities of life. It doesn't necessarily dull the pain to think about other things, but it does help to take my mind off of those thoughts.

When I think about my own death, I don't think of it as something that I fear. I regard death with a light of curiosity. When the day comes, I think I would welcome it because my curiosity would finally be satisfied as I find out just what happens to us after we die. Would I be conscious enough to realize my own death? Or would it simply be a stop in consciousness? If the latter, then who would even know? It's like that old cliche about whether a tree falling in the woods would make a sound even if no one is there to hear it. Would my cessation of consciousness even be realized by me? How would I realize it if I no longer have consciousness?

What I fear most about dying are the consequences my death would have on those I love, especially my parents. I fear how devastated my parents would be, how they may never fully recover from that shock, and how much they would suffer. For that reason, I would never be able to carry through a suicide, not because I have such a great unshakeable respect for life, not for my own sake and desire to live, but for my parents to not suffer the misery of dealing with my death.

Driving on a dark dark highway a couple of nights ago, I ran through these thoughts of death. What if I swerve and hit a siderail? What if a car runs a red light while I'm driving through the intersection? Then the thought dawned on me ... How would I feel about my death if my parents no longer are a concern? All the voices in my head paused. I felt calm.

That scared me.

annoying meetings

The lady sitting next to me in a meeting earlier today wouldn't stop hmm-ing to everything that was being said. You know the type? The speaker would make a point, and she would nod her head and make a "hmm" sound, as if to say, "hm, interesting."

Fine, whatever. I do that sometimes, too when I really do think the speark made an interesting point.

Except, she did this for every other sentence that came out of the spearker's mouth. GAHHHHHH. The meeting lasted an hour. I almost stabbed my own eye out of agony.

smile

Relationships really are so up and down. Last time, I was so down and hating the world and asking why just why am I putting up with Broadway. Are the good parts so good that they completely outweigh the bad?

Last night, I slept alone ... the first time that Broadway and I consciously slept apart in the 7 months we've dated each other. I know that's hard to believe, and I sometimes wonder why we (he) place(s) such weight on whether or not we are spending every night together.

Nevermind why I slept alone, but I felt more lonely than ever this morning ... He came over in the afternoon. He's never given me flowers before. He's just not the flowers kind of guy. Yet there he was, outside my doorway with a huge bouquet of flowers in his arms, looking at me with those big anticipatory eyes, nervous, not sure whether or not I would forgive him. Tears poured out of my eyes again, this time from joy and from love. All it took was one look at those eyes, and I knew that I had already forgiven him.

He sent me an email just now with the subject "you", with this silly little link the only line in the body of the email. It brought a smile to my face because he's right, that is me. But more than anything else, he knew me so well to see me in that cartoon immediately, and I knew him so well to know that the way (brevity) of his email meant that he he sent it with the most love there ever was in the whole world.

I really do wonder

I really do wonder sometimes why I go through this, why I put myself through the hell of enduring and dealing with his depression. If it's bad now, what will it be like in some years?

I don't know how I am supposed to act. I try to be unminding of the silence from him, and despite the dismissal and lack of warmth I feel, I try to be cheerful and unjudging and continue to interact with him in a normal tone. And still, the best I get in return is nothing. When he does speak, it scathes. He may not intend for it to, but inevitably it does. It's almost better to get the depressing silence in comparison.

I just don't know what I am supposed to do. The only thing I know to do is to walk away, leave him alone, and cry on my own.

I'm selfish and mean

I convinced Broadway to come stay at my place last night and lured him by saying I'd make him pumpkin pie, and that I would do my laundry which would give him clean underwear. He'd been out at his house, and I'd been dragging my feet about doing laundry, so he went through his last pair a couple of nights ago (I know, gross).

We got back to my place around 9, and I subsequently wasted away a couple of hours and didn't get around to the laundry until 11. Broadway had a deadline he was rushing to meet, but still helped me carry 4 loads of laundry to the building's laundry room around 11pm.

When we got back after loading the washers, I set the timer on my oven to remind me when to go downstairs to move laundry to dryers and laid down in bed to read my magazine. Having only had 4 hours of sleep the night before, I fell asleep.

Fast forward 30 minutes ... the timer's going off, and Broadway comes in to ask me why there's a timer going off. I, in my sleepy confused state, mumbled something about "what timer?", rolled over and fell back asleep.

Fast forward another hour or so, I wake up, more confused than ever and see Broadway in my bedroom doorway laying out clothes flat in a laundry basket. I ask him what he's doing, and evidently, he had gone downstairs, moved the clothes to the dryer, and now had just brought them, dried, back up to my apartment.

Through all of this, I just slept. Instead of letting me help him lay out dry clothes, he told me to go back to sleep (which I groggidly did).

I woke up this morning and thought about how I would have reacted if he had done what I did last night. I would have blown a fuse. I would have been so furious, crying about the unfairness of the situation. I would have run to my computer to document just how wronged I'd been by Broadway. I would have yelled at him until he apologized, and then rubbed it in some more about how badly he treats me sometimes.

Broadway said nothing last night. He just quietly finished all of my laundry while I slept soundedly. He finally made it to bed at 7am this morning when he finished his assignment.

I can really be so selfish sometimes.

o, blockbuster

Blockbuster changes up their mail-rental program more often than John Roberts changes his stance on unifying the Supreme Court. I've paid the same monthly amount to Blockbuster now for over two years, but somehow what I get is constantly changing.

Yesterday, it miraculously changed for the much much better: I returned three DVDs last Friday and found 6 new DVDs in my mailbox yesterday. My queue actually says that I have six movies out, even though I'm still on the 3-out-at-a-time plan.

I'm not complaining.

depression

I started seeing a therapist at the beginning of this year because I naively thought one would be the panacea to all the problems I was struggling with at the time (parents, Doctor and other past relationships, general life direction). I stopped after just three sessions because she made me feel worse about myself. Maybe inevitably, when you go to someone whose sole job is to listen to you whine about yourself, there's some neaturally-associated guilt of feeling overly self-centered. However, I thought the point of a therapist was A) you're paying them, thereby lessening the guilt, and B) they're the experts at making you feel comfortable no matter what and listening and sympathizing.

Well, it didn't really work for me. She made me feel worse, and I felt that talking to her trivialized my problems in a feeling dismissed kind of way, and I often left more angry than when I walked in. It's hard to tell if I just picked a bad therapist for me or if I would have that reaction to every therapist.

Anyway, the point is that I'm thinking of seeing a therapist again because of Broadway, but I'm just not sure if I want to take the plunge again.

Broadway is chronically depressed. It does not seriously affect his life (at least not yet), but does manifest itself in extremely irritating ways: he is overly cynical about EVERYTHING, and he is so difficult to mobilize, in every possible way. Making decisions about where to eat, where to go for toothpaste, when to go home from work ... he just drags his feet in everything that he does.

I struggle between wanting to be supportive, knowing that he can't help it (or can he?), and wanting to kick some sense into him to just suck it up because life's hard sometimes. A lot of our conflicts stem from my wanting to grab him by the shoulders, shake him, and yell at him to get a grip on his life.

My biggest problem is just that I can't relate. I don't understand how he just absolutely can't help it. I feel that if he would only put his mind to it, why can't he wake up before 1pm every single day??? It is incredibly difficult for me to be nice to him in these situations. I used to try to wake him up, then I eventually got mad after a while of not being able to wake him up. Now, I don't even try. I get up and leave in the mornings when I need to leave, and I call him sometime around 1pm to see what he's doing or if he's still snoring.

I just don't understand depression. I don't understand the inability to control one's negative thoughts and not being able to become consumed by negative energy. He tells me that my getting mad and frustrated at him just makes him feel worse and more depressed knowing that I'm pointing out the very things that he does badly, which he knows he does badly, and which he can't control because of his depression, and it's all just one big downward spiral.

I don't know how to deal with that. I just plain don't understand, and I want to call in the experts. What would a therapist who deals with people like him daily say? How do I function around him without frustrating myself and making him more depressed in the process? Is that even possible? What exactly am I getting into anyway?

And scarier thoughts down the road ... Broadway's dad is the exact same way as he is, if not worse. Would Broadway become the same with old age? His mother finally decided she couldn't take it anymore and moved out. Would I eventually hit that stage, too? If so, would it be better to withdraw now?

So many questions with no answers. I don't want to have too high of expectations, but maybe a therapist could help, if only because s/he sees people with real depression problems like him and would understand the thought process that is so hard for me to grasp.

i can be nasty, too

One very small group in my company wants to be independent from its supervising division, and has been harassing me about it for the past few weeks. I managed to set up a meeting to discuss this situation between the group and the chair of their supervising division, and volunteered myself and another colleague from my office as mediators. (My office also happens to hold the power to grant them their independence, if we deem it necessary and appropriate)

The meeting is scheduled for tomorrow afternoon, and will be a 4-5 person informal discussion about whether this group really just needs to work better with its supervising division, or if this group really warrants being independent.

About an hour ago, the group leader emailed me asking if there will be a projector present in the particular conference room where we're meeting because they have a PowerPoint presentation they would like to show. In my three years here, I have never been to an internal meeting like this and used powerpoint (or seen it be used). But whatever, no matter how unusual, fine it's a valid request. We use powerpoints always when we meet with clients.

However, the final comment in his email made me fume:

"There is a very nice conference room with projection capabilities down the hall on my floor, but I cannot reserve it unless our group is independent."

Only division supervisors (and others designated by him/her) have the ability to reserve conference rooms, so what he says is true ... but was it really necessary? It was an intentional, in-my-face comment highlighting another "disadavange" they have just encountered as a non-independent entity. F- that.

Normally, there is a projector I bring along to that room when we meet with clients, but his comment pissed me off so much that I simply wrote back:

"Hi Group Leader,

Since there will only be 4 of us, I think a laptop will be just fine.

-Seine"

Gosh, it bugs me so much that he thinks he can impress us with a powerpoint presentation. There is not a culture of powerpoint at internal meetings in our company, not even if I'm meeting with my most senior supervisor. Everything is informal, and everything is roundtable. He really is shitting his chances by bringing a presentation, especially since I will be present.

You see, he comes from a consulting world. He worked as a consultant briefly before joining our company, one of those top firms who convince you that they're teaching you the "soft" skills ... like the fact that you impress when you show up with a powerpoint.

What he doesn't know is that I know that consulting world up and down. I came from that world, and I left because I couldn't stand the pretentiousness. He has no idea what he will getting himself into tomorrow. Unnecessary presentations won't buy my loyalty. They will only piss me off more and align me biased against them.

I really was planning to show up to the meeting tomorrow completely unbiased, just to talk to him and his supervisor to gather some facts and really evaluate if the group's request for divorcing the parents division is valid valid. But now I'm just pissed, and I actually don't want to help them at all. I want to be immature and fight against them, make it hard for them to become independent.

It's bad because I actually do have that power. This situation was entrusted to me, and I will be writing up the review report. I feel like I already know what I will write, without having ever set foot in that meeting.

friends & awkwardness

My best friend from college called me last night. I deliberately let it go to voice mail, and despite expecting this reaction, I was still shocked at the amount of negativity I felt toward his voice when I finally listened to the message this morning. It wasn't anything he said. It was a typical message: "Haven't talked to you in a while, was wondering how you were doing. I'm busy as usual; law school's really keeping my hands tied. I went to India last month, and I'm dying to tell you about that ..." blah blah blah

It wasn't the message itself ... what bugged me was his sentence intonation. He has a way of raising his voice at the last couple of words or so of a sentence, any sentence, sentence after sentence after sentence. The mere thought of that intonation makes me angry, and I have no idea why.

He and I really were best friends in college, especially the first couple of years. As all cross-gendered friendships go, there were times when the friendship/relationship boundary was not so clear, but we got through it all and each graduated vowing to stay BFFs forever.

And then we just grew apart. We stopped really keeping in touch, and every time we talked on IM or on the phone, I felt more distant from him than the last chat. In the few years since college, he got engaged (they had started dating during college), then got married, then just went on living life. Through all of this, I cared less and less about his world. I ran out of conversational pieces with him, questions to ask him about his life, questions to ask him about their life together, and I didn't so much feel like sharing my life details either.

With each chat or phone call, the conversations got more and more awkward. We don't talk much (maybe a couple of times a year), so in a way, we've still been able to keep up the pretense of BFFs despite the awkward conversations, but really only in name. True BFFs would never run out of things to share, no matter how long they've been physically apart leading separate lives and being out-of-touch.

So I know that I should really call him back. He's definitely making an effort to stay in touch with me. I should reciprocate. But honestly, it's just such a mental block to me right now. I keep finding excuses for why it'd be inconvenient to call him right now, why I should wait until I've done my laundry, and then after my laundry I excuse that it's really too late, I should call him tomorrow ... etc. etc. etc. ...

I have to do it. I have to pick up the phone and just dial. But man, those sentence intonations are all that's running through my head, and they do nothing to help me pick up the phone.