SEEING RED
I bled a little last week. Still not a real period.

A long time ago I mentioned this guy I met at a concert, whom I nicknamed Red for his awesome hair. *sigh* This gets kinda complicated, so follow along.

Red & I met at a concert about a year & a half ago. We seemed to hit it off, but afterwards whenever I suggested places/events we could go to, he would either give me a bullshit excuse or not respond at all. A normal person would have taken the hint after a couple of weeks, but as anyone who reads this blog knows, I am not normal when it comes to men. Further compounding the problem was the fact that I'd brought my pocket recorder to this concert & Red had expressed an interest in having a copy when I finally got around to burning it. To make a long story shirt, about 6 months after the concert I finally mailed him a copy of the cd at his work address (it was the only one I could find online) because I was sick & tired of him dicking around & I didn't want it sitting around my apartment reminding me of him. I also called him on his bullshit in a kiss-my-ass email.

That happened almost exactly a year ago, and that was pretty much the end of the story, save for the fact that despite the way he treated me I still couldn't stop thinking about him. Fast forward to last weekend. I was at a concert. (Here's where it gets a little tricky, because I'm not going to use actual artist names here to protect my anonymity.) The artist that Red & I saw way back when (First Artist) once recorded a duet with an(O)ther artist. The concert I was at last wknd was the Other Artist.

When Other Artist walked out for the encore, First Artist walked out with him and the place went nuts. Then the 2 sang their duet. Since I had Red's cell number programmed into my phone (I'd saved it when I was dumb enough to believe we'd be seeing each other again--to paraphrase Nick Hornby, I don't have friends, just acquaintances whose contact information I haven't managed to lose yet), on a whim I called him & held up the phone for the duration of the song. A little audio nugget of joy, if you will.

When I got home there was an email from him. As I clicked on it & waited for it to open, I figured it was going to be something along the lines of "don't tie up my line you stupid bitch why are you bothering me". But it wasn't. He thanked me profusely, said he'd been thinking about the concerts for months but couldn't attend. Said the audio was lousy (wtf??), then said I made his night. And of course, he asked if I had brought my recorder.

We had a brief email exchange, during which I learned that he's been laid off from his job. Having spent quite a bit of time in Unemploymentland, I wrote a few paragraphs of what I hoped was helpful advice. No response.

A couple of days later I sent him a funny link & apologized for getting all amateur shrinkish, & said that I was only trying to be helpful because I knew how much being unemployed can suck. I also told him that First Artist was going to be doing a local concert (either free or very cheap) next week & offered to buy him a drink if he wanted to come. No response.

So...for about 24 hours Red was back in my life, if only in cyberspace. I don't want to marry him. I don't want to fuck him (yet). At this point I'm not even expecting him to buy me dinner. I just want to see him again. Spend time with him. Hang out. See if we can enjoy each other's company. But I guess that's too much for me to ask.

I'm still going to First Artist's show, though. Not counting last wknd, it will be the first time I've seen him in over a year. Screw Red. (I wish)
- posted by Pat @ 10:43 PM | 0 comments

 
FALSE ALARM
Yesterday a spot of blood showed up on my underwear and I wept with relief. But it was just that--a spot.

I can't believe my days of being a "young" woman are really over. Medically you have to go for 12 months without a period to be officially menopausal. But it's now been more than 3 months and there isn't any other medical explanation. So it's really over for me.

There hasn't been a single day in the past week where I haven't broken down and wept over the loss of a womanhood I never got to have. I thought I was hopeless before, but now I'm really hopeless. Who will ever want me now?

My performance review is this week. Normally this fills me with dread to the point of being physically ill, but I'm so depressed right now that I just don't fucking care. Nothing matters to me anymore.

Why the fuck am I still alive? I serve no purpose on this earth.
- posted by Pat @ 4:50 PM | 0 comments

 
RANDOM STATUS UPDATE
Not much going on, but I haven't posted in a while.

Performance reviews will be out soon. I keep telling myself that I don't give a shit. I do a good job, and if people didn't like the way I did my job I would have been fired a long time ago. And the whole tying reviews to salary increases is bogus, because when money is tight they find excuses to nail you on your review so they don't have to give you as much of a raise. So, to quote Bill Murray in Meatballs, it just doesn't matter.

At least, that's what I keep telling myself. Maybe if I say it often enough I'll start believing it and stop shitting bricks at the mere thought of a review.

So...how about this whole rash of gay teen suicides? It just makes me sick. No one deserves to be abused and humiliated the way these people were. It makes me think of all the abuse I endured at the hands of my classmates. At least I wasn't filmed in the midst of a sexual encounter. And I was never beaten. The worst I ever got physically was being smacked once in the head with a fully loaded backpack. The blow knocked my glasses off my head to the floor and broke them.

Why are human beings so cruel to each other?

I've been out sick most of this week. Nothing serious, just a nasty cold. Now I'm dreading going back to work tomorrow. But it's been so dreary inside this apartment. If I didn't need money I could really get used to lying in bed all day and doing absolutely nothing.

Oh yeah--I've now missed 3 periods. And no, there is not a snowball's chance in hell that I could be pregnant. I'm 40 and I've never been pregnant or on the pill, which means I've had 30 straight years of hormones coursing through my body. And now my time has run out. My sexuality is dead before it ever had a chance to begin.

I don't even think much about men anymore. I remember when I was in college I would constantly daydream in class about sex with whichever guy I happened to be obsessed with at the moment. Now it barely crosses my mind. Thank God. It's torture to wish constantly for something you can never have.

I still think about Red though. Even though it's been almost a full year since our last email exchange. I haven't seen him. I don't know if I ever will.
- posted by Pat @ 8:25 PM | 0 comments