One of my worst nightmares (literally) came true tonight. I was out with a good friend grabbing dinner at a local grocery store before we went back to work and at the store I saw someone I knew who used to be part of one of my recurring dreams. Something I had always feared (because of the nightmares) happened but still I wasn't prepared for it. The jarring that can just slam into you when you instantly know the someone in front of you is someone you haven't seen in years is so very unnerving.

I had always envisioned having some kind of closure one day if I bumped into her, but how do you tell the first person you ever had serious affection for and that you expressed it to (unwanted to her and, really, to you) that you're sorry? You can't apologize for that, ever, even if you only confided your feelings at the time because they weren't well and had been going through a hellish time. It just would sound really really creepy, no matter how platonically you went about it back then.

That experience was the first time I ever let someone know I cared about them and how that admission was received has always haunted me in some way. I was in the wrong for saying anything and for not realize how much I misjudged the situation.

After that I never told someone I cared about them unless it was a very close friend or a family member. To this day, if I detect even the slightest uneasiness in someone else's eyes when they see me, I keep on walking, no matter how I feel about them. Even if someone told me they liked me, I would think it was a prank. So I keep to myself whenever possible.

I'm glad I was too shocked by seeing her and affected by years of guilt to say anything. I put on my poker face, pretty sure she didn't recognize me as we walked right by each other. I tried to smile like I would with a stranger and I was fine...until I wasn't.

Back at work I started shaking and I'm glad my supportive co-worker and friend was there to help me after I confided in her. I have been over my crush feelings for decades, but the guilt has always been there, even if it's settled down over the years. I think it was right to not let on that I recognized her. It was a bad time in both our lives and I imagine most people don't want to go down those dark roads again once they've left school behind.

the heart is a messy place

A missed connection is still some kind of connection, right? Yes, if it's an actual missed connection like this one:

Vivacious Mom at Flight VA - m4w - 42 (Springfield)

© craigslist - Map data © OpenStreetMap

7200 Fullerton Rd

(google map) (yahoo map)

age : 42 body : hwp height : 6'3" (190cm) status : married

I'm kicking myself for not asking you for your number! I didn't want to come across too forward and now I'm regretting it.

You - mom with 2 kids. Me - dad with 2 kids. I really enjoyed the 30+ minutes we spent talking about our kids and each other. You were fun, vivacious and very sexy!

If you see this (and I doubt you will), please send me an Email. In the Subject line, put the name of the game you were telling me about.

Maybe we can set up a play date in the near future? ;-)

There, ^above^, is an actual event involved and a possible mutual interest, though hopefully each person is a single parent.

Last month, in an incredibly shameful and silly action, I posted on Craig's List out of some odd need to absolve myself and find some imaginary closure, never truly intending or wanting to be possibly recognized by the person I meant it for, telling myself (honestly, I think) I didn't want "my person" to know, but somehow (I'm not sure how to say this) hoping that if she did know she would forgive me for liking her. My posting used no names, just the generals of it all and a truthfulness I longed to use in offline life.

But need for anonymity and non-discovery doesn't explain why I was extremely sad and disappointed after hearing from someone who thought she could be the person, but wasn't. There were so many similarities and yet there couldn't have been any because...well, it was me and she was...well, how she is (out of the realm of possibility) and never shall the two of us ever really be friends, beyond how already formally know each other. 

How could I be so stupid? Love and blind hope aren't good enough excuses. I'm not a teenager and I shouldn't even be thinking or feeling like one. I was ashamed I had feelings for someone I shouldn't (I still am) and now I'm ashamed that I believed it could be her. But I also learned from that experience too...realized how desperate I had become (how much I need to sucker-punch myself) if I'd gotten to the point I posted on Craig's List and thought, even at warp speed that flickered out immediately, it could be mutual.

That realization (however pathetically it arrived) really woke me up, snapped me out of a misery so deep I was almost forgetting the people in my life who possibly do care about me, the friends and co-workers I do have actual relationships with. I may always like this person, but it's time for me grow up and to push those feelings _way_ back further into my heart. All I want need is forgiveness, which I can't get from her, only me. And, so, for now at least, I forgive myself...or at least my heart.

Karen Carpenter would have been 65 today. I sometimes wonder what she would be doing if she were still with us. Would she be performing and recording albums, doing The American Songbook like so many older artists today or would have she branched out on her own, away from Richard, and tried new sounds?

I know this sounds incredibly corny, but if there is a Heaven (which I like to think and believe there is) I hope she's up there, happy and singing. There never has been anyone quite like her and probably never will be:


http://www.hitfix.com/news/happy-65th-birthday-karen-carpenter-10-times-she-blew-our-minds

Oh my gosh. Yes!

I don't think I've ever read anything so close to how I feel about this channel and getting outside of yourself to escape your own feelings...a terrific article:

Some people turn to psychopharmacology when they are blue. I prefer Turner Classic Movies.When disappointment has brought you low, or sadness has colonized you, or fear has conquered your imagination, you experience a contraction of your horizon. Your sense of possibility is damaged and even abolished. Pain is a monopolist. The most urgent thing, therefore, is to restore a more various understanding of what life holds, of its true abundance, so that the bleakness in which you find yourself is not all you know. The way to break the grip of sorrow and dread is to introduce another claimant on consciousness, to crowd it out with other stimulations from the world. Sadness can never be retired completely, because there is always a basis in reality for it. But you can impede its progress by diversifying your mind.

The rest is here and it's wonderfully written:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/01/magazine/letter-of-recommendation-turner-classic-movies.html?_r=0

"Bob's Burgers" Fox TV

I love "Bob's Burgers." It's so much (much) funnier than "Family Guy" and has none of its nastiness. BB's writing is intelligent and there is a warmth (an adorably kooky warmth) to the Belcher dynamics that is completely missing in the Griffin family. It actually kind of stuns me that "Family Guy" is still on the air, any humor it once had is long gone and meanness is all that's left.

In a recent episode of "Bob's Burgers," Tina (the eldest of the Belcher children and one of the most lovelorn characters to ever appear in animation) is righteously upset when a friend of hers mentions the girl he likes is way "out of his league." The scene takes place in a bowling alley (again, the smart writing!) and Tina yells, "Damn it, there are no leagues!"

The intercom interrupts to call forth bowling leagues that are entered in a contest. Well, okay, Tina continues, there are bowling leagues, "but there should be no people leagues."

Oh, how I love that! Saying someone is out of our league (many of us do believe that no matter if it is a good thing to think or not) is one of the saddest things, I think, because everyone deserves love and it be a wonderful world if we could actually have a chance with someone we like. Maybe they are not so much out of our league as they are out of the realm of possibility, which I think is a different thing altogether and far less cruel to our self esteem and self-worth.

At the very end of the same episode, Tina has to attend extra school sessions to compensate for getting a D in one of her classes. "Remedial at math, remedial in love," she whispers to herself before she goes through the door and discovers a boy she likes is there.

"Maybe we can be bad at math together," she tells him before the end credits kick in and it's just another moment from a show that just gets it...and truly puts "Family Guy" to shame.