can't hold us down
Last night, with Christina Aguilera's "Fighter" and "Can't Hold Us Down" blaring on repeat in the backgroundFlorida: Angry girl music, mm?Me: You missed the Tori Amos and Sarah McLachlan phase earlier this afternoon.
I effectively ended things with The Boy.
It's been a week since anything happened. He totally ignored me yesterday, and my frustration peaked. I sat in the library, staring at the same page in my Civ Pro book for three hours. I forced my way through one case, and then read the note following the case: "Helicopteros was the first case in which the Supreme Court acknowledged and adopted the distinction between 'general jurisdiction' and 'specific jurisdiction,' although it first was articulated almost twenty years earlier."
I thought, with some surprise, "I'm supposed to have been reading about specific versus general jurisdiction??" That's when I slammed my book shut and went home. Sitting in the library, I felt like crying, and a couple of times had to blink back the tears. I really like The Boy, and I'm disappointed by the way things went down. By the time I got home, I was just seething with anger. No particular reason for the transition, but I'll take anger over sadness anytime. Sometimes all you need is a little good ol' fashioned rage to get you through.
I put up an away message to the effect, "You've made your point, so... fuck it. I'm done." It's okay if he's not into me, but I'm not going to let myself be toyed with indefinitely. Sitting in the library, unable to focus-- that's absolutely ridiculous, and it had to stop. At some point, there has to be closure, and yesterday was that point.
The Boy IMed me, "AB, what's wrong?"
In true girl fashion, I answered, "Nothing."
He copied and pasted my away message, and said, "That doesn't sound like a happy camper to me."
"Well, yeah." I mean, there's really no way of disputing that.
"What's wrong, peach?" I love that The Boy calls me peach.
"I don't want to talk about it. I just need a few hours to burn off some frustration, drink heavily, and move on," I said.
"Is there anything I can do to help, besides allowing you to booze yourself silly? Always a good fix to any problem, btw."
"Boozing is a fine way to cope, I'll have you know," I said.
"I was being serious."
We switched subjects, and then the conversation died. I put on my Angry Girl Music(tm), and did what I always do when I'm stewing: I cleaned.
Half-way through my bathroom, I made the decision to say something to The Boy. I knew that it had 99% chance of quashing the possibility of anything, but... to know that nothing will happen is better than spending my days wondering if he's going to be hot or cold today, feeling frustrated and upset. I consulted my friend Soup first to ask if saying what I wanted to say was going to make me a classic psycho hosebeast. I figured that the obvious answer was a resounding yes, but Soup disagreed, and said, "The phrasing is perfectly acceptable. It puts him on notice that you're sick of the mind games."
I still was going to chicken out. This really is the stuff disasters are made of. IM is a horrible medium for certain types of communication. And when you know in advance, "Man, I'm probably going to wish I hadn't said this in two weeks," that increases the likelihood that you shouldn't, in fact, say what you want to say. However, after I told Soup I was scared, he pulled out the big guns and said, "Cowboy up, dammit!"
I'm a Texan, and telling me to stop being such a pussy, to suck it up, not to be a wimp, etc.-- all have absolutely no effect on me. But, tell me to cowboy up, and well, there's really only one thing to do.
So I IMed The Boy: "Hey, there is actually something you can do for me."
"What's that?" he asked.
"Next time I might need walking to my car, don't... because I like you too much not to care." [The circumstances of our last encounter-- leaving a bar where we'd been watching a basketball game, he walked me to my car.]
Two minutes passed. And then The Boy blew me out of the water by saying, "I'm not sure how to respond, but ok."
So that's that. It's over and done with. I actually feel kind of good about that. Yes, I am disapointed that things happened the way they did, especially given how much I like The Boy. Yes, I could have played his games indefinitely, and maybe eventually in the distant future, something would have developed. But now I've got closure. Although I wish that The Boy were into me, and would take some affirmative action after my having put out there that I care, I'm pretty sure he won't do a thing, which means... it's done. Just knowing that takes a huge burden off my shoulders.
... and then, true to form, I went boozing.
