Memories

This afternoon I have been sitting at my desk feeling as if I might be about to cry.

My friends who are a couple, E and A, are moving in together. The female half of the couple, E, told me. It is really good news: they seem very happy together, are well suited to each other and definitely click.

The reason I feel like crying is the memories it brings back. A is someone who, for what seemed like an age, I was attracted to, had feelings for and who I wanted to date.

I never told him how I felt.

I made every effort to spend as much time as possible with him. I tried to flirt with him (I think I failed). I attempted to give him signals that would make it obvious that I was interested. I analysed everything he did and said for signs of interest. I discussed with friends (E, and T, the friend who was seeing the married guy) what I should do. But I didn’t say anything and I don’t think he realised.

As more and more time passed with nothing happening, I knew I should stop kidding myself that he was just shy, but I still naively hoped. Eventually I got to the point where I felt as if I would go crazy if I didn’t know for certain whether I had a chance with him. Even if the answer was no, I had to know. I planned to tell him how I felt. I drafted the wording of a letter or email (there was no way I could do it face to face).

Then he asked E out.

She said yes. I felt as if I had been punched in the stomach. E and I talked about it. We agreed that neither of us wanted it to ruin our friendship. It took me quite some time to work through the feelings the whole thing left me with. I’m still friends with both of them, and I’m glad of that because I really value their friendship. They are great together and I don't know that he and I would have been, and I’m sure in a few days time I will be fine with it again.

But today....Today made me remember how long I liked him for and how much. It made me remember the huge amount of time and energy I expended on liking him and on trying to work out if he liked me. It made me remember how I wished one day to be in E’s position. It made me remember the occasions when he said something that made me think I stood a chance. And it made me remember that he chose someone else. And that made me want to cry.

One of the guys?

This has been a bad week at work so far. There has been a problem which required me to liaise with various departments in an attempt to get it resolved. It still wasn’t fixed by the time I left work today. Then something I spent hours setting up in a database then didn’t work as it was supposed to. I’m not sure I can get it to work. On top of that I’ve had new tasks thrown at me from all directions.

I arrived home exhausted and fed up and spent a couple of hours browsing the internet for job vacancies in my sector of work, and for other possibilities. I even started a couple of online applications. I’m not terribly optimistic that this will lead to any actual, real-life, concrete change of job. Next week when everything has calmed down at work I’m likely to slip back into my usual procrastination and never get round to completing the applications. Still, it’s further than I’ve got in a while. Maybe next time I have a bad week I will complete the online application form....and the time after that I will actually submit it...

One other thing that has been occupying my mind at work is a guy who works in my department. Well, more something he said really. This guy, G, often pops into my office to say hi and have a chat. He’s a nice, friendly sort, I get on okay with him and we chat about non-work stuff, but I’ve never seen him outside work so wouldn’t really call him a friend.

Anyway, the other day he was in my office and a new female colleague appeared in the doorway and asked if he could help her out with something. He said he’d be with her in a minute and when she’d gone turned to me and made a comment about her being “hot”. And it occurred to me that if he’s saying that to me, does that mean he sees me as “one of the guys”?

Sociable Guy does a similar thing in that when we’re out he will point out women he finds attractive (immediately before apologising for ogling other women instead of talking to me). I never really had male friends when I was younger, but in recent years I have made some, mainly developing from going for after work drinks with a group of them.

None has been interested in anything more than friendship (to my knowledge anyway) and I think they do tend to see me as one of the guys and talk about “guy things” in front of me. I kind of like that because it means there’s no ambiguity about our friendships and nobody is wondering whether there is a hidden agenda.

I guess there must be something about the way I interact with them that makes them feel like that. Or maybe it’s my “keep your distance, I’m scared of relationships” vibes. I don’t know. Whatever it is, I wonder sometimes whether it is such a good thing, especially when it comes to meeting new men. If I’m going to be seen as one of the guys am I automatically not potential girlfriend material? Do I need to act more “like a woman” or more “girlie” for men to consider me as possibly more than a friend?

