Country roads

... or an evening with Miss J.

How come that I always get the one I do not want and let the one I want slip away?

How come that I have never been able to reset my default settings?

Pointless things

Something I picked up there.

• I usually wear custom made shoes. When I do not, I usually have a shoe half a size lager than the other one, because my feet are not of equal length, thanks to a funny horse and a rigid stirrup.
• I do not like to look into people's eyes. Like a true psychopath, I look at their solar plexus when I feel I could be threatened, or somewhere over their head when I feel safe. I look into people's eyes when I am listening to them intently or about to do something drastic about them. 
• I hate crowds. And I hate myself when I allow myself being crowded. I like open spaces though, so I guess I do not qualify as a full blown agoraphobiac. I tend to avoid crowded covered spaces. Say more than 10.000 square feet, but I manage to feel at ease if I have a wall behind my back.
• I actually listen to Bach covers by, say, Saint Preux or such, to cringe at the disaster. 
• People who do not truly know me say I am a composed and reserved kind of guy. People who really know me say I am talented and intransigeant. I have too many faces. I usually make a favourable first impression.
• My nose is full of infectious crater holes.
• I  love rarely and far too much for my own good.
• I still believe that best and worst cases analysis are meaningful. I hate relativism and still believe in absolutes. 
• I need symbolic stochastic analysis to go over some of my preconceptions.
• I do not believe that I am holding many preconceptions, especially about myself ;-)

Talking about the revolution

Miss I and I shared another pleasant evening.

To be honest, I wasn't so sure that she would be coming, and, to be even more honest, I wasn't so sure that I wanted to see her either. Not that I wanted not to see her, just that I was still digesting our last emails. 

I was tired, feeling somewhat inadequate, lacking of something, and, up to a point I still feel that way.

The last few days weren't my best. I felt sad, and when your iPod randomly feeds you some Daho and then you suddenly feel that it has been written for you and you just want to pull over and cry it out, well, obviously, something is very wrong with you. But, in a way, that particular incident helped me a lot. Because then I realized that something was indeed wrong with me. Not that what I was feeling was wrong: I was true to myself and tried to communicate as openly and frankly as I could. What was wrong was that I was that I was trying to find answers, hoping that they would close the issue. That, magically, understanding would bring me peace. And I was unable to find answers, so no peace for me. So I decided to accept the situation as it is, acknowledge the fact that I was living it, and then try to understand something, maybe not everything, but enough to be able to understand what hit me and how it came. Accepting is easy. Easier than trying to find answers to questions you do not fully understand anyway. And then some kind of understanding began to trickle and slowly diffuse.

Right before our date, I was in the opinion that I maneuvered myself in this relationship on my own. Granted, it takes two to tango, but my expectations, hopes and fears were mine and mine only. Granted, I had done my best at expressing them, but perhaps my best is not enough. And perhaps my best is absolutely not the way to go. And, perhaps, no matter what and how I might say things, the one I have been talking to wasn't willing to hear me. I was at the crossroad between self-doubt and  loosing my bienveillance on the way to betterment. 

Here we are, without awkward moments, chatting about her new job, how things are going, exactly as if nothing happened. Well, we have enough practice I guess ;-)

Then we talked. About what we had written about the days before. She needs to establish an emotional dialogue before opening up, I need to feel a connection, share something before being emotional, that sort of things. Let's be frank, at this point, we both have opened up to a point and formed an emotional bond. If we cannot go on from there now, it is sad but it most probably is that we never will. Why? Well, communication style is a part of it. For my part, expressing my feelings is a long and arduous process where I find myself battling with words I half understand in the hope of conveying something meaningful. I am far much better at this game when I write than when I speak. Well, less abysmal better describes it actually. I thrive in regulated environments, where there is a clear and well known  boundary between who you are and who you should be. And I guess that most if not all of my past relationships followed the same pattern: meet someone, act as we are supposed to, find a mutually agreeable way to go out of context, share, feel. She goes exactly the opposite way. Besides, I have no idea of what she wants and how she wants it. What does she expect me to share when our common experience is restricted? It is truly beyond me. Perhaps are we doomed to stay at the friend level, which isn't a bad proposition but not where I expected to be. 

Anyway, this whole thing is tiring me. There may be an opening, somewhere, but I do not count on finding it on purpose. As I see things now, we will most probably stay friends, and if our relationship evolves it won't be because one of us wanted it, but just because, at some point, I'll say something utterly trivial to me that she has been waiting for. 

Right now, I am still working on what we said, I am tired, sad and neither happy nor unhappy. 

Tired, mostly.

You have no idea...

- "You have no idea what it is like what I have been through."

- "I kind of guess."

Those three days in cac weren't eleven months without a job, but the intensity more than largely made up for brevity when it comes to learn a few unpleasant things about who you thought you were, how much you need friends when you are less than yourself and about who your friends really are.

And about not letting people down when they need you most.

Among a few other things.

Loop the loop

Once again, for the third time in almost two years, Miss I and I have looped the loop.

I won't say I am overjoyed. I won't say I am content. But I won't say I am unhappy either. I am just back to planet Earth. 

Each and every time, we hit the communication wall. I still do not understand her as fully as I would like to. I do not understand what she wants me to say or do or be. She doesn't understand what I mean nor, I strongly suspect, who and how I am. 

But, this time, we managed to say what we mean to each other and what we are expecting. And to understand it. 

Which is an improvement, in a way. 

Not that I am disappointed, just that, on the onset, I was hoping for something more. 

Anyway, "l'existence, c'est la vie" (TM) ;-)