Why My Birthday was Fun.....I think......Maybe?

Well.

I'm pretty sure that the fog from my hangover is starting to clear just a little bit. Very little.

Let's just say that last night was ridiculous. Check that. Saying that does a disservice to ridiculous.

We started out with drinks, margarits mostly, at Crazy Ritas. There was about 20 people there, and it was a blast. I have to say that I don't think I appreciate some of my friends as much as I should, it was really nice to have everyone there, and celebrate with everyone.

Something really interesting happened though while I was there. So we're sitting up on the little back area, which is kind of elevated a few feet over the rest of the bar. We had pretty much taken it over. I was standing kind of against the wall, just looking around the bar, checking out the crowd. And I see Bethany f'ing Borger.....

Who?

Bethany. Let's try and make this simple. She was like Megan, before Megan existed in my world. In other words, she was someone I was with for a good amount of time, things ended pretty badly, mostly b/c I'm an ass, and needed to grow up, (probably still do, thanks guys, really). Why is this weird? Becuase we broke up all the way back in 2003, before my old roomates got engaged, married, had kids. Before she finished school, before I moved to Lakewood and started grad school.

Literally, it was that long ago, pretty much like a lifetime. And the girl lives at home, 5 minutes away from me, and I hadn't run into her yet. And westside Cleveland ain't that big.

I guess the thing that's wierd about it is that I hadn't given her much of a thought once Megan came along or even for quite some time before that. But until then, I wondered how I would react. I was bitter about the way things ended for a long time. As much for my role in it and the way it went down, and the way I handled it (poorly), as anything.

So when I saw her, it was wierd. But not bad. Just different. It was fine actually. Maybe it was the 3 drinks I had already had, or the fact that I wasn't going to mope on my birthday, or that someone had really crushed me more recently, and you can only really hold a bitterness for one person at a time.

That, or maybe I just realized that she was my friend for over a year before we dated, that until it ended we had a lot of fun together, and that really, she's a genuinely good person with a huge heart, who really meant well pretty much all the time. Hindsight being what it is, I would have left me too. I wasn't a great person to be around back then. I needed to grow up.

So, I did the right thing. I went and said hello. We talked, caught up on each others careers, families, friends of each others that we had grown fond of while we were together. We laughed a little bit, talked about how everyone changes a lot in 4 years, especially at our age, and that was it. She saw people coming up to say happy birthday, wished me one as well, we said it was good to see each other, and that was it. I went over and said good bye to her before we moved on to the next bar, bought her a drink, and told her maybe I'll see her again in another 4 yeras......

And then yesterday, of all things, I was messing around online, and saw her instant messenger account was active. Why I had instant messenger on is beyond me. It logs me in when I turn the computer on and I just leave it up for no reason. So I hit the little buddy info thing, just to see what she had up, and the girl has a blog. Of course. Small world huh?