You know what I�ve noticed? It seems that every single time that I see something blatantly illegal with regard to driving, the party responsible is a cop. Today, on my way into work, I saw a cop use one of the Michigan lefts to turn on to the road. However, he was too lazy to go further down to the one that he actually needed to use and decided instead to just go against traffic for the distance needed to actually get into the driveway that he wanted to.
I also firmly believe that parties responsible for all of the construction in Michigan are conspiring to make sure that my drive home and to work is virtually impossible. I�m not sure about you people who live in other states, but Michigan is always under construction. In fact, three of the major freeways near my house are routinely shut down on the weekends [with seemingly no notice] and you will not find a single construction worker in sight.
Anyway, the main street that I use to get into my subdivision has been shut down for at least a month. You can drive on it, but you can kiss your shocks, tires, and paint job goodbye if you do. I haven�t seen a construction worker, trucks, or anything construction related on the road in at least three weeks. I�m not sure who the state of Michigan is paying, but I haven�t seen anyone earning their dollar lately.
Well, I�ve had to deal with that for over a month. There�s been an added bonus the last week or so, however. They shut down two of the lanes on the other road leading into my sub. Not only that�.but they have redone the entrances to the three streets that lead into my sub from that road.
So let�s tally this up now�.
The road that I normally take on the south side of my sub is shut down. The road on the north side is reduced to one lane in either direction. AND!!!! And the three streets that lead into my sub are blocked off.
What does this all mean?
This means that I have approximately one way of getting in and out of my sub, and to get to work now takes a half hour when I live about a mile away.
Perfect�huh?
I realized, yesterday, that the things that I always assumed were my flaws weren�t actually that noticeable.
I should be throwing a party right?
Not exactly.
What I did find out was that there are things that I�m doing wrong that I didn�t even know I was doing wrong. Most of it involves communication.
Communication?! Yes, it appears that I have a communication problem.
When K left to go to Japan, I had all of these grand plans. I was going to send her pictures, videos, magazines [I thought that the American magazine thing was a great idea]. I was going to write letters and do all of these wonderful things that a wonderful person would do.
The result of the nine months that she was gone were a few emails, some IMs, and I don�t even think that I got to a letter in there.
What was the problem? Oh, I had the videos made. I had the magazines to send. But for some odd reason, I just am not very good with the follow through. I find it very hard to actually send letters. It�s not that writing the letters pains me, or that I can never find the things to say. No, I have a much more selfish reason as to why I don�t keep in touch.
I�m lazy.
I prefer instant gratification. If I can�t IM someone, email someone, or call someone, the chances of me contacting them are pretty slim. You would think, though, that my friendship would have overcome this vice of mine, but it didn�t.
In the end, K was under the mistaken impression that I never missed her, whereas I knew the truth. I knew that every time I got ready, put on makeup, did a pre-drink shot, I was thinking about how much more fun it would have been with her there. I knew that when I was alone, watching movies, hurting about various stupid things, that the only person I wanted to talk to was her. I knew that I would have conversations such as, �Remember that time�� with the other people who seemingly felt left behind. I planned �welcome home� parties in my head [one of which, I actually followed through with]. But it all seemed so much more grandiose in my head than it did when I put the effort into doing it.
When she got home and I saw her for the first time in nine months, I fell to my knees, let a tear fall, and hugged her silently. It wasn�t until then that she had known that I had missed her. It wasn�t until after everything was over, after she put in this effort to keep in contact, after feelings of resentment had already formed, that she knew.
I have, in the past year, tried to make a conscious effort to make sure that stupid things like that didn�t happen again. However, I went off to college, and the same thing happened really. The people who were not in my line of sight didn�t get much of my attention. With as intelligent as I am, it�s hard for me to focus on things that are not in the �here and now�. It�s hard for me to realize that people need to be told things that I assumed were known.
Last night, B and I �talked� about what was going on. It wasn�t a completely serious talk, because we don�t have the kinds of problems that would warrant something like that. I didn�t even realize in my infinite frustrations of the past few days that I�d been doing things wrong.
I didn�t realize that I didn�t explain my thought processes when it comes to making plans.
Alright, that was confusing.
I have made some serious mistakes in my past. I remember myself from high school. I was very outgoing, very daring, very exciting, very mysterious, very�..everything. I loved my friends more than my own family and everything in life was about making sure that we spent as much time together as possible.
I met D, and for the first time, I had someone in my life who seemed to care about my existence and spending time with me. I didn�t handle the transition between spending time with friends and spending time with him very well. Instead, what happened to both of us, is that we gave up our independent lives and fused them into one very dependent life. I rarely ever saw my friends unless he was there.
The result of this was that when the sun was setting on our relationship, I was very far away from the people that I needed to help me get through it. I hadn�t really made any new friends in college because I was spending too much time with him. What I did instead was move on to a new person, hoping that he�d fill the void that existed.
That was definitely not one of my better moments.
I made the mistake of not living through a transition period where you don�t expect someone to instantly be there for you at every moment. The more I tried to cling, the further he pushed. I can�t blame him for that [but I can blame him for many other things]. A normal, sane person would have realized what was going on and talked to me about it. Instead, I decided to try and make it work with Mr. I-Prefer-to-Play-Mindgames-and-I�m-a-Pathological-Liar.
Actually, a good thing resulted from that very stupid year or so. Since he was so busy playing games with me, I started spending more time with my friends. Finally, when I went back to school [without him], I was thrown into a wonderful new independence. I had no one to answer to. I had no one to explain things to. I could do whatever I wanted whenever I wanted. It was great.
Now things have taken another turn.
I guess it�s hard for me to realize that I�m not as open as I thought I was, and that the mistakes of my past do come back to haunt me. Instead of merging my guy and my friends, I�ve kept them painfully separate. I definitely don�t want to end up with what happened with D, but the shocking part was that, unlike P, B is very interested in my life. I always thought that the separateness was for his own benefit. Why would he want to spend time with me when my attention wasn�t solely on him?
In the past few weeks, I�ve met two of his friends and his mother, all of whom are from Florida. Since I�m so used to my friends being around, I didn�t realize that that was such a special occasion. The times that they were here were full of stories about their pasts together that I relished hearing. I never really put a second thought to the idea that he might be interested in seeing that other side of me, hearing the stories of our silliness, seeing that glittering social side of me.
I mean, I look at this from my own standpoint. I already know all of these things. I have already seen and lived all the seemingly stupid things that I�ve done. I never thought that anyone else would want to hear them.
Thus results my communication problem. I always thought that he knew that he had a long-standing invitation to all of my �friends� events. He is, after all, one of my friends, yes? What seems so glaringly obvious to me, isn�t at all obvious to others.
Duh!
It�s like all those times where I didn�t realize that saying �Hey, how�s it going?� really mattered to people. I always assumed that they knew that I cared. I always assumed that K knew she was missed. I always assumed that R knew what I thought. I always assumed that B knew what was up.
And with that, I shall shake my head and say, �What was I thinking?�
