Autoanalysis

I think I’ve developed an unhealthy obsession with Vince and Six’s relationship. Well, maybe it’s not an obsession, but it’s a …preoccupation, there’s the word. Maybe it’s how I channel my suppressed jealousy. I’m attracted to both of them, physically. And mentally a little bit, too. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be as attracted to Vince if I was around him all the time… but the only reason I say that is because I’m not around him at all, and haven’t really spent any extended amount of time with him. And I automatically assume I wouldn’t like him as much if I was around him all the time. Reasonable..? So I suppose I might actually like him more in that situation, but who knows. Six I already know how I feel about him. We’ve been friends for years, since 2004. I’m attracted to him physically, and he to me apparently, but he’s got issues that prevent me from liking him as any more than a friend. He’s still got issues about being gay (… don’t we all, but still, his are larger), he’s a bit too negative and cynical, as much as that can be funny sometimes, he’s a drop-out who continues to not go back to school, he smokes, AND he’s paranoid. Now, these only matter in judging him as a potential boyfriend. In terms of being a friend, the only thing I can fault him with is that he’s not the absolute best to go to for comfort, and he’s paranoid. Both of which are get-around-able. Vince I’ve yet to really get to know, aside from our online chats, and that one weekend. But still, they both have occupied far too many of my thoughts lately. Now, I don’t want you to get the wrong impression – I don’t think I’ve ever thought of them at school, which takes up a lot of my time. Ok that’s a lie, but not very often anyway. But still. I can’t go online without thinking about them. Just, either one or the other, or both, or spending time with both of them again. Alex would have to be around, too, but he’s not part of my preoccupation. And you know, it’s totally idealizing them, and their relationship, and building it up into this wonderful, perfect thing of which I’m envious and for which I’m happy.

I did this exact thing with Thomas and Rebecca, two friends who’ve since moved away. They were much more ideal in reality than Vince and Six, at least in my eyes. Both of them were geniuses, first of all. Awards and scholarships galore, and they won even more upon acceptance to their grad schools. They’re also both extremely friendly, community minded, politically aware intellectuals, but at the same time they’re approachable and funny and weird. In my eyes they're nearly flawless. I loved them then and I still do now. I totally idealized their relationship, and I suppose them as individuals to a certain extent. I wanted to be around them, I enjoyed them, and I just knew they’d be together forever. Of course, this was doomed, and they broke up shortly after leaving for different grad schools. To me, once I heard, it was as if the world had gone mad. I was totally unprepared for the break-up (not as much as Thomas, apparently, but whatever). This event definitely contributed to the somewhat fatalistic attitude that I now hold towards relationships. But this attitude is still buried beneath a romantic, sentimental, sappy layer within me that I think has led to this current thing for Vince and Six. It seems I can’t help but let this happen.

I must admit that I think part of the thing I’ve got for them is due to the absence of gay friends in my day-to-day life. I SO enjoyed having that when I went and hung out with them and Alex that weekend. So, this is a temporary feeling. All I have to do is find some new gay friends lol.

Six and Vince had their first big argument last Sunday, a week ago. I was at work when it happened, but Six had msged me on facebook as soon as the whole thing got going. Which says something about how upset he was, because Six NEVER msgs me. On msn or facebook or just email, or anything. I always have to start the convo. He’ll keep it going, even invite me places and stuff. But he never starts it. It’s odd. And on occasion supremely annoying. Anyway. Apparently, Vince had been drinking in someone else’s dorm room, at some party or something. It took place in Vince’s res. Anyway, Vince’s friend G was in attendance, too. One of Vince’s few gay friends, and also one of the few people he’s out to. So they all got drunk, and then the party ended in the night sometime, at which point Vince learned that G had no way of getting back to his apartment aside from walking. It was an approx. 20min walk. On a windy, frigid winter night. So Vince, the nice guy that he is, said to G that he could just stay in his room for the night, and walk home in the morning. Thought nothing of it. They stayed up for a while talking and YouTubing or whatever, talking a lot about their respective boyfriends apparently, and then went to sleep. Both slept in the same bed, though not under the same covers, or something. PS this is all Vince’s version of events, although I do believe it. Six was aware that G was there, because he chatted to Vince after Vince had gotten back to his room with G after the party, and they’d used a webcam. Six was a kind of upset that the whole G staying over thing was taking place.

Next day, sometime around lunch time, Vince clicked on Six, tried to make some small talk, but Six was upset about the night before, so he wasn’t being very conversational. One word answers and such. Eventually Vince, gently, was like, is something wrong? And then, are you upset about last night? And after a bit of Six being like, I don’t want to argue on msn, and then, I don’t want to argue when we’re far apart, he eventually just let it out, how upset he was about the night before. Anyway, I won’t go into the gory details, even though Six told me absolutely everything. Just sent me the msg history. It was, frankly, depressing to read. I felt a little bit like I was intruding, even just reading the thing, and also pretty upset just because they both got so upset. Like, tears upset. Six was totally the angry one, and Vince was totally the apologetic one… ughh it makes me sad to just think about the whole thing. Anyway, I quickly encouraged a phone call- I would NEVER want a fight of any emotional import to take place over msn. Ever. It’s nice as a casual chatting medium, or information exchange, or something through which you can chat to people you’ve found online. But not for anything too serious. I mean, I’ve done it, argue, talk about big important things, but it’s not my first choice. Alex and I were chatting as I crisis-controlled Six. He’d been doing the same thing for an hour. Apparently Six had also turned to a few other people for advice, some of whom were not the most wholesome, and just reflected Six’s confusion/distress back to him, amplifying it. Both Alex and I tried to calm things down and encourage phone calls. Eventually this happened, and they made up, and all was well. I briefly chatted to Vince a few days later, and tried to be supportive to him, too, just so he would know I was still behind this relationship.

I’m very wary of trying to be a support for both of them, however. I tried to do this with a past relationship of Six’s, with S. I’d started chatting with S summer before last. Six met S that Christmas, and they started dating before December was through. It was Six’s first serious relationship where he really fell for the guy. It was also S’s first serious relationship. Six was 20. S was… 18 I think. I thought that S was a nice person. They appeared to be happy, and in love, and I was happy for them. I never actually met S. (My relationship with Six is weird, it’s only started to become a bit normal this year. But anyway, that’s for another entry). So my judgments of S were based only on online chats. But still. He was young, but he seemed nice. At least fairly mature. Anyway, as you might’ve guessed, this relationship came to a rather untimely end. A very awkward, messy, untimely end. I forget when exactly. The whole thing only lasted for a few months, although in my mind it takes up a larger portion of time because of how strongly they felt for each other, and because of the lasting impact it’s left on Six. I mentioned that I’d started chatting with S that summer. Well, we continued chatting all throughout that fall, and through the winter, during the whole relationship with Six. At first, this was awesome. I felt like I was the confidant of both of them, and I could calm things down between then if there was a fight, I could open communication channels if they were blocked, and I could also be in the know about everything that was going on with them. I liked both of them and they both seemed to appreciate having me to talk to. Now around the mid-way point of the relationship, I started to realized that I was starting to play for both sides, so to speak. Sympathizing with both of them, often in a way that I wouldn’t really want the other guy to know about. Sort of like a… “I’m really on your side” kind of thing, to each of them. I don’t think I realized what a bad situation I was creating for myself. But still, they both seemed to appreciate me, a lot, so I kept doing it. As things started to get weird between them, the whole thing began started to get somewhat stressful for me. I had to really start, not lying, but really crafting how I interacted with both of them so as to keep the appearance that I was just as close with each of them as I’d always been, even though at that point it would have been impossible because they were really not getting along. I was lying to one or the other, but I could never really tell which. Truthfully, if I had to choose who I was being more truthful towards, it would’ve been S, unfortunately, because I often find Six too emotionally unstable, a bit too reactive, a bit too.. paranoid, I’ve mentioned that lol. Not that S wasn’t being unreasonable sometimes, too. But anyway. Six started asking me what S was saying about him. S started asking the same thing. I’d always been open about the fact that I chatted to both of them a lot. This is where everything really got out of control. Unfortunately, even though I hadn’t been completely truthful with either of them about how I felt about what was going on with their relationship, and how I judged the decisions they were making in terms of what they were saying to each other, and how they were treating each other, I’d still developed a sense of loyalty to each of them. As in, I would never really sell one out to the other. If one of them told me something in confidence, I would never share it with the other. I’d only really lie about what I was feeling about things, so as to appear more in line with what either S, or Six, was venting about, depending on which one I was chatting with. This sounds like I’m a terrible person, and maybe I was, but I’ve certainly learned my lesson. Anyway, so they started asking more directly about what the other one was saying about them. And of course, I couldn’t really reveal anything explicit, I’d just try to give vague positive impressions of things. Six especially wanted more information, and when I refused on the grounds that S was my friend too – yikes. He felt so betrayed. He said some pretty hurtful things to me. Fortunately, I’d been in arguments with him before, and I knew he had a tendency towards the melodramatic, if perhaps unintentionally. So I didn’t get very hurt by anything he said, but it certainly put a strain on our relationship. S never really got too upset, he seemed to understand a bit more what my predicament was. Eventually Six and I got past the whole him feeling betrayed by me – he had a lot more anger and sense of betrayal toward S than he ever had toward me. But it continued to come up now and then over the following months. That’s one thing about Six, he doesn’t let things go. He’ll bring it up, use it as a jab, but then quickly say “anyway” or “but whatever” and interject some new topic. I hate this. Either address the issue, and resolve it, or bury it and don’t bring it up ever again. Unfortunately I could never really get angry at him when he’d bring it up because I felt guilty over the whole thing. During the break-up, Six had used the argument that he and I were better friends than S and I, and so I should spill S’s secrets to Six out of loyalty to Six. This of course discounted any loyalty I felt towards S, which I couldn’t do. Even though, and I agreed with Six on this one, I had never met S in real life, and I really did have far less of a friendship with S than with Six. But I still couldn’t bring myself to betray S like that. As much as Six felt betrayed by me withholding information from him, I never saw that as real betrayal. Telling Six everything, however, would have been.

