I'm feeling a bit like I'm coming down from a high right now, having companionship withdrawals. It's too quiet here, even before the kids went to bed tonight. And so I blog. Again.
What a marvelous weekend: trapped inside with a lover and no kids... nothing to do but watch movies and mess around and watch more movies and mess around some more... and take a treacherously slippery walk to the convenience store and back... and drink some beers and eat chocolate and watch more movies... and mess around some more... and take a nap... and shower... and did I mention messing around?
Yep, thirty-six straight hours of sweet decadence. He arrived here at 9pm on Friday night and by Saturday morning, the roads were too dangerous to leave... so he stayed until 9am Sunday morning. I didn't lose power the whole time until about 8am Sunday, so instead of messing around, we went outside and chipped away at the ice encasing our minivans for about an hour until they were free and we had to part and go back to the reality of being parents again... my kids at my mom's, his kids at their mom's.
Is it weird to feel content having someone to sit next to you on the couch at night, even when you're not in control of the clicker and there's nothing but crap on the tube? I guess I've been in control of my own remote for far too long. Or is it weird to gain a sense of satisfaction just having someone sleeping next to you in bed, even when he is taking up too much room? I woke up in the middle of the night last night and realized that he was lying in the center of the bed and I was barely clinging to the edge. But rather than wake him and ask him to move over, I felt supremely satisfied that he was there sharing the night with me, so I just rolled over to face him and put my arm around his middle.
It turns out that it's the things like that -- the little day-to-day things that most couples take for granted and even let themselves get annoyed by if they have control issues or have lost a sense of the big picture -- that I'm finding joy in right now.
After my divorce, it wasn't really the sex that I missed, it was the simple companionship. But I never fully enjoyed that companionship with my ex-husband... there just were too many power struggles between us and too many passive-aggressive dishes coming from him, served up with a side of cold shoulder from me. Sure, it was good some of the time, but ultimately I was dissatisfied the majority of the time and there were too many other problems between us to ever feel content just "being" with the ex.
"S" and I have been dating for almost a whole month now. We met the night of January 2nd, so it's been four weeks exactly. Things are shifting and changing and reality is creeping in, but that's because we're inviting it. We both are eager to find out how well we do together in other situations outside of our own private row-to-hoe. We know we do so well in and out of the bedroom as just the two of us, but we also want to get a feel of ourselves as a couple in other formats... double-date... maybe a party... things that make us feel more real. We're making the private public, and we are becoming a real couple, when before we were only made of "would" and possibility.
We were supposed to have a double-date this weekend, in an effort to open the perfect little bubble we've created, but that has to be rescheduled to next weekend because of the ice storm. Last week, we opened the bubble a bit, as I let him meet my litter. The first night went fairly well, until my middle child acted out at the end of the night... getting angry at his brother as he sometimes does when he gets frustrated playing video games and then topping off the outburst by yelling "you bastard" at him. It didn't help that I let them stay up a little too long, so the meltdown continued while I tried to have them get ready for bed. There’s nothing like an angry, overtired 9-year-old boy throwing a temper tantrum to almost spoil the mood. Of course, not even sitting on a block of ice can cool the heat in these loins, so that damper didn't last long.
The next night, the same child made another vulgar stand by punching his sister full-force while we traveled to my mother's house to drop them off for an evening out together. "S" stepped up immediately and stopped it, as he's more than capable of dealing with 9-year-olds and their combative outbursts, and I pulled the van over until the outburst subsided, but it made me feel mortified that my middle child can't just behave in a civilized manner like the other two (for the most part) do. Instead, he has to be the challenger. I think he was testing everyone's limits, especially mine and this new man in my life, trying to get attention by any means and trying to find out how much he could get away with too. That moment almost spoiled my mood for that evening too, but I recovered eventually. A little time and some charming company really do wonders for my soul.
Of course it's not going to be all smooth sailing for us. We have real limits as well. A good example of that is when we went to see a movie in the middle of the afternoon last week. I didn't realize that the theater that I'd picked was right near his estranged wife's place of work... if I'd had any idea, I would have picked anywhere else at all. He didn't mention the problem and never complained, but I knew as soon as I accidentally drove past her place of work as I tried to find the theater that I'd compromised his sense of well-being for the day. And when I got to the theater and he was waiting inside for me rather than outside, I knew he really was feeling uncomfortable. And afterwards when we walked to have some tea nearby and he didn't hold my hand along the way, I knew he was feeling so guilty. And when we said goodbye and he didn't try to kiss me in the parking lot and nervously cut the hug short, I knew he was torn and filled with pain and sadness. I knew all of that, but I also wanted him to not feel any regrets.
He has no reason to hide these things. He's not having an affair, because he's officially separated and out on his own, but he still suffers from guilt. Most people would wonder why? His wife left the vows of their marriage behind ages ago, so why, after being forced out of the nest, would he still feel guilt and fear of getting caught? For the same reason that he wears his ring. If he takes it off, if he shows he's moving on, his wife will react to it and suddenly he'll have to deal with all the emotions that will boil over in that regard. It will bring them even closer to the big D, and that alone is a scary thing. I know. I've been there.
At the same time, he knows where his happiness lies. He knows that avoiding the inevitable is not going to make it hurt less. Sometimes you just need to rip that bandage off, rather than slowly and painfully working around the edges. You're going to have to deal with all of those emotions that come up anyway, but you have to ask yourself which is better: miserably dragging it out over time or dealing with it head-on all at once? He's already been mourning the loss of his relationship for nearