Bottoms up.

One part of me thought I would be free if I knew he didn’t care, but I am starting to realize that I’d probably be devastated. Maybe it is just the disparity that is the trouble—how violently he stirs me up while I mean nothing to him. It would also be magnificently galling that he could do that to me without even trying. I go on like a broken record about this, but I must say it again: he is so screamingly hard to read. He asks how I’m getting on—oh, he must be thinking of me. He doesn’t remember the things I say to him—oh, I must be no one (though that particular point is unfair since it’s more like, "he doesn’t hang on to every single word I say"). I believe him to be a frank person, but you could say that of me, too; the only soul who has any idea of how much he has gotten under my skin is the best friend and she’s barely begun to see how much this eats away at me. If we really are of a kindred sort, we readily discuss many topics, some of which could be considered difficult, but there are odd bits we bury under lock and key. Because of the general willingness to share, most people don’t catch on to what depths the information flow is being controlled. You only know about what I’m comfortable with you knowing about and different realms have different zones which are off-limits. Besides that, what areas are out-of-bounds change on a whim. For me, any question of romance is a great black hole, so I play with my cards held very close. It is an awful mode of conduct, but I don’t know how to operate any other way. I only hope that he’s as bad as I am, because then this see-saw of incidents is really a courtship dance.

I myself am definitely guilty of mixed signals. He saw me interact with other people yesterday and it may have made him think that all my previous attention was nothing special. I think any outside observer not privy to my thoughts would declare that I treat him like everyone else or perhaps even that I like other people better. He seemed a bit stormy later that same afternoon; something unfortunate had come up experiment-wise, but it didn’t warrant how grumpy he was acting. Ah, wishful thinking that little old me could bother him like that.

While I am so delighted that we are getting to be better friends, the closer we are, the messier it gets. The more I know him, the more I like him. It is pain, no doubt about it, but there’s also a kind of revelry in that (spoken like a true M, eh?).

I am, for the instant, content. I was that way Friday afternoon on the shuttle, too. It’s so unusual for me to have these snatches of nice in such proximity to each other. I know I have set myself up to be very frustrated for the most part, so when the good passages come around, I try my hardest to commit them to memory. It’s something pleasant to distract myself with when I’m having one of my spells, both in the sense that I can think of them and relive better times and also because they remind me of why I need to keep my head above water. Those are the moments to live for. They are small, but they are perfect, and in that I find something like happiness.

Tonight was because of hot pot and board games and friends. I got to pick the pot fixings and for whatever reason was co-host (it was at my classmate’s apartment and he was definitely running around a lot) but it went pretty good, I think. There was chatting (not top caliber, but friendly enough) and we played an unexpectedly fun game and no one got crazy or did anything bad. If I could have many more evenings like this one, I think I’d come out of this adventure all right.

Friday was for science finally not turning to shit in my hands. I guess it was a culmination of things begun on Thursday. I went to three talks of various sorts on Thursday and was pleased to find myself actually engaged in all three (sadly this did not carry over to journal club on Friday, but god, I really did not care about those things). Then I stayed late that day to get an experiment started and finished it up on Friday. Much to my satisfaction, everything worked! I am feeling good about this stuff and am starting to see an actual plan for my thesis. There’s even a new postdoc in the lab whom I can work on this with. Best of all, I’m actually excited about it. It’s not the exact direction I wanted to go in, but I am surprised to find how well it fits me.

