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7:55 am - THU 3/7/02
She said no
It seems my body has a new idea about the way things should go; Instead of waking up somewhere between 7 to 7:30 a.m. everyday no matter what, I'm now waking up between 6 to 6:30 a.m. no matter what.

So today I woke up two hours earlier than planned, and since ANOTHER decision my body has made since being out here is that I will never nap again, no matter how tired, I'm now up for the duration (Said duration being work from 10:30 to (Hopefully)6:30, then rehearsal from 7:00 to 9:00.

For a time out here, I either wasn't having a problem, or wasn't NOTICING that I had a problem.

Then it seemed like, for reasons unknown, I was back to having a problem again.

I have a genuine love/hate relationship with my body. I really do.

That my body has held up this long and this well, with a pretty spotty record of care and maintainance on my part, is a testament to what an impressive machine it truly is.

At this writing, my vision is still perfect. I have all my teeth, with the exception of those pesky wisdom teeth (If those teeth were so "wise", why didn't they have the good sense to grow in STRAIGHT?) And I've waxed lyrical about it before, but I DO like that I can move. Unless I'm very, very tired, I don't do a lot of bumping into things, and most of the time, I'm actually downright GRACEFUL.

But I'm not nuts about the part where hair continues to sprout everywhere but on my HEAD, where the defenestration continues apace (I very possibly both mis-used and mis-spelled that word. I should have just said, "deforestation" and been done with it).

(I've been in the process of going bald for a REALLY long time, btw. I first started noticing I was losing my hair in my mid-twenties, and it's still going on. I used to joke about the inexorable loss of hair, telling people that I just wanted to wake up one day and be BALD, with all the hair I was ever going to lose laying on my pillow. It would be traumatic, but at least it would be OVER. But anyway...)

And something always HURTS. Something is always sore, something always feels sprained or strained or twisted or otherwise out-of-whack (My knees hurt so badly sometimes you'd think I was a retired NFL player). Usually nothing that feels major enough to go to a doctor, just annoying enough to make life a little more difficult and unpleasant and generally worrisome (Is the pain that's "nothing major" now a harbinger of future SERIOUS problems? I never know).

And then there's the part where I sleep badly, wake up early ANYWAY, and now can't nap. Where I very often go through my days in a depressed fog.

But I'm going to detour back to a positive thing, for a second, and this is a little...PERSONAL, so I hope you'll forgive me; For many years, I thought I had IBS (Irritable Bowel Syndrome). Going to the bathroom, which previously had been an experience that ranged from neutral to pleasant, became frustrating, uncomfortable, and upsetting.

(This doesn't sound POSITIVE, does it? But wait, there's more...)

I went to the doctor (For something else initially, but I brought up the subject of my bathroom difficulties), and he diagnosed IBS. And that was that; I don't remember any advice, recommendations, medications, or anything else coming my way. It was just a problem I had to live with, apparently.

But you know what? It went AWAY. These days, I probably eat better and get more regular exercise than at most points in my life, and the majority of my visits to the potty work out very well. Apparently, I just needed to eat a piece of FRUIT now-and-again.

I sometimes think about how impressive it is that the body replenishes itself, fixes itself. It can feel like a hit and miss process sometimes, and sometimes I get frustrated about what the body DOESN'T seem able to do in that department, but really, it's kind of amazing.

So I go back and forth. I genuinely appreciate my senses, my ability to move freely, etc and so forth, but at the same time, feel tremendously frustrated at the fatigue and chronic discomfort that so often color my world, as much as I struggle against it.

_________________________________________________

Well, I've been working my up to it for quite awhile. For days, it was really just a matter of finding the right time, the right opportunity. I knew I was going to do it. I knew I HAD to do it.

And yesterday I did it. I asked Lori out.

She said no.

It's at times like this that I realize there's an eternal optimist lurking somewhere deep inside me; In spite of the various and sundry things working AGAINST this happening (The manager/employee thing, conflicting schedules, poverty, having no car, etc.), I really thought she might say "yes". I wasn't at all sure what I'd do from THERE, but I thought there was a definite possibility of her taking me up on my intriguing offer.

She gave me the "double excuse", which is something I recognize, because I've dealt with it before; When a nice person is uncomfortable with having to say no, they'll use a couple different explanations for why they have to; It's a measure of how much the person wants to be NICE, and not be hurtful (I think also, in this sort of situation, it's effective, because if you have a particularly ARDENT admirer, and they do an end-run around your FIRST excuse, you can bring them up short on the SECOND excuse, and maybe even go to a THIRD of FOURTH excuse if need be).

She brought up the work thing, though she made apologetic noises about it being kind of "lame", and also said she was "seeing someone" (Initially, I thought the "seeing someone" would have been sufficient by itself, but the one-two punch was really better; When I leave Borders, she could still be "seeing someone", while if she stops "seeing someone" while we're both still at Borders...well, you get the idea).

She was very nice--She said lots of nice things about me, which were all quite true--and I was very funny, and I thought we dealt with the awkwardness of it quite well. All-in-all, I'd say it went about as well as could be expected...except for the part where it didn't work out the way I wanted.

It's almost time for me to go to work...

It's difficult to pat myself on the back for what I did. Emotionally, I just feel like "I threw myself OUT there, and for WHAT? To feel worse than I did BEFORE...".

But whether I FEEL it or not right now, I really DO deserve "a pat on the back". This was not an easy thing for me to do. This was a VERY "not easy" thing for me to do. But I overcame my fear my insecurities, my resistance to change, and all that, and threw myself off that cliff.

And while I'm pretty bummed right now, you know what?

I didn't die. Life goes on...if ya call this LIVING.

 

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