April 14th, 15:52 | On Guys' Demand For Women Demanding Pedestals

I'm beginning to hate April.

Now, let's be honest here: I've never really been that big a fan of April. The showers don't bug me so much (it's Canada -- we don't catch on to that trend till May, really), but it's still usually real muddy from the thawing, and still too cool to bust out the Summer Clothes of Awesomeness. Add to that exam stress if you're in university, or the extreme desire to be out of school, if you're in grade school, and it's just a very antsy, restless, muddy, irritating time of year. As an added bonus, it's Aries-season. I've nothing against Arieses, don't get me wrong. I'm just saying, there's only so much buoyant, yang energy one can take. And spring is definitely their season. So yeah, already not that big a fan of April.

I feel the need to step in here, and defend my minor distaste for April by pointing out that my grandma's birthday is in April; in fact it's today. And I love my grandma. So that's a good thing. It's also the birthday month (and possible the birthday of an old friend who used to live across backyards from our old house. A couple ex-boyfriends' birthdays are also in April (pisces + aries: tsk, tsk lilephyte; what were you thinking?) so if I think about the people side of things, it can be a pretty happy month. It could be. Or I could think about people who aren't celebrating their birthdays in the sunshiney spring and it could become a month of great bitterness, confusion and hurt.

Last year around this time, well, or slightly before this time, everything fell apart and it all came to a head in April, when I broke things off with a very confused and hurt Boy. A year later, our relationship is frosty and on extremely sharp rocks and its salvation is in my provably-incapable hands. (I'm not assigning blame here, just facts. It's up to me, and frankly I'm not sure I'm up to the task.) Good warm thoughts there.

Shortly after that, I fell into a horrible well of What The Fuck Am I Going To Do With My Life-triggered despondancy, a huge number of friends moved out of the province/country, I realized that I'm the worst sister ever, I realized that I no longer had a floor of loving froshlings to rely on, and the one person I'd figured would understand exactly how I felt (since he was going through a pretty similar mess) walked out on me because apparently our friendship upset his girlfriend.

I have little enough patience for women. (I'm not talking about the sweet, creative, cool girls that are awesome and that everyone wants to hang out with. Those girls are awesome. It's just that I seem to encounter precious few of them.) I'm talking about the sit-com nightmare clingy, boring, controlling women that people always joke about, and don't really believe exist. Until they happen to them. No patience. Given that, though, I have even less patience with guys who put up with or encourage these creatures in any way. That lack of patience turns to disgust and disappointment when one of those guys is a friend of mine.

We're going to pause here while I assure you I'm not pure diva. No seriously. It is possible. Contrary to popular belief, what upsets me about this isn't that the guy friend is choosing someone else's company above mine. Heck, most of them have closer friends than me anyway. No, what bothers me is that they're having their personal freedom curtailed, and they don't even seem to see it.

Maybe I'm being blind here. Maybe they realize exactly what's going on, and they just don't care because their woman is making them so happy that it's worth it to them.

If that's the case, I think they should have the courtesy to just tell their friends to stop trying, it's their choice (and stop pushing the reason onto their woman). I just always assumed that no one would want their lives or friendships to be limited in that fashion. I know I would hit the ceiling (and the newly-ex-boyfriend's ass would hit the curb) if anyone I was involved with ever tried to put limitations like that on me. Alternately, if I'm not being blind, and the guys do see it my way, then what is there that I can say to make them see that I'm arguing not for my own divaness but out of concern for their well-being? Seriously. Anyone? Because it just happened again.

I've known this guy (we'll call him ConcreteKid) since first year. In fact, I started talking to him because he looked exactly like a skinnier version of a guy in my highschool. Together we pooled our hatred of pre-med students, our great laziness, he tried explaining the basic rules of hockey to me (total wash), I transitionned him from the world of Baldur's Gate to tabletop gaming (fantastic success). He switched into engineering and joined the concrete canoe team (hence the name), and in my last year, took me to my First Ever GreasePole event. I kept him from spending his life cooped up in his home, dragged him out to late-night curling, and randomly scribbled on his window with glass markers when I swung by CampusTown. It was a very laid-back, very low-maintenance friendship.

About a year and a half ago, he met a girl (ConcreteGal) whom he loves and is now engaged to. Apparently, and it's only after an extremely caustic (albeit heartfelt) bout of email-writing that this came out, I am the only thorn in their otherwise perfect love. What I wrote him was that if he wants to have to make that choice, to just let me know, and I'll stay the hell out of their way. After all, I have enough bad deeds credited to me; I don't want to be responsible for any unhappy marriages as well. What I did insist on, though, was that he think about whether or not he thought it reasonable that he be forced to make such a choice.

He sent me back an email thanking me for putting my heart and so much thought into my attack on his original email ("we're going to have to only pretend to be friends now"). He explained the stance, and that he hoped, over time, to get ConcreteGal to relax and maybe meet me, and accept that he might actually have female friends that aren't trying to break up his marriage. This all sounded extremely dubious and weak-willed to me. I decided to sleep on it, and compose a reply today.

I interrupt myself to underline that any impression I may be giving of ConcreteGal being insecure, possessive, controlling or otherwise Woman-like is entirely based on the impressions I've formed via what ConcreteKid mentions of her. I've met her once; she was extremely reticent and seemed not particularly eager to engage in conversation with me. For all I know (and I certainly hope this is the case), she's the bomb, and rocks their collective Concrete World. But you've got to admit that someone who doesn't think that either of them should have friends of the opposite sex because even with the best of intentions, bad things can happen comes across as... shall we say a little untrusting?

This morning he writes me again saying that by explaining in gorey detail the emotional motivation behind his actions and his fiancee's, he's gone and betrayed her trust and, essentially, done all of the things she was afraid maintaining a friendship with me would lead to. (Apparently it's only in my own personal world that sharing how you feel with people is a normal and non-sinful occurrence.) He goes on to explain how he only clung to me in our earlier years at the U out of (essentially) desperation and utter lack of other friends, but he has ConcreteGal now, and she's all he needs, so please stop trying to contact him as he needs to end our relationship now and try to salvage (because it might be too late!) what's left of the shambles of his soon-to-be-marriage.

What kills me about all this is that I can't even decide if I should send them a wedding gift or not -- not because he's written off our "friendship", oh no. I can't make up my mind because I'm afraid they'll take offense and torch it or something. What the hell is wrong with me??

At this point, I'm thankful for Launchcast, Blind Melon, and that kid in the bumblebee suit. That and dark chocolate Aero. Seriously. If that doesn't qualify as "emergency candy", I don't know what does.

Also, happy birthday Grandma.

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