It Will Happen Again

I should be finishing up my end of year 2011 in review blog.  But I have been literally nauseous for the past 24 hours and I am thinking I will have better luck writing that blog if I get this one out first.

HSF hits the road in t-minus 144 hours.  I am going to calculate it into hours because it makes it seem longer that way.  I understand that the love of my life isn't going to war.  In fact, I am not even technically saying goodbye to a boyfriend.  I am just watching someone I care about deeply do what is very normal for 20 year olds to do, and that is go to school and get a degree like an adult.  So why does this seem so much harder to walk away from then that moment after high school graduation where the friends I had spent a decade with were all going their own ways too?

I guess the big difference is that he is leaving and I am staying. As much as I am sad to see him go, I can't deny the fact that I am a little envious.  I've always been a little envious of this kid.  He doesn't have to pay rent, utilities, or for groceries.  He doesn't have to set an alarm to wake up in the morning for work.  The only thing I seem to have on this kid is the lack of a curfew. 

So how come after all the hard work I do, and all I struggle with just to keep a roof over my head and my water kept on, how come HE gets to go start over?  How come he gets a free pass to try again, wipe the slate clean, and follow his dreams?  I feel like at 24 I am already stuck in the cycle of adulthood and watching him jump through it like a circus performer, coming out the other side unscathed, really kind of pisses me off.

But jealousy aside, he has become a permanent fixture on my couch over the past 5 months, and I don't know if anyone will be able to fill my time and hold my attention as well as he has.  I like to consider HSF the best rebound relationship I've ever had.  He was the perfect band-aide over the broken heart that Charlie had left behind.  He's been charming, and funny; I've at no point in the past 5 months been bored with any conversation we have had.  I was at at beautiful wedding at the Peninsula hotel in Chicago, and my date was upset with me because I ignored a 5 course meal and fantastic wedding band to spend the night texting my 20 year old Napervillian man-friend.

I wrote an essay to Barack Obama about why if I could have dinner with him tomorrow, I would bring HSF as my dinner date.  Some serious shit has gone down in 5 months.

So it's ending.  And he will get in a U-Haul in 6 days and take his life, the very little of it he has had yet, and move away.  And I will have to process him leaving the same way I have with every man before him.  The hardest part is realizing that this doesn't have to end in the most negative way possible. I don't need to be heartbroken and abandoned, because he isn't leaving me, he is just leaving.  And I truly believe that if he was to still be here in 6 months, we would still be us.  The only thing that changes about our relationship now is that it is over, not that one person broke the other person's heart.

There is an awesome early 2000s film called 'Someone Like You' starring Ashley Judd and Hugh Jackman.  In it the lead female realizes a pattern in the men around her, that more often than not they leave her.  I guess the advice her love interest leaves with her is all I could ask for right about now :

Jane: Because if this theory is wrong, men don't leave all women, Eddie. They leave me.
Eddie: I know it hurts. I know. It's so hard to believe that something that wonderful can ever happen to us again, but it can.

Of All The Gin Joints

I think back to the beginning of summer and that uncomfortable moment of finally running into Andy since we had broken up.  I have been very lucky to have so few run-ins with exs in the past.  Considering how many exs there are.  But when I saw Andy and his now fiance sit down in front of me in that theater I felt like someone had punched me in the gut. I felt like I was going to throw up, laugh, and cry all at the same time.  It was awful.  In retrospect it wasn't awful because I was in the same room as an ex boyfriend. As much as it was awful because in all of the ways I had dreamed of running into him, none included the dimly lit theater for the 9:15 showing of Crazy Stupid Love.

When you date a lot of "performers" it's easy, in this day and age, to know how to avoid ever seeing them.  For those ex's who are in bands, I get emails weekly telling me exactly what club they are playing in on what night.  And not that I frequent the club scene much these days, it's still nice to have a head's up of where I shouldn't be going.  The same applies for comedians, I have found.  And though it is more than irritating that my facebook events page is nothing more than a daily reminder of all the things my ex is doing in the local comedy scene, at least I have a well drawn out road map of how exactly to avoid him.

Lately I have been fighting the urge to get back out into the comedy scene.  Not full-fledged like I used to be, but enough to see some new material from the local comedians I used to actively support and adore.  And part of me will even admit to missing the social aspect of the comedy world.  A lot of these people are just giant fucking douche bags.  But there is a select handful of them that do remind me why I fell in love with standup in the first place.  I have all these event invites just sitting on my stupid facebook, and I have stopped looking at them for the sake of not having to know the exact location of my exboyfriend on any given night.

