Platitudes and other false "truisms"

In a breakup, or during a rocky patch in a relationship, the platitudes come out full-force.

No, thank you.

Two that have particularly gotten my goat recently are, "Love someone for who they are, not who you want them to be," and another, which was a quote that Chris posted online which spoke of letting someone who leaves you go because your destiny is never tied to them (I looked for the quote online and found it's not only attributed to the wrong person and has been reposted about a billion times incorrectly, it's also completely rewritten from the original version, which was in a blog entry by Tony McCollum, but is actually a quote by a preacher named TD Jakes; the original text is far more palatable; I'm guessing McCollum paraphrased Jakes at some point and that's where the "quote" comes from).

Anyway.

Love someone for who they are, not who you want them to be.

Why does everyone latch onto this load of horse dung? You love someone because you love them. What ever reason or reasons those are. If they're an alcoholic, they're always going to be an alcoholic, but you can want them to be on the wagon, and you can help them get there. You love them in SPITE of this huge obstacle, and you want the best for them, you want them to be better. And you should. And, if every hobby they have isn't something you're into, you decide if that's worth it to you, to hold onto that love. If they're not on the same life path you are, again, decide if the love is worth it. But that has nothing to do with the love itself; you love the person for other things that have nothing to do with those things. I have a friend who travels constantly by himself, goes out to bars and parties by himself, the woman he's with doesn't want kids or marriage. But he loves her. And he's been with her for years, and will probably stay with her 'til they die. When he is home with her, they cook together, they have "craft night," and make Halloween costumes (months in advance). They have their bonds. They decided that, even though their goals don't match, even though their lifestyles are different, that the love is worth it.

And then there's this destiny and leaving malarkey.

I feel like face palm-ing myself every time I think about it.

If everyone who was ever left by someone just gave up, and truly thought, "Hey, my destiny is not tied to that person! Time to move on!" There would never be a single great love story. There would be millions of people who left because of insecurities, fear, defense mechanisms, because they don't know how to make a relationship successful and they give up, whose leaving was validated by the person left behind saying, "Well, okay then."

I've left many people, and been left by many people. Sometimes, we came back together romantically, more often than not, really. And even if we didn't, almost all of those people are people I am very close to now; we learned a great deal by being in love with one another and are now a kind of friend that can't be disrupted.

A platitude that is a bit more reasonable would be, "If you love something, set it free. If it comes back to you, it's meant to be."

That's also gross, but it's not really hurting anyone. When someone is trying to leave you, most of the time, it's a really good idea to give that person space. My rule of thumb is usually about six months, post-breakup, once the two or three weeks post-breakup kind of come to some sort of operatic head (cuz seriously, only the most cold people just let someone go without any kind of plea). By six months, it's typically not devastating to have coffee with them or just run into them at the bar.

But just giving up? That's depressing. Destiny has it's own ideas and you have absolutely no idea what they are.

These platitudes and false truths are ways for us to delude ourselves, and validate our behaviors or the behaviors of others. They're not real. If anything, I think they make us doubt good things we have, and put us in positions where we think we "deserve" better. Our whole fucking culture is centered, love-wise, around telling us we "deserve" better. Which means a lot of us never really give what we've got a shot. Which is why we have a bunch of assholes in their mid-thirties running around whining about how they can't ever find love. Myself included.

Juice.

A little break from the love-oriented writings.

I've wanted to write something about the juicing I've been doing the past three weeks or so, but it would be too long for a fb status, awkward as a tumblr post... No one will really see it here, but, since I'm testifying with the likelihood of it coming off as proselytizing, this may be exactly the place for it.

It was my ex who put the nugget into my head about juicing. He spoke of how it helped him lose a significant amount of weight, and how, now, he can't easily put on weight, so long as he continues to juice fairly regularly.

So, I asked for a juicer for Christmas. I always ask for kitchen gadgets for Christmas, and some have been more successful than others. The crank-operated pasta maker I asked for ten years ago still has never been used. The Dutch oven I asked for last year has sat silently in the cupboard. I can't remember the last time I used my standing mixer, as I never really make anything that needs anything more complex than the hand mixer. When I got the juicer, I hoped for the best. Motivation would be everything.

