Rejection

OK, so this is real good and real bad. Most­ly real good, but there’s a sharp bit­ter­ness in there too, and I’m try­ing to absorb it like a grownup or something.

A month or more ago I met this chick over Friend­ster, OK? It was kind of fun­ny because she was imme­di­ate­ly very hot and flir­ty and fun­ny and all that, and she invit­ed me to a par­ty at her house like that very next night. So I thought that would be real­ly cool and I went.

Well, first, I showed up pret­ty close to when the invi­ta­tion was. She said 8:00pm and I was there by 8:15. She was­n’t dressed yet, and did­n’t expect any­one else for anoth­er two hours. I guess I’m just not hip to how these young peo­ple deal with time. Or whatever.

Any­how, I had a grand old time, met her friends, was turned on to some music I’d nev­er heard before. All good. There was some awk­ward­ness from not know­ing any­one, but that’s sort of life and I end­ed up talkin with sev­er­al cool peo­ple. Yay! Fun was had by all.

She end­ed up get­ting real­ly pret­ty drunk, which is her pre­rog­a­tive; I don’t do that myself, but you know. Par­ty and all. I did notice that the far­ther along in the evening we went, the less she want­ed to talk to me and the more obvi­ous­ly ine­bri­at­ed she became. Then when I left she said, “we’ll talk again.” That seemed more like a res­ig­na­tion than a promise, but I went home hav­ing had a grand night among almost total strangers.

I sent her a mes­sage thank­ing her for the par­ty and sug­gest­ing that we do some­thing some­time. Since we’d met through a web­site and had com­mu­ni­cat­ed by IM and email, email seemed the appro­pri­ate medi­um. I got no reply, so I just let it drop. It’s not fun to think that I was not fun to be around or not what she expect­ed or what­ev­er, but I know that what­ev­er faux-pas I may have com­mit­ted (arriv­ing ear­ly and stay­ing late, some slip of the tongue, a joke tak­en wrong… I don’t know) I’m pret­ty cer­tain that I did­n’t do any­thing too bad. I mean, I don’t drink. That may make me bor­ing or awk­ward, but I actu­al­ly remem­ber the entire evening and I know I did not cause any prop­er­ty dam­age or run around with my under­wear on my head or any­thing. Things did­n’t click, so OK. She gave me the brush. Whatever.

So that should have been the end of it, but her name keeps pop­ping up on my IM client, and every now and then I think, “well, maybe I should just say hi” and I did today, because I was in her neigh­bor­hood at the blood bank and she and I had talked about it because we’re both blood donors. Or maybe just because I am a dumbshit.

Me: What have you been up to? Are you well? How’s the job hunt? Should I stop being such a nosy jerk?
Her: hav­ing been look­ing need to start soon
Her: I just came on to check email and need to get ready for a club
Her: so um yeah
Her has gone offline

Which is great. I think I can safe­ly just delete her from my IM client and not be tempt­ed to pester her again. That’s total­ly cool.

BUT… damned if it does­n’t still sting. What’s up with that? I mean, it’s nei­ther unex­pect­ed nor even a big deal, and I still feel this pang like I’m not good enough. I guess I have this idea that hav­ing mature expec­ta­tions (or lack there­of) will insu­late me from human feel­ings. And now I’m ashamed for not being thick-skinned enough to brush this off.

Ulti­mate­ly, I know that it’s not a big deal. I’m not gonna cry myself to sleep or any­thing. I have oth­er peo­ple’s approval way too high on my pri­or­i­ty list. What I’d real­ly like to know is how to let go of that and purge it. or maybe it’s only a con­scious deci­sion. I have the feel­ing first, then I decide what to do about it second.

Or maybe I don’t even know what I’m writ­ing any more. Ram­bling ram­bling ramblng.…