The times they are not a-changin’

I didn’t go out with my Sociable Guy friend after all. I contacted him but he was working all day Saturday and decided the weather was too cold and wet to leave the warmth of home once he got back from work. So I spent the evening at home on my own. It’s at times like this that I really wish I had a group of single female friends who I could call up and invite out and I’d know that at least one of them would say yes.

I mentioned to Sociable Guy that at the moment I’m feeling fed up and as if my life is going anywhere. He responded by saying that only I can change the way my life is going and that I have to take the plunge and do what makes me happier.

I guess he’s right up to a point. No matter how stuck I may feel, there are probably ways out if only I try hard enough. I could try to work out what alternative job would suit me, then find myself a new job, preferably one with a higher salary, because that would mean that I could also get myself a home of my own. Or I could even try to find a better paid job similar to my current one because again that would enable a change of home. But finding someone to have a relationship with, relying as it does on someone else’s feelings, doesn’t seem quite as straightforward. I could make more effort to meet new people. I could sign up for even more courses and join even more clubs. I could even try internet dating, although the thought of it terrifies me. Ultimately though, I have no control over someone else’s feelings or over whether we click.

I know that I do need to change my life in some way, but I am uncertain whether I ought to try to change one aspect at a time, or just go for one big bang. Do I move into a different houseshare and stay in the same job? Do I find another job and a new home but stay in the same town? Do I find a new job in a different town which would give me a whole townful of new people to meet (assuming I could pluck up the courage to try to meet them)?

Doing anything at all seems too scary. What if I don’t like the new job? The new housemates? The new town? I think I’ve become almost too comfortable with a lot of things. I can do my job with my eyes closed. I’ve known my colleagues for ages so no nerve-wracking getting to know them required. I live conveniently close to work. I like the town I live in, its facilities and its location. I sometimes wish I hated my job because that would give me a push into at least changing jobs even if nothing else.

I am a terrible procrastinator. I am capable of spending hours thinking about what I‘d like to change and ways I’d want to do it, I day dream about living elsewhere, about travelling more, about the day I am offered a wonderful new job, yet I do nothing that might help to take me down that different path.

Sociable Guy is right. I am the only one who can change the way my life is going. I just need to give myself a very big kick to force myself to do it. Trouble is, I think I’m too afraid to give myself that kick.

Stuck

I’ve been feeling as if my life has got stuck for the past couple of days. It’s something that hits me every now and then and when I woke up on Thursday I recognised the feeling immediately and have not been able to shake it since. There are all sorts of aspects of my life that I wish were different, and that I want to change, but I seem unable to, hence the feeling “stuck”.

I have a job that which I don’t really enjoy and which doesn’t especially motivate me. I don’t dread coming to work each day, but I want to do something that I find more fulfilling and more of a challenge. The trouble is I am not entirely sure what that might be. I do have a “dream job” but it is one which is only recruited to once a year and which has quite a tough recruitment process. I have applied in the past and will do so again, but I don’t want to rest all my hopes on it, and would like to have an alternative in mind in case it doesn’t come to anything. So unless I am lucky in the dream job application and until I work out what else I might like to do, I am stuck.

I am in a similar situation in my home. I don’t hate where I live but would like to have a place of my own or at least to share with just one other person. Currently I share a rented flat with several other people and it often seems as if some of my flatmates change every few months. Unfortunately I can’t afford a place of my own and don’t really have anyone to share a smaller place with. So again I am stuck.

And then there’s my love life, or rather lack of. This is where I feel particularly stuck. I have had other jobs and lived in other places and can imagine changing both for something better eventually, even though it seems a distant prospect at the moment. The lack of a relationship though, I’m really not sure I can imagine that changing. Five years ago I thought, and hoped, that by now I might have met someone. As each year goes by however, and nothing happens, it feels more and more as if nothing ever will.

It’s as if I am treading water and going nowhere, while everyone else is swimming on past making progress in their lives.

It’s when I’m feeling like this that the optimism I usually take from my friendship with my sociable guy friend turns to pessimism. The theory that if he finds me interesting enough to want to be friends with me, then surely there’s someone out there who will find me interesting and attractive enough to want to date me, turns on its head. All I have is the thought that if all I need is for someone to find me attractive as well as interesting, why the hell hasn’t it happened yet? I’ve known a fair few men over the years, some of whom have become friends even if only for a short time. Did none of them find me attractive? Were they attracted to me and I missed the signs? I am extremely bad at reading signs, plus I often get too caught up with my own nervousness to even look for signs, so it is possible. I’m not sure I want to go any further with analysing why; I think I’d just make myself feel worse.

I was supposed to be meeting up with Sociable Guy this weekend. We haven’t made any concrete plans and I’m not really in the mood for trying to socialise, but I think I might contact him and try to arrange something. If I don’t I’ll just end up being miserable at home alone, and I’m definitely not going to unstuck myself doing that.

With a little help from my friends

I had a good Sunday. I went over to my friends’ house and had lunch, drank some wine, chatted, laughed, played some computer games. There were five of us to start with, then one of my friends and his girlfriend left and for the rest of the time it was me and another couple, both of whom I knew as individual friends before they got together.

They’re really good friends in all senses: they are people I enjoy spending time with and I know I can rely on them. Earlier this year I was quite ill and they visited daily and helped me in all sorts of ways. They’re probably the friends I spend the most time with currently and when I’m with them there’s no sense of me being a third wheel. On those days when I am feeling most down about my lack of relationship, (not to mention my job and where I live) when I’m feeling like a failure because I am no further on in life than 15 years ago, I remind myself that I am lucky enough to have friends like them.

There have been times in the past when I have not had many friends in my life. For a while I only really had one friend, albeit a very good one who is still my best friend. She was the only person I socialised with and opened up to and I came to rely on her a little too much.

At the time I was feeling particularly depressed about still being single and there were many times when I found myself crying on her doorstep as I tried to say goodbye and leave for home. Sometimes it had been building during the evening, others it seemed to come from nowhere, but always it was the same: sobbing rather than simply crying, noisy, messy sobbing, gasping for breath and finding it difficult to get the words out, which were always some variation of what’s wrong with me, am I ever going to have a boyfriend. I was also having problems with jealousy and I think a little paranoia.

My friend eventually told me I had to get help. I plucked up the courage to visit my GP. He asked a lot of questions (including “Do you have a boyfriend?” and “Have you ever had a boyfriend? How I longed, and long, to be able to say yes to at least one of those) but I couldn’t quite bring myself to tell him the whole story. I didn’t mention the uncontrollable sobbing and the paranoia; I just said I sometimes got upset when talking to a friend. I asked if I could be referred to a counsellor but he said he didn’t think I was depressed and told me to go back if things got worse. I never did.

Luckily I didn’t get any worse. I started spending time outside work with a colleague and managed to develop that into a friendship. I made efforts to keep myself busy. I stopped myself from reaching rock bottom. I know that if I didn’t have good friends now and if I didn’t have my classes and swimming, if I had nothing in my life apart from work, I would be back in the same bad place I was then.

It’s not that friends and keeping busy stop me wanting a relationship. They don’t stop the loneliness, they don’t stop the worry that I will never find someone, they don’t stop the hurt that comes from knowing that nobody has been in love with you, that nobody has liked you enough to even want to try being in love with you.

But my friends do make me feel loved and cared for. Spending time with them means I have evenings and days which I enjoy, when I have fun and when I laugh. It means that I don’t spend every waking hour thinking about my situation; it doesn’t completely dominate my life. I won’t, and can’t, let it dominate my life. If I did I fear it would completely overwhelm me.