When Chris and I started to fall apart rapidly, I turned to the juicer. I was already mitigating anxiety over the situation with a lot of mindfulness techniques, and they were working, but I thought, hey, a bit of fresh veggie and fruit juice can't harm the process.

Shockingly, I noticed effects almost immediately. My anxiety did plummet. So did my tendency to dwell and get depressed. My body temperature got higher--I have a helluva time, often, holding onto a steady core temperature. For a mammal, I am pretty cold blooded, and during the winter, usually have to have a cup of scalding hot tea attached to me constantly and typically shower twice daily to keep my body warm. That has not been the case since I started juicing, and I am, in fact, too warm as I write this.

I sleep better. I'm going through a breakup, where, for the first time in a decade, since my anxiety became chronic, I don't have to medicate with sleeping pills (or the less effective alcohol which comes with its own battery of issues and drama-triggers). I sleep, mostly, through the night, and though I have awakened with a bit of a panic, I am able to calm myself and fall back to sleep. Most of this is the mindfulness, but I definitely feel like the added nutrients in my system help, too.

My brain feels clearer overall, and I've only taken one nap, whereas I would normally take one four times a week or so, for twenty minutes typically. I have skipped the juicing two days, and noticed I was tired by the end of the day and didn't feel like I was firing well in general.

I've lost ten pounds, by doing almost nothing. I am, about every other day, doing some crunches and pushups and weight lifting, but those are all things that add to body mass, and yet my weight keeps dropping, incrementally. I am back to 125 lbs, which is the weight I feel most comfortable in my own skin. Once it warms and I can start biking again, I can desquishify better, too. I tallied my calorie count per day at about 1000-1300, which I'd guess is about 500-700 calories less than I was ingesting/craving pre-juicing. And there aren't cravings for bad foods; even after a night of drinking (and THAT is something I have to be careful with now, with so fewer calories in my system, drinking gets me drunk, hard and fast), I eat well the next day, and the hangover is both not as bad and disappears quickly after I down my juice.

What do I put in my juice? Sometimes, it is up to 10 different things, some combination of tomato, kale, red cabbage, celery, cilantro, parsley, orange, grapefruit, apple, carrot, green pepper, beet, lemon and cucumber. The learning curve happened pretty fast, and by the third time I juiced myself, I was able to gauge what would make it taste best (half a lemon in each batch is key to cover up the earthier taste of beet and celery, and going carrot and tomato heavy always makes for a better tasting juice). If there's anything I DO crave now, it's my daily juice.

Which I'm about due for.

I'm Exhausting To Be With

That's what he told me.

"It's exhausting to be with you."

I could laugh it off, if I didn't know it was true, and if I hadn't already heard it a couple of times before. Never during the breakup conversation, the times before were during fights, in person, and I remember one instance where I got it turned around to wry smiles and romantic conversation. But this time, it had gravitas.

Chris is pathologically stubborn, and there are some things he says that you know aren't going to change for anything. Telling me I'm exhausting to be with felt like a death blow. I knew I wasn't coming back from that statement this time. And he doesn't like that I'm "better at arguing" than he is. He feels manipulated, like he thinks one thing at the beginning of a conversation, and at the end, I've convinced him otherwise, or at least, have put doubts in his head. That frustrates me, because I believe him to be my equal on every front, and while I may have my lawyering skills in play, he's no slouch at arguing, not by a long shot. Plus, he diffuses me more quickly than anyone, with pointed comments that I immediately acknowledge are true. In short, no one has argued with me as well as he does.

