Laugh Out Loud Funny Reason to Maintain Healthy Boundaries

I woke up at noon, and it is 3:15PM and I have just changed out of my robe into my clothes LOL

I am REALLY enjoying having a day off with no responsibilities, I have a dinner date with my "sister" Linda, and plenty of chores to do, but I am so worn out from my 5 day trip (thats HUGE) that I feel really okay about sitting around on the computer and relaxing.

This has been a great trip. I REALLY enjoyed my crew, especially my F.O. I have added him to my crush list. He is married so he is in the "want to find one like him" category, not the "I wonder what could develop if we had a few more trips together" category, or my "man-slut, but a hot one" category LOL

I also have a BIG OL' new crush! I had a mini-date (30 min) this week with the desk clerk in Boston. We will call him Kareem. He is from Morroco, an artist, and has the CUTEST Boston accent! My heart is pitter pattering just thinking about it. He factors in, quite a bit, to my new tale of hilarity and warning.

My tale of warning is about a girl we will call Lorraine. Lorraine is a flight attendant at my airline. She is a glowing example of my struggles with maintaining healthy boundaries. It has a funny ending (or sad, depending on how sensitive and kind of a person you are)

I met Lorraine in Milwuakee (MKE). MKE is one of the rare cities that we have any time to have dinner &/or drinks. There were 2 crews at the bar, and she and I were the Flight Attendants (F/As.) I didn't think much of her. She was blonde and pretty, but seemed rather shallow. Her captain (we will call him Dustin) was giving her a footrub at the bar. I rolled my eyes inside, but it was none of my business. Dustin and I are friendly and chit-chatted at the bar too.

The next day Lorraine called my room! She got the room number from the front desk. I have never had anyone call my room except a captian in professional circumstances. She didn't seem to be getting at what it was she wanted. My intuition told me she wanted some inside info on Dustin. The whole time she sort of gave me the heebie-geebies. She seems like the girl in high school who is friendly to your face and then talks behind your back and steals your boyfriend. I talked to her for at least an hour. I wanted to hang up but (BAD BOUNDARY ALERT!) didn't feel comfortable initiating it. Being that she seemed sort of evil I guess I wanted to be on her good side. I think I finally got up the courage to hang up. I told one of my pilot buddies about our encounter, that I didn't trust her, and to watch her and tell me what he thinks.

I saw her a month or so later. Her, another F/A and I were chatting, and I told a funny story about the MKE hotel without mentioning the Pilot's name who was involved. Lorraine asked if it was a specific pilot and I said yes. I asked her how she knew, she said he told the story and that he didn't like me. I that point I softened up about her. I felt like it was sweet that she told me (not that she betrayed HIS trust, or that she may be a liar.) One day, I got a call on my home phone...it was her. She got my number from the computer at work.

Now here is a thing that gets me in trouble in the boundary department. As an anxious person I have been abnoxious, impulsive, insecure, you name it. Not because I am a bad person, just because I am imperfect and my social skills have not been perfect. My college friends were friends with me ANYWAY, and they are a big part of me being the person I am. They have corrected me when I have been inappropriate, and have given me a window into the lives and mindsets of people "with parents." (people in functional families) When I run across someone who is imperfect, I want to be kind. I know how it feels to be excluded, and sometimes a little kindness goes a long way when you feel like an outsider.

It's good to be kind, but it's not good to try to save people. In jr. high/high school I used to try to save my boyfriends, and I have sort of stopped that, but I continue to have my heart-strings tugged by women. Women seem to martyr themselves alot. We are often very giving and don't feel we deserve anything in return. Many women have been abused and/or raped and continue to abuse/rape themselves. We also are all growing up in a time when beautiful, air-brushed, and often overly thin women are thrown in our face, we see them enough that we start to believe (even if we are VERY beautiful) that we are ugly, or not beautiful enough to be loved. So when I see a woman in these traps, I just want to grab them and pull them up into reality, where they will see that they are worthy of love.

Well you can't pull someone up. A person can pull themself up, and you can pat them on the back. Or they can fall down and you can remind them to pull themself up. But you can't pull someone up. And also, some people are outcasts for a reason (they are liars, manipulaters, users etc) Maybe they are that way as a reaction to their past, but that doesn't mean you should spend any energy on them.

So in the spirit of helping my sisters, I talked with her on the phone, and tried to help. She had a dumb boyfriend who didn't treat her nice. I told her about the AWESOME, EMPOWERING book "He's just not that into you" (which she bought) She told me she thought she was ugly. I told her she was beautiful and any man would think that. She told me all sorts of inappropriate things, like she snoops in his apartment. I told her that she shouldnt do that (can anyone reading this tell that this woman is not the kind of person you want to be near) She dumped her boyfriend, but got back with him. We were sort of "friendish" but our friendship consisted of her talking about herself and me talking to her about herself and her interupting me when I was saying something to her about herself.

During the "storm of '05" I got stuck in Boston. Everything was closed, & the hotel wouldn't take people anywhere. The first day was fun. I watched movies on HBO instead of working, but by the 3rd day I was ready to die! I asked the desk person who from the airline was at the hotel, hoping one of my friends would be there. When the desk clerk saw her name I thought "awesome" I knew she would want to hang out, she couldn't feel violated me calling her room, and two cute girls hanging out might attract some fun attention.

