A day bookended by bummers

Last night I was out til 1 or so drinking with Resident Evil and her friends and Resident Evil's (kinda hot) twin brother and his friends for the twins' 25th birthdays -- it was like college, complete with a shot of tequila and a pizza run at the end of the night. It was pretty damn fun.

But then the morning came. And it was a bummer. Although not for the drinking the night before.

It takes a lot of energy to be angry, and I felt that at 7 am this morning, as I lay awake for what seemed the umpteenth time this school year of waking up far too early and being unable to fall back asleep. It is undoubtedly the lack of sleep -- the continual, repeated, dreaded lack of sleep -- that is contributing to this uncharacteristically angry state of being I seem to be entertaining lately. But understanding the reason behind it doesn't help all that much in dealing with it, which is one of the things I told Scientist this morning.

We were supposed to hang out today. That's what we had agreed on Friday night, when he dropped the whole "I need to not have sex with you because it's too confusing for me" bomb (again). But I woke up today and I still felt so angry, that when I came back from the gym and found a message from him on my voicemail, I thought about just not calling him back.

Of course, you know I did.

He, to his credit, immediately picked up on the fact that I was upset about something, and when he asked, "Are you all right?" I replied, "No. I'm not all right," and told him that I could not hang out with him today because I was still really angry at him, and that I couldn't quite articulate why, but that I needed some time to think about it. That I'd call him in a few days.

He got very quiet. Asked a couple questions. I answered them the best I could, including: "I have a lot of stuff going on, and I don't need another thing that makes me feel bad and sad."

"You don't need to deal with my issues."

"Yes," I said, I hope not too unkindly. "I'm deciding things about you, and you're deciding things about me. I know you want me to be patient with you, but I don't know if I can be. I don't know if I have enough patience."

"I guess this means you don't want to come to the Pond with me."

I sighed. We'd talked about this on Friday, and I had been happy then to hear him say, "You've only been there once? We should go sometime." It was beautiful out, and I did want to go to the Pond, and I said so. "But I don't think I would be very good company for you today."

There was a silence. He said awkwardly, "I hope -- if you want -- if you wanted to talk more about this, I'd be interested in doing that."

"I just -- I need some time to figure out what it is I need to talk about. I might have some things I need to say, and we might have some things we should talk about, but I don't know what those things are yet." I waited for a moment, and then said, "I'm going to hang up now, and I will call you later."

"Wait," he said. "Hold on a minute."

I waited.

When he spoke again, his voice was thick, choked up. "Please," he said, "please... don't be mad at me. It doesn't -- I don't want you to be mad at me."

I shook my head, sort of despairingly. It was the kind of thing someone pleads when they're so insecure about themselves that anger -- completely justified anger, I might add -- shakes them to the core. (On the other hand, I've discovered in the past few years that I am fairly terrifying when I'm mad.) "I know. It doesn't feel good to have someone mad at you," I said as neutrally as I could.

"I guess it doesn't feel good to be angry at someone either."

"No," I replied. "It doesn't." I thought for a moment. "I know you haven't done these things on purpose."

"I -- I'm just trying to -- I don't mean to make things hard for you."

"And I'm telling you," I said slowly and carefully, "that I know you aren't doing this on purpose."

"So I'm not a totally evil person."

"No," I said. "You are not."

"That's the best thing anyone's said about me in a while."

I didn't say anything. I may have closed my eyes. And then I repeated, "I have to go now. I'll be in touch later."

"Okay." There was a pause. "Have a good day. Bye."

"Good-bye." I hung up.

And immediately felt like total and utter shit. After my last boyfriend, the last thing I want to do, the thing that terrifies me the most, is to hurt someone else. The thought came to me yesterday that part of the reason I liked Scientist is that it didn't seem like I could hurt him as badly as I did my ex. But it turns out that it only seemed that way because he didn't really believe I'd really do anything. On Friday night, I told him I was angry, and he said something that he's said before: "I understand why you'd feel that way, and I'd understand if you felt you couldn't do this."

"Are you trying to make me break up with you?" I asked in disbelief that night.

"No! No, I'm not."

"Because it really sounds like you are."

"No, I don't want you to do that. I would be sad if you did."

I guess he was being honest. He did sound awful this morning. But he can't have thought this wasn't coming, could he have? Perhaps I'm better at masking my emotions than I think -- I remember "breaking up" with my first shrink, who was totally taken aback by my opinion that I wasn't moving forward and that she hadn't been very helpful the past several weeks. (God, that sounds totally harsh. But it was true.)

Anyhoo. Whether I wasn't clear about the depth of my frustrations or whether he's a total space alien who can't comprehend the effect of whiplash-inducing mixed messages on a human being, the end result was that he seemed stunned and deeply hurt. And that makes me hate myself a little bit. Even if I was justified in saying what I said.

And I still haven't decided what to do. I have been so frustrated and confused about Scientist's actions and true feelings these past few weeks, I don't even know anymore whether I find pleasure in his company beyond the sex. Sex was just about the only joyful, carefree thing in our interactions over the past few weeks. Everything else has been violin-heavy melodrama -- something that both of us acknowledge and that frustrates both of us; on Friday night, Scientist said, "We have a lot of serious conversations for people who have only been dating 2 months." That was before he said he wanted to take a step back and take things less seriously.

The crazy thing is, I think we might want the same things. I want things to be less serious too, insofar as the state-of-relationship talks are driving me batty. I'd like to do other things with him besides sleep with him. I'd like to see where things go now that the July 31 deadline's been sort of lifted.

But I hate the fact that he feels he has to consciously decide to enter into a longterm, serious relationship with me -- and that I'm sort of on probation until he decides that. I like him (or I did before we started having these talks regularly), and for me, you start out there and feel your way toward what kind of relationship you want. You don't catalogue the other person's traits into pluses and minuses and tally them up, which is the impression he gives me of what he thinks he should do.

I hate the fact that he runs back to the excuse that he has commitment issues and is working on having a healthy relationship. Honey, we all have issues. I have issues too, ones that may have doomed past relationships. But do I talk about them incessantly? I do not. Do I use them as excuses for jerking people around? I do not.

Most of all, I hate the fact that he couldn't immediately express happiness about the possibility of me staying here. That to me seems like a fundamental character flaw -- and more than anything else, gives me real pause. Everyone deserves to be with someone who is happy to be with them. I don't feel that way around Scientist, even though he has said he is happy to be with me.

So. The jury's out, and will stay out until they've given the topic more thought. And then, undoubtedly, they'll want to talk.

Oh, right, I did say the day was bookended by bummers, didn't I? Well, it's Mother's Day today, isn't it? And I had to call my aunt and uncle, didn't I? And because I -- like the space aliens I excoriate endlessly -- can't deal with certain things about them (namely, their horrifyingly sad self-identification as "old people" who can't do anything anymore), I was distant and monosyllabic with them, wasn't I? And I felt like a toolbag while I was doing it, because they totally felt something was wrong, but I denied it. Aaaaaand my mother -- another space alien if ever there was such a thing -- wouldn't answer her phone today. Lovely. And my aunt and uncle didn't even see her today, did they? Even more lovely.

So today, even though I got a good amount of writing done on the 3L paper and had a fabulous time doing it, was a toss-up, chiclets. Please god, let there be a lot less rage on my part and a lot more human rather than space alien behavior tomorrow. Please?