A Very Long Engagement

I really enjoyed A Very Long Engagement. It has a similiar visual and narrative style to Amelie--of course, it's the same director--but with a much more serious story. Beautifully shot, complicated plot, and great characters. Even get to see Jodie Foster in a sex scene or two. What's not to love?

(no subject)

Passive Aggressive Punctuation Substitution

An excellent way to cope with irritating work e-mail without getting fired!

Birthdays

Somewhere in the "Kim years", birthdays became a reminder of negative things for me. It mostly had to do with this wounded inner child crap feeling around the fact that Kim's birthdays were all about spoiling her and treating her like a princess, where by the time my birthday would roll around we'd be having an uncomfortable lunch with her giving a "let's just be friends/I can't handle having a relationship with you" speech.

This happened more than once in the stormy years of our relationship.

The intellectual and understanding part of me realizes the timing was because she felt obligated somehow, and that the status of our relationship was emotionally tied in her mind with what exactly was the long-term reality of a complicated situation. On the other hand, I felt like "why the fuck can't you just wait one more day instead of traumatizing me" or even "why do you have to make everything about you!"

After a couple years of that roller-coaster, it was hard to enjoy anything, much less a birthday celebration. Pretty normal for soul-crushing depression brought on by a profound sense of rejection and loss combined with work stress (I was a co-owner in a struggling game company trying to avoid bankruptcy), school stress (I was attending graduate school part time for my master's degree), marriage stress (Angela and I were growing increasingly apart), and a growing sense of isolation. At that point, having to pretend to be happy was a chore and being a morose "birthday boy" wasn't fun for anyone.

In any case, I got into the habit of having minimal birthday plans to cope. The last birthday party I threw was probably in 2000 while I was still living in Austin, the year before I started dating Andrea and moved.

This year is my 35th birthday, a milestone of sorts, but I still didn't feel much like making a big deal out of it. Partly because my apartment can't host a party, and partly because nerdvana is already having datavore's party tonight at their place--with an established party rep, it would be hard to compete. There were plans to do dinner this weekend with jeliza and family, but their family emergency means those plans will be delayed a week or so. But honestly, I'm totally cool with all that. I'm just thrilled to have someone to celebrate with, a social function to attend that is celebratory, and that I don't feel like I'm just an emotional shell of a person.

A big thanks to appleang for her amusing, sweet, if a bit obnoxiously early call this morning to wish me a happy birthday. And thanks to the friends I'm blessed to have in my life.