Sunday

Happy Sunday everybody.  Apart from going to Mass super-early, I have taken the day off.  I've done some laundry and changed my bed linens, but apart from that it's been gloriously lazy.  I'm currently in bed with my frozen feet tucked underneath a fuzzy, warm blanket while I surf the net and listen to The Girl Who Kicked a Hornet's Nest on audiobook.

I worry I'm getting a migraine, though.  My vision's gone a bit wonky today in my left eye.  It's just a hint of the migraine halo, but it's enough to make me think that reading or watching TV might not be in my future this evening.  I'm sure sitting here on a computer isn't the best idea either.  Merp.

My roommates brought home a couple of bunnies last Monday.  They're super cute, and my roommates seem to be going out of their way to keep the apartment clean now that there are animals.  They are messy (my roommates), and it's been a constant source of irritation and stress for me while I've lived with them.  I'm not a neat freak, but I like organization, and I despise things being dirty.  For example, I always keep the kitchen clean.  Partly because it's more convenient for the next time I want to cook, and partly because leaving food messes attracts bugs and bad smells and is just... gross.  Blech.  The kitchen still doesn't get cleaned when they cook, but they've been great about vacuuming and keeping stuff off of the floor, because they like to let the bunnies hop around the living room when they're home.

I'm moving out in June anyway.  I'm actually going to start packing up my car this week, and I'll be bringing a load of things over to my parents place and That Guy's apartment on Thursday.  Since I'm getting out of debt, my parents have graciously offered me a room.  I don't really want to move home -- I like having my own space very much -- but I get along with my parents, and it will absolutely allow me to pay down debt/save money.  It won't last longer than a year.  Ostensibly I'll start saving up for a wedding this summer too.  That Guy says he's going to propose before August, and we'd get married in the summer of 2014.

Sometimes I wonder about that.  I love him very much.  He's my best friend.  But I worry about how good I'll be as a wife.  I worry about being a good spouse.  I have a hard time letting things go, including some things that happened early on in our relationship.  They still hurt my feelings, still come up more often than I'd like them to.  That Guy tries dealing with them (and succeeds, usually), but I definitely fear he'll get sick of me.  He says he knows he's made mistakes that have contributed to this, so he feels like it's only right that he help me out now, but I also think that, eventually, he'll just decide it's not worth it with me, and we'll break up, and the next woman he likes he'll just try to do better from the get-go so she doesn't have these same issues to deal with.

I fear that a lot.  I also feel like being alone can't get me hurt.  I'm good at being single.  I fill my life with books and films and friends and family.  I've never sat at home pining for a boyfriend.  I don't sleep around to fill some void in my soul or drink to excess or anything like that.  I hate dating.  I like my own company.  I just have a hard time believing anybody else likes my company as much as I do.  That's why I fear people will get sick of me.  So I struggle with feeling like it'd be better for everyone involved if That Guy just moved on without me.  I've never loved anybody like I love him, and I've never seen myself with somebody like I see myself with him.  But can I let go of the hurt and the fear?  More than that, can I let go of feeling like I'm meant to be single, like I'm so good at being self-sufficient for a reason?  There are lots of people out there who can't stand being out of a relationship and who make self-destructive decisions when they're single.  Maybe I should clear the way for them?  I seem to be the opposite; I seem to fall apart when I'm with somebody else.  Well, that's not entirely true.  It's happened with two guys: my first serious boyfriend and That Guy.  The second serious boyfriend, the one between the first one and That Guy, that was an amazingly level-headed, stable relationship.  Not one with a viable future, but one that was safe and secure and which almost never involved arguments or hurt feelings.  Even the way we broke up was so sane.  It helped that it was a long-distance relationship, so I was, more or less, single the entire time.  Like I said: I'm good at that.

I asked That Guy if he thought my struggle to move on meant that I wasn't meant to be in a relationship, but he said he didn't know what it meant.  That kind of hurt my feelings.  I wanted him to tell me... I don't know. Something else.  Anything else.  It makes me feel like my hunch is right.  Maybe too many bad things have happened and I've just made myself impossible to be with.  It seems easy not to take me seriously as a life partner.  None of my boyfriends have.  That Guy does now, but didn't when we first got together, and it impacted me deeply.  It makes me think that, whatever he says, it's never going to be as serious as I always hoped it would be, from the moment I met him.  I let myself feel too much, maybe.  I let myself think I meant as much to him as he almost immediately meant to me.  Nobody'd ever meant so much so fast, everybody always had to spend lots and lots of time getting to know me before I let them in.  But with him I felt it right away.  I loved him before we ever even dated.  And maybe that was a mistake.  Maybe if I hadn't felt so much so fast, the mistakes he made in the beginning wouldn't have meant so much, hurt so much, and wouldn't have left such wounds.

He's sorry.  I know he is.  But I fear that if he could act that was once, he could act that way again.  I know why he did back then.  He had baggage.  But now I feel like I have baggage.  He dropped his off, and I picked it up.  Stuff I haven't thought about for years, stuff that didn't have a negative impact on my last relationship are having an impact on this one.

I wish I knew what to do.

I wish I felt as safe and secure and stable with him as I do with myself.

Lady Friends

I'm 28.  My three best female friends are 39, 39, and 43.

