Two exes have told me on different occasions that I have a “princess mentality”, meaning I expect to be treated a particular way, and when those expectations are not being met, I check out. This is something I will not deny, as there are certain behaviors I require from people in my life – not just boyfriends, but family, friends and co-workers alike. I do demand respect, and you will know when I feel as though I am not getting that respect. I do expect to feel appreciated and wanted, and when I’m not, fuck you – I’ll make damn sure you don’t feel either, also. There are far too many people in my life who not only treat me with total respect (and wouldn’t dream of doing otherwise), but they also never let me feel as though I am unwanted in their life, or not significant. I have friends who would walk the ends of the Earth for me, and I don’t doubt this for a second. Those friends, they also know I would do the very same for them as well.

I live my life by a very easy to remember mantra – “fuck it”!

I never let people know when life is getting a little too difficult to handle the weight of it myself, and therefore it’s nearly impossible for anyone else to realize I may need them. To no fault of their own, I begin to hold this against them, consider them inconsiderate. The wall that I built from the get-go just gets taller and stronger. I push myself into a corner where I hide until I find that inner strength to trudge forward alone, without the assistance of anyone else, thus making that independent side of me somewhat stronger.

I wish allowing someone in my life to be there for me in the truest sense of the word is something I could do, but it’s not the easiest thing to change. I wish I could take some of the weight off of my own shoulders and tell certain people that it would be nice if they could do certain things for me, but alas, I don’t see that ever happening.

No expectations – this is the motto I make for nearly every person in my life. I expect nothing from people, if only because anything I do expect, I do for myself. Anything given to me is just an added bonus, but how much happiness can one person ever really experience if living under such strict conditions?

As the years go by I see myself becoming an empty shell with no emotions. That scares me. A person needs to feel the whole spectrum from happiness to sheer sadness, but what happens when a heart is so strenuously trained to ignore any emotion other than happiness? Can that truly last forever, and if not, what happens when reality catches up to my heart? Will everything I ever worked for in archiving my personal strength and independence crash and burn? Will any hope of a meaningful and spirited relationship be vanished?

These are the thoughts I think of when the sun has yet to rise and I am again by myself. Don’t take pity on me, as I have nobody to blame for these attributes other than myself. For now, I am thankful I am the way I am – it is something I take great pride in, I just worry what will happen when the inevitable other shoe drops.

Anywhoot, I’m getting off topic. This past February has been like every other. First came a total surprise, an ex of mine showed up at my work about two weeks ago. I said hi, we made small chit-chat, and I kept catching him look my way. He came over to ask me strange questions (ex: “Hey, Debbie, do you know where the microwaves are?” Yea, Brett, they’re right behind you.”) and eventually he left. About half an hour later my phone notifies me that I have a MySpace message from him, and it said something to the effect of me looking good. I thanked him and in return said that time has worked well for him (meaning he looked good after all these years, since it was six years since we last saw one another), but this comment seemed to boggle him and he needed a further explanation (which was, in my opinion, either him being really dumb, or fishing for an ego boost). As it stands now, we’re working on our friendship. IF my life were different than it is right now, I MIGHT consider seeing where this takes me, but as it stands right now – the desire is just not there. I don’t think he’s a horrible looking chap…

He does have the whole shaved head thing going for him.

He has amazing blue eyes, but it all comes down to me being pretty darn content with my life right now. So, I think I’ll keep him at arms length away (unless he gets super scary on me), and who knows, maybe we’ll reconnect more romantically next February!

It hasn’t just been Brett, though. Oh, no. If there is anyone in my life who has ever meant the most to me, it’s Tom. Take that name, engrave it deep within your head, because it’s the most important name in my life. He had this habit of popping up in February. We started dating February of 2001. We took a short little break and he came back around in February of 2002. After a few more months, we ended things again, but in February of 2003 he called me up. I ended up finding a backbone that time, though, and nipped that in the bud (something I actually always regretted). In February of 2004 he got his sister (my high school bff) to contact me. We were going to go out one night, but I found myself with cold feet, worrying my heart couldn’t handle it, and backed out. The Februarys of 05, 06 and 07 were Tom-less, which I thought ended the era… until this past week.

