Have you ever had that moment when you walk out of a classroom after taking a test and realize that you wrote down the wrong answer even though you were 100% sure you wrote down the right answer at the time? I've done that once on a final exam and still kick myself about it even though I know I know the right answer. (I'm not perfect but have moments when my personal expectations of perfection are too high.)
This past Saturday I only worked a half-shift, which meant that I got home earlier than normal and ended up spending the night watching TV with my sister via Skype. Since I had been looking for an apartment since 30 September I hadn't had internet and had been working overtime 6 days/week, I was behind on this season's latest TV episodes. This meant that my top priority--according to my sister--was to catch up on The Vampire Diaries and resume watching Grey's Anatomy--because she started watching it recently.
We were talking, laughing, reading online plot synopses when there was a huge crash against my front door coinciding with the AC shutting off causing a weird change in air pressure and temperature. I screamed "WHAAAAAT?!?!?!?!" and my adrenaline level spiked through the roof because I honestly thought someone had broken down my front door and was coming to kill me. My sister thought I had fallen off my bed. I grabbed my phone to call, not the police, although they were my second choice, but someone who hasn't spoken to me since the night I moved from Beaumont. I wanted Ryan to come make everything all better and save the day. Because that's what he did the last year I lived in Beaumont. If I needed him, I just picked up the phone and he was there. And now he's not.
I told a really close friend about what happened and she told me how impressed she was that I would go check the doors to make sure the deadbolts were still engaged, barricade the door with my unpacked boxes, and sleep with me hammer under my pillow just in case. She told me I was one tough chick because she just lays in bed and waits for someone to come get her. Of course, I'm a tough chick; I don't have anyone desiring to be cast in the role as my personal hero. But, in that moment Saturday night, I wanted Ryan to be there, doing the checking while I hid under the covers for once. Oops! May have wrote down the wrong answer to that question.
I'm not real aware of things, hence the "oblivious" part of my blog. If you tell a guy you have a craving for banana splits when you know that there's going to be root beer floats at the get together you're both attending and he brings banana split flavored Blue Bell Ice Cream just for you, does that show personal interest or just an ability to pay attention to what's important to you? When he brings gluten free shortbread cookies to a potluck dinner knowing you would be able to eat them when everything else might be a temptation does that mean he cares about your well-being or was he thinking of his own stomach--even though the cookies never got opened and he let me take them home because I said I wanted to eat one? When you come home from work at 3AM and you feel safer because his car is parked in his parking spot at your shared apartment complex shouldn't that be a tip-off that you may have feelings for him?
But, life goes on and we move to different things, places, people, etc. And I wonder why I never noticed before how truly amazing he treated me. How wonderful it made me feel to have someone remember that I wanted a banana split and provide me with the closest thing he could just to make me happy. To tell me not to worry about it when I agonized over putting my foot in my mouth, hurting another person's feelings. Or just send me a text that says, "Movie?"
I complain about certain things and then wonder what more I could have done to be aware of the people around me who tried and I just didn't notice. Because I don't know how not to be the tough chick who takes care of everything herself. I don't know how to encourage feelings that may or may not have been there. I don't know how to need another person until my flight or fight response kicks in and I do the opposite of what I want to do because there is no one for me to stand behind should I want to flee. So, I didn't need him to slay dragons for me but if he had wanted to I think I might have let him. Lesson learned the hard way.
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