I come when called, I jump when you circle the cherry, I sing like a good canary

I’ve been listening to Exile in Guyville again for the last few days and it’s been hitting me hard. I think I actually started to tear up walking from the train to my office this morning with my pod on thinking “Oh my god, this is really my life.”

I didn’t really get Liz when I first listened to that album. I bought it to be cool and hang with those older kids who drank a lot and dyed their hair purple and hated their parents.

Now I’m exactly twice as old as when that album was released and I get it Liz, I feel your pain you bitch.

Saturday night I ended up hanging out with The Ex. I did not set out for this to happen. He called, I wasn’t busy. He wanted to get together. I'm an asshole. See post title.

One of the reasons me and The Ex get along so well is that we’re huge geeks who can spend the whole night playing XBOX360 and watching Hitchcock movies and be having fun. We stayed up until four. He has this amazing mancouch/chair monstrosity that isn’t a couch at all but instead two comfy recliners attached in the middle with a console and cup holders. It’d hideous. It screams “I spend entire weekends with someone’s sweaty butt perched here who is drinking cheap beer and wearing a uber cool headset so he can smack talk people in Georgia playing Soul Caliber IV.”

I haven’t gotten a decent night’s sleep in nearly three weeks because of this dumb arm and the manchair felt great. He asked me if I wanted to stay over. (And the award for person full of the most self-loathing goes to …)

He said goodnight. I thought he would go to his room. He didn’t. He lay down on the other half of the manchair. But I figured it was kind of harmless since we were separated by a pile of game controllers, remotes and glasses.

He put his hand out to grab mine. This was not unusual. We do an awkward hand squeeze thing from time to time, no big. But this time he held on and squeezed and did that thing where you rub your thumb up and down the side of the other person’s hand – you know, that thing COUPLES do!

It weirded me out. Then it felt good. Then it made me sad. Very sad.

We fell asleep like that. It was pathetic. I would have rather had sex. Sex I could have interpreted as just sex -- this felt tender and it was a huge mind fuck.

The next morning I asked him to take me home right away. I could feel the weepy stuff coming and I wanted to be out of there stat. This is when I crawled under the stinky dog blanket and stayed there for a few days.

Fast forward to today when he asked me to meet him for lunch. (Again, seriously, they should give out awards to people who clearly hate themselves and yet manage to walk among the rest of you as if life is peachy) He drops me back off at the office and I lean over to grab my purse and I say “Hugs” -- which is one way I say goodbye to people, not an invitation -- and he plants a long, soft kiss on my cheek. What the frack was that?

The problem with The Ex and I was that we never stopped doing any of the things that couples do except the physical stuff (and this was mostly because of him, not me – I didn’t know this was humanly possible until him.) We still went out, hung out at home for hours, saw each other's families, etc.

We broke up eight months ago after about two months of fighting. It was messy. We lived together. I found out he was keeping some huge secrets from me (big ones. bigger than you would probably imagine.). I freaked out but then decided to try to work it out.

I always say that he dumped me, because, in the end, he did – via text (yeah, text. Did I mention we were LIVING together and talking about getting married? I had packed a bag a few hours earlier and stormed out, but still …) but the truth is we were falling apart and both of us knew it. He was in a crazy place and he was making me crazy. News flash: two individuals with serious mental health issue do not make one sane couple.

What he’s asked of me since the breakup is terribly unfair. He wants to be my best friend but not date me. He may as well greet me every day by saying “Hey, let me be frank, you’re a hideous, stinky ogre but if I avert my eyes you’re a lot of fun to talk to.”

Needless to say, this relationship is not good for my self-esteem and when I’m being a sane person I recognize that and stay far away from him.

The problem is (get ready to groan and shake your collective blogging community head) I love his company. I’d say he’s hands down the one person on this planet that gets this big hot ball of mess called SG more than anyone. But what do I do with that? He doesn’t want to treat me the way I deserve to be treated. The mature part of me knows we make better friends anyway but every time I’m around him I just end up feeling like a lonely reject all over again. It’s like a wise blogger once said, “A martini …” No, that’s not it, oh yeah: “It’s not possible to really be friends with the ex.”

Ick. Must stay away. I need to be held accountable for this. Quick think of a promise I can make to all of you so that the next time I’m about to make a colossal mistake like this I can think again. Like I have to send you all life sized cutouts of movie stars like BWP did or I have to post really embarrassing drunk pictures (you know who you are, Kellie.)