We, again, go to MySpace for this situation. I was sent a notification that a “Mikey” wanted to add me on MySpace. Um, okay. His profile is private but his small picture looks oddly enough like Tom’s brother’s, Mike. This alone was enough for me to add him! So, I check out the rest of his pictures and sure enough, it’s that Mike. He sent me a message telling me he saw me at a red light, so researched me on MySpace. Okay, that’s fine. He asks how I am, am I married, kids, etc. etc. etc. I amuse him with answers to his questions, and after some back and forth, I ask how the family is (I was, after all, very close with every member of that family. Jess, as I said earlier, was my high school bff long before I involved myself with Tom. Paul, the second oldest brother, I was very close friends with. Mike, the oldest brother, well, we weren’t all that close, but we knew of each other. Their mother adores me, their father thinks the world of me, and the grandparents are still big fans of me.) He catches me up on everyones status, including Tom. I play it cool and tell him to tell Jess that I said hello, and we should catch up for lunch sometime. He says he will, and I think it ends there. No. He sends me a message that Tom was asking about me the other week (how I was, what was new with me), and then goes on to tell me that Tom said he would love to see me and see where things could go. What? Fuck. After crying my eyes out, calling my mother (who did what every good mother would do, she told me she would disown me if I ever willingly hung out with Tom), calmed my stomach down, and finally emailed Mike. I said, verbatim.

Wow. Um. Wow. You can tell Tom that his offer is something I have wanted to hear for countless years now, and that even though he’ll always have a very special place in my heart, one met with no hard feelings or regret, and that as much as it pains me to say this, I have had to let the Tom Ship sail away years ago. If I knew my heart could handle seeing him without falling apart at the seams, I might be able to do what it is he wants me to do, but the truth of the matter is that he is just one of them guys who will always have a pull over me, my life and my emotions. Tell him to give me another five years before I can muster up the strength to see him again. I wish him well, I wish him lots of happiness, and the memories we made together will last me a lifetime. I hate to say “too little, too late”, but it’s the only fitting cliche that comes to mind at the present moment.

I have yet to get a response to that message yet, even though it has been read.

Tom and I circa 2001. Pardon the bangs, as I said it was 2001.

Again, note the shaved head. I’m not lying when I say it is a total weakness of mine. How I ended up with Matt, a guy with a full head of thick hair, for three years is beyond me.

In the end, I’m happy to see March come. I am one who lives in my past much more than the present or future, so February tends to really torture my soul further than necessary. At least I have a good eleven months before I have to handle any more drama.

I noticed him starting to slip yesterday. Yes, maybe I might have been testing my limits, pushing some buttons, but that’s not the point. It was so easy to see how badly he wanted to yell at me over a quirk of mine I have had my entire life, but he caught himself. All was well, he went to work for his twelve hour shift, called me when he left work that night and soon enough he was asking me if I would go with him to the grocery store to get some rolls. I have two issues with this – he was just at the grocery store to pick up cheese, and he was driving past another grocery store before coming to the apartment. Whatever. I went with him and did not bitch. I did, however, bitch when he refused to use the self-checkout, because he didn’t know how to. I said I couldn’t hold his hand forever, and he had to be a big boy. He pouted, he tried to get his way, but I was victorious.

Anyway, we come back here, eat, chat, relax. American Idol came on at 8pm, which is my free pass to go to sleep, but this time he wanted to lay with me in bed and watch his show as I slept. Again, whatever.

I wake up a little before 2 and tried to get out of bed without waking him. No dice. He asked where I was going, I explained I wanted to lay in the living room and watch TV, but he asked for me to stay in bed and watch it in the bedroom. No. I said I didn’t want to disturb him, and before he could protest, I was up and out. Well, he said he was going to come join me, and that he did. We sat on the futon, I was getting angry, because the early morning hours are my peaceful quiet hours, and he couldn’t understand this. I went into my secret venting room (the bathroom), texted some friends, and when I came out – he went in. I heard the shower water running and thought that would be my chance to get some freedom. I peeked my head in the door and said I was going to Sheetz. I asked if he wanted anything and he told me to wait for him, because he wanted to go with. Grrr. Now I am just livid.

So, we went to Sheetz in silence, came home and ate in silence, and then he started his speech. He has changed so much, blah blah blah, I am not appreciative, blah blah blah, there is nothing more he can do, because he has done everything I asked of, yadda yadda yadda. I’m a bad person (in not so many words). He bitched until 4am and finally went to to bed, but not before telling me he’s going to his mother’s in the morning and didn’t want me to go anywhere until after he got back (which means to stay there not only when he was at his mother’s, but while he was sleeping, too). I was sick and tired of talking to him at this point, so I just nodded my head and told him to go to bed.

He woke up, left to go to his mother’s, came back and off we went. First was to Wal-Mart, then to Staples. Anything I looked at, he tried not to bitch about. I’ll give him props there. We come back to the apartment, he yells at me for something stupid, and asks if we can go to Taco Bell. Well, who am I to turn down that place, so I agreed. Well, somehow going to Taco Bell turned into going to Cabelas for a fucking hour. Hi, I work tonight, jerk! The entire time, he complained about my driving, which is now a giant pet peeve of mine. “Make your turns like this”, “don’t do that, “pass this guy now”, “you’re going too fast”, etc. etc. etc. Grrrrrrr.

So, he went from being the guy I wanted him to be, to becoming this overbearing freak that is annoying the ever living piss out of me.