And of course, there’s him. We’re still not at the point where we’d hang out together outside of lab, but the banter becomes easier and easier and whatever it means, I take pleasure in it. Weird articles, bits of science (it’s been mostly news, but we had our first real talk about our own research on Friday morning), goings-on around the school. I also think he likes my taste in music (whistling along with some of the tunes I had playing) and I believe I even saw him stop in front of my computer to check what song was on (and it was in such an obvious fashion; he was on his way out and he turned right to my screen…maybe he was just checking himself out in the reflection). On Friday, I think he might’ve been staring at me. Probably because my hair looked straight-up disheveled that day (going to bed with wet hair always ends poorly, but lord if it doesn’t feel nice to take a hot shower and immediately crawl into bed and be deliciously warm), but who knows? I couldn’t look directly at him because even the thought of his gaze made me nervous and I didn’t want to make eye contact lest he become embarrassed (or I be wrong and he was looking at something else and then he notice and then I look creepy). The stare felt like forever, too, almost like he wanted me to turn around. It was so bizarre (and made worse by the fact that I needed to go use the bathroom). Well, the whole thing is bizarre. I have a major crush on him, but I have absolutely zero idea of how to show it without looking foolish. I am immediately frightened out of my wits when he shows any sign of suspecting me and I become stiff as a board in my deportment. Even if he does (or did) like me, too, I have never given him an unambiguous indication of my affection (and probably more than a few examples of indifference or even dislike) so how could he retain any hope?

I have too much fear in my belly. Fear that if I did reveal myself, he would have to tell me that he only sees me as a coworker and would henceforth be ill at ease around me. Fear of the next step if we found out that we are attracted to each other. Imagining either possibility coming true sends a tingle of panic through me. The first one would sting like mad. I would be humiliated and things would be forever broken between us (which sucks, because I genuinely like talking to him). I would also hate to have been so stupid as to misinterpret him being a nice guy (or bored guy) for "unspoken feelings" or whatever woozy wonderings I’d deluded myself into believing. Perhaps the second fear is the more ridiculous of the two, though. To have exactly what I want, but not be possessed of the sense to see what to do with it. It would be, to take (out of context!) something Florence has expressed, "It’s so easy to sing it to a crowd / but it’s so hard, my love, to say it to you alone." I am not physically or even verbally affectionate and the thought of disappointing someone I cared about so deeply shakes me all the way down to the soles of my feet.

It’s completely insane for me to like someone this much when I, all in all, know so little about him! I feel as if I have a portrait of his character, but let’s face it, loneliness can make a person think any old cuckoo thing. Ignoring that for the nonce, I think there is some kind of chemistry, and that if we could work out the bumpy beginning part, we’d find that "something like happiness" in each other. Even if it was only a short while, at least we had it. It would have been worth it. For me, at least.

In the great book, the one that I suppose exists at the end of life for each and every one of us, how will I judge today?

Favorite thing first, which was that we talked like real deal human beings. Like friends, I mean. I’d given up a while back, but he’d been talking to me more than usual lately. Mostly practical, technical questions, but the occasional funny line passed my way (which I would then huffle-duffingly fumble) and cute link. I’d wanted very much to send something his way, if only to show my appreciation, but wasn’t sure what or how. This past weekend the best friend advised that I need to soften my image and not appear so much like I don’t need other people (Third person! Third person, who, unbidden, said I had a tendency to come off too strong) and last night I noted to myself that I never ask him about anything. Well, today I was having a terrible time wrestling with an old piece of lab equipment and then just as I was about to throw my hands up into the air, I managed to put two and two together. Fortunately, he was more than happy to help and thereafter came chatter (sadly, while he was adjusting something on the apparatus, I was treated to a front row seat to the nascent thinning at his crown; I wonder if he knows). Ach, stupid hope is stupid hope is stupid hope, but damn if it doesn’t make my heart warm all the same. Every day is a failure of the Bechdel test.

Second favorite: food. Food is so important to me, I think because there is so little that I hedonistically give over to. Fine company, good conversation, nice meal—I want for naught. To be the bearer of that joy to other people gives me so much gratification (open secret, but I also like having my taste validated). It was my turn to bring the snacks for lab meeting and I did it up (some guilt for how much it cost, but considering I probably provided lunch for at least a couple of people, not so bad). People were pretty complimentary so I think I did right by that.

Now for the wobbly. Science. Dear, darling, horse manure science. I got next to nothing done today because of that machine, and it’s even more bitter because I had to break down and beg the neighboring lab to use theirs (though, see, at least I’m getting better at being proactive about these things rather than dithering). Also, I’m pretty sure the boss still thinks very little of me and I still don’t have much of anything for a thesis. I have a general theme, but that was one I kind of just fell on top of and I really need to sit down and see what I can actually contribute to this field.

