Timing Is Everything

I guess I do post some really personal stuff on here. In the future I'll try and be more mindful of those things that I write about, especially as it involves other people. I think I like writing about personal things, but then it gets hard because so much of it involves my dealings with other people, and many people are much more private in their own personal matters.

Having said that, how about more personal stuff? Weird, huh? Now you're thinking, then why the disclaimer?

In the middle of a conversation the other night I started to think about some of the events that have transpired over the last year of my life. It was kind of weird to have some of these other memories flash through my mind. The relationship between the events really helped me to see the difference between feeling just letdown and being truly crushed. While having this talk with a friend, I began to think about another one I had almost exactly a year ago this weekend.

I think the weirdest thing for me about the conversation was thinking about the timing of it being right before General Conference weekend for the church. It is almost exactly the one year anniversary of when things definitively ended with a girl who, for a long time, I was sure would one day be my wife.

That was on a Friday night that it happened and I felt pretty much destroyed. I had a residential appraisal down almost by the Mexican border in San Diego and I missed the Saturday morning session of conference. I remember eating chicken mcnuggets in my car and filling up at a gas station and just feeling, quite literally, defeated. That whole day was so surreal and I can remember so many details about it, but overarching anything else I remember about that weekend was the supreme sense of loss and heartbreak that I experienced. That was devastating, and it took a lot of time for her and I both to finally reach that point where it was done.

Hearkening back to that night while in the midst of the conversation I was having with a different girl almost a year to the day later was quite a contrast. I just thought the juxtaposition of the two experiences really helped me to realize that although it wasn't fun to have that conversation with the new girl, I have had hundreds of conversations that were infinitely more difficult than the one I was having with her. I know I'm going to be fine, and I can really only say positive things about her. I know that oftentimes relationships don't work out, or don't develop just because of the simple fact that it is not the right fit for one person or the other. Nevertheless, no matter how cognizant you may be of that fact, it is still so hard to not take it personally when someone says that they just don't see as anything more than a friend. Although I do think I have gotten past those feelings already. In any case, I've thought a lot the last day or two about the things that have happened over the last year:

• Dropped out of CGU
• Experienced the high of my mom finding someone to be with, only to get the extreme low of having that completely unravel
• Brief involvement with a drama queen. That's pretty literal.
• Big promotion
• Dated a great girl for a bit, and then it didn't work out
• Applied for and got accepted into another grad program

And now this most recent conversation. I was not feeling this way right afterwards, but I am now - I feel like I'm finally starting to get a rudimentary understanding of how to ride the waves and maintain a steady course throughout the ups and downs. I realize that by admitting that I am probably precipitating something that will capsize me in the near future. But hopefully that lesson is real.

I have two movies scenes in mind that relate to my situation:

1. Does anyone besides Dave and I appreciate the comedy of Pauly Shore? I have a secret love for him. In the movie In the Army Now there is a scene where his girlfriend writes him a letter to break up with him and she leaves him for another guy and he finishes it, pretends to be heartbroken for a second, and then crumples it up, tosses it over his shoulder and says something like "luckily I'm too shallow to let this get me down for very long." I just love that dettachment. I'm not quite there, but I think that scene is funny.
2. This is probably only for Laura, but in the movie Singles this band is in a coffee shop and they are reading reviews about their performance. The reviewer just pretty much rips on the band, and then it's really dumb, but the lead singer says "This negative energy just makes me stronger, we will not retreat...this band is unstoppable!" It's so cheesy, but sometimes I really feel that way. This band is unstoppable.

Timing is everything, though, because the day after this most recent letdown when I came home from work, a friend of mine had sent an early birthday package and it was just perfect. It felt like I could make a fresh start from that point and look forward to the rest of what will probably be a great weekend with a baseball game, maybe a movie, and General Conference. Life is good.