I always had a hard time, when I was growing up, relating to other people my own age.  Then, around the time I got into high school, I only had a hard time relating other girls my own age.  I wasn't snobbish or distant towards other girls, and I didn't prefer hanging out with only guys because I was trying to get closer to them for dating opportunities, as some girls assumed.  It's just that I was at my most comfortable around guys.  My sense of humor, though not based on fart jokes, is more masculine.  My way of speaking is more direct.  My tastes tend to run towards things that guys like, too, like science fiction, kung fu movies, and comic books.

That's not to say I also don't like "girl" things.  I like them especially now that I'm older.  Pretty clothes, makeup, shoes, Jane Austen novels, cupcakes... It's just that, when I was younger, I was more at ease with men than with women.

I realize now that I've kind of handicapped myself, however.  My three best female friends are all more or less like me.  They're also older women, which I think makes a huge difference.  We don't get together and talk about our weight or gossip about what each other is doing.  We talk about... well, everything else.  They have a wisdom and calmness that I crave, being at the tail end of what is likely the most anxious decade anybody ever goes through.  (Seriously.  Twenties.  Yuck.)

But I kind of wish I had closer female friends my own age as well.  Not at the expense of the three best female friends I have, just in addition to them.  I've met a few, and I want to be closer to them, but I don't really know how to go about doing that.  My friendships all develop organically, and age never really entered into the equation.  It wasn't until years after I'd grown to love and trust my friends that I realized all of them had over a decade on me in age.  And it never bothered me.  I kind of liked it.

But these three other women I'm thinking of who are closer to my own age are all really nice.  And I think that, if That Guy and I eventually get married and start having a family, these women will likely be starting the same thing (two are already married, and one is likely to be in another couple of years).  It'd be nice to have women to share these experiences with mutually.

I guess this might be the first time in my life I actually have to work for a friendship.  Normally I have to work to maintain one, but setting one up seems harder.  That Guy tells me that I'm already friends with at least two of these women, but I don't know.  I feel a little insecure about it.  It doesn't help that I'm not really able to spend time with them outside of my time with That Guy.  (I met both of them through him; they're married to or dating friends of his.)  I feel like female friendships need to exist separately from relationships with other people.  That Guy is "friends with" everybody in his circle, including people he doesn't really know that well.  They're all friends by association.  Is that a guy thing?  I have all kinds of classifications for people I know.  Coworkers, acquaintances, buddies, friends, close friends, BEST friends.

Anyway.  Something to think about on a chilly Sunday morning before Mass.  Maybe I'll pray about it today.

Later, gators.

Huzzah!

I just made seven months of car payments in one month.  And it's the first day of the month, too.  I'm hoping I can send even more before February is over.  The more money I send to the finance company, the closer I am to reaching my goal of paying off my car by my 29th birthday in June.

I keep wrestling with the idea of getting a second job. I 'm just not sure... If I lived in the same city as That Guy or if we were married I'd do it, because then I could see him in the evenings or whenever he and I were both home.  But I don't know if it'd be great for our relationship right now to have that kind of separation.  Not that I'm saying we'd break up or anything  if I picked up a second job.  Nothing like that.  He's SO supportive of my sprint towards financial freedom (having given me the inspiration to begin with).  I guess, truthfully, I don't want to give up that time with him. 

I guess these are the problems you want to have, right?  *L*

My life should be car payment-free around the time I move at the end of June, too, which means I should be able to start socking money away into savings.  That Guy and I are going to have to pay for our own wedding after we're engaged, so I want to try to get a head start on that as soon as I can.  I'm not a princess -- as a matter of fact, I will probably be a huge grouch throughout the wedding planning process.  I need to start praying on that. --but I want our wedding to be simple and elegant.  We'll have a really tight budget, but it's important to both of us not to go into debt for any of it: the ring, the wedding, or the honeymoon.  The way I look at it, I'd rather go small, significant, and paid for now, and, later on, when we've been married five or ten or fifteen years, and we have no more debt (other than a house, hopefully), we spend two weeks in Paris or Rome.  (Or both.)  I almost said, "And he can buy me a huge rock," because that seems like the other obvious "upgrade," but I'm not a "rock" sort of person anyway, and I think I'd probably hate to give up the ring he proposed to me with.  The rings I've pointed him towards when he asked for my opinion are all very modest.  (I think he was surprised I didn't want more diamonds and things.)  I have small, thin hands, so bling looks kind of ridiculous and gaudy on me.  Honestly, I'd be happy with no engagement ring, just a wedding band, but he insists.  I understand the reason.  It's an investment in me, he gets to ask me on one knee and be traditional and sweet.  I'm going to be embarrassed and cry and my ears will turn red and get really hot, and I'll cry a lot more.  *L* 

Speaking of moving (was I speaking of moving?  I think so.), even though I already know where I'm going, I couldn't help looking at the website of my old property manager.  The unit I used to rent is available, and I was SO tempted by it.  I loved that place.  It was built in 1902, it has wood floors and (non-functional) beautiful tiled fireplaces in both the living room and the bedroom.  *le sigh*  I keep saying if That Guy gets kidnapped by aliens and we don't get engaged and married I'll try to get back into the building.  All the units are really cool.  There are only four, and each one is different.  I think it's a converted boarding house.  Oh... Gosh, I miss that place so much.

I won't think about it.  I'm going to a good place for a good price that will help me get out of debt and pay for a wedding.  No regrets!  Make it happen!

I'm off to listen to more of The Dave Ramsey Show before I get to leave work.  It's sooooooo slllooooooowwwwwww today.  Blerg.

Later, gators.