Wednesday, March 24, 2004
Today has not been a good day. By about 7:30pm, I was feeling like Artax sinking into the Swamps of Sadness despite Atreyu's entreaties. (Can I just say also that even as a child I found Noah Hathaway, who played Atreyu in The Neverending Story, incredibly attractive. But anyway.) I was feeling like the biggest reject out. Yesterday one house I really wanted to move into rejected me ("Sorry, dude, we got someone else," he said on the phone), and today the second house did the same ("The reason we took so long getting back to you is that we were seriously considering you," he said on the phone). Ice-cold comfort.
Because berating myself perversely makes me feel better as it makes me feel worse, I got to thinking that trying to find a share house is like trying to ask someone out. (I am so sorry if this comes out like one of Carrie's increasingly forced and inane metaphors in Sex and the City. That's not what I intended.) You have to call them up out of the blue. You have to second-guess what they're looking for, yet you try to 'be yourself' in the hope that your honesty will win them over. You have to be funny without being annoying, laid-back without seeming dopey, attentive without seeming desperate. You give them your phone number. They say they'll call you. Mostly, they never do, or they offer platitudes about why they don't want you.
Then I started to feel miserable about my love life. In the last few months I've identified what I was calling an "army of crushes" - six or seven different boys I like for various reasons and to varying degrees. They're mostly keepers - guys I don't see often enough to get truly obsessed with or fret about whether they like me back. I mostly treat them as eye candy - I can look, but the chances of ever touching are so remote they're not even worth thinking about. Except sometimes at parties. Then I brood a lot and can't enjoy myself, or get really really really really drunk and, you know how in booty songs sometimes they say "Touch the ground"? Well that was me at my house party about a month back, aka the Possible Costume Malfunction Incident, aka the Baboon Incident, and certainly aka the Showed My Crush My Arse-Cheeks Incident.
But this one guy I like so much more than the others, it makes my attempts to distract myself seem all the more transparent. It's like trying to inveigle myself into the best house ever, and yet knowing all the time that no matter how great I am, there'll always be someone they like better than me. I have pretty much resigned myself to thinking I won't find a house. And although the optimist in me still wants to believe otherwise, I've also pretty much resigned myself to the idea that this particular guy will never love me the way I love him.
That's why they call it a crush, I guess. I feel totally crushed. I bought two albums today, the first N.E.R.D. album ($10 at HMV- even the sales dude thought it was a major bargain!) and the latest Britney album. But I feel so sad right now that I don't even want to listen to them. That's how bad a day this has been.
Because berating myself perversely makes me feel better as it makes me feel worse, I got to thinking that trying to find a share house is like trying to ask someone out. (I am so sorry if this comes out like one of Carrie's increasingly forced and inane metaphors in Sex and the City. That's not what I intended.) You have to call them up out of the blue. You have to second-guess what they're looking for, yet you try to 'be yourself' in the hope that your honesty will win them over. You have to be funny without being annoying, laid-back without seeming dopey, attentive without seeming desperate. You give them your phone number. They say they'll call you. Mostly, they never do, or they offer platitudes about why they don't want you.
Then I started to feel miserable about my love life. In the last few months I've identified what I was calling an "army of crushes" - six or seven different boys I like for various reasons and to varying degrees. They're mostly keepers - guys I don't see often enough to get truly obsessed with or fret about whether they like me back. I mostly treat them as eye candy - I can look, but the chances of ever touching are so remote they're not even worth thinking about. Except sometimes at parties. Then I brood a lot and can't enjoy myself, or get really really really really drunk and, you know how in booty songs sometimes they say "Touch the ground"? Well that was me at my house party about a month back, aka the Possible Costume Malfunction Incident, aka the Baboon Incident, and certainly aka the Showed My Crush My Arse-Cheeks Incident.
But this one guy I like so much more than the others, it makes my attempts to distract myself seem all the more transparent. It's like trying to inveigle myself into the best house ever, and yet knowing all the time that no matter how great I am, there'll always be someone they like better than me. I have pretty much resigned myself to thinking I won't find a house. And although the optimist in me still wants to believe otherwise, I've also pretty much resigned myself to the idea that this particular guy will never love me the way I love him.
That's why they call it a crush, I guess. I feel totally crushed. I bought two albums today, the first N.E.R.D. album ($10 at HMV- even the sales dude thought it was a major bargain!) and the latest Britney album. But I feel so sad right now that I don't even want to listen to them. That's how bad a day this has been.
