scraped knees and bruised hearts

Saturday, May 26, 2007
Current mood: contemplative
When you are a child, you think you are invincible. You run around, all willy-nilly, not concerned about bumping your head or falling down and skinning your knees.
But it is inevitable that you will do so. You get hurt, and you begin to cry.
As an adult, I have dealt with children many times - babysitting, church, taking care of friends' children. People always tell you when a kid falls down and hurts themselves, never let them see your initial reaction. Act like everything is okay. Speak in a sweet, soothing voice, and almost practically ignore the fact that they are hurt because if you get upset, they will, too.
But what do you do when the person that is hurting is a grown-up?
There are so many different ways of dealing with pain and loss. We all react in different ways. One of the hardest things to comprehend is how to respond when someone you are very close to is hurting.
One of my very, very dear friends has experienced that kind of loss twice in the past two weeks. Most recently, he lost his roommate and one of his best friends in a devastating car accident this past week, before that it was his grandfather.
When I first found out, I couldn't believe it. It doesn't seem fair that someone should ever have to go through someone like this, but this time it felt particularly unjust. I felt transported back to last fall when Ben was taken away from me in a car accident, leaving his fiance and another one of my good friends in poor physical condition.
I wanted to reach out to him, and I called him, just so that he would know he is on my mind. But then I was faced, once again, with a dilemma.
How do you reach out to someone who is hurting? Do you take them in your arms, like that little child, comfort them with soft words and do your best to take their mind away from what has just transpired?
Or do you sit down with them, let them talk, acknowledged that it all happened, and just commiserate that this really, really sucks?
We aren't children anymore, but it's times like these that I miss that innocence.
My thoughts are with you, good friend. We're here for whatever you want...whether you want to talk or you just want a friend, we are all here, and we love you very much.
No matter what you decide that makes you feel better, there's one thing that remains.
You're not alone.

livin' time and the summer is easy :)

I just wanted to thank everyone that has kept me in their thoughts as I have been waiting patiently to hear back about my internship. Almost two weeks ago, I interviewed at The Magazine in The City for an internship that I have been wanting since I was a senior in high school. My entire college career has been working up to this, really.

I started to get a little discouraged, especially when I found out that they were interviewing 10 and only hiring 2.

However, Friday afternoon I received a phone call from KB with The Magazine informing that they would like to offer me a position....!

I'm so so excited, and I really can't wait to start. But I'd be lying if I were to say that I'm not scared at all about moving to Birmingham or actually doing the work I will be doing or leaving my friends and family at RL in The Great Little Big City.

I'm scared as hell.

But.

That's one of the best parts, the being scared. It leads way to more excitement and the feeling that I'm taking a huge step towards what I would ultimately like to do.Thanks again to everyone for hoping, praying, thinking, wishing, believing, and wanting this for me just as badly as I did. I love you!

you're so fucking money, and you don't even know it

Have you ever felt like you were playing a game with all the wrong rules? Or worse, everyone else is using a different set of rules from you?

That's how I feel sometimes, especially when it comes to life.

To illustrate my point, I'll use an example from recent weeks. I met someone, he got my number, and then he said, "I'll call you tomorrow....nah, I won't call you tomorrow. It'll actually be more like sometime next week."

At first I was a little put off by it, but I soon grew to realize that his honesty made me feel way better than when someone says, "I'll call you," and they never follow through.

This is a touchy subject, I think. I'm reminded of the great scene in Swingers in which Mike gets a number, and then he asks his buddies how long he should wait to call.

Two days, they respond, is industry standard. But then again...three days is really kinda money. When he asks them how long they will wait before they call their beautiful babies, their answers are most unexpected:

"Six days."

Now, I must take a slight time out to be brutally honest here. I will be the first to say that games are wrong, men and women should be honest with one another, let's cut the bullshit and get to the heart of the matter, right?

But.

That being said, I actually like a little mystery. If I like someone, chances are I won't like them nearly as much if they call me right away. I gave my number to someone one time, and he called me not a few hours later. Needless to say, I deleted him right away. I enjoy thinking, "Is he going to call, is he not going to call, did he like me..." et cetera, et cetera.

Is that so wrong?

I'm afraid that my attitude sets women back instead catapulting us forward. But I can't help it; that's how I'm programmed. There is such thing, however, as too much. Six days in my eyes in entirely inappropriate. Who sets the standard? If you get the number on the weekend, do you wait until the next weekend? Is it okay to call the next day if you really, really thought there were sparks?

While we are on the subject of phone etiquette, I've had a few other musings as well. There is an episode of "Sex and the City" in which Carrie gives her number to a man and starts to get worried when several days pass by without him calling. She asks her friends what they think. One man talks about how he met a girl and really liked her, so he didn't call her for about four days. The woman, pissed, says that she waited to call him back for three days, and so it went. My question is, once the lines of communication are opened, what is acceptable?

I've always had the fear of calling too much or too often. But then there have been other times where I've honestly wanted to say fuck it, I have something to say, I want to talk to this person, I'm calling. But I never really know if I'm helping or hurting my case.

For example.

I went out with a guy two summers ago. We had dinner, watched TV; a fun time was had. The next day, I waited for him to call me. He didn't. So I waited again. Still didn't call. Beginning to get frustrated, I actually called him. We talked; things were fine. I think we spoke a few other times but never went out again.

What went wrong?

Many months later, we were chatting. Determined to get to the bottom of this, I brought it up. He said simply, "I thought you didn't like me when you didn't call. I figured when you wanted to see me, you'd let me know."

Damn it. I tried to explain my whole system of not calling when you want to call, and trying not to feel like you're overdoing it, and the complicated rules of the phone call, but he just looked really confused. This threw me off. It was one of the first times (but not the first, just one of the best examples) that I realized we were all playing by different rules.

So I guess the only hard and fast rule is that there are no rules. Everyone is different. Not all women like a little mystery, and not all men are going to call once they get the digits.

But one thing does remain.

If you like someone, there is still that little tingle during the number exchange, and the wondering, "Does he like me? Is he going call?" and "Did she like me? How long should I wait to call?"

At least, that's true for me.

And PS. He did call me...not the next day, or the next day, or even the next day. But he did call.