but would you suspect my emotion wandering

Alright, here we go, we'll give this whole new blogger thing a shot. Actually, to tell the truth, this is one of the reasons it is sometimes preferable to resist change- you end up escaping the sacrifice. By the time I was forced to migrate to the new version of blogger, the transition seemed relatively seamless. Of course, I write that and now my post will probably come out thoroughly mangled.

Thanks to an element in my life at the moment that I will simply call Mischief, I have been thinking about poker faces all day today. I never really thought of myself as having a poker face. In fact, I know I do not, because I have lost games of Texas Hold 'Em to children half my age and to adults twice as drunk as me. It's not because I'm stupid (well, maybe it has something to do with that); it's more to do with the big, dumb grin that spreads across my face when I have a good hand.

Similarly, I was never really good at hiding my feelings. But maybe I have become good at hiding them now. Given that there have been all these tiny, imperceptible changes that have accumulated over the past few years, I have to consider the possibility that this, too, has changed. As tamasha already put it, more eloquently than I could, I do not really know I like someone, until I like them so much that it is overwhelming, both for me and for the object of my affection.

At least, that's how it used to be. And let me tell you, much hilarity ensued. There's nothing like rabidly confessing your misguided devotion for someone who was, understandably, thoroughly unaware of your mounting attraction. It got so that, when I finally figured out I was interested in a dude, I'd brace myself for never seeing him again, because I knew the inevitable outcome of these outbursts of mine.

Still, I am starting to see that I am better at tempering myself than I used to be. First of all, I have stopped treating everything like some sort of Molly Ringwald anxiety ridden Cinderella story. I don't know when it happened but somewhere along the way, I went from Sixteen Candles to Living Out Loud. It's sort of a radical transition, and I can't say it was incrememental or gradual. It's just that one day, I woke up, and no longer believed there was some perfect person out there who was going to make me happy. One day, I simply rose and realized I was happy, and that it was my happiness.

And when that happened, those matters of the heart became a lot less dramatic for me. I still felt the sucker punch of heartbreak, still felt sad, even lonely, but never felt that my chance for happiness had somehow passed me by. I never again felt like the devastation was too much to bear.

But as a result, I guess I am getting lazier about matters of the heart as well. I'm far more detached, even when the realization strikes me that, amazingly, someone has caught my fancy. Even then, I make up a lot of excuses. My experiences serve to reinforce the laissez-faire approach as being the sound choice, since the alternative usually ends in humiliation, awkward interactions, and cringing recollections.

Or maybe. See, this is where it gets confusing, because I am an expert hyperanalyzer. But maybe it's just that the intensity is not there. Maybe if the intensity were there, I'd turn into a red-headed flat-chested gawky teen again, hoping that the dark-haired senior would, for once, notice me. Or maybe not.