Apres Moi

Hello! Greetings from the land of the unemployed! I finished my last day of work today, and it’s been a whirlwind of work-related drama and worse, I accidentally deleted my ENTIRE INBOX AND SENT MAIL, so Jesus, I really hope they don’t need anything after I’m gone. So that was my last gift to the company: sheer idiocy and technical incompetence. Good times. I mean, logic tells me they won’t need it because hello, I DON’T WORK THERE ANYMORE, but the last thing I want to look like is the shady weirdo who vanished without a trace. Mission so not accomplished.

Anyway, I think tomorrow is officially going to be there weirdest day, when I wake up for the first time with nowhere to actually go. Well, I am meeting Carol at noon, but that’s about it, and then … nothing scheduled for the foreseeable future, except for that whole MOVERS ARRIVING thing. And then the whole cross-country (up country?) thing. Incidentally, we’re planning on stopping in Georgia, Virginia, New Jersey and Boston, so if you see a silver Honda CRV with a pug and two glazed-over people in it, it’s us. I’m the one with the flaming red hair. Wave, if you want to. I’ll totally wave back. Or better yet, throw the goat, because how else will I know it’s you?

I’ve been a shitty, shitty human being lately. I’ve been a shitty friend, a shitty acquaintance and a shitty … lots of things. And one of the things I’m looking forward to about starting over is having the time to repair some of my relationships that have fallen apart because of lack of attention. I certainly didn’t do anything overt or direct to hurt anyone, but I’ll say that my strategy for relationships lately has been … benign neglect. I’ve not called a ton of people I need to call. I’ve failed to keep up on my family. And it sucks, ergo I suck. The only thing I can really say is that tomorrow is another day — another day for a fresh start, apologies and Jesus, a little action. I plan to remember birthdays and anniversaries and actually call people back.

And not that this is any excuse, but this all happened SO FAST. The truth is that while the move was sort of planned, it wasn’t planned to go down that fast — Adam’s was initially a telecommuting job, and when we realized we’d want to move, it was an open deadline to get there. And then, just like that, we got a renter and a house and we had to leave and … I don’t even know, I just sort of feel like I blinked and it arrived. And before that, I was working so much and dealing with personnel issues and the pressures of deadline that I neglected to actually LIVE, and I screwed so much of my life up while I wasn’t paying attention. And now, although I never liked Florida that much, it’s too late to really realize what I did have here, and what I ignored while I was focused on things that I now realize don’t really matter.

And you know, I haven’t talked about it in a long time, but we had very few friends here, really. And in retrospect, a lot of that was our fault. Oh, I had people at work that I loved — my coworker, Chad, is someone that I honestly will miss immensely. I felt like Dorothy leaving the Scarecrow, for I will miss Chad most of all. Male-female relationships are so hard — especially between two people who are happily married — due to all of the appropriateness issues, but I think we genuinely liked each other as people on a purely platonic level, and my only regret is that I didn’t have him and his wife over for dinner. I would have liked to get to know her, too, and spend time with both of them and it’s a chance I wish I’d taken. And the truth is, if Chad were a woman, I would have. And when he left, he said the same thing. And for that, I am an idiot, and so is he, for that was stupid, and there was nothing inappropriate about our relationship for even a flash of a second.

And also, did I ever tell you that I’m a pansy? Yeah. I suck at reaching out to people, because I’m always afraid I’ll be rejected. Even when someone is CLEARLY trying to be friends with me, I back off, terrified that I’ll offend them or come on too strong. There have been times when I have avoided friendly advances from people who want to SPEND TIME WITH ME — because surely, I think they must be mistaken, and what if I say the wrong thing? I think it’s why, in part, I’m so comfortable at work. I’m aggressive at the office — organized, outspoken and even risky – because I’m smart and capable (and confident!). And if I’m working, it helps me to avoid what I’m actually afraid of — for in my personal life, I am a turtle. The slightest breeze sends me ducking for cover.

And the other thing is that Adam and I became dangerously complacent in our friendless state. In Boston, we were able to rely on a foundation that we’d built when we were 18 — we moved there from Syracuse with nearly every one of our college friends, and once you have a foundation like that, you can build on it easily. And when we moved here, we quickly got used to having no one to rely on but each other. While it did wonders for our already solid marriage because we literally spent every waking moment together except when we were working, it is a shame that we never branched out to other people. Most of that was because of the weird dynamics of this place — elderly retirees outnumber people under 80 by about 20 to 1, and the young people fall in two categories: rednecks or the extremely wealthy and pretentious Charles Schwab-types with pinstripe suits and cars that they care DEEPLY about. And once we realized we were leaving here (which was about five minutes after we arrived), we just gave up. Because once you know you’re leaving, no matter how far into the future it is, you check out.

I’m looking forward to a life that I can be checked into. I haven’t had that life for two-and-a-half years.

So hey! Here’s to new beginnings. I guess I’ll figure that my life, once again, is happening now and maybe I should wake up and pay attention.

Have a great Thursday.

*Regina Spektor

18 comments February 20th, 2008