6:58 p.m. - 2012-06-13
school and women
I made it through Tuesday and Wednesday and now I have to make it through Thursday and Friday. And Saturday.
That's how I feel at this point.
School and more school are really kicking my ass. I've been sleeping 3 or four hours a night, max. I'm not real happy with my grades either; my midterm grade (we got them today) is an A-, which I really want to get up to an A and am terrified will slide to a B+. I need that A. Nursing school is competitive. Grad school is competitive. Everything is competitive -- and I have a lot of lost time to make up.
I have a bunch of messages from cool-sounding women on the online dating site that I haven't responded to -- people I'd have messaged right back if I didn't have hours of biology homework sitting on the coffee table every single night. I'm already corresponding regularly with a couple people, and I can't handle any more. Maybe this weekend...
On Saturday I'm supposed to meet a woman named Andi for the first time; she's 30, the head pharmacy tech at a local hospital, and from Alaska. I'm not sure if she is way cooler than anyone I've "met" online so far or if she scares me. I'm afraid she's already attached to me; she's not as wary and streetsmart as you would expect a 30-something doing the online dating thing to be. I really love her e-mails but I won't be devastated, or even bothered probably, if we had a couple of dates and she decided she wasn't interested. But she would be if I decided that. I already know that.
So part of me is saying, "CLINGY DESPERATE PSHYCHO!! RUN LIKE HELL!" but I haven't written on d-land about her because I figured I would get the above feedback, and listen to it, and miss out on someone who could be "the one."
She reminds me a lot of my gone and unreplaced best friend, who I must have loved more than Matt and anyone on earth but my kids, from the time I met her when I was 12. I thought I would never love anyone like that because as an adult you learn to keep part of yourself always in reserve in relationships -- I didn't think I was capable anymore. But who knows. I was always competing with Matt and I always felt inferior, and a lot of the people I haven't messaged back but plan to are people who share my competitiveness, journalism in a few cases, and international ambitions -- people I would probably also compete with, in a nutshell, and maybe feel inferior to.
Andi doesn't spark my competitive/comparative juices because (like my ex-BF) she isn't a competitive person. She's more or less satisfied with her job, her pets, her friends and her life. I can hear the voices out there telling me this would end up boring me, but Kate was like that too and she never bored me. People who have to "do" and "achieve" are often not very interesting when they're not doing and achieving. Kate a complete person doing nothing remarkable at all; she never wanted to be a standout, although she admired in me that I did. I admired that she didn't.
Anyway, Andi from Alaska is an only child and basically an orphan -- her dad left when she was a kid and, if he's still alive, is probably in jail, she says; her mom was killed in a car crash when she was 18. (She didn't tell me this right away -- only a couple of days ago, when I asked.) So she didn't go to college, but she has a pretty good job and a house, and she writes intelligently and flawlessly -- much better than your average teacher, college-educated professional, or journalism school graduate for that matter, which of course is a major plus to me.
She has a lot of animals and one of my biggest fears is that she'll turn out to have way too many pets -- like animal hoarders I've written about or the mother of one of my teenage boyfriends, whose house reeked of oily pet fur and litter boxes. I love animals but not poor owner/animal hygiene, if you know what I mean. That would definitely kill any potential relationship. I can't think of a polite way to ask in an e-mail, "Does your house stink?" But maybe I'll find a funny, non-offensive way to ask on Saturday.
Anyway, although I don't have class again for five glorious days, biology calls. OK, so maybe I do work for my good grades ... sometimes. Sometimes it is unfairly easy for me to get A's, sometimes I get them because I do what it takes to get those A's. Last week I didn't start studying till Friday; this week I start Wednesday night. Or Thursday morning, since it is now past midnight. Hello, NADH Dehyrogenase! and all your friends!
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