Spent the weekend back home, went to a rodeo. Bucket list item #42: check. The rodeo itself was fun, bronc and bull riding, barrel racing, steer roping and wrestling, all that fun stuff. I enjoyed seeing in person what I always loved to watch on tv, but at the same time I was kind of perturbed by how the whole rodeo thing is kind of.. inhumane.. You see some of these poor animals just what-the-fuck'ing because they never did anything to deserve some creature chasing them or sitting on their back. So I have mixed feelings.

After the rodeo I tricked my sister into showing up for her surprise birthday supper. Was harder than I planned, but worked out. About 20 of her and her boyfriend's closest friends showed up and I kind of felt out of place with my friend who accompanied me for the day.. We had to order our food and eat in a hurry to get back for the concert at the rodeo grounds. Awkward I guess, to be the only people eating at a full table, but at the same time these people aren't my friends, I did my part, I needed food, and I had to go.

Because the concert was something I really didn't want to miss. I am trying to make this year one of no regrets. The year of doing instead of not doing, so that I won't look back and think "I wish I had.." and not going to shows that I really wanted to see is part of that. So I heard Aaron Pritchett was going to be playing in this small town and his music touched my life at one point so I made sure I was there and I had a blast. Could write a whole entry on that concert but at the end of the day it was just a really fun time so it suffices to say that.

After the concert there was a local band playing and everyone was dancing, two stepping and the gallo. I ran into a friend who taught me how to do the gallo and I'm happy to have learned it because all night I was envious, it looked like so much fun. That night I also ran into friends from university and others. It was fun to party a bit with my old university friends and make new ones.

I quite literally ran into this guy who is from back home, who I started seeing/really liking immediately after I broke up with my high school boyfriend of three years.. It didn't end exactly well, and we haven't seen each other since (about 7-8 years, I counted). He added me on Facebook at some point maybe last fall and I kept bailing on him when he was trying to meet up over Christmas to catch up.. So I see this guy and go "Oh my god, I know you" and he goes "Oh my god. What the fuck are you doing here?" I guess I was the last person he expected to see. I jetted out quick but later that night asked him to dance, I guess partly for old times sake and because I felt like it was the least I could do for always bailing on him.. maybe also because I was curious to see what kind of a person he was. I laughed, he's still funny and charming, but not my type anymore. Didn't stop him from trying to get us to go to the bar afterward, and my friend and some guy she knows thought to try to cockblock me but I told them I didn't need cockblocking, I believe in honesty and communication-- I told him I was going home and that was that. Good night nice to see you bye bye. I don't know why I needed to say or do anything else.. People make shit way too complicated for no good reason.

The night was fun but at the same time tinted with that familiar melancholia, that tad of loneliness, seeing couples dancing and all that stuff. Guys that I used to have a crush on who I think of now as losers. Made me wish I could find my permanent dance partner to enjoy these kind of nights with.

When I was hanging out with people from university, one of the guys mentioned His name. The one that I don't think I nicknamed, the "too good to be true" one, the "I thought he was different" one. This guy mentioned his name and it stung. It was like my gut wrenched as I tried to pretend to be indifferent like "oh yeah I know him" But owch it hurt to hear his name, to think of him, to try to throw away the Mardi Gras beads from our first date the night before, and at the last second being like no I'm going to keep these. Fuck. To realize on the drive home today that this was the weekend he said he was going to be in Montreal.. the weekend he didn't think to make plans with me and what made me realize it was never going to work out with this guy.

It makes me sad. It makes me want to cry but I don't know why. Because I wasn't in love with the guy, it was only a few months of really, really, liking him.. saying "oooh I'm in love" but those words were used lightly. I think. I don't know. I can count on one hand the amount of times I saw him when I went to Ottawa. We never slept together-- he never made me come three times, and isn't that what makes a person fall in love?

But hearing his name and holding those beads and realizing he was in my city.. and the fact that he didn't call, didn't text, didn't care.. That we ended things with mutually insincere "Yeah we can be friends" That I truly felt like this guy was someone that I could have feelings for after being worried I would never find someone "good enough" to make me feel that way again.. Fuck, just fuck, you know? It's been a month or two and I haven't really thought of him, it wasn't like a Kryptonite kind of thing where not a day passed that I didn't feel sad for him.. This one slipped my mind, it was a relief to end it when I knew it had to be ended, but man after this weekend.. It's hard. It's hard and it shouldn't have to be because I feel like it wasn't worth me feeling this way right now.

But the truth of it is that I do feel this way.. I learned that you can't control the way you feel. You just have to feel it, to experience it, and that all scars heal in time. Doesn't stop me from thinking fuck, just fuck, but what are you gonna do.