2 months to D-day (moving day) and i am still without a new job (or, really, a new apartment. thus far, i have been unable to win the game of phone tag being played with the property manager who HOPEFULLY is going to find and give me a one-bedroom apartment in the building).
needless to say, i am feeling a little bit like i am standing on the edge of a cliff.
nevertheless, i am supposed to be both playing nice and playing happy on demand, and i am. seven years of being used like a fucking bandaid by someone who has never been honest with either of us is locked away for dealing with at a later date. much later. possibly never.
on one hand, i went to the zoo with kerry on monday, and while it was fun and we had an eternally bonding conversation about never having children ("i'm thirty-fucking-five years old! when do you think i'm going to 'change my mind'?"), it entered my mind multiple times that there were things missing from my usual trips to such public places, taken with carolyn in the recent past. we didn't count fat people (altho' we did count annoying ones). kerry didn't look out for snake displays so she could direct me away from them before i saw them ("holy jesus fucking mother of god, eww eww EWW!" <- that was me when i accidentally saw a boa constrictor, promptly followed by me running down the opposite corridor away from said boa constrictor), nor did she understand precisely how long i meant to sit at each tiger exhibit (like a fat kid on the couch watching cartoons, baby). while i love kerry to death (and am thrilled that at last someone really, honestly, truly agrees with me on the repellant nature of breeding), it's not the same. and while i am grateful that at least i've got friends, i just can't imagine taking the time and putting forth the effort and the heart to make new bonds. i don't want another best friend, or another sister, or another 'common-law wife' (i wonder if i could use that to sue for custody of the dog? i'm sure it would fall thru in the courts, being that we lived together in a two-bedroom apartment). i feel like i've had enough, like i've used up all my tries at this 'real friendship' bullshit (which is what it is, because as far as i'm concerned no human being in this world knows how to take care of any sort of valid friendship) and i've given up. i'm ready to sit back and have shallow insignificant friendships just to pass the time, essentially. when maura and i lost each other, i kept hoping for the person who would take her place and be the best friend she should have been. i thought it was carolyn, and i was so grateful that we'd crossed paths and ended up together and blah blah fucking blah. now that she's turned out to be just another person who needed me until something better came along, i think my rose-colored bubble-encased idea of having a friendship that was more important than life's other ups and downs has finally been put to rest. maybe that's the 'growing up' i needed to do. in the end, of course, it just means the same thing that i've always known - i was meant to be alone.
there is a little part of me that, while it doesn't wish for it, wonders what it would be like if i were just one of those normal boring girls who were completely satisfied with and fulfilled by having a boyfriend. i wouldn't care about silly immature things like friendships then. i would be bouncing merrily (or miserably) from one guy to the next, wondering who would stick the ring on my finger or give me a key to the apartment or put the bun in the oven. (romantic relationships come with guarantees, at least. then again, most of them don't mean anything. people get married and move in together and have kids at the drop of a hat these days, and it rarely means they stay together. so i guess they're no better off than friendships, since all their symbols are tenuous and/or false anyway). would i be happier that way? hmmmm. well, it's never going to happen, so i suppose it doesn't matter.
all i know is that i feel really tired, and i've really sort of given up. not in any dramatic way, just in a sort of ... indifferent way. meh. people. whatever. friends. whatever. that sort of feeling. which is less stressful, at least, than crying and screaming. but it leaves you feeling sort of strange and empty all the same.