I called her room and she came down. We looked in a tourism book about places to go. There was a bollywood theater, and an art museum (turns out, both closed). She told me she didn't have her coat and didn't want to go out. We decided to get some beers, get delivery food and watch a movie on the lobby TV.

The clerk at the front desk was hotty hotty. When I asked him how to get to the bollywood theater he seemed impressed. I liked his cute Boston accent. He made my heart go thu-thump. Dreamy. I would go up to him and ask questions when ever I could come up with a not stupid and obvious one. At one point I told her how hot I thought he was and she said "uh, you think hes cute?" and I was like "yeah!" and she said "well I don't like his glasses" to which I responded "his glasses are like the hottest thing!" (No accounting for taste right?)

So we hung out, had a few beers. Even though I was crushing on the desk clerk and wanted to be hit on by nice men, at the time I was on what I called a "man-ban/boy-cott." I had just broken up with a man named N. Y. Name Dropper (like batman, this is not a pseudonymm its his real name) and was so fed up I figured I should just not date for awhile. Now and then Lorraine would allow me to say something about myself. In response to a lot of her comments about her boyfriend and the NASTY pilots she had slept with (I wish you knew this one she slept with, you would be SOOOOOO disgusted) I had said "this is why I am on a man-ban, I am so sick of their shit!" I kept pointing out "men will take what you give them, so you have to tell them stop, or they will keep on taking." I was very man-negative, which is one reason why i kept bringing it up, but also I wanted to show her, you don't have to have a man to be happy, it's okay to be alone!

Our conversation still revolved around her. I had been alone for 3 days, I really wanted to talk, I would have talked to a rock! But after a few hours of this I was running out of patience of talking about her boyfriend. I said "let's talk about something else...do you have any hobbies?" She said "running" that was about all she had to say besides something about men. She did mention to me that the whole thing about her coat was a lie, she just said it because she didn't want to go out (charming) I mentioned this to the desk clerk, he was not impressed either.

She had asked me if I had ever fooled around with a woman. I assumed the context of this question was about having threesomes and doing it to make men happy (totally the sort of thing I could see her doing) I told her the truth, I never have, but if I did I would only do it with a woman I cared about, it wouldn't be to make a boyfriend happy. I told her that I would only do a threesome with a man and a woman if he was willing to do a threesome with another man, and be sexual with him too. I also told her that I am not looking to start anything with women, but if I met someone wonderful I would be open to it.

It was nice that she included me for a moment in the conversation, but soon she was back to her boyfriend. I couldn't take it anymore. I REALLY wanted to be with people but I just couldn't deal with her. I told her I was sick of sitting still and was going to go swimming.

A while later that bitch showed up at the pool and told me she was hanging out with the desk clerk! I was floored. What was this? Revenge for me leaving or a ploy to bring me back? She didn't even think he was cute! At this point I decided I would have nothing more to do with her. I told her I was ticked off, in a jokey sort of way "I go swimming and you steal my boyfriend?" but I no longer felt any need to be nice and try to help her, she didn't give a shit about me, why should I give a shit about her?

For weeks she has called me constantly. I never answer her calls, and she never leaves a message so I don't have to call her back. Emma (my roommate) is familiar with the situation, so she doesn't answer when she calls either. Last week, the caller ID said "unavailable" and Emma answered. She had already said I was there before she realized it was Lorraine. This happened a few days after the scare with SpiderSolitaire. Spider, being a woman who can use a pat on the back but not being one to try to drag you down, not to mention someone whose correspondence I actually ENJOY helped me see how serious my boundary problem is, not to mention how UNWORTHY Lorraine is of my time.

The phone call was hilarious. She said "are you mad at me?" I said "No, I guess I just feel we have run out of things to talk about" (this is a BIG step for me...my boundary problem is so bad I let it get to this point, and I HATE hurting people's feelings!) she paused for a second... and then started talking! I let her go soon after. She has called a couple of more times since, but I havent answered and reiterated my point yet. I will.

Fast forward to this week, I enter the hotel in Boston and there he is...Kareem! I laughed and asked him sarcastically if he "had fun with my friend" He told me he was mad, he thought I had set them up. He told me he hung out with her because he thought it would be hanging out with both of us. He told me she started talking about her boyfriend REALLY SOON after they started hanging out! LOL He also told me she had said she called my room and a man answered! And she said it didn't sound like I wanted to hang out "with him" LOL!

LUCKY LUCKY me! He wanted to hang out that night. I wasn't willing to hang out when he got off work (healthy boundaries- it was too late at night, It would hurt me in the morning and I would be too tired for class) he respected that :) We hung out for his break. Heres where the funny part was. I was explaining how her and I met. He said "thats not what she said" He told me that she thought I was attractive and thought that the feeling was mutual!

LOL! The punchline is not that that she was bi, and interested in me, the punchline is that I SO MISSED IT! All of my telling her she was pretty and trying to build her up was like courtship to her. LOL! The other funny (and sort-of mean) thing is I said if a special woman came along I would be open to it...yeah...like shes that special! LOL I wouldn't sleep with someone that coniving and dishonest no matter how pretty she is, I'm a woman, not a man. (sexist joke, sorry!)

The way Kareem told me made me crush on him more. He didn't say it in a "eww shes bi" way, he told me it in the same way as if she were a man. That impressed me.

Moral of the story: Maintain Healthy Boundaries.

mood: tired, sore, relaxed, amused