I am deeply paranoid about my inability to figure out what is real and what is not.

I am amazing at taking compliments; while your average girlfriend might reject the compliment a few times, I am willing to not only accept your praise but build on it.  That being said I would like to think I am a relatively rational person.  That being in the sense that I am not so arrogant to not think that sometimes it's a problem with me, not with the other person.  However, I do have an ego problem, where I believe truly everyone does like me more or less.

If you take this high self esteem problem (that only I seem to have), and mix it in with my imagination..  You end up with a false sense of reality.  You say 'go away' and my head immediately adds 'for now, I am just in a bad mood'.  I can't often tell if I am in the good or bad with some people.  Worse, being the rational person I am lol, I am fully aware that my sense of reality is often false, and thus, I become paranoid.

I start to have these problems where I think things are great, and I think that he likes me too, and then suddenly he's like '..You thought we were together?' and I read back and realize.. we aren't.  It was just all being invented in my head.  Then what do you say?  "You were a fantastic imaginary boyfriend, you never got jealous and I never had to explain myself to you."?  After embarrassing yourself like that, I don't think there IS a comeback.

After said problem, I start in with the paranoia..  '....Did he really mean that when he said he wanted to take me to dinner?  Maybe he wants to take me to dinner as friends.  Maxime, don't think too highly of yourself, not EVERY breathing body with a pair of testicles attached is pining for you...' and I bring myself back to earth only to return a few minutes later with '....why are you being so cynical Maxime..  don't think that way' .... And by the time I am done dinner was just a horrible mess!

To fix this problem, I am implementing the basic system that every child uses:

But I would take out maybe.  Make up your mind mate, if you only maybe like me, just go with no.

Take this problem of misreading social situations and apply it to my every day life and you'll understand why I live happily in my own world.. Because your world sucks and in my world everyone likes me.

Girlfriends

I’ve never been one for girlfriends.  In fact, I find the term to be an oxymoron.  Most women take every immediate chance they have to rip me a new one.  In fact, I will be completely honest.  Most women scare me.

That aside, I have always admired these woman clubs other people seem to be in.  They call them their ‘girlfriends’, I prefer the term cult.  Regardless, I am in awe of them.  It would be fantastic for me to be in a position where a girl liked me enough to defend me and emotionally support me or whatever they do.  Truthfully I haven’t figured out what they do because my only real woman reference is Sex in the City, and I have a feeling that is relatively unrealistic considering I am pretty sure no one can live in NY as a writer and afford designer shoes (but really that’s only the beginning of the discrepancies).

So … I went out to dinner with a girl.  Not just any girl, a girl who seemed to think I was really cool (or at least I think so).  We got to talking, and I casually steered the conversation into subjects that I constantly hear brought up amongst girlfriends….  So things I more or less had to bullshit my way through, such as boys and make up.  I know nothing really about them seeing as my closest thing to a healthy relationship is a one way love connection via the internet and chapstick as an all-purpose make up product.  I don’t think you’ll be surprised when I say that after this, things went downhill… 

I bought fake eye-lashes, which I somehow found a way to casually bring into the conversation resulting in the desired results: an ecstatic ‘oh wow really?!’.  I was so sure I was in, right then and there.  I suddenly felt like I had earned my uterus.  We then talked about where I had bought them, when I was going to wear them, and she asked if I could put hers on for Halloween, and I said ‘Yah girl of course!’.

WHAT??  Why would I say that?  What on earth possessed me to think that I in any way should be allowed that close to someone’s face to do anything that is considered a girly skill?  I felt an immediate sensation of pure dread and anxiety. You know that saying “you’ll poke somebody’s eye out”?  I am pretty sure I am about to be an example of that, and I think doing so may disqualify me from this women’s club.

I have spent the majority of today frantically searching through wikihow and youtube for answers to my eyelash dilemma.  After extensive research into the eyelash process, my solution is to explain that I don’t have my glasses and wouldn’t want to make her look stupid, thus as the considerate girlfriend I am, will be unable to fulfill her request for fake eyelashes.  I think this will work.

Being a girlfriend, not nearly as easy as they make it out to be on Sex in the City.

Being emotionally available is too mainstream.

Being emotionally unavailable.  Now that's where it's at.

You've all seen the movies where some handsome man or beautiful woman who is clearly far out of your league, or maybe not as you're also an actor/ress in this scenario, rips you from your shell of 'reservedness', and shows you that love can really be worth it.  Right?  It's the basic story line for any sap who wants to imagine it can happen to them.  They call themselves hopeless romantics..  I say romantic is a little strong.

I had my movie scene moment.  I met someone on a train and then found them again on the internet only to proceed with a weekend fling.  It was 'You've Got Mail' circa 2011.  But where is my happy ending?  Why didn't I come out of this movie moment weekend with this sudden deeper understanding of myself and what it means to be in love?  Oh yes.  Because I am emotionally unavailable and completely lack the ability to express myself in any way, shape, or form, when I am enamoured with some unlucky victim the opposite sex.

The therapists that I don't have, but stalk online, always write things about being able to change if you're open to it.  I think the problem is basically that I am not open to it.  In fact, I am deeply against it.  I hate this feeling.  I hate feeling wide open to anyone.  I would rather have my mug collection smashed while I watch kneeling on the floor in tears before I would let myself be subject to what most people call 'romance'.

People always tell me how you know you're in love when you can't stop thinking of them... your heart begins pounding heavily when they talk back..  you feel butterflies in your tummy when they compliment you...  This is what this sounds like to me:  Subject is describing obsessive behaviour, possibly hallucinations, irregular heart palpitations and nausea.

Aside from feeling cheated out of my happy ending, I am more afraid that i'll never find out what being ill with love truly feels like.  I would like to stress the word ill.

He who does not travel does not know the true value of an unlimited buffet.

Some people say, when things get rough, that it can only go up from where you are.  I don't know what type of encouragement they think they're giving me, because I clearly know they are wrong.  For me, when things are bad, I am fully aware that they can get worse.  I like to think that I have adopted a good attitude about it, seeing as I clearly can't do anything to avoid my luck, and have found many a creative way to improvise.  Also, I like to think that karma has a good hand in it all, as I have had equally as amazing of experiences as I have horrific ones.

Before I left Seville, while remarking about my past six day delay journey from hell with my very soon after Ex, a friend of mine tried to reassure me by telling me that this was indeed the worst it could get.  Travelling was going to seem like cake compared.  They owe me a beer.  I knew the moment I was in the train station at Sevilla Santa Justa, and I had forgotten my winter jacket and my glasses that I was going to need those improvisational skills that I had been honing over the last three years, little did I know that was only the beginning of it all.

I arrived to the United States purely on the kindness of good people, and a miracle.  There was no other way to possibly pull off what I did when making my way into the USA without some phenomenon.  I will spare you a super long work up of everything that happened and just give you the summary:

There was a problem with the train which they originally told me was the brakes.  When the police showed up with their guns pulled, I was pretty sure that was a complete lie, but never the less we were stuck.  After an emotional call to my mother saying I may not make it, the sympathy of the people on the train drove them to trap the conductor in my train car and coerce (bully) him into finding me a way to get to the airport.  They got me a free taxi which got me to the airport with two minutes to spare.  A lovely Irish family helped me into the queue and even got me some chocolate to make me feel better.  In Ireland I spent the night and woke up next to a Spanish girl who asked me if I wanted breakfast.  I wasn't expecting to wake up in the company of anyone, let alone a girl, but I went with it and I spent the day with her.  I felt better speaking Spanish anyway, it felt more natural.  When I finally got on a plane from Dublin to JFK, the plane was late.  I was given only fourty-five minutes to pick up my luggage at Terminal 4, take the air-train to Terminal 5, check in, and go through security again.  I only made it with the help of the German doctor who was so kind to me during the flight and made it possible for me to get ahead of the crowd, and speaking Spanish at security charmed them into letting me into the front.  I was the last to board the flight with one minute to spare.  I made it home.

Sadly, that was the summary.  I couldn't leave out any more information than that and still give the entire story.

The vacation was better than I had expected.  It was lovely to see my family again.  I spent as many hours with my baby sister and my best friend as I could.  It was great to see how their lives have grown and changed, and yet our relationships haven't changed at all.  It was easy to go back to just how things were when I left almost two and a half years ago.  I even got to see my brother, who lives in Boston.  

Now see, this is where karma comes in and rewards me for the journey here...

I met someone.  Well, we can't really say met.  I saw someone.

You know those romantic films where a man and woman see each other from across whatever form of public transportation and/or area they are in, and then through a series of events dictated by fate find each other again?  I lived that, in real life, and he hasn't filed a restraining order. yet.

Falling in love in train cars doesn't seem realistic, and I didn't think so while posting online that I couldn't stop staring at him and that I wished to find him again.  This is where fate comes in: he wished to find me too.  It only took a shocking three hours for us to be in contact.  What started as a joke about my orange line lover, quickly turned into the reality of a craigslist lover.  Who knew craigslist worked?  I still don't fully believe it does, but I have been swayed a little.

Maybe it was the magnitude of good luck that brought me to meet him that forced the hand of karma to give me what I can only describe as the most horrific trip back to Spain I have ever had.  I can't think of any other way that it was possible for things to suck as badly as they did.  It was one of those trips where nothing seems to go right, and you just can't take any more.  I can't even summarize fully the extent of how exhausted I was by day two.

Aerlingus sends me more mixed signals than all my ex-boyfriends combined.  I hate when they send me messages that say things like 'We regret to inform you that your flight has been delayed', but they won't give you any more information than that, leaving you to wonder if you should go and wait it out an hour, or you have to re-book your tickets.  I am pretty good at being blunt, and I don't think there was a lack of communication on the phone when I kindly explained that I had to take a flight from Portland to JFK, so I needed them to give me an idea of whether I should expect to go tonight, or if I should rebook for tomorrow. They wouldn't give me ANY information.  I don't know why they continued to respond 'I don't know' when what I was asking them had little to do with knowing anything, but rather giving me an idea of what I may be able to expect.  I took the flight to JFK anyway, and luckily, because the wait was only two and a half hours.

There was a lovely German girl who was going on the same flight I was on, JFK to Dublin.  She asked me kindly to use an American phone to call someone to say goodbye, but I didn't have one.  She looked like she needed company though, so I asked her if she'd like a bite to eat.  We both had $10 dollar vouchers from Aerlingus to buy some food through the wait, though that doesn't go far in the airport.  I will skip the details of what we ate, all you need to know is she ate the entire burger and plate of fries in record time and I was left in awe.  I have never been so impressed, nor have I ever felt so inferior as I stared down at my half burger, unable to eat any more.  She tried to console me by telling me that it was because she was German... What kind of excuse is that?!

She was lovely though, and we spent a few hours together waiting, and drinking.

When I arrived in Dublin, I had yet another seven or so hours to wait.  This is where things went truly badly.  I almost got kicked out of the airport.  For drinking.  In Ireland.  Did you get that?  Let me say it again.  I got in trouble for drinking in Ireland.  Don't sell it if I can't drink it.  They made me out to seem like a drunkard in the middle of the airport.  'Miss, I am sorry you can't drink wine here'.  Really?  Since when was Ireland against public drunkary?  Since when did I seem like a drunk??

They gave me a voucher for internet use in exchange for my wine bottle, which truly was only exchanging one 'addiction' for another.  All I did was go online to complain about Ireland suddenly becoming chaste about public drinking.

Luckily, not all of Ireland shares the airport's sentiments.  On the plane the lovely elderly woman next to me kept trying to feed me alcohol and cookies.  For free.  I accepted.

Anyway, I was lucky enough to find my way to a hotel for the night, where I was so exhausted by the journey that I immediately passed out in preparation for today..  It is currently day three of travelling, and as I write this I am still not in my house.  Soon though.  I will be soon.

Just don't travel with me if given the opportunity, it's the only advice I can give you if you want to maintain your friendship with me.

You're what makes New England so great.

Pad Thai.  I want to have Pad Thai with you.

I promise not to wear white to dinner, I am not so arrogant as to show off my hand-eye coordination so shamelessly.

It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.

I am charming.  Modest, not so much.

No but truly, I consider myself charming.  I read a quote not long ago that said charm is the ability to make both parties to the conversation think they are pretty wonderful.  It's true, there are people that you talk to who just warm you up inside, and make you feel comfortable.  I am one of those people.  I have the ability to make people ambitious and excited just by being near me. That is, unless, I have a crush on you.

I can be wooed, I can even play the cat and mouse game... but wooing?  That's an entirely different story.  When I try to woo, I am no longer bilingual, in fact, I fear I have no language.  I have no coordination, and I have no ability to judge.  I am not just talking about judging alcohol intake, which I also lack, but judging distances, judging social situations, judging how interested they are.  It's all magically gone, and I am left with some type of verbal deficit of a nature that I can't really explain.

In fact, I would say my abilities with men are so lacking, you should be more worried if I am charming you than if I am not.  Though if I am not, you may be tempted to leave, in which case I beg of you to believe me when I say I am not actually as retarded as I seem... and whilst the emotional scars of watching me in such a state may last forever, I will soon loosen up and I promise you, I am quite fun.

Don't expect poetry out of me normally. Seriously.

I loved you, and I probably still do, And for a while the feeling may remain... But let my love no longer trouble you, I do not wish to cause you any pain. I loved you; and the hopelessness I knew, The jealousy, the shyness - though in vain - Made up a love so tender and so true As may God grant you to be loved again.