As for the indifferent until I have the benefit of hindsight, I found out with whom and where I’ll be teaching the young ones today. The rest of the group seems to have a much better idea of what they’re doing, which is great for getting things done, but I’m afraid my bumbling self won’t be of much use. It does no one any good for me to have this attitude, though. I need to stop moping and just have fun with this.

Speaking of fun, my pocket is going to be thoroughly abused this year. I’ve already got a trip planned and at least one and possibly as many as four more in the pipeline. Then there’s whatever’s happening here in the city and…oy. The money’s bad enough, but I also feel guilty because I won’t be devoting as much time to work as I should.

Doesn’t sound so bad written down, but the mix of it all is like oil and water. Makes me feel like I can’t sit still.

I will be very glad to see the backside of 2011. It has been a tough year and I don’t know what to think of myself anymore. I no longer want to be a PI, I can’t do anything with my legs besides walk slowly and stand for short periods of time, and I’ve somehow acquired a sort of brain stutter so that I lose my train of thought or completely draw a blank when someone says something to me. Worse yet that I still don’t comfortably belong to a group or have anyone I feel I could confide all of this to.

I have been riding the bus a lot lately (the real bus, not the shuttle), which means I’ve been doing a lot of people watching. There’s the usual flights of fancy—invent a personality and story for someone based purely on their appearance and bearing—but a large part of that has also been wondering how that person perceives him or herself. It’s along the same lines as when I went to that professor’s house for dinner a year ago. I see a man in middle age with a family and all kinds of responsibilities; he doesn’t really exist in my mind before the time I met him. I am dealing with the man he currently is and without benefit of being witness to his past, that’s all I have to go on.

When I do actually consider what has brought a person to the point he/she’s at now, it becomes more fun, because then I get to imagine what someone was like when he/she a child or a teenager or a twenty-something. I get an especially huge kick out of doing this with my classmates and coworkers (not with their knowledge, mind). What were you like in high school? Were you a loser? Did you go away to college and reinvent yourself? I bet you were pretty mischievous as a kid. What made you change? Those sorts of things. I’d reckon that all that history totally colors how they presently see themselves.

It’s kind of a nice thought, though, as I’m riding through town, to realize that everyone I can see is a product of all that time and shaping. And as part of that, too, to think about how each person has a mother and father and friends and neighbors and coworkers and try to picture how they interact with all of those other people and where they fit into a network.

For the past few months, I’ve been getting a lot of comments which amount to "You’re so unusual." I guess it must be true, then. I figured I was pretty weird through middle school and high school, but I changed my mind in college and Japan. I didn’t fit in amongst the oddballs at my university so that was strike one. Then in Japan, even though the culture and society there is pretty different from the US’s, in observing the people around me I got the sense that we all just wanted the same basic things like food and shelter and friends and love. And in general from reading things and watching movies and TV shows, I really believed that I had roughly the same thoughts and feelings as most folks. But now, no, I don’t think my opinions and behavior are representative of any major population.

My life is so awkward sometimes that I can’t stand it; it would not do at all if everyone were like this. I can’t read people so I’m forever moving too fast or too slow and I’m always on edge about making a gaffe (which causes me to fall on my face anyway as a result) and it’s rather maddening because I know I’m better than this.

The lone consolation I have is that maybe I’ll come out on the good side of being out-of-the-ordinary. A lofty aspiration, but if you have to pin your hopes somewhere, a cloud’s as good a place as any, I suppose.

This is my favorite time of year. Offhand, I can only recall one genuinely nice Christmas (I have had some pretty good Thanksgivings, though), but the run-up to that most wonderful of all holidays stirs up a feeling in me that I spend the rest of the year trying to recapture. The crisp fall air (that perfect way it smells when it’s cold), darkness by 6pm, the start of the rainy season, pumpkin-flavored everything, eggnog, TV specials, maybe even goodwill towards mankind. Summer is all sultriness and tension, spring is uneasiness and rushing to get things done, and winter is the dry doldrums, but autumn is mostly lovely. I’m still in school so this is when everything seems new (funny that I now associate harvest with new, but there you go). While working out the kinks is a bit unpleasant, the anticipation for what could come fills me with a joy that is almost as good as actually having whatever it is I hoped for.

