Everybody's got somebody....

Sunday, April 15, 2007 1:04 AM

Even as I was posting in the picture thread this morning I heard my text-message alert going off. An old college buddy - a girl I worked with at the bus service, and had a severe crush on for a few years - had sent me a picture that I couldn't check while my gorram phone was in roaming mode. So I checked it again while hanging out at Panera and making that BDTY present for PhoenixRose (which, PR, I do hope you've seen by now ).

Well, this old college buddy has been seeing a mutual friend/co-worker for a little over a year. He's a very good dude. I got along with him well enough, and it ain't hard to suss out why they got together - they've so much in common that I was surprised they didn't get together a long time before they did. Well, anyway: The upshot of it is, I should have seen that picture long before I viewed it.

Because they're engaged.

I keep telling myself not to be disappointed. As I say, I crushed on this girl for years: she was the only girl I ever worked up the nerve to ask out, which ended up a complete flop, along with my subsequent attempts to make it up to her. Our "friendship" was, at best, rockier than shoal waters until I finally stopped talking to her when she got a steady guy. Long story short: years elapsed, I met somebody as well, found something I'd been looking for since the year of the flood, and at last found my way clear to forgiving her all that heartache. I'm very grateful that we picked up the pieces and became friends again. So I keep saying, Don't be disappointed. She's happy, she should be happy, she'll still be happy years and decades from now, and that's what matters.

But <i>gai si de gui,</i> I am disappointed.

She'll be spending the rest of her life with someone and she wants to spend the rest of her life with that someone and what a life they're going to have together. No doubt she'll invite me to the wedding, but I ain't even sure I'll want to go. Rest assured I'm long since over the crush, this is a friendship for the ages and I'm glad she'll get to live the rest of her life in marital bliss. So why am I disappointed? Not in her, not that I couldn't have her. What's tearing at me is that she does get a lifetime of wedded bliss while I die alone. Why do you think I've been using that sig banner for near a year?

No doubt you're all saying the same thing now. But Steamer, you're always saying you don't ever want to fall in love again! Well, you're damn right I don't - and this is why. Because I'm older now than any of my family was when they got married, because almost all my friends are either going steady or engaged, because I've been questioning for eons why they always got the warm fuzzy feelings of companionship and tender loving hugs while I got clobbered every damn time. I even backed out of a potential relationship not too long ago, because I just knew it was going to end badly one way or the other, and I knew because it always, <i>always,</i> ALWAYS happens. Love hates me, and I hate it right back, so determined it is to make me miserable - of which it so pointedly reminded me today.

<i>BUT WHY!?!?!?!?!</i>

A decade of fruitless search and I still haven't found the answer. Hence, my disappointment. Hence, another analogy between me and Mal: he no longer believes in God, I no longer believe in love. I can only hope that after today, it's run out of ways to kick me where the sun don't shine.

Till then, I'm just going to have to live with this.

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