2008-02-17 1:53 a.m.
Valentine's Day and Other Happenings
There. A song for the holiday, even if it is tragically sad (or something) and doesn't really fit with anything in my life.
This last week was hell for me. It's always hard being in my skin around "major" holidays. It didn't help that I had midterms this week either.
First, I hate happy couples. They make me nauseous and I just want to tell them to go away. This has nothing to do with my perennial singleness...I've always hated happy couples. Don't know why. I don't care if they're real or in movies, I just don't want to be bothered with it.
I shan't ponder what this means for my future romantic possibilities. However, my friends are already taking bets on how long it will take for me to reveal my inner dominatrix. They don't believe that there's any way I would be submissive, or even nominally equal, with my boyfriend in a relationship. It's funny, for the time being.
However, despite my well-publicized loathing of happy couples - or perhaps because of it - they all seem to gather around me on Valentine's Day. Ick. Even my main characters in my novel are falling in love (though, since I'm basically God to them, that sure as hell isn't going to last. I'm thinking she's dying, since he's the Prophecied One, but not only is she dying, he's causing it by accident. Trust me when I say it's a good thing I'm not actually God).
All told, I only got about 8 hours of sleep from Monday through Friday, thanks to four take-home midterms that were way longer than should be allowed, even in University. But, I did them, sleep or no, because I must keep my GPA at a very specific point or risk being unable to go abroad. Which would be nothing if not damning. I've spent too much time and effort getting to the point of being able to frolic off overseas, and I will have a nervous breakdown if something goes wrong NOW.
Anyway, sleep-deprived as I was, I spent Valentine's Day at work, after spending the morning blowing a paycheck at this one store downtown. I'm horrible with money, everytime I get paid, it's like I take a knife to my wallet and wait for it to start hemmorhaging, and then run into the coolest looking store I see. Well, not really, but you get the idea.
I did get some cool stuff, though, including a new notebook to start keeping track of my novel in. It's even more sprawling and ridiculous than my worst nightmares have conjured it up to ever be (including the ever-so-unplanned, soon-to-be-destroyed-horribly, burgeoning romance between my main characters) and I need a notebook dedicated specifically to it if I'm ever going to keep anything straight. Beginning with the pantheon and mythologies, then heading into locations, character profiles, and detailed descriptions of any and all magical objects, creatures, spells/procedures, etc., and then finally into an outline of the plot thus far.
Have I mentioned that it's sprawling and ridiculous?
I have about 100 pages typed, single-spaced. Not sure what the word count is, but I got to 50,124 or something by the end of November and have been adding to it since.
Just for the record, while I'm warped and twisted enough to enjoy this, I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. However, anybody who wants to be able to say they inspired a character in a novel need only invent a myth and name and I'll pitch the character into the ever-so-epic army of gods, mythic beasts, legendary heros, etc., that I'm building to destroy the imaginary world I've created. Or save it. I still haven't decided that yet. Probably should...
ANYWAY.
I don't know what the point of this was.
I'm stressed. I'm PMSing. I'm still single, and while it doesn't bother me, I resent that everyone else thinks it should.
Oh, that was it.
Why is it so difficult for people to understand that I'm really happy being single? That I like not having to deal with the boyfriend nonsense? I swear, I hated having crushes, when I had them, and now that I'm blissfully uninterested in anyone, everyone suddenly feels the need to start giving me suggestions on how to find someone.
Is it a fact of human insecurity that we can't believe that anybody might actually enjoy - or worse, prefer - the company of a select group of best friends to sexually charged romantic attention?
I guess it all boils down to my beliefs about love. See, I don't think that most people truly love their boyfriends/girlfriends. I think "love" is a state that, for most of us, only our truest friends can inspire. I know it's true for me. I love my amigas more than I will ever love any guy - they've been there for me through everything, and will continue to be there long after all sorts of other shit has gone down. Romantic love, for all that it's hailed as this sort of epitome of happiness, is something that we've really made incredibly shallow.
Not that there can't be depth to romantic love. My grandfather died almost 30 years ago and my grandmother still sounds like a girl with a crush when she talks about him. They got married over 60 years ago, and never fell out of love. But in general, even though we hail romantic attraction as this marvelous thing, we take a really cavalier attitude to it "not working out".
How many of us have ever said, "It just wasn't working out" about a friendship? Would any of us dare?
No. We wouldn't. Because we recognize friendship and the attendant love and bond as something beautiful and precious, even if our society makes it damn difficult to maintain those relationships sometimes.
I don't understand what's so difficult about that.
Maybe I'm just blowing it out of proportion since I miss my friends. In high school it was easier to put up with the bullshit and nonsense because I would see them everyday and it made getting up and going to class worth it because we always had fun. But now? Now I have little motivation beyond England (not that that isn't a HUGE motivation), and I just feel really blah.
This entry kind of sucks. Sorry about that. *shrug*
