Life Updates on a Lazy Sunday in Open Diary 2001-2018 (Pre-Prosebox)

LDL is still working on getting me to move to San Francisco without a job prospect. It’s really, really tempting when he sweet talks me like that. But you know good and well that I’m such a rational thinker (except in the love department). I’m not a risk-taker (hmmm…now that I think about it, I would have to say that leaving everything and moving to the Great Midwest was something of a risk, right?). And even if I were, don’t you think that I would take risks on things that had better odds than what I would be jumping into?

Let’s think back, shall we? Back to when LDL and I met. [ I wish I still had those entries. I erased them when LDL found my diary and read the whole thing.] I struggled with our relationship from day one. I don’t know how and I don’t know why, but I fell helplessly and desperately in love with him. Crazy kind of love. Love that doesn’t make sense. Especially considering what an ass he was to me. He has the strangest hold on me. It’s been what, seven years? I can’t believe it.

Why couldn’t/can’t I break cleanly with him? We both know that this is keeping us from being with other people. We both know that he was a dick to me and I let him be a dick. We both know that I’m bitter and resentful of the past and don’t know if we could move beyond those weird dynamics—because we seem to fall back into them time and time again. I guess it’s chemistry. And ours is volatile. And I guess, exciting and challenging. And maybe that’s why I tend to go back time and time again. Because I know it’s going to be hot and sticky. Always.

With LDL, life is a series of traumas. It really is. I don’t want to go into everything right now because it’s just too complicated, but let’s just say a lot of abuse, addictive personality, abandonment issues, and death is involved. Things I’d never really experienced too much of before he and I got together. But these things were magnified 50X with him, and I always tried to be his rock—his support system. And that’s what our relationship turned into. His trauma, my support. Repeat, repeat, repeat. And how does one human being leave another human being who’s obviously in severe pain? Chronic pain. Seriously, I’ve never met someone with so many woes.

And now that I think about it, things haven’t changed that much since those early days. There’s always something. Always a trauma—be it a death or a robbery or an illness or the murder of his dog (I’m not kidding. I think that part’s in this journal). And I know that everyone has bad things that happen to them, but it’s like black cloud syndrome for him. And it makes me so sad. I can’t stand to think about him in pain. His pain has always turned into my pain. From the very beginning…I could feel his pain, his sorrow, everything. I took it all in. I guess it was the thought of him needing someone, and I was that someone. He took all of my energy. Every last drop. And perhaps that filled some kind of void in my life.

To be needed. Maybe that’s it.

Wow. This was not where I was going with this entry, but I’m glad I wrote it down. I’d sort of forgotten all of the trauma stuff until I started writing. What does it mean? I don’t really know. But whatever.

So in a completely different direction, I had an interview at my old company on Friday. I had to fly there on Thursday afternoon, so I told my boss that I felt like I was coming down with something and left to “go to the doctor”. I called him back to tell him that I have strep throat. Nothing like a nice little LIE, right? I hate doing that, but what else can you do, ya know? I’d already taken a week of vacation the week before. I just hate the sneaky part of interviewing for jobs.

The great part about interviewing there is that I still have a lot of connections. I’d kept in touch with a couple of my old bosses, and had drinks with one of them when I got to the hotel. Not only that, but I even had a last minute dinner with Dude, a guy I used to date (and still keep in touch with). I was already buzzed when he picked me up at the hotel. Had a VERY NICE (read: really expensive, Dude being ever the spoiler) dinner and more and more wine, and by the time he dropped me back off at the hotel, I was pretty wasted.

Interview lasted from 7:30am until 5:00pm on Friday. It would have already been very intense, but put a hangover on top of it, and it was intensely painful. I interviewed with 7 different people and had to take aptitude tests and all kinds of crap. The good news is, if I were to be re-hired, I would be reinstated with all of my seniority. So I’d start out with 4 weeks of vacation and a bunch of other stuff I can’t even remember because my head was spinning and pounding at that point and then I got called away for another appointment in the middle of talking with the HR person.

I don’t know how I would feel about going back to my old company. The job is a LOT higher profile than when I was there three years ago, and it would be doing all of the stuff that I LOVE to do in my current position. There would be just as much travel (probably even a little more), and there are some seriously strong personalities involved.

If I get the offer, there will be a lot to think about. I may even be jumping the gun on this one. I know they are interviewing other candidates.

The limo dropped me off at the airport around 6:00, and my flight wasn’t until almost 9:00 (no earlier flights available), so of course, I went to the bar and chatted with anyone who’d talk to me. I meet the greatest people in airport bars. It’s like therapy. I talked to the cutest med student who was interviewing for his residency in various locations around the country. We told each other our whole life stories, probably both spilling out a little too much. But I guess that’s the beauty of strangers.

And then when he left to catch his flight, another guy showed up and we discovered that he knows the girl who spent the night in my hotel in Los Angeles the week before (the friend of my friend Anna). They work for the same company! It’s fascinating how we are all just a few degrees of separation apart.

I finally got home around midnight on Friday. What a day!

And that means that I haven’t done anything this weekend. Yesterday, I went to get cash out of the ATM, and it wouldn’t give me any. So I had to go to my bank branch, and as I was heading in I ran into the guy I’d hung out with on New Year’s Eve. Yes, the floor pisser, though I’d temporarily forgotten about that. It all came back to me soon enough when we went to get coffee, and he was all handsy and grabsy. Like wanting to put his arm around me a lot and hug me and stuff. What’s up with that? It was the most annoying thing, and then I remember how he’d gotten so drunk and peed all over the floor on New Year’s Eve. And then I was so grossed out that I had to leave.

The rest of the weekend has been spent lounging around and getting over my “strep throat”. Some additional highlights: