And now for something completely different....

I'm not sure why I feel compelled to post about this here. I have other places I could write about it than here, but I guess I feel like it might be directly related to my failed marriage and divorce that I have this kind of view, so I'll write about it here anyways. And if you don't like it, phooey, it's my blog I'll do what I like.

I gave a name to this phenomenon last October, because that's when I really started to notice it happening. Perhaps still dealing with living with X in Cincinnati for 3 years and having next to no friends and feeling weird making new friends (when this was something I excelled at back home), or maybe I was still reeling from the double whammy of losing one of my best friends of 10 years due to roommate woes at the same time my other roommate and best friend decided to move 2 hours away, I was feeling a large void in my "omg bff" department.

Every fall I work at Cedar Point as a Screamster for Halloweekends. That's right, I dress up in order to scare the pants off people, and I love it. I think I love it the most, though, because I meet such amazing new people. My first year my best friend & I decided to do it together. We were going to carpool and share our dorm, even though we lived together at home, it just didn't make sense not to share a room up there. It was a life changing season in a lot of ways, but then it ended. However, the after effects of that season carried on & resulted in said friend moving 2 hours away. At this same time, our other best friend moved in with us. We were hesitant, she's the confrontational type, but we loved her and her daughter, and we needed that 3rd roommate to continue affording our situation, so we went ahead. It was great until it turned ugly. And it got REALLY ugly. As mentioned already, the result was me feeling rather alone and abandoned. I had Alan, and man was he a champ dealing with all that. I'm still surprised he managed to deal with all that drama even though we'd only been dating about 4-5 months. Anyways, I moved in with some other friends, but I was so poor and depressed that if I wasn't out with Alan, I holed myself away in my attic apartment of their house and moped. I had a terrible job, I couldn't afford hardly anything, and my apartment was always a mess.

Then my 2nd Halloweekends season rolled around. I said "bollocks" to my crappy job and said that I was working Halloweekends no matter what, and they had to rearrange my schedule (though it really helps when your immediate boss is a friend), and off I went. This time, my best friend already lived up there, so she wouldn't be needing dorms. I hadn't made too many friends the year prior, not many female ones anyhow, to share a dorm with, so I had no clue what would happen. When I walked into housing, they asked if I had any preference to what room, and I just asked to be paired with another Screamster. To my great luck, I was paired with Jessica. After a mildly awkward first meeting, I thought "well she seems nice, that should make this easy." But somewhere in there, we suddenly clicked. She got me. Over the next couple weeks we quickly bonded to one another, and often referred to our bond as having "friend crushes" on each other. When she began dating a friend of mine, I was so excited for her, and I barely knew her! And when that friend of mine broke up with her months later, I drove 2 hours out to go get her, drive her 2 hours back to my place to stay for a few days and hang out, get away, and then make the drive all over again to take her home.

I often meet people that I see I have a ton in common with and want so badly to be their friend. Sometimes it really is more like a "crush" where you try to act nonchalant about it and you probably never say anything to them, but you secretly wish & know you'd be good friends. This happens to me often, but more so after the events that happened with my housing situation. I want so much to surround myself with people I enjoy, and people who enjoy me. I don't want to bother with people who just keep me around for their own amusement, but because they feel a true bond with me.

This season it happened again. I have formed a friendship with a girl who's life had just flipped out of control and all I wanted to do was help. I barely knew her, so I tried to help while also not intruding, but she seems to have quickly let me in and let me know what's going on. And in between her upset points were glorious points of hilarity and yelling about how weird it is the things we both share in common. We work in the same zone for Halloweekends and we love scaring guests by screaming quotes from things we love, like Anchorman and Old Gregg. I had a friend crush, but like with Jessica, my crush on Tif evolved into an actual bond.

I'm very blessed to have wonderful friends come into my life.
It blows they're all so far away. But I love them just the same.

I'm a weanie.

We all do it. We all snoop on our exes, especially through the wonder that is social networking, it sometimes becomes much too easy. Last week I did my own snooping, and it was a dumb, dumb idea.

I looked around google+ and found not only X, but X's new wife. Last August was 2 years officially after our dissolution was legal. I know I've been in a rush myself (see last entry) but I'm doing my best not to force the issue. Knowing that X married the person he left me for, that I was so quickly replaced is especially hurtful. There's no part of me that wants him back, but that doesn't mean what we did go through, what we had, wasn't significant. And to be so quickly replaced just makes it seem like I am insignificant.

I'm not jealous, that's not the right word. I don't want him, I don't want to be in her place, but I don't know how to define the hurt I feel when I think about this. I know that if he really wanted to, this whole blog is public and he could read all this and see how bothered I am. And I'm sure it would just tickle him pink. But I don't care. This blog is out there to help someone. Someone who doesn't know where else to look because no one ever talks about this!

After I was done with the stupid mucking about, I promptly blocked them so they couldn't see me. Hypocritical, maybe, but I can't trust him not to try & use information against me.

But perhaps what I should talk about is the great advantage I have been given due to this whole thing.
I know what it looks like when someone doesn't really love you for who you are.
I know what to look for when I start having second thoughts.
And while we all pretend we don't "compare" our exes to our current squeeze, I know we all do, and my comparison serves to remind me how much better I deserve and how awesome Alan is. Sometimes I get frustrated with little things he does, but then I remember that there are much bigger problems we could be having.

I can really appreciate so much more about Alan because he's much the opposite of X, in all the right places. I sometimes wonder if I would appreciate all that he does for me if I hadn't felt like a burden all the time to X. If X hadn't constantly told me what a problem I was, how fat I was, how useless and stupid I was, would I know how great Alan is to me? Would I appreciate how well Alan and I function and how logically we can sit down to talk out issues instead of dragging out some canned response from X whenever we argued? Would I really appreciate how Alan insists that whatever ring he buys me, I will have never seen before after X went out & bought the first cheap ring that I mentioned was on sale? I might, but odds are, I don't think I would. I think I would still be some spastic and selfish person. I might have matured a bit, but I don't think I would know what a great guy Alan is without the complete douchebaggery of X.