I mean, my interpersonal relationships and lab business are a frightful mess, but I’ve been doing an okay job of treading water lately. One would always like to have more and better, but I’m in a stable enough frame of mind to see that where I am isn’t bad at all.

Still, there’s been one gripe especially bothersome to me in the past few weeks.

I think I’ve been giving people too much of the gloom and doom version of me lately. More problematically, gloom and doom without any of the humor. This article already made me kind of sad (irrational hatred for you-know-who), but it linked to one that made me feel even worse. Of course it’s for a whole bunch of reasons. Most of the time I try to be funny and fail miserably, but if/when I’m actually funny I scare people away. The solution would appear to be give the hell up, but without funny, I don’t have much to offer anyone because I’m not pretty, smart, or nice. How massively shite is that!

I’ll work it out. I guess. I don’t have a plan right now nor any idea where to begin one, but since the alternative is to be alone for the rest of my life, what other option do I have?

Ah, yes, stable mood, but not a motivated one. That might be a seasonal issue, too. I’m this feeling all over.

What it boils down to is that I still like him. I should know better, but I look at him and I can’t figure him out. We (and a some other folks from the lab) are off to a conference in our nation’s capital. His flight gets in about an hour before mine. I want to text him the morning of and suggest dinner. I don’t think it’ll end well. He is rooming with someone else in the lab; she’s much prettier than I am and they have better chemistry and plus he has friends there he wanted to see or something. Kebabs by myself, or perhaps with the random I am rooming with. God, I am a dolt.

I finally listened to Florence + the Machine’s new album and it is amazing. That voice, the arrangements, the stuff she sings about; what is not to love? Well, she does make me think of him. He played some of her tunes in the car to the retreat and I mentioned that I like her (and the other music he played in the lab, a long time ago before he went all headphones all the time). He sent me a link to stream the album before it came out. 90% chance it doesn’t mean anything, but 10% isn’t nothing, you know? I sometimes think he’s a completely unfeeling asshole, but how can you like Florence without letting her words get under your skin? I bet he’s pretty squishy inside, once you know him better.

Oh, that. That I concoct, virtually out of whole cloth, a personality for him that matches what I think he ought to be.

One of my classmates, the bigmouth one, laughed at the idea that he’s gay. And when I called him a dick, she vigorously agreed. That same night this conversation took place, a friend of hers let slip that someone in our program had inappropriately hit on her but wouldn’t name who. The girl herself wouldn’t tell me. I wonder if it was him. I wouldn’t put the action itself past him (whatever it was), but choice of girl seemed interesting. Bigmouth gets hit on quite a lot, though. Which is befuddling to me because she’s okay-looking but dresses pretty blah most days. I never get guys coming up to me. Man, I must be fug.

Though another one of my classmates said I could be intimidating, which was a surprise to me. I figured that was more the things I say, but I don’t god damn know. Maybe something in my bearing, too.

Fifth date was yesterday. I feel bad that I am distracted. It’s still very slow. I lied a few times last night, about stupid things, some in the service of telling a better story (which I do in my normal life anyway so that’s not outside of protocol for me), but also a whopper about when I leave and get back in town. I didn’t want to see him again that soon. Part because of thingy, but a lot a lot because this is all new to me and I am freaking the fuck out. I like it better if we don’t have to resort to mapping out what it is we’re doing, but I would be so much more comfortable and myself if it could be decided whether this is simple friendship or in fact a relationship. I don’t know how I should act so mostly I’ve just been letting him do all the chasing and that’s fucking terrible. On the fourth date, I was afraid he was losing interest and that upset me, but I couldn’t determine why. What the hell is wrong with me?

