What a difference a year makes

On the train headed up to the Compound for Thanksgiving, it hit me that it's been a year since I forced the itinerant sailor to break up with me. He was feeding Salem for the weekend while I was away, and we were going to get something to eat before I left for the Holiday. He had been either ignoring me or making excuses not to see me for a couple of weeks, and in general, I was miserable.

That's right, I did say forced. Why didn't I just break up with him if I was so unhappy? I think I just wanted him to stop being such a weasel, man up, and tell me he didn't want to be with me anymore. He couldn't look me in the eye as he was telling me he had a lot of stuff going on in his life, he really needed to be alone, and at the end of his explanations and excuses, it was just a relief to know where I stood.

Silly me thinking it was a simple break up. Over the next couple of weeks, lies were discovered, there were threats (not by me, but by a very protective friend), the vagrant sailor was reprimanded by the Museum Director (although that was ridiculous - why anyone got her involved is still beyond me, but I think someone was trying to cover his ass), and there was a 3AM argument at Fresh Salt right before Christmas where Jesse told us to stop yelling at each other. I had never had such a drama fueled post breakup, and I was still miserable and my self esteem was pretty low.

For it being a short relationship, a number of things were life-changing:

1. Hanging out with him was the final straw for a friendship between another volunteer and I that was already very strained.
2. The state of my self esteem after the breakup finally made me go to therapy to deal with why I had such issues with relationships. There was a dichotomy between how I felt inside and what I projected to the public. It was a puzzle to me how people had an impression of a really confident self-assured woman when I felt so small and insignificant and invisible.
   
3. A friend challenged me to a bet - 15 dates in 10 weeks. If you're not familiar with that story, you can read it here.
   

The therapist thought the bet was a great idea. It did help me listen to my gut more (instead of my overactive brain), and having that many men 'interested' in me (it was mostly on-line dating) helped with the self-esteem problems. I was able to sift through all the options - it was like shopping.

Date number 12 seemed the most promising, but after two rounds of dating him with a five month lag between rounds, I saw him for what he was. I'm still not quite sure what that was, but I know that it wasn't anything that I needed in my life. Too many questions and that all too familiar sinking feeling surrounded the last date and the following week of unclear texts - too tired, too busy, too unable to plan.

He disappeared for a second time, and I won't go looking for him again. It was also a relief that the last evidence of the bet was gone - how to explain to someone why they were referred to as number 12? How would they react to the bet? It would either be "I was one of 15!" or "I was one of 15?"

Around mid-October, between only being contacted by men in their 20's and men in the 50's, I had had it with OK Cupid. I was giving up on dating until at least the new year. This time it wasn't so much why don't they want me, but that I was just so tired of what was available to me in this limited fashion. There had to be something better, but I was ready to just be by myself for a while.

In my new free state, I went to meet Heidi B at the New Museum one evening. Her friend Eric had sent her an invite for a book signing of one of his former professors at SCI-ARC, and I tagged along. He wasn't someone I'd typically be interested in (somewhere along the way I had decided that guys in the profession were off-limits, they were so self-absorbed usually), so we chatted a lot about working in New York, about grad school, the economy, and then the question: So, are you dating anyone? Since I was so adamantly not looking for someone, I immediately took it as he was just being friendly, just making conversation. A couple of us went to dinner, we ended up sitting next to each other, the conversation kept on, and I figured that something was happening that was more organic than catching a glimpse of someone's thumbnail photo on a website.

A couple of days later, he casually emailed asking if I wanted to meet for a drink. Sure, I've been wanting to check out the Standard. We met for drinks and then dinner that night, and then drinks two nights later, and then a movie at his apartment two nights after that. I feel like I've been caught off guard, but in a really good way. Being male, he could always disappear like the rest of them, but we'll see.

On with my life

After waiting a week, I got my test results: Benign (not cancer). It strikes me as funny that they have to include the parenthetical addition, and this is in the written lab results and when the nurse told me the results over the phone. But, I guess its good to be clear. Now, on to worrying about other things, such as paying for the tests...I love that having insurance still means that I have to pay at least $1000. Those are the bills I've gotten so far - according to the email my insurance company sent me, there's another $500 bill coming. We don't need health care reform now, do we?

I just can't believe that I'm paying more out of pocket than my dad did when he had triple bypass surgery with a 7-day hospital stay.

Once I recovered from the procedure, I finished the yoga challenge. Didn't end up practicing yoga everyday, but with everything that was going on in October, I feel I did pretty well. Om Yoga does this challenge twice a year, so there is always March.

After things being relatively stable at work, the situation started to become uneasy again at the beginning of October. Back in July, the partners had called an office meeting to tell us that starting July 15th, we'd all be taking a 20% paycut for three months. The supposed end of this paycut was quickly approaching and we did not have any new projects to allow us all to go back to full time. Would be continue the pay and time cut? Would some people go back to full time and other people recieve their pink slip? No one knew, and no one was talking. Finally on the 13th, one of the partners walked around and told everyone that the paycut would continue. At least people weren't going to be laid off, I thought. Well, that was optimistic.

In the last couple of weeks, the office is feeling like a bad reality TV show. People are being eliminated one at a time, and the layoffs are happening in the middle of the pay period. Out of the four people laid off in the last three weeks, three of them were the newest hires (although one of them had been there two years). There seemed to be a reason to the madness, and then this week someone who didn't seem to be in that line of fire, and who had an active project, was laid off. That was unsettling. At this point, it seems like any of us could be next.

We finally had an office meeting today to discuss the current situation. The partners told us that although we've been able to get a couple of small projects, they're not the size that we need to sustain the office, and there will be more layoffs if something big doesn't come in.

Although I am anxious about the situation, I feel there are people that will go before me, and I'll survive as long as the firm survives. Hopefully, things will turn around before then.