Shooting myself in the foot

I just realised that my last post talks about my friend Sociable Guy inviting everyone he knows when he’s going out for a drink, and I thought isn’t that what I’m looking for, a way to meet new people? So why don’t I accept every invitation that comes my way from him?

I do accept some of his invites and over time have met a good number of his friends. They’ve all seemed nice but there hasn’t been anyone I’ve really clicked with or wanted to get to know better. When I go out with him now and his friends are there, I’ve generally met most of them already so the source of new people to meet has pretty much dried up anyway.

Also, I am not very good at all at speaking up in a large group of people, especially if I don’t know them very well. I’m that person in the corner who sits there and says nothing, while the conversation flows on without me and everyone else contributes insightful comments and chips in with witty one-liners. I can’t see anyone deciding that the quiet one in the corner is the one they want to know better.

I find it a little easier to talk to people in a smaller group, but if I don’t know them well (or at all) it’s still quite difficult and I still feel uncomfortable. There are those awkward pauses while I try to think of something to say and in an effort to say something I sometimes say pointless, stupid things.

I am a slightly more successful at one-to-one conversations, mainly because if I do say something idiotic, or am stuck for words, there’s only one person witnessing it, rather than a little group. It sort of lessens the embarrassment factor.

I will keep accepting the invitations if they arrive in one of my more confident moments. I don’t want to shoot myself in the foot by refusing them all, because you never know, one day there may be a new person there who I do click with. At the moment it just seems like one more “activity”, along with classes and clubs, where I’ve unsuccessfully met new people.

The thought does occur that I’m being somewhat fussy and picky about this – “I want to meet new people and make new friends...but not like that...I couldn’t make friends at that sort of event....I’ve tried that, it didn’t work”. But any analysis of that will turn this into a very lengthy post. Another time maybe. I need to go and buy wine to go with lunch.

My future self?

I spent a few hours at the shops today, mainly on the seemingly never ending search for a pair of jeans that fit perfectly. Just as I was standing in yet another fitting room wearing yet another not quite right pair I got a call from a guy friend.

He’s probably the most sociable person I know. Actually he’s probably the most sociable person I’ve ever met in my whole life. He loves going out, being with people and meeting new people and if he’s going out for a drink he’ll often invite pretty much everyone he knows. I prefer to see friends one-on-one or in a small group where I know everyone, so I don’t always feel comfortable at his gatherings. I get on well with him though and we’re going to arrange to meet up next weekend. Plans for two weekends in a row! Must be all that complaining I did...

My friendship with Sociable Guy gives me hope that I will find someone one day. He seems to find me interesting and worth spending time with, and says that I’m lovely (usually after a few drinks, but hey, a compliment is a compliment), that I really shouldn’t be single and that I need to find a man. I figure that if he finds me interesting enough to want to be friends with me, then surely there’s someone out there who will find me interesting and attractive enough to want to date me. I finished the call feeling quite cheered.

About an hour later I was waiting in the queue at the supermarket checkout and was watching an older woman on her own (about in her 70s) pack and pay for her food. And that prompted the thought: That’s me in 40 years. I was standing there having visions of me at that age, still single, shopping alone, going home to eat alone. I felt a little sense of panic.

Of course I had no idea whether the woman even was single. She had no wedding ring, but that might not mean anything. A husband might have been at home. She might have been widowed. Even if she was single she might have had a very active and happy life.

I always feel a little sad when I see lone older people, men or women, buying just enough food for one, counting out what looks like their last few coins to pay. Mostly I don’t relate it to myself, I just wonder what their story is and feel sad. I always hope that, no matter what their circumstances now, they’ve had a good life and that they have family and friends who love them.

I’m going to try to keep the cheery feeling I got after the call from Sociable Guy, and forget about the old lady future self panic.

Oh, and I did eventually find a pair of jeans. Not quite a perfect fit, but pretty good.