A moment's reflection
Earlier today I was talking with coworkers about the awkwardness of facebook. The way that you always seem to get a friend request from someone you knew 10 years ago, and haven't talked to in all that time due to total mutual lack of interest. And it occurred to me that I've always been on the receiving end, always been the one wondering "If I don't friend that person, will they be offended? If I do, will I actually have to talk to him?" You know. The Awkward.
So I decided that just once I would *be* the awkward. Almost instantaneously I knew the perfect target- My ex from about 5-6 years-and-change ago. We didn't part on bad terms or anything, but she was always very traditional about relationships (specifically about the dysfunctional traits that should be present in both the male and female according to stereotype) right down to the "conversation post-relationship should always be awkward and uncomfortable" rule.
Didn't find her. Curse the heavens! If my girlfriend were of a significantly less awesome caliber, I suspect she would arch an eyebrow in suspicion at me trying to look up an old flame on facebook.
I can only say that there are few people I would be comfortable making feel awkward, and since she was always so committed to it, it fit an ethical loophole on the matter. :D
Anyway, the moment of reflection of this post isn't about her. Really what I'm trying to say is that in skimming her old blog for a last name, I came across reference to an event I didn't remember, so I tried to look it up in my blog, at which point I started reading old posts of mine from around that time period (circa 2K3), and it occurred to me that relative to then-me, I have my life relatively together.
That's strange for me. Not to have my life not teetering on the brink of insanity (well, sort of), but to realize it. It's normal for people, actually. When was the last time you thought to yourself, "I'm not currently on fire" or "A jet engine has not randomly crashed through my ceiling, hooray!" ? You don't, because unless it's happening, that shit just doesn't occur to you.
This is the paragraph that brought it home for me, at a key moment where I was just *barely* starting to pull out of what my life had briefly become, toward what it actually could be:
"Later that night, another random greek tradition, burning the Christmas tree. Burning branches of the tree is supposed to bring good energy to the new year, and erase bad energy from the old one. Most of my branch burning was for the old year. I tossed one in for the month I spent in a chemical fog. One for living with a guy who thinks waking me up at 1 in the morning with a 12 gauge shotgun is a really funny joke. Another couple branches for my classes, one for the duo's quest for my soul. And I watched all my bitterness flare up in a blaze of fire, and then just go up in smoke, floating amongst the burning ashes up into the sky, out of my life forever.
I think I'm getting a handle on life. So I made an anti new years resolution. I resolved not to change a thing."
So I decided that just once I would *be* the awkward. Almost instantaneously I knew the perfect target- My ex from about 5-6 years-and-change ago. We didn't part on bad terms or anything, but she was always very traditional about relationships (specifically about the dysfunctional traits that should be present in both the male and female according to stereotype) right down to the "conversation post-relationship should always be awkward and uncomfortable" rule.
Didn't find her. Curse the heavens! If my girlfriend were of a significantly less awesome caliber, I suspect she would arch an eyebrow in suspicion at me trying to look up an old flame on facebook.
I can only say that there are few people I would be comfortable making feel awkward, and since she was always so committed to it, it fit an ethical loophole on the matter. :D
Anyway, the moment of reflection of this post isn't about her. Really what I'm trying to say is that in skimming her old blog for a last name, I came across reference to an event I didn't remember, so I tried to look it up in my blog, at which point I started reading old posts of mine from around that time period (circa 2K3), and it occurred to me that relative to then-me, I have my life relatively together.
That's strange for me. Not to have my life not teetering on the brink of insanity (well, sort of), but to realize it. It's normal for people, actually. When was the last time you thought to yourself, "I'm not currently on fire" or "A jet engine has not randomly crashed through my ceiling, hooray!" ? You don't, because unless it's happening, that shit just doesn't occur to you.
This is the paragraph that brought it home for me, at a key moment where I was just *barely* starting to pull out of what my life had briefly become, toward what it actually could be:
"Later that night, another random greek tradition, burning the Christmas tree. Burning branches of the tree is supposed to bring good energy to the new year, and erase bad energy from the old one. Most of my branch burning was for the old year. I tossed one in for the month I spent in a chemical fog. One for living with a guy who thinks waking me up at 1 in the morning with a 12 gauge shotgun is a really funny joke. Another couple branches for my classes, one for the duo's quest for my soul. And I watched all my bitterness flare up in a blaze of fire, and then just go up in smoke, floating amongst the burning ashes up into the sky, out of my life forever.
I think I'm getting a handle on life. So I made an anti new years resolution. I resolved not to change a thing."