But, I understand why I'm exhausting. I exhaust myself. My life exhausts me. The combination of anxiety, observational skills, empathy, and self-awareness, plus a band to promote etc, a literary event to produce regularly, a job where I'm never really off the clock, and a circle of friends who've got their own mountains of stress make for a brain that's processing serious emotional quantities at all times. A lot of that doesn't just stay in my head, and it tends to pour out to my paramour. I vent, I process things verbally, and sometimes, I take out my stresses on them unfairly, in the form of nitpicking, and arguing, and judgmental observations.  Plus, my tack when feeling insecure is just to become nitpicky and argumentative; all I'm looking for is affection and reassurance, but it takes someone secure and happy with themselves to know and do that, and that is not Chris. He withdrew affection, or I became insecure, chicken before the egg, egg before the chicken, and that was where things started to go down hill. He is not someone who muscles through very well. He doesn't fight for things, he flees, though he is of very strong character, and he's pulled himself out of some serious muck in the past year, his instincts are still pretty safely on the side of flight. He's someone who decides he's done, and figures out how to cut and run. It's a defense mechanism, of course, and it's one I've got no resources against other than time. I'm pushy and I'm intense and I'm difficult to deal with. He is too, just as difficult with his stubbornness, his tendency to be negative and use black and white thinking, to seek solace in depression instead of pulling himself up and out of it. I was willing to work through these things. He was not willing to work with me. In fact, according to him, he has his "reasons" for breaking up with me, but they're "mean," so he's not going to tell me what they are.

This indicates to me that these are things he never even brought up to me, never gave me a chance to defend or change, that he views them as so intrinsic to my character, they were things he put under the umbrella of "love someone for who they are, not who you want them to be," and started to put his love for me out to pasture. And, I believe, that they must be things I am proud of, things I would perceive as "mean" if I were criticized on them. He said, that maybe once he becomes more comfortable with me as friends, he could maybe tell me what these things are. He doesn't seem to realize that, he's dropped a significant box of kittens on my head, here; I can't work through this breakup not knowing what these "mean" things are. As much as I work on pushing it out of my head and try not to obsess over it, it's still going to come back, over and over, the obsessing and fretting over what these "reasons" could be.

So this is all exhausting. If he'd just had a clear, rational conversation with me, instead of tallying up reasons to leave me, we might have had a chance. Despite the distance, despite the fact that we are both difficult people who will never have an easy relationship, despite ourselves. I think what we had in the first couple of months was an indication, to me, at least, of how good a relationship could be. He was my partner in crime. We discussed things rationally when there were things to discuss. We lifted one another up, we loved one another truly. And then, or so it seems to me, he just checked out. And I got insecure, and an ugliness set in.

I have the kind of life where, even if I'm sitting completely still, I am surrounded by a whorling mass of intense situations. Last week, while sitting in my living room, I watched a car hit my car head-on through my picture window. By the time I got outside, they'd done a u-turn and were driving off. That's in addition to the crane that hit my car while I was at an art gallery, whose insurance I'm contending with now. One of my good friends' mother committed suicide recently, and he's coming to me to help him with that. Another's mother and father-in-law are both gravely ill, only three months after one of their sons had drank himself to death. A member of my band is experiencing serious health issues.

Chris implored me, last week, to talk to my friends. That I couldn't keep coming to him because I was hurting from this breakup, because he's the one that broke up with me. He asked me to stop contacting him, for the time being. A perfectly fair, and correct assessment, but all those things above are what I'm contending with in my day-to-day life, and those things are why I often have a very difficult time being vulnerable with my friends. Many of my friends have it much worse than me, and I'm realizing, a lot of my "close" friends, particularly in Minneapolis, are more drinking buddies than anything. Quite a few of my truly "close" friends have moved in the past couple of years. To Portland. To Chicago. To New Orleans. To San Francisco. My emotional ties to this city are dissipating, and it's depressing me. I've wanted to leave for a long time, at least for the winters, but literally feeling less and less desire to be here because of the people around me wasn't something I'd expected to happen.

So, I don't have a lot of people I feel comfortable reaching out to right now. Additionally, one of the people I normally discuss my relationship woes with is Chris's sister. I realize they are close and that this is a huge conflict for her to be in the middle of, but it's a point of fact that neither of them seem to acknowledge.

My life is experiencing significant shifts. With therapy, I will make yet another shift toward being better at living. With others, with myself. Employment shifts are on the horizon; I'm reducing hours at the job I loathe as of March 1st, and I'm going to make the leap toward jewelry design, in the hopes it can at least provide half my income per month. I'm considering moving from the apartment I love more than any other living space I've been in, in order to be more in the thick of things in Uptown. This would mean less space for me and four cats, no more porches and fenced in backyard, no more giant perfect kitchen and dining room and ten foot ceilings, but it would also mean fewer cab rides and more biking and walking now that my car is completely totaled. So that would happen as of May 1st, when my lease is up.

