March 25, 2012
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The benefit…
I went to the benefit. I went and met my colleagues at the beer garden where the event was held. It was nice. The weather was beautiful. We all laughed and enjoyed the company of those we never get to see dressed in “normal” clothes.
We all clean up nice.
I really, really, really need a new hairstyle. I also need a makeover. My fingernails are very short, all broken and splitting from the drying effects of the constant handwashing and the gloves. When I look at my hands, they don’t look very pretty. Acrylics are out of the question, since often I “scrub” in and assist or pass instruments. I look at my hands after I’ve applied my makeup. I can remember H giving me a hard time about my hands. He liked acrylic nails and manicures, but I could never have them because of my specialty area. He always accused me of lying, of wanting to be unattractive. It rolls in, like the tide coming in. I close my hands so they look like fists. I wonder what it is about my hands that requires them to have long nails in order to look pretty.
I’ll be self conscious about my hair and nails for the entire time I’m at the benefit.
I leave fairly early, close to 9 pm. I drive home, and I very briefly entertain the notion of stopping by the bar I was supposed to meet J at after the benefit. Maybe he went anyway and is there with some of our friends, I think. I decide to go home. I’m feeling very tired, and when I look at my hands, overwhelmingly sad.
It turns out to be the right decision. D sent J a text at the bar, “Is you-know-who there?” J replied that I wasn’t, and D keyed in, “Good. I’ll come by then.”
J tells me this later. My heart sinks. My voice cracks with tears when I say that I’m glad that I went home. While I talk to J on the phone, my IM box lights up with a cheery note from D. He’s going to dinner with a friend and her mother. I say nothing to J, and read it silently. J says that he talked D out of contacting me today, “Leave her alone for awhile. She’s really upset over all this.” D said he knew that. It wasn’t his intention to make me feel better. He didn’t want a relationship at all right now.
Tears fall. The swifts that have been darting through my head for days increase in number until I can’t see, and wings beat at my insides incessantly.
J tells me to come out anyway. Meet him early. I can always bug out early. I don’t want to, but I can always leave.
I’ve never felt so empty and alone.