I might almost be happier if arranged marriages were still standard. "This is the person you’re supposed to love." "Okay." No bullshit or confusion. I think the love would come in time as long as I didn’t hate the other person.

Fucking bloody twatting hell. Already this is too much drama for me. I am looking forward to this conference, if only to get away from my personal mess for a minute. I was already pretty interested in the science and sightseeing and reconnecting with old friends, but now I am raring to go.

Shit’s still shit (no, really?), but I’m reading Christopher Isherwood’s A Single Man right now and I’m enjoying it so much! This isn’t terribly like the movie at all, but that’s good. Like the movie, it takes place in a single day, but our man isn’t planning on offing himself at the end (as far as I know; I’m only halfway through at present). What’s more, the book is funnier. Sometimes I have to stop and giggle or out-and-out close the book and grin for a minute. I suppose I just enjoy seeing someone I recognize; George has lost his lover and (most of all) is gay, but it’s nice to know that depression and hatred make us all crazy in similar ways.

I think that’s all I really wanted to say. I know I am insane because the things George says are a mirror of my own mind, but I still find it comforting that our bile should manifest itself in almost the same fashion even though the origin of our hurt is completely different. At least someone knows how I feel. It really doesn’t matter to me that George is fictional; hell, I’d bet the book’s a kind of roman à clef anyway. My unusual kinship with George has been one of the few things preventing me from going entirely off the rails the last couple of days and I am grateful for that. I’m sure reading all these dark-ass books is not the way out of my hole, but I don’t plan on getting happy anytime soon so they make for a wonderful stopgap.

Let’s just hope that the small moments make this whole life experiment worth it.

Children, what the fuck am I supposed to do?

There’s all this shit that is happening at once and some of it is good and some of it is bad but most of it is (also) confusing.

Bad:

I don’t know anything about pain or where I want to go in the lab and I need to read and learn because the boss man wants to meet next week to talk. Shit fuck.

My Achilles tendons, in both feet, are fucked up beyond all recognition. I can barely walk anymore and everyone looks at me with such pity in their eyes when they see me moving. I am an idiot for having done this to myself. I am an even worse idiot because I poured boiling water on the instep of my left foot today. All I want to do is lie at home and not move but that is not possible and so I push myself. How the fuck are my feet going to heal? And I have to take the bus to get to the shuttle stop now and I sit all the time now and I am going to get so fat.

I really like some of my classmates. We carved pumpkins at someone’s apartment last week and that was probably the most quietly enjoyable thing I’ve done in a good long while. Sadly, a lot of my other classmates so clearly don’t want to even try to be friends. I see the other classes and their harmony and my heart weeps. I want a family, dammit.

Good:

Did a maxiprep today which was proper concentrated. I hope the mass spectrometer read it correctly (that is, I’ve got the DNA I wanted and not just a bunch of impurities and shit). Really should be learning how to do intrathecal injections, but the whole ankle thing makes me really not want to shuffle down to the mouse room.

Third date was tonight. Went…pretty good, I think. Kind of embarrassing that he came to my apartment and saw all the ridiculous shit I own, but he wants to see me again so it can’t be all wrong. I think he was as nervous/self-conscious as I was so my fuck-ups probably cancel out with his. We’re similar in a lot of bizarre ways, which is unsettling. But I suppose what will keep things fresh and interesting is that he works with wine and spirits and alcohol is so absolutely not my bag. We exchanged CDs of bands we wanted the other to check out. For now, I am happy to not call this anything and go slow, enjoy the ride.

Some lab chums from Chicago came to town and stayed with me for two nights. I think some of the conditions in my apartment were not ideal, not to mention me being a crap tour guide what with the broken legs, but it was nice to see them and I think they saw some good things. They said they had a fine time, but what else were they supposed to say? I hate not knowing what people actually think.

Having said all that, on the whole, I’m less down in the dumps. The shit balances with the cream. Maybe we can get through this without losing all our marbles.

We find ourselves ensnared in a most egregious cliché.

So I still like the guy-in-question, the one from school. I…have half-heartedly tried to cast him out of my thoughts. I am fairly certain he harbors no warm feelings for me, so I am just being foolish. Worse still, I’m even more suspicious now that he is plain old gay (not even bisexual), yet here we are. Even if we did discover that there is a connection between us, I don’t think it would go anywhere. The taboo and the gossip would be bad enough but could be overcome if the passion was there, but the real issue is how we would spend our time together. I think we find the same things funny, but it’s as if we speak different languages. Conversations hissing and sputtering out, and then uncomfortably turning to our computer screens. And I certainly don’t care for any of his hobbies (though it brought me a slight happiness to hear from him that he enjoyed a museum exhibition that I liked, too) and he’s never responded in the affirmative to any of my suggestions.

Maybe that’s okay? One day early in September, I was talking with one of the postdocs in the lab about relationships and finding the right one. He was saying how he and his wife don’t even share 20% of the same interests, but I’ve seen them and they look happy (I think she gave birth to their son today!). Plus, he mentioned this bit from Khalil Gibran’s The Prophet. Sounds right to me. Frankly, I’d find it disgusting if my other couldn’t exist almost entirely independent of me. This postdoc is a total hoopy frood so I already respect his opinion; that he is in the lab, works with the guy-in-question, and should bring up that particular quote…that’s an ache and an itch.

But then I’m still doing the internet dating thing. My first foray went down quite badly. That was followed by an almost, but I found him physically unappealing and his manner of writing put me off so completely that I wrote him once and never responded when he gave me his phone number (not to mention his given name was the same as the guy-in-question’s). Now we are on #2. He is okay-looking, the same race as I am (my parents would love that, ecch), and we like a frightening number of the same things (mostly music-wise, that I know of, but attitudinally there seems to be a lot of concordance). He’s not in science, which is neither good nor bad, just interesting for now. He’s good at making conversation, seems to dress well, and is very sweet. We went on a first date about a week ago and got along fine, but there was no lightning. The Blue Angels kept making hearts in the air, which angered me, because it didn’t feel right (Why is one thing allowed to be FATE and the other is stupid bullshit coincidence? It doesn’t work that way…). I think he likes me more than I like him at this point, but I don’t know how much of this is my misplaced affections and how much is a genuine lack of that extra spark. My uneasy hunch is that we will simply be friends, but that makes me sad for him because I think this has happened to him before and he deserves better. I definitely want a second date, though, and would readily abandon guy-in-question if I could find something to latch onto. Thinking back on why I like my classmate, it’s not his interactions with me but how he is with other people or situations (either in things I’ve seen myself or had recounted to me) which is so intriguing. We’ll see. He’s asked to do something Tuesday night. I haven’t sent a reply yet.

God, this is boring. That’s all my life is nowadays: yearning, boredom, wanting to kill myself. Absolutely mundane, though having watched the newest episode of The Vampire Diaries, I should probably be grateful.

Quiet horror over the last couple of weeks. Nothing really bad on the surface, but inside it’s all writhing on the floor and pulling at my hair.

I am tired of my life and of being me. I hope this is a temporary feeling, but this time, the part of me that wants to run away and never look back might win.

Today I looked out the window and thought about the splatter pattern I’d make if I jumped off the roof or crashed out through the window. Do you think the blood would dry before they did anything about it? Would they have to pressure wash the pavement and asphalt to get it off?

No, I won’t actually go through with it, but oh, I will ponder it to my heart’s content, thank you.

It wouldn’t matter much if I left. I mean, people might be broken up about it for a while, but I think they’d get over it. I wasn’t that important to begin with. My continued existence only means fewer resources for other people.

Ultimately, though, I’m just feeling selfish. I wake up and already know that the best I can hope for in the coming day is infinitesimally small moments of bliss which will be gone in an instant. The rest is forced and awkward and superficial and disorganized and seemingly insurmountable. I haven’t the spirit to bear up under this anymore.

The world is possessed of such beauty. It’s not going to miss me, and that is a comforting thought because it means freedom.