bloodyrosemccoy | Nobody Likes A Crybaby

Anniversary - Challenger Space Shuttle Explosion

So, here’s an explanation and an analysis, along with some soul-searching. You know. Boring stuff.

Last night while we were watching TV, Liz suddenly said, “I’ve been talking with Emily, and I’m going to live with her next year.”

No “maybe,” no mention of tentative plans, just a statement. It was the first I’d heard of it, and as we’ve spent the last two years assuming we were living together, the idea that they’d only come to me when they had it fully worked out hurt my feelings. It felt akin to having her say “I don’t want to live with you anymore,” which is what I’d been suspecting anyway.

I’ve been caught in one of those vicious cycles since the beginning of the schoolyear. For the last couple of years I’ve been doing all right, but this year my mood went down a bit. I started feeling … I don’t know, vulnerable, frightened of the future, sad, and a little lost. It’s not the Depths of Despair, it’s just sort of the Shallows of Uncertainty. But it’s making me a little more melancholy than usual.

The trouble is, most of my friends aren’t very tolerant of a long phase of more melancholy than usual. I can’t say I blame them; I get a little impatient with it myself. Hell, I get a little impatient with myself when I’m like that, but I don’t think I can really pull out of it, so I figured I’d just ride it out. I started holding back from doing things with friends because my mood was a bringdown, and I was worried I’d start annoying them with it. Which, according to Liz, is exactly what was happening. But the Catch-22 was that she also says that I never do fun stuff with her anymore. So what do I do? Putting on a fake happy face and go out with them is not an option, because I am the world’s worst actor. I can be happy, but it may be interspersed with a little more causticity or sensitivity than usual, which may not help. So I’d been worried that I was driving everyone away.

Turns out I was right. Go me.

Of course, I realized later I’d been a little unfair, myself, and this was where Kenya came into this little drama. I’ve been worried about where Liz will live next year without me, and in fact her living with Emily isn’t a bad idea. I could always live alone and I wouldn’t mind. But I had wanted to wait until next week to bring it up, because I have an appointment with an academic advisor I’d be more certain of whether I was going to Kenya, or maybe somewhere else if Kenya’s too dangerous. I thought I’d mentioned it to Liz, but I hadn’t, which explains why she went ahead without me. I just wish she’d brought it up to me first.

But this at least makes me realize that out of the two things I worry would annoy my friends, isolating myself is more obnoxious than the melancholy. It gives me something to work with, anyway, so I can take new measures. For the last few weeks I’ve been missing some of my CSl Night friends, soI’ve been considering a trip to the local pottery-painting place with them. I’d been waffling with that because of the aforementioned fears, but now I have a clear answer, so I can take action. So maybe this is good for me. It’s just a little rocky at the moment.

So! I’ll get through this, but it’s never fun to have a crisis. Life is just hard sometimes.