SHH/Peaceful

Q: How many Cancers does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: Just one, but it takes a therapist three years to help them grive through the process.

Q: How many Leos does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: Leos don't change light bulbs, although sometimes their agent will get a Virgo in to do the job for them while they're out.

Q: How many Aries does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: Just one -- wanna make something of it?

Q: How many Libras does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: Er, two. Or maybe one. No, on second thought, make that two. Is that okay with you?

All of these come from Beliefnet under their horoscope section. Sorry if I didn't include your sign -- I most just chose the 4 ones most connected to me. But the rest are pretty damn funny, assuming you have a little knowledge of astrology. Oh, I forgot to post my favorite one though:
How many Capricorns?
A: I don't have time for childish jokes.

I started surfing this site because I was trying to find my horoscope from yesterday, but I can't even find the horoscope from today -- at least the ones they send out in their daily newsletter. Anyway, the horoscope yesterday for Cancer said something about need an emotional release and communicating an issue that's been under my skin for awhile. Of course I read that and blithely thought "oh, I don't have anything bothering me..." So of course, when a minor minor drama happened last night, I completely ended up later flipping out. And it was definitely panic-attack level of flipping out -- by that I mean there was not a genuine blow-up issue, there was just my brain working overtime to cause an intense physical reaction.

I hate that. I hate that sometimes I can't cope with a little hurt feelings. I mean, I'm not asking to be a robot here. I'm not trying to force myself to never be hurt about anything -- I just don't always want to get incapacitated. But once I talked it out a bit, and with the help of a sleepy pill, I laid in bed last night feeling capable of seeing the big picture, the whole thing. And sure, my feelings were relevent and important, but they weren't the massive ball of fire or giant weight pressing on my chest.

I got a lot going on with me right now. I need some emotional re-evaluation and to start doing things with the new feelings. These new revelations about my faker/poser status. I'm realizing that I skipped some steps in the process -- I went from introverted/repressed/wary to extroverted know-it-all slut-master. At least on the outside. But now my inside is finally trying to catch up, and I'm being mad at myself for stumbling and tripping and getting caught on the corners of dressers that seem old and archaic, still stuck in the childhood bedroom even though I've grown up into sleek stupid swedish Target furniture.

Someone very nice to me suggested that I'm often to hard on myself. I didn't really know what to say to that, which probably means it's true. Though I'm not always exactly sure of what to do with these expectations, except perhaps to take a step back and maybe follow some of the exact advice I would give someone else.

I don't want to get angry at someone else in exchange for being angry at myself. I don't even want to be angry at myself. I just need to pull everything out of my pockets and arrange them in such a way that I can see everything out on the table and have a better perspective, rather than just focusing on some sharp unknown object that keeps poking my hand as I repeatedly fumble with my pants.

So now I'm going back to the beginning in some ways, tracing back the path to deconstruct things I don't understand and hopefully pick up some new things along the way. This has to do with my relationship with myself and relationships with other people and relationship with a partner.

And along the way, maybe I can make out with some folks and get passed my bizarre silly categories of "Friend -- No sex because it's too scary", as well as my own fears that maybe, just maybe, it's okay for people to be attracted to me and that it does occur.

following limenal's lead

Thank you, Melro, for posting your version of the story here. I liked reading a story where I was a main character and I didn't write it!

Here's an alternate version of the tale -- not the way I tell it to folks in person, but made up of pieces of LJ entries from the time period. It's a perfect example of how LJ doesn't quite cover everything, since I fail to mention NUMEROUS details that I find pretty important now. I think I go into more details in later posts -- probably because I was so busy e-mailing her 15 times a day that I never took the time to write in livejournal. Plus, I feared jinxing the whole deal since it was going so well.

Friday, December 8th, 2000. (I was going through a period of solitary confinement, which is why my horoscope is mentioned at the end.)

"Tonight I go to the volunteer party for work, and then retire to my bachelor pad for a rousing evening of video games and mixtapes with my buddy. It's like an 8th grade sleepover night. I even have Oreos. But I think we talk about sex more than I did as a 13 year old.

Cancer is supposed to come out of his shell tonight. I want to be careful and not poke out too fast -- I might retreat again, this time deeper. I creep out, little by little, exposing as little soft gooey inside as possible...."

Saturday night, December 9th, 2000 (This entry is also shaped by a minor disappointment re: this other boy I was quasi-dating.)

"Things were sort of improving, but I think it was a false start. I hung out last night with D___ and we went to the office party, and I ended up sorta kinda picking up this woman. I mean, we basically just talked for awhile, but I ended up going home with her phone number, so D___ says that counts. She was nice and cool, and I'm going to call to see if she wants to come over and watch Queer As Folk tomorrow with my half dozen other friends. But I don't know about this dating thing. But then again, this is a bad week, so I should probably take a few deep breaths (i.e. wait a week)."

On Wednesday night, I had a dream about our date on the upcoming Friday. It's long, but you can read it HERE.

On the day of the actual date, I was to preoccupied with writing livejournal entries about being disowned by my brother. This topic came up on our date, as previously mentioned by limenal.

And this is what I had to say following our first date:

"In other news, my date on Friday went incredibly. It's become quite the intense situation -- not intense in a bad way, but intense in a "this is so good I'm scared" sort of way. It's also weird that this is the 3rd December of ths past 4 years that I started a relationship with someone. Okay, M___ and I haven't proposed marraige or anything, and we haven't had long involved discussions about how we're defining ourselves....but I think we both know we're going to see a lot of each other in the next month (and hopefully more). We're both going out of town on Friday though, and she won't be back until after New Year's, which I think is a good thing, because I'll have some time to sort my feelings out. I keep saying that I'm not ready/not wanting a serious relationship right now, but then again, I haven't met someone that I clicked with so intensely.
But the bottom line is, she's really funny, really sweet, and damn good in bed."

I love you so.