A Little On The Nutty/Spicy Side

...I am, kind of like spicy cayenne peanuts or something. I have my issues. But my issues are very clear. I've worked hard to make them clear. I continue to work hard to make them clear, and when something pisses me off, I allow myself the time to sort through everything so that I can say exactly what has pissed me off.

So after waiting for BigMan to call--which he didn't--I picked up the phone roughly 24hours later. After having posted here things were very clear for me, so I told him pretty much what I'd written. Including about having too many women dominating him, and he was going to have to decide at some point, what he was going to do about that.

He had kind of an attitude about it... didn't see what I saw about BestGirl and I said "I know you don't, cuz you're a dude and that's OK. But I'm a chick. And a chick who listens to her gut. I know what I feel when I feel it, cuz I pay attention. I've been through too much shit. And I'm telling you I won't deal with it". (And judging from the few comments here and some other comments I got but not from here, I'm not off my rocker.) But we pretty much worked it out. It took a while though, even though once I had said my piece I was pretty much over it.

He mulled it over a little longer though, and later on in the evening came back at me from another angle... saying I should have been more clear about the timing the Professor had. I realized then there was an important backstory he didn't know, which was... much as I love my sister, she'll often go back and forth a while before she makes a hard and fast decision. And it makes me nuts, so I've had to train myself to not listen until I hear the tone in her voice that indicates she's definitely made up her mind and is on her track. BigBear can handle it, and will zig and zag with her but I just can't. It also doesn't jive well with my lateness issue. So until she tells me a definite time and plan is when my ass can get in gear so I can be my usual 10-15 minutes late. If I zigged everytime she did, neither of us would ever get anywhere.

And BigMan, who can zig and zag patiently with BestGirl, was annoyed that I hadn't told him of Professor's first indication. I told him "You borrowed the car, it was up to YOU to follow through. And if you have the patience for zigzags, then in the future YOU do it cuz I can't and I won't."

So that took care of that, for the time being. And I still like him. And he still loves me.

But I had the rather sobering thought, there for a moment, that there is still the very real possibility that I am destined for other things that don't include a long-term relationship, as much as I want one. Because it takes an EXTREMELY patient, secure and thickskinned person, who also possesses skills in the third dimension to be able to ride me out. I know this. I'm not patting myself on the back about it, or trying to make myself out to be some wildspirit... it's just that my life patterns pretty obviously reflect this.

I don't TRY to be difficult. I check myself all the time. I spend way too much time talking to myself and sorting out the errors of my ways. But I am what I am, and at just-about-45 am more like I am every day. And the other thing is... I don't mind ME as I am. I mind OTHER people reacting to me. Which pretty clearly indicates my Narcissistic Tendencies and a bent towards insanity.

Whatever.

I have issues. The problem too, is that randomly, I will get a snapshot of a person that tells me where they're White-Hot core issues are. And I react to that. It often doesn't occur to me until later in the game that people are confused/annoyed/pissed off/happy about my reaction to them, because they can't see their whole picture. So they may not appreciate that I doggedly return to one thing over and over. But I can't help it. It's like if you look at someone and they have food on their face. It's all YOU see. You want to wipe it off, hand them a napkin, rub your chin in the same spot hoping the science of body language will prompt them to mimic you. Some people, you can just reach out and wipe the food off, but if you're not that comfortable with them, you can't do that but the knowledge of the food spot just makes you nuts. They, on the other hand, have no clue why you keep rubbing your chin. They think you're crazy--have an itch.

It took years for me to realize I had this "thing" for people in mental distress, and not confuse it with a need to bond. It took years to realize I can see this "picture", although it's random. I finally learned to pay attention when my scalp tingles (my "danger! danger, Will Robinson!" notice), I learned pretty much how not to get sucked too deeply into the minds of the insane, I learned I couldn't let everyone in and save them (cuz sometimes the scruffy wandering cat is just too fleabitten and too ferile to be domesticated) and I had to learn not to feel guilty about letting some people go.

Now I guess I have to learn to analyze the pictures I see, and separate what I see from what they see. And realize that sometimes they're just going to be people who will walk around with food on their faces. And not let it make me too nuts.

Cuz this picture thing is sort of a recent development. Well, the realization of it is. I realized I've had it all along, it's why certain people stand out in my memory, though years and years and years, and hundreds of people will pass between me and them. Some people make a picture in my heart and I never forget them.

Case in point... Mima. I spent so much time with her as a toddler and she meant so much that even though YEARS went by without me seeing her, I never forgot her. When we left Paris and went our separate ways, I was three and a half. The next time I saw her as a kid I think I was six years old, and then YEARS went by and I saw her briefly in passing when I was about 13 or 14. Then YEARS again... and the next time I saw her I was 36 or 37... and she's back in my life where she belongs.

Added to that list is my high school Math teacher. I ended up with him as a teacher because I'd failed math twice, and he had made an arrangement with the school to pick up all the "recalcitrant math students" and teach them how to think... but in order to do so he needed them for a whole year.

Cool! I thought. I get to "play" all year.. cuz what he did was teach us various string figures known to most as "Cats Cradle" or "Jacobs Ladder". What I didn't know was that in reality, he was teaching us order, how to pay attention to details, processes...

but the other thing about HSMT was that he was Cherokee, even though he possessed an Irish moniker.

At the time, I only knew the rumors of my mother's Native blood, but the call was so strong and HSMT was the first person I'd met in America willing to say "I am Cherokee". He wore different colored socks, strings around his wrists and various amulets around his neck. A lot of the other kids just thought he was a "hippie", a smoker, and a little nuts, and he was all those things but he was also Cherokee and that meant something to me.

It turned out he'd know my Poppy in Harvard, and so they reunited for a bit and Poppy and I ended up attending his Cherokee wedding when HSMT married my music theory teacher.

I graduated, moved on, retained very few friendships with my High School peeps, and certainly nothing with any of my teachers. But I never forgot HSMT, and every few years, whenever a new search engine came about, I'd try to find him. I had found him through Google recently, but unaware of his penchant for translations of poetry from ancient languages, thought it couldn't possibly be him. Turns out, it was.

He finally appeared on FB recently, though I tracked him down from his (now former) wife, my music theory teacher. Who, turns out, knew Mima from a Native women's retreat.

Small ass world.