Middle Ground

This is one of those posts that I've been forming in my head, but haven't gotten down in the blog. What can I say? It's been busy. I had a good time in the big-D with the Konk peeps. Unfortunately, NC wasn't able to make it (stupid cancelled flights!), which was a huge bummer for the both of us since we had been looking forward to it for a while.

I'm wondering who I've become. That's not as bad as it sounds - truthfully, it seems I'm just another person in a relationship. It's a strange feeling, putting someone else before yourself (wow, that sounds self-centered) especially when you've been single for SO freaking long. When I found out that NC couldn't make it, I immediately started investigating how I could get back. While on hold with the airline people, I thought to myself "What the hell am I doing?" Knowing full and well two things a) There was no way I was getting back to DC and b) the people I am closest to minus one were all in the same place, what's so bad about that? Again, it circles back to being in a relationship. US said to me that wanting to go back was understandable - you'll do anything to be with the person you care about. This is true, but RS said, "hey, we're not chopped liver." Both of them were on point. Then, I started thinking about NC's point of view - he wanted me to stay and have fun with my friends, but he wanted to see me and he wanted to be there with the whole crew. That added an entire extra layer of stuff floating around in my head.

There's so much of me that is still trying to figure out how this relationship stuff works. I've never exactly been great at it (as my track record proves). When you're in a situation where you have to choose between friends or boyfriend, what do you do? Can you come up with a compromise? I guess that's what I tried out- I tried to find a middle ground to where everyone was happy. I chilled with the peeps in Dallas until Monday and snuck out around 5 a.m. to get a confirmed standby ticket (and ended up just getting a regular ticket since they had seats available). I got back early and got to spend the evening with NC.

Personally, do I think I could I have handled the entire situation better? Yes, absolutely. It's the first time I've been frazzled in a while. How did I let myself get like that? Here's the issue - I'm a perfectionist and so type A that I function off a precise schedule. In my head, MA and I were supposed to meet in Milwaukee, go to the ticket agent to change our seats, grab a bite to eat, catch our flight, get to Dallas on Friday at 6:30 p.m., pick up rental car, go to Ranjit's, reunite her with US, give hugs and catch up all around, HEY BARBEQUE! and a few hours later, RS and I were going back to DFW to pick up NC. THIS IS HOW I AM, especially when I travel. What actually happened was so amazingly far from what I had in my head that it that it totally had me rattled. Can I get better about this, perhaps get more flexible? One can only hope I can compromise with myself and find MY middle ground.

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A big thanks to RS for hosting and to all of the peeps for putting up with me.