Not too bad, thanks; you?

I'm not saying it wasn't a rough weekend. I'm just saying it could have been a lot worse.

I'm a pretty resilient person. Actually, that's not true -- it just appears that I am, because I know better than to combine my transient misery with my chronic social anxiety. When the going gets rough, I hole up alone and become a recluse even more reclusive.

Except, occasionally, when I don't.

After the drama of Thursday night, and after my angry blog post (truth? I did email K back the next morning, after all. Will power, not so much.), and my even angrier cruising of the personal ads, I called my friend A the next afternoon and blurted out the news. There was a long silence.

E: "A? You there?"
A: "Yeah, yeah. Look, E, I'm trying to figure out how to say this nicely. Um...this isn't the first time you two have broken up, y'know?"

Ok, fair enough. But after I managed to convince him why this fight was different from all other fights, A hurried over to fetch me and began mixing margaritas.

Here's the thing about me and alcohol.
It makes me a better person.

Now, yeah, I know we all think we become utterly charming when drinking, but the thing is, there's this ideal state of tipsiness during which, control freak that I am, non-intimates generally can't tell that I'm at all drunk, and simply think I'm an unbelievably gregarious, warm-hearted, talented raconteur and all-around fun person. How do I know this? Because these people invariably want to see me again, and then, equally invariably, end up alternating between glancing at their watch and looking with utter disbelief at the withdrawn, fretful, inarticulate person before them. I can tell some are mentally blogging, too: today, I met someone with MPD...

I am, however, in no danger of becoming an alcoholic. I can say this with confidence, because I unfortunately possess some buried Asian -- or, I suppose, just not-so-buried Jewish -- allele, which, even while all the dopamine is happily sloshing around in my brain, causes my body to frantically signal to my cerebellum, "HAALLLLP! I'M BEING POIIIIISONED!!" If ignored, it finds increasingly urgent and socially unacceptable ways to get its message across. Should medical science ever find a way to quash these unfortunate side effects -- and, frankly, given the Dr. Jekyll effect on my normal Mr. Hyde personality, I really wish they'd put aside all that increase-longevity-end-cancer stuff and get to work on it -- then I'll be in serious danger of becoming an alcoholic. But until that time, it's quite a self-correcting and constraining mechanism.

Anyway. That digression brings us to two points: (1) on Friday night, I was well, well, beyond that optimal state of tipsiness, and (2) eecccchh.

Luckily, in keeping with the private misery theme, the bodily penalty round didn't kick in until I got home, and, until that point, the evening was exactly the sort of cathartic distraction I needed. And take your collective heads out of the gutter. Most of my friends are of the platonic male variety, and A was his usual gentlemanly self. (Though, note to A: a real gentleman might have tried a little harder not to sound quite so amused when phoning Saturday morning to check on me...)

It was downhill from there. I did not manage to reply to the perfectly nice and presentable bike-camping guy, and I feel somewhat bad that I do not anticipate doing so. I spent far, far too long compulsively checking for emails that never arrived. I cleaned the apartment only because I was motivated by the fractional-percent chance that K might do the romantic gesture of turning up, never mind K's track record with romantic gestures. And I spent far, far, too long, given the probabilities involved, wondering how I would feel if that happened, and what the appropriate reaction would be -- and, indeed, whether "love of one's life" might be something one unfortunately only ever gets to assess in hindsight.