So we eventually moved past it. The larger issue for Six, of course, was the break-up itself, and the betrayal he felt at S. I think he still finds it very difficult to really fully trust a boyfriend again. I’m sure this affects how he behaves in his current relationship. The larger issue for me was that I could never again put myself in a situation like that, where I was on both sides of a relationship. So really, when I’d blocked Vince before he and Six started dating, after they started dating I was glad that I wouldn’t have the opportunity of getting to know Vince, because then I’d never be the middle person again. But then Six asked me to give him another chance, and then I went up to see Vince and Alex with Six. And I really liked Vince! So now my goal is to somehow be friendly with Vince, but remain definitely on Six’s side. Hopefully the situation won’t have to be framed in terms of “sides,” I’d rather just be an observer. But seeing as I am Six’s friend, and we’ve been friends for years, and we share stuff with each other, I will not put myself in a position where I feel loyalty to a guy who is causing him so much pain.

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In other news, my grandmother is completely losing her mind. It’s pretty sad if you think about it too hard, but she is happy, she lives at home with her husband, my grandfather. They have the best of care (hired). Lots of creature comforts. And really, she can be quite funny, if you indulge the repetitive questions and comments, which of course we all do. We went to their place for supper tonight, brought all the food with us. Beth, my sister, and I always really enjoy our grandparents, they always make us laugh hysterically. They’re in their late 80’s now. Hopefully they’ll stick around for a while longer. I think when they go it’ll be the first time death really touches close to me. I’ve lost a gazillion older relatives over the years, been to more wakes and funerals than I can remember, but I was never terribly close to any of them. Sure it was sad, and I may have shed a tear or two here and there, but no one really close to me has ever died. This is definitely a temporary state of affairs.

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I’m going to accept my first, and so far only, offer from a law school this week. Put down my non-refundable deposit. The deadline is the end of the month, and I’ve yet to hear from any of the other schools I’ve applied to. I’ll be more than happy attending this school… but it’s not my first choice. It’s my third. Though first, second and third are all rather close in terms of how glad I’d be to attend there. There’s also a fourth choice, which I already don’t really care about anymore because my third accepted me. My first choice is somewhat more competitive, so I’m trying to be defensively pessimistic about my chance of being accepted. But I can’t help but hope. If I do get accepted there, or my second choice, then I’ll just let my third choice keep my non-refundable, and I’ll accept to the first or second. I might not hear for months, unfortunately.

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I have a crush. I think. My last real crush moved away summer before last. I’d hardly had any time to even learn if he was gay. We’re facebook friends though, so I keep tabs on him lol. Still inconclusive. Anyway, this new guy, Liam, he’s in a class with me. A comm class. I noticed him in the first class, thought he was cute, in a dorky kind of way. He’s kinda short, longish hair, though not really long, not like, shoulder long, just got a lot of it. He had glasses that first day, though he hasn’t since. He’s a first-year. He gave a speech the other day that was really touching. I made an excuse to talk to the prof so I could learn his name. Since then I’ve been trying to find a way to catch up with him in the hall sometime to tell him I liked his speech. Seemed like the best way to start a convo. Unfortunately, there’s this girl he’s always with. Lisa. I’m hoping she’s just a friend and not a girlfriend. Another first year. She also gave a good speech, technically better than Liam’s. Though not as touching. Maybe because Lisa’s was more polished, while Liam’s was more… earnest and unpolished. I like her contributions to class discussions; they’re intelligent, and articulate, in a soft-spoken kind of way. So she does present somewhat of a challenge to talking to him, but I think I could reasonably talk to both of them at once. Anyway, I couldn’t find an opening this week. But then, today, coming home from work at the library, I passed him in the parking lot! I work at the university, and he lives in res. He was just walking by with a guy friend. I looked up, realized it was him, smiled, just as he seemed to do the same thing, I said hi, quietly (I’m generally dissatisfied with my casual hi’s, I don’t think they have enough umph to them, but whatever), and he said hi back! In that shy little way he has. This made me really happy lol. I’d never interacted with him before, so, I’m hoping this is a nice first step. It’ll make it easier to start that initial convo.

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I could probably keep going, but this is a bit of a mammoth entry lol. I’m half watching Twisted with Dad on Bravo… it’s pretty dark. A movie, for those who’ve never heard of it.

ciao