Thursday, December 29, 2005
Happy Holidays!
Firstoff, a belated Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year to my loyal and most excellent readers.
Sorry I haven't been writing lately.
I've been working a lot, and playing a bit, and I spent Christmas in the woods far, far away from computers and blogs and other such trappings. It was a nice holiday with the family, and a VERY nice five whole days off from work. I have to go back at 9:30 AM (which for me is the crack of absolute fucking dawn) tomorrow morning, and I am equal parts annoyed and, oh, dare I admit it, A LITTLE glad to be going back. Let's not kid ourselves. I like my job, even when it sucks.
In other news (perhaps this is the bigger news): remember the lovely Heidi I told you about? Well, I'm changing her name. Heidi sucks. She's going to be Hayley from now on.
Let me first thank the people who left me comments when I started sounding desperate. It made me think, and I've done a lot of thinking over the past couple of weeks. I'm not nearly as confident as I should be when it comes to who I am and what I want from my life, and especially when it comes to my personal life. I am inexperienced, and this scares me. I have a huge tendency to act aloof and sarcastic (Dag -- you know this better than most people) and to make jokes when I actually care about someone. I am way too used to having people around who know that I care, whether or not I bother to be obvious about it all the time. Perhaps some of the Boy's patented reserve when it comes to human relations has actually rubbed off on me after all.
It has really been my downfall, but I can't continue it. I am, underneath all the nonsense, a genuinely caring and honest person, and I should let more people see it.
But I'm stalling.
I asked her out.
And she said YES.
*insert cheering here*
Ok, backstory:
I'm really happy, but you wouldn't believe (actually, you would if you know me at all) how much I agonized over this one. I asked everyone for advice, and finally did a combination of what was suggested. I invited Hayley over on Friday, after my parents had already left town. I made her dinner, and we drank some of my dad's scarily alcoholic 151 proof rum. We hung out for hours, in fact I couldn't get her to go home, and the anticipation was absolutely killing me. Everytime I decided I was just going to say it: "HAYLEY I LIKE YOU" the very idea sent me into a panic of the strangest proportions. The last time my heart pounded like that was with Kylie, and the results there were not so good, so I was understandably terrified. The most frustratingly wonderful thing about Hayley is how her aloofness is so much like mine -- at the back of my consciousness I knew that she liked me but the way she acted threw me off completely. She says yes to everything, but once we're in the moment, she likes her space, and I hate to invade it.
Finally, we were lying on the couch not doing much of anything, and I said it: "You know, Hayley...I like you." She replied, tantalizingly, "I like you too." I was too nervous to say anything else, and the conversation moved on. She slept on my couch, and I worried. She likes me...but...I like my cats, and my friends, and, ARGH! Finally, I sent her an email before I left for the island. It said something like..."what I was trying to ask you in a roundabout manner the other night was whether you'd like to go on an actual date with me." Then, I went away and worried. For five days. That was pure torture.
Opening my inbox when I got home tonight was even more torture. Reading her message, until I got to the 'yes,' was torturous too. She said my attempts at subtlety were lost on her because she's bad at picking up on such things, but that she does want to go on a date with me.
And now, ladies and gentlemen, I have to calm the fuck down and be sensible and confident about this one.
Wish me....luck?
No, wish me fun and butterflies.
Because that's really what I want.
Happy Holidays to you all.
-N
