de-MYST-ifying: A long story.

A long time ago (more towards the year and a half mark then two years ago), a young impressionable, somewhat insecure engineer (me for those that didn’t guess) was doing cool stuff for a small company in the middle of nowhere. Some tumultuous events had occurred earlier that year and things for this guy were just starting to look up again when he re-met a girl he had known in college (Dess).

Okay so enough with the third person. It sucks to write in. And it sucks even more to read I think.

Anyhow, we started dating. Well I guess to be more specific we spent a lot of time together for some reason mutually didn’t call it dating because didn’t want to. Of course now that sound amazingly dumb, but hey I wouldn’t be at this point if I had made all the right choices the first time.

So after a few months of dating (but not “dating”) I remember receiving a message like this: "I by no means want to confuse things between us, and I have a great time just the way things are, but I have to ask, because it's been gnawing at me in the back of my mind, have you ever thought of making this more than it is?"

My answer to this was classic. Well classic in my mildlyretarded (shameless plug) way and said in no more words then this: “Well I won't lie and say that no it hasn't ever crossed my mind, but it doesn't really sound like the best of ideas to me for a huge number of reasons. And really what would be gained by changing the name of what we have? We happen to be idling in the same place and while we're here it may seem a good idea but we'll move on in different directions, its just a mater of time. In general friendships last much longer for me, transcending distances substantially better so I would prefer to keep things that way.”

Wow, reading back through that now is terrible. I can’t believe I would say such a horrible thing. I am amazed by how degrading a comment such as that really is. So in short order things ended as one would expect. The thing is that wasn’t what I wanted to say, it just sounded like the right thing to say.

I guess now is the time to explain a complex I have seemed to suffer from for a great long time. I nearly always chose the hard choice without considering if it’s a right choice. I have since learned that if your heart is in the right place then the hard decision is actually the wrong decision because it is your head thinking what is right going against what you KNOW is right. Where in this case knowing is not rationalizing.

Anyway getting back on track this separation was not long lived because I did a few things that I don’t really seem to end up thinking about they just happen. In this case a bouquet and note at exactly the right moment. Also, I think by this point I realized how wrong I was (but not how wrong I realized I was now).

So I guess now I have to fast forward though a lot of moments in time where things were up and down for miscellaneous reasons. Of course though the times I thought I knew all the answers and thought we had come to an agreement of sorts to resolve them. Well not so much, I didn’t really live up to my side of the bargain. I am actually probably skipping a lot of important history here but I guess it remains to be seen if that affects the way this story should read.

Well then I ended up moving back to Terre Haute after putting in a couple years at my first employer. It was nice moving back into the haute. At least the drive went from three hours to 10 minutes. Unfortunately, while I had the opportunity for spending a lot of quality time with Dess, I didn’t. Instead I blew her off to play WoW instead. That’s pretty much the brutal truth of it. I squandered the short time that we had together.

The thoughts going though my head were greatly varied at the time and I guess I wouldn’t call them doubts, but just more along the line of accepting of the fact that I could live without her. That was farther from the truth then anything I think I’ve ever heard.

That brings the story nearly up to date. Just skip a little bit into the summer months.

The one thing that I guess I haven’t mentioned really in this whole thing is though my life two things have been true. One being I have gotten by more on talent than motivation. I am not the most self-motivating of people. The second is because of events in my life I chose to create a shell for myself to live in, a facade of strength and aloofness to combat the possible judgment or hurt the world would bring to bear. It thought that not only would that protect me but would also help me because who would possibly resist that strength?

Well I learned this weekend that in the end it didn’t help me at all. And, it was one of the things I see now is one of the most offensive things to the people I know. The details of how things recovered from such a catastrophic fall will be put off for another time.

Note: Thanks Jerry for the post title :)