I don't know. Like I said, I exhaust me. I feel like I never get a break. Not from the drama of everyone's lives around me, not from things that happen to me without my consent, not from heartache. Some of that is what I'm putting out in the world, and I can work on that. A lot of it, though, I know to be just the way my life is, and will be. So perhaps acceptance is something I need to work on, too, instead of fighting the cars of the world who want to careen into my car...

Electrified & Soothed

Chris is the brother of a good friend, Lindsay. She may end up reading this; I'm not sure this blog would come up on her radar anymore. She'd told me, a year and a half ago, when I was on a layover in Chicago on a bus trip to New Orleans, complaining about how there's no one in Minneapolis for me, that her brother and I would be perfect together. I pooh-poohed the idea, but she suggested I friend him on fb and just try to get to know him, be his friend. And I did that. I'd known he was a gifted artist for years, through my friendship with her, and her many postings of his art sales and the like, but that was about all I knew. And I didn't glean much more from his fb page. I flipped through his photos and thought he looked like someone I could be friends with, but wasn't the least bit attracted to him.

This past fall, I went to Portland, where both brother and sister live, to see her (and several other friends in the Pacific NW). He'd written on fb about how he was finally going to meet me, before I left Minneapolis. I responded, "As if." I don't remember why I said that, but it became our first in-joke.

In-jokes are something, it would turn out, that we were very adept at creating, which makes this all the harder, what with so many easy references and riffs to be made to our private stock of jokes.

The night before I left, all my Portland friends gathered at a bar, and I finally met Chris in person. Lindsay had told me that he'd lost a bunch of weight, had started working out, going to therapy, and in general had decided to pull himself together in the past year, as he'd spent a good long while pretty depressed.

So, Lindsay and I met up with him, at his place, and I was excited to meet my casual friend in the flesh. He opened the door, and sincerely, I felt like the kindest, most soothing, loving, lung-full of air was put in me. I looked him up and down, and was instantly in like with every thing I saw, plus the timbre of his voice, deep and thoughtful, but with a certain mischievousness.  I thought the words, "Electrified and soothed." I asked him to hug me, to commemorate this, our first meeting, and the hug was exactly as warm as I'd hoped it would be.

The rest of the night, I kept watching him, listening to him, waiting for a red flag or something that would indicate it was a bad idea to pursue this. Lindsay kept half-joking about finding someone for me to sleep with that night, pointing out dudes she thought I might like. There was slim pickings, and, in general, it had been months since anyone caught my eye. I can't say anyone had ever caught my eye like Chris did. I just kept coyly eyeing him, feeling embarrassed we were having this conversation about getting me laid by a bar patron in front, and with him. I knew I wanted him. I just wasn't sure, yet, that it would happen.

We changed tables, and he wound up sitting next to me. I remember thinking, "Even if this is all that happens, being near him feels so nice..."

We were both drinking Tecate, mine with a shot of Powers whiskey, his with tequila. I looked for excuses to touch him. I touched his arm, for some reason, and again, I just felt electric.

After a while, some friends left, and we opted to move on to a karaoke bar. Again, Chris sat next to me, and I realized that it was going to happen. Our thighs touched one another under the table, and he intoned, "You can put your hand on my leg if you want to."

I was embarrassed, a little, that he would call me out like that, but I did as was suggested. Soon, we were kissing, in front of Lindsay and our friends. I immediately thought it was the best kissing I'd ever had, and I've smooched on probably 150 people over the years (my numbers of other activities are significantly lower; I just like to smooch). We instantly had a physical connection, no adaptations necessary.

And this translated, too, to sex, even though we were both quite drunk and probably not at our best.

We woke in the morning, and, even now, I look back on the couple of hours we spent in bed with a sort of awe. The cadence of our communication could have populated an award-winning rom-com, and was of the kind that usually takes a while to find with another person. We spoke to one another in Russian and French accents, making up characters with one another, rapid-fire, laughing heartily the whole while, kissing the whole while. I told him I was going to take a chunk of his rib meat with me to make a clone. We decided the clone would end up like the dumb Michael Keaton clone in Multiplicity, who keeps pizza in his back pocket. We decided he would only eat junk food, namely Cheetos, and his favorite show would be Ice Road Truckers. We decided he never engaged in foreplay, but always expected me to give him blow jobs, and my tits would always have orange fingerprints after sex from his Cheetos hands (Chris would write, a couple weeks later, a wonderful story about my conjuring of, and relationship with this clone).

We got out of bed and we showered and couldn't stop kissing, with a base need to continue kissing, hungry for one another.

He took me back to his sister's place, where my things and my rental car were, so I could pack up and take the rental back to Seattle, where I would get back on a bus to Minneapolis. I remember packing, half-listening to Chris and Lindsay's conversation that couldn't yet be about how he felt about me, and if I recall, was focused on Lindsay getting a burrito, and again, I thought, "If this is all it's going to be, that's enough..."

He carried my suitcase to the car, and I drove him back to his place. I wasn't going to say anything about a future visit, or keeping in touch. I had accepted that, rationally, this could only be a one time thing.

But then he said it, "So, should we exchange numbers then?" And I smiled. And we did.

I watched him walk back into his house, appreciating every line of his beautiful form, and felt just about as happy as I could remember in years.

In the car, driving to Seattle, I kept focused on the road, and not on who would be the first to text who.

It was him. I don't remember what it was, but it was him. From that moment on, we'd hardly be out of communication 'til about three weeks ago.

I'd like to say my heart isn't broken, but this feels more real, crystalline, than other breakups. There's nothing to be done. It's just over.

Breakups & Therapy

It's been almost two years since I've written anything here, but I need some covert(ish) writing therapy.

And, just plain therapy.

I started it up again, three weeks ago. After my now ex boyfriend told me he thought I needed it, with that condescending, needly-voiced tone that speaks of frustration and, unfortunately, projection. I'd told him he needed to keep seeing his therapist, even though he can't afford it, so that's what he came back at me with.

And we're both right. We both need therapy. We're two fucking assholes in our mid-30s who, despite having quite possibly the best relationship either of us had known, just fucked it up. Within three months.

I'm learning things, already, in therapy. Two notable things came out of my session on Friday; I have trouble with grey areas, and I'm always right.

The latter is a bigger ball of kittens than I can process right now, but the former thing, that's pretty simple to acknowledge. The problem is executing a better way of dealing with the grey areas.

And what do I mean by grey areas? Well, that it's very difficult for me to wrap my head around statements, in a relationship, like, "I need space," or dealing with the concept of someone moving, emotionally, at a different pace than me. Because, I think, of my chronic anxiety, I've maladapted to an expectation of timeframes and status reports, asking, in general, for people to give me concrete quantities of time so that I can process what I'm dealing with. I can't expect people to know how much space/time they need. I can't expect people to process their emotions and come to a conclusion as quickly as I can.

Like a lot of things in therapy that end up being the most helpful, these two things are simple things to see in my day to day life. Unfortunately, getting better at handling them is not going to be the easiest thing when I've got no relationship to work with, and my therapist agrees. But, he is determined to help me, and he is kind and he is not afraid to tell me the reality of things.

This is gonna be a several parter, I think, so I'll end this one here.

Current state of the cookie

Two blogginations in one day. How delighted you must be, my faithful constituents of, dare I approximate, ten in number.

Which really is not the point. I offer my whimsical observations and lighter hearted photos/videos/interests over at http://sarahmoeding.tumblr.com, over here is journal-town. It's good to keep the numbers small.

Yesterday, I was to have a date. As is the custom on the day of a date these days, I spent the pre-date time panicking, feeling as if I could vomit at any time, crying just a bit on two or three occasions. But it's never like this when I meet a person, it's only when it comes time for an actual, set down date that I start to lose it. Why? Well, obviously, I shouldn't be dating. I'm in love with Andy, have known I want to spend my life with him since about the time we met; I had a year with him to affirm that notion, which was affirmed and reaffirmed at every turn, and now, six months after breaking up, each dating scenario just, again, reaffirms what I've known now for a year and a half. Until something shifts, I can only imagine repetitions of this situation, ad nauseum.

Which is a damn shame. In theory, a new person should be exciting; even if I know I want Andy, I could delight in the entertainment of a new person, right? Perhaps not.

Anyway. The date fell through. This fellow, "New Dan" as he's been dubbed ("Old Dan" is not super enthused about his title, he prefers "Original Dan" but that's just too damned long) phoned at the time he was supposed to be arriving in Minneapolis (he lives an hour away) to tell me he'd decided to not come as he's leaving for Alaska (!) in three weeks and feels it's unwise to try and start anything which might leave both of us upset in a short period of time.

Okay, sure, I get that. I just wish he'd informed me of this Alaska thing, which he's done now for four years, apparently. I'd have been completely content hanging out with him a couple of times before he left. We met about three weeks ago, and really, really hit it off. He's so much fun. A positive, funny, energetic person. Something I could really use right now. Our meeting was drunken and hilarious, involving the ratting of his hair, followed by him asking me to help him with his too many beverages problem. "You can have the the Crispin or the Summit. Or you can kiss me." I chose the latter, and the kiss was electric and tender and he put his drinks down and dragged me out onto the now empty dancefloor (we were at a big party that was closing down), and proceeded to cut one hell of a rug, spinning me around and making me laugh...

So, really, despite yesterday's crying and nausea, I guess I wish the date had gone down anyway. Or that something had been different. And frankly, now that I know he's leaving anyway, that takes so much pressure off of the idea of him; he doesn't have to be anything more than Fun Dan, not Future Husband Dan. He said, on the phone, that he felt like he was breaking up with me before we'd even gone on a date, that he wasn't saying he'd been planning our kids names or anything, but I seemed like a lot of fun and a good person to know, but ultimately, the timing seemed impossible. And he's right, of course, but that kind of pragmatism goes against my beliefs regarding love; always try. Try, if you want it, see how it sticks, and if it fails, it fails.

But, maybe I am, for the first time, genuinely not in a position to try. I don't know. I do know that New Dan has perfect circumference of thigh (I've got a thing for man-thighs), that he's got joy in his eyes, and freckles and a furry chest and a great beard. I know he makes me laugh and that he's already good at handling my more strident, high strung personality quirks--in a joking, cutely mocking tone; "Oh, look at you, with your moral high ground! Knock it off, be a happy bunny."

I know he took to calling me Happy Bunny right away after getting that from my outgoing voice mail message "This is Sarah, and I'd be one happy bunny if you left me a message". I liked that about him.

Bah.

In other news, the job that previously seemed a foregone conclusion to become full-time and permanent, fell through. I'm back to unemployment and inconsistent temp work. I've realised I'm terrified to try and find a job. I have no interest in going back to serving, but it's all I know, and I have no idea how to find a job otherwise. I put off going to the WorkForce center, despite knowing they hold all of these answers. I know I'm screwing myself, and I could be employed and going to school right now if I'd just get there. Jesus, I type that out and feel like I should probably slap myself across the face a few times.

I'm just in a great transition. I don't operate the way I used to in regard to love/relationships, career, lifestyle, anything. I may be 32, but I definitely feel as if I'm going through the growing pains of a person about five years younger.

I guess I'm a late bloomer.

Dream in which my ex introduces me to his girlfriend, "Randy".

It's narcissistic to be so awed by my own dreams, but I am. Particularly when they're so linearly constructed, so basic, so realistic, peppered with true behaviour (and internal monologue) from myself and others, by appearances of folks I'd be likely to see in such a scenario. It is genuinely hard for me, when I have dreams like this, which have almost no function of "dream" contained within them, to not believe I am privvy to some glimpse into an alternate reality.

I had one of these dreams last night, and I feel like something's been corrected in the waking by it, because of this real, basic quality it has. Namely, that Andy wanted me to meet his new girlfriend, in order to reduce tensions between he and I, and to aid me in facillitating less internal drama in regard to him. The logic: I'll meet her, like her, see that he's happy with her, and it will help me move on. And, if he were to do such a thing, that is exactly what would happen--the only major problem being that both of us are far too neurotic for it to happen (why make a situation easier when you can make it complicaaaaated?). Secrecy and distance only serve to make me feel I'm being lied to or treated like persona non grata. I thrive on inclusion, and while I understand it is not always, or even frequently possible, given that people do want to keep things for themselves, it does tend to grease the wheels quite a lot in my process of working through any situation which is of high emotional content.

In any case, the dream went thusly:

Andy picked me up, there was another girl in tow, a friend of the girlfriend (clever, no? Now I'm not only not alone with Andy, but one of her friends is there, so I can't even ask questions about her or show emotion toward him). Andy was wearing the shirt I first saw him in, and the shorts I last saw him in (clever, too, you silly brain). We drove through a college campus/New England-y looking area, where we stopped to pick her up; at this point I asked Andy what her name was, and he mumbled, or there was too much noise from the radio, so I barely got it, "Randy? Like 'I like to fuck?'" and he looked at me, disapprovingly, for my crassness; "You'll note that there IS someone new in the car." And there she was, and suddenly, I was sitting next to her in the back seat, and her friend was in the front (the one dream function that took place). Randy. She was like a plain-pretty version of Mila Kunis (Andy is fond of plain-pretty), long dark hair, olive complected, all slight of build, long-limbed, dainty, but with an obvious internal strength, and...a sweetness. She smiled, we shook hands, and I mentioned that she looked familiar; she said something about how that was possible, though she'd been out of town for the past three months off in Europe studying for her graduate degree (of course! My god, how cunning my brain is to provide the details for all the things which would be exactly what Andy craves in a woman; in a woman who is not me--though the only detail I do know is that he thinks she's "sweet"; her physical looks, her name, what she does, who she is, all unknown).

We drove to a large, old stone building, where we were to enjoy various presentations on various things--it was some kind of multi-roomed conference on the campus of this university that both Andy and Randy were attending, which was of interest to all of us, where we'd wander at our leisure and listen to important people tell us important things about important topics, all within this large building, built somewhere in the late 19th century, with marble floors and long, echoing hallways. We split up relatively quickly, and I gathered info on the things of interest to me, but soon hours had passed and I was ready to reconvene with the group. I began to search for them, hoping to not come upon Andy and Randy having some sweet, intimate moment, seeing in my mind's eye how they'd look in an embrace. I eventually wound up in a student lounge (how gorgeous these old buildings are, with student lounges filled with large leather couches and velvet drapes over their floor to ceiling windows) where a girl I've known for years sat with a computer on her lap (she's one of a set of twins, and as always when coming across her, I looked for what makes her Lindsey and separates her from her sister, Taryn). I approached her, and she gave me a soft high five; I sat next to her and asked what she was up to, "Just email," she said, and closed the laptop to pay attention to me. There were other girls on the couch, and I noticed that Taryn sat at the opposite end; we acknowledged one another, and I moved to sit in a more central location on the couch. "Why are you here?" Lindsey asked, an obvious question, since we were not in Minneapolis (and yet why they were there seemed clear, though I know they're not anywhere but Minneapolis). I told them, and then lowered my head and voice a bit to convey the greater reason; to meet the girlfriend of the man I want to marry. An audible sigh/gasp came from the girls around me, and remarks of pity began to be made.

"No, no, it's okay," I said. "She seems really sweet."

I wandered back out into the hallway after a bit, and looked out the window (at a building, which I knew housed a woman on the third floor that I'd assisted moving a few months earlier). The trees were bare of leaves, and it was chilly, not cold, and there was no snow on the ground. I would guess it was November. I heard someone behind me; I turned, it was Andy, leaning against the wall. He looked crestfallen, and he was alone.

Something, I understood, had happened between he and Randy.

And that was where the dream ended.

See how banal that is? It definitely serves a purpose for me, because even though it didn't happen in any reality I know of, the effect is somewhat like if it had. Of course, if I ever do meet the girlfriend, it will be a total mindfuck because she almost certainly will be nothing like "Randy".