Basically, it comes down to this, Matt wants a clean slate. He doesn’t want a “second chance”, because he said he knows he’s not even worthy of one. He wants to do this the “hard way” (his term, not mine), the way that involves earning my trust back, showing me he can easily go back to the guy I fell in love with and that together we can find our way back to the good times. I want to believe him, I want to believe him with a fiery passion, but it’s hard. I terribly miss the Matt that I fell in love with.

He asked what I want from him, if I want him to clean more, do more around the apartment, etc. It’s not even that, I told him, I want him to go back to the guy who was my best friend. The one that would make late night Sheetz runs with me when I was hungry, the guy who would spend time with my parents because he knew how much it meant to me, the guy who when I ask about his day, he tells me more than one word answers such as “good”, “bad”, “quick”, “long”. I want the guy who would sit with me for hours and just talk about everything under the sun, from religion and politics to racing and music. I want the guy back who would happily watch a chick flick movie with me, even if he did fall asleep halfway through it. I want a guy who does more than watch Law and Order or ESPN, I just want those happy days back. I miss when we would leave this state on the drop of a dime, and while I understand that we have more bills to pay than we did during the first two years of our relationship, it is still more than feasible for us to make our infamous impromptu trips to the Baltimore Aquarium, the Philly Zoo, Fenway Park – even if that means we take bus trips instead of driving ourselves.

I asked if I had to change anything about myself to get the old Matt back and all he said is that a dayshift job would help. As much as I am against the idea of me leaving the security and decent pay my current job has to offer, I actually handed in applications today that I had sitting in the spare bedroom. This does not mean I am getting a new job, but if I see him actually making an effort to change as much as he said he will, I’ll see what is out there in terms of a new job and weigh the pros and cons of seriously considering a new employment. I’d be willing to do that for him, for us, but it’s not going to be something I quickly and easily do.

He has a lot of work ahead of him, a lot of personal changes that need to be made. It’s not going to be easy for him and he claims to know this. I have very little faith right now in him and in our relationship, but he swears this month and a half that we were separated, sleeping in different beds while living under the same roof, was enough for him to open his eyes and realize I am the one thing he cannot live without.

I also brought up a touchy subject, the fact that he needs friends. He needs to get out of my hair on occasion, more so than him just going to work. I’ll be a happier person and he’ll be a happier person if he could find some friends to go out with. Also, this way I won’t feel as bad when my friends are calling me and asking me for a Girls Night Out. I don’t like the fact that the only three numbers in his cell phone are his mothers, a local restaurant, and myself. Having people in your life just fills your heart with so much joy, and I see he’s lacking that right now. I know saying this to him was hard to hear, but it needed to be done. I cannot play mother to his emotions any longer, and if he’s going to be a big boy in a big boy relationship, he needs some thicker skin. He needs to know what is bothering me and how I want it to be fixed. I will no longer play the “happy enough” card, it’s time for me to get everything that I deserve in this life. Granted, I feel as though what I really deserve will never fully be mine and maybe I am settling for second best when giving Matt this second chance, but I can’t put my entire life on hold with a single wish that things would go the way I want them to in terms of what it is I really do want. I have to realize that just because I want it, doesn’t mean I am going to get it. So, maybe it is time I take my life into my own hands, mold it the way I want it to go, and hope and pray things work out okay in the end.

Oh, there is so much more to say, but I’ll save it for another day.

I am an abundance of sunshine on the outside, always happy and always willing to have a good time. On the inside, my thoughts are a bit less shallow. I am more intuitive, more precise, more cynical than meets the eye. For being so young, one is almost always amazed at how closed off I really am, how heartless I really can be. How much in life I dissect to oblivion and how much more I actually know.

Boys are the number one issue in my mind, right up there with politics and racing. I find the assholes, but they’re assholes in disguise. I am actually attracted to the nice guys, despite the claims they finish last, but in all actuality, the nice guys are the biggest assholes of them all. They tell you what they think you want to hear, when at least the real dicks are honest. I have learned, there is no such thing as a good man, just a guy who is good at making up a fairy tale.

Most men, especially most men my age, don’t understand me, how I work, what makes me tick, what I need from a real man and in a real relationship. Nothing angers me more than someone who views me as naive, weak and dumb. These three things I surely am not. I listen to the things you don’t even realize you tell me, the little things I pick up on that honestly tell me everything I need to know. I see the inconsistencies in your stories, your eyes, your everything. Men, they are the idiots, not the women. They don’t realize how much we know, and it would debilitate them if they ever found out.

So, this blog is being made to tap into the real me, the me that despite working years on closing myself off, the me that knows there is still hope out there. It might not be as pretty and as flawless as I once envisioned, but it has to be better than the own personal hell I have put myself through for so long.