I wish I could go back to a time where I wasn't able to access all of this information.  But I can't. Does this mean I have to be a prisoner to the information that is shoved in my face simply as a result of being a member of a stupid social networking website?  What if I want to go to a local comedy show, knowing there are so few in the area I live, in the off chance that on that particular evening I will have to run into an ex?  What if I just want to be a 24 year girl going to a comedy show - and not have to worry about who will or will not be there?  What if I stop looking and start living?

I am basically playing with fire.  And this blog isn't a result of throwing caution to the wind, as much as it is a blog about me throwing myself to the wolves.  But I don't want to have to swallow my stomach back down my throat again when I am caught off guard by the appearance of someone from my past in a movie theater.  I want to go to that restaurant I love, even if it was the place we had our first date.  And I want to lie on my couch and watch the show we used to watch together with out you  And listen to that song that made me think of you because it's still a great song with out you.  And I want to go see comedians and bands and not worry about who may also be partaking in these activities.


I will pledge to myself from this moment on not to dictate my actions based off of who I may find when I do them.  Life is too short  I may run into every last guy I gave my heart to that handed it back to me some where along the way.  Even if that is the case, I am not about to deter where I am going for where they might be. 

Worst case scenario : these men will see a girl who is still looking for love, who is still a bit too intense, and is still hellbent on not giving up.  And there is no shame in that.

Potentially Learning

One of the major connecting themes through all of my most significant relationships has been my ridiculous ability to fall in love with a man's potential vs. the man they actually are in the time I am dating them. I have always beaten myself up over this, I mean, I recognized it for the first time with Jerod 5 years ago. But it never seems to stop me from dating the same type of guy over and over again.

I am a "fixer", as it is most commonly referred to as. I like taking someone who isn't quite all there yet, and inspire and motivate them to make themselves some thing better.  And not in a manipulative way, but an incredibly supportive, more times than not, an over-complimentary way. If I see someone who has the world at their feet and the opportunity to do something great... but they don't realize it yet?!  Hold the phone...that's as exciting to me as being stuck in an elevator with Colin Farrell. 

When each of these relationships has ended, I have always felt as though I was letting go of someone that was going to be great someday. That someday I would wake up and see each of these men doing that one great thing they were destined to do.  And that it would break my heart to see them doing that thing I have always encouraged them to do with out me being there at their side.  But, I wake up now at 24 and realize - these men haven't become any of the great things that in my head I thought they had the potential of doing.

Jerod isn't doing anything great.  I wanted him to be a rockstar, or an explorer, or a writer. He joined the military after we broke up. Married some Aldi-brand Katie Keller in Hawaii while stationed over there. He was divorced within the year, and back in Aurora dialing up MY phone number shortly thereafter.  Andy?  We'll he's engaged to be married after he knocked up his Oswegoland girlfriend (also a redhead - it's almost creepy how this keeps happening).  And I am sure he is going to have a great life ahead working at GameStop and supporting his tattooed bride and bastard child.

And then there is Charlie, who is really the only hope I have left in being proved wrong with this theory.  Maybe I will turn on Live! with Kelly in 5 years and see him promoting his next comedy effort.  Maybe, though, just maybe, I will be rereading this blog when I am 30 and enjoying the satisfaction of this theory being proven true all across my early 20's dating board.

So now that I have taken this into consideration, and had my selfish moment of reveling in the lack of success of all of my ex's, I do realize that this says more about me than it does about any of them.  Maybe I need to stop looking for that project of a man I can fix up, and start looking for a man who, as they are right now in this very moment, is doing great just they way they are.  Maybe they aren't a rock star, comedian, magician, or rap god.  Maybe they are just that guy who works at the place and lives in that house and thinks I am a fucking goddess.

That is the dream, isn't it?  Maybe I am not making any huge revelation here.  But I do feel like it is a small step in getting closer to that love I think I am going to find someday. 

DTR With The HSF

I watch a lot of romantic dramedy television, listen to a lot of love songs, and sob through most of the formulaic boy meets girl romance films that exist.  There is a moment in every relationship, in every one of these mediums, that I refer to as the 'DTR' moment.  This is the point in the story where the characters are forced to define the relationship.

"We're just friends."
"We're soul-mates."
"We're casually dating, but seeing other people."
"We're just not working."

My brain has been conditioned from a very young age to ask that question, "What are we?"  I think this is more important for women than men, and I think that is a direct result of our much more outward insecurities.  We need to know that we aren't falling alone.  We need to know if it is ending, or beginning.  Even just some sort of validation that it is happening at all.  Unfortunately, I have come to find in my many years of romantic field research that this is the exact opposite of what men want.  In fact, I haven't been able to find anything to make men more uncomfortable than having the DTR talk.  Maybe only second to a pregnancy scare.

I am in this pseudo-relationship with HSF, and though we have been doing this thing, whatever we are, since June; only twice have I had a strong pull to DTR.  And both times I have watched terror and discomfort build behind his eyes and the conversation had quickly extinguished shortly there after.  I haven't pushed this conversation any further, because to be honest, I have known from the beginning that this non-relationship relationship comes with an expiration date.  And there isn't much of a point of DTRing when we won't exist past December 31st, 2011. 

So this morning... I wake up with an incredibly strong urge to DTR.

'God Dammit, HSF' I thought to myself 'can you just tell me what the fuck this is already!?'

Why this has come barreling into my mind over Wednesday morning coffee I will never understand.  But I did quickly realize that this conversation with him would end no differently than it had the first two times before.  So instead of looking to him to define anything for me, I decided to define it for myself.  In my own terms.  He doesn't owe anything to me, he leaves in 3 weeks. I can label us with whatever the hell I want, and it won't affect the inevitable conclusion to this story.  So here goes:

HSF embodies all of the qualities of who Charlie should have been. And I don't mean that as terribly as it sounds. But Charlie was on board to be my boyfriend, he jumped at the opportunity to be exclusive.  But when it came down to it, he was all talk and no action.  HSF has been the complete opposite of that.  Though he has never exclusively claimed me as his own, he has made it a point to spend as much time as possible with me.  I know if there were a line up of me and most people he knows, more likely than not, he would choose to waste his days on my couch watching me laugh at Modern Family and arguing with him about the value of 90s music.  He has never changed his facebook status for me, or even alluded to the fact that we were in a relationship.  And yet with no answers, no DTR,  I am still happier spending time with him than anyone else in the world.

HSF is not the end all and be all of men. And once he is gone, I am sure it's only a matter of time before I am searching for the next guy to DTR with.  In the interim, I have stumbled upon a very pleasant reminder of what it is like to be in the company of someone who genuinely wants to be with you.  Whether it's defined or not.

The Mikey B Story

I don't know if I had mentioned this before because this blog has only been in existence for the past year.  And to be quite honest, though this upcoming story does carry some weight in the larger picture of Katie Keller, this part of my life hasn't had much relevance in this past year at all.  Before I worked at the music store, I spent 2 years as a waitress at the same Naperville Italian restaurant. Which, at the age of 24, felt like forever.

I went through a lot in my time waiting tables there. At one point I was living in a house with no running water and no heat in the middle of December with Brock.  There were some dark times, for sure.  I am so far on the other side of that part of my life at this point that sometimes I forget how much learning and growing up happened in the time that I was there.  Lately I have been nostalgic about a certain relationship I had, via this restaurant, the summer of 2008 when I met a fellow server, a young man, named Mikey B. 

It was the end of the summer, and the end of my 2 year long relationship with Andy. We had tried everything at this point.  We had dated and broken up, and dated and broken up more times than I can remember.  We both knew we were no good for each other, but like an addiction didn't want to stay away.  So we were, technically, still dating when Mikey B and I decided to grab a drink together after work one night.  I knew it was going to lead to cheating, I knew that it would be the final straw in Andy and mine's relationship. And I lit the wick anyway.

The thing about Mikey B was that he was moving to Boston about 3 weeks after we had decided to make something more of our casual beverage-station banter.  We threw caution to the wind, and decided that him leaving sooner than later would only make the time we had together that much more intense.  We stayed up, every night, camped out on the bed of his studio apartment in the middle of no where Aurora.  I would wake up to breakfast in bed, and very good sex, before we would shower up and go to work together to go home and do it again until he left.  And 3 weeks later he left.

I had a blast with Mikey B.  He was a weird kid, and the other servers of this time would agree, he was not all there in the head.  But my memory of him is that of such a sweet kid, that made me laugh, that gave me an out from a no good relationship with someone I will, undoubtedly, love forever.  We had great moments together, some of the most romantic moments of my life.  He did once ask me to move to Boston with him, though I knew this wasn't really an option since he was moving up to Boston to be with his long-distance girlfriend.  (Another story for another day...)

He lives there now, a head chef of some tapas restaurant.  They are married, and in love. And I honestly, truly, couldn't be happier for that man.  He was exactly who I needed him to be, when I needed him to be there.  There is a part of me that knows this memory is only relevant because history is, in a way, repeating it's self.  I guess this story, if nothing else, proves that whatever may be will be.  Not everything lasts, but that doesn't mean it doesn't count.