Now I’m lonely, upset, AND confused

I’m alone. Of course it’s 0300 and the place I live in has no nighttime activities to speak of, beyond going to the Wal-Mart and walking around, which I honestly don’t feel like doing. I hate this. I hate being alone. Of course when I’m around people I usually can’t stand the fact that they are there and “in my way” since I appear to be the only person in the area that knows what he wants and where he’s going when he gets into a building and doesn’t have to block the aisles to figure out if I need bread or not. I get really frustrated when I’m driving too. I have to wonder how some people manage to not only live as long as they do but keep from killing other people when they don’t appear to know where they are going or how to get there. Just let me go the speed limit and I’m pretty well happy. But I digress.

I’m alone, mostly because of my schedule, but it wouldn’t be so bad if I hadn’t been royally brassed off earlier today by a friend. So now I’m alone and moping. And I thought that Critter and I had made plans to make plans if the kid’s dads got them this weekend, which they did, but she’s off somewhere else. Maybe I misunderstood. Her birthday was three days ago (4/9) but I didn’t get her anything because I’m pretty much out of money for the pay period. Well, there’s a good portion of my check still in the bank but it’s all spoken for. I’m hoping to take her to dinner next week. There’s a place in the town my doctor is in that I think she’ll enjoy. It’s Italian.

Rah-Rah was fussing at me about Critter earlier tonight. She doesn’t understand how I can be friends with her. I guess it is a little weird, and I’m not sure I understand it myself. Most people, hell, everyone, thinks what she did to me was horrible and unforgivable. I mean we started dating, she moved in, she moved out, and she never looked back. I don’t think she understood what she was doing to me when she did it, and I’m not entirely sure she understands now what I went through, but I thought I had processed all that and moved on. Now with Rah-Rah and her having a hate-fest and me stuck kind of in the middle I’m not sure. Up until today I was happy being Critter’s friend, and once I get some sleep I may be again but right now I’m miserable.

Critter and I were discussing it earlier in the week. She was headed over the mountain with her mom a few months ago and had forgotten something she needed so she had to turn around and they happened to be at the road I lived on, so she turned in and showed her mother the apartment. Her mom didn’t seem to understand how I could be living here since we had asked her for money to get the place. Critter explained, again, that we only needed money for the security deposit and first week’s rent. I had the money the very next payday but by then it was too late. Critter and I have both thought that if we’d been able to get the place we might still be together.

I hated that the kids had to sleep on airbeds in the living room. I hated that she didn’t have room for all her stuff and all their stuff but we didn’t plan on living together so soon. Finally, the night I had the time and the energy to make room for her stuff (I cleared out one of the closets in our bedroom for her) was the night she came home alone and told me she’d left the kids at her ex’s house and they were moving back in with him. I also hated the fact that we had to go from learning how to be a couple to learning how to be a family in such a short amount of time. The original plan was that we’d each have our own place and gradually start spending more time together with the kids and eventually one of the apartments (probably mine) would be just a formality; a mostly empty apartment with a bed and alarm clock and not much else since we would be pretty much living together in all but name at that point. It would have been so much better that way. And I know there were times when we were all home that I seemed uncomfortable and I was. First of all I hadn’t had a roommate in ten or eleven years and second there were five of us living in a two-bedroom townhouse apartment; it was too crowded by far. I knew I was supposed to be the provider and guardian-protector but I wasn’t prepared for it to happen so fast.

Don’t get me wrong, I loved having them there. For the first time in my life I got to wake up every day next to someone I loved. It was great having the kids there. For crying out loud, I wandered around for two days after they moved out wondering why the place was so quiet and then I realized I was looking for the kids. The same week she moved out she was stuck at work with no one to pick up the kids from school so I offered to do it. That was the time B told me there was a play she was in that was coming up and her parents were supposed to be there and was I going to come or did I have to work that night. So it wasn’t my imagination that we were all getting along really well.

And now all this has come bubbling back up. Up until today I really thought I had a handle on things and that Critter and I were headed down the “just friends” road and I was happy with that. Now I’m not at all sure what I’m feeling. I noticed that I had put my ring on the wrong way. I was wearing it with the heart pointing towards me, which is supposed to mean that my heart belongs to someone. I have to wonder if it was an honest mistake (but I’m normally pretty careful about that) or if my subconscious is trying to tell me something. I’m pretty sure that Critter and I will never be a couple again, at least not anytime soon, but I have to talk to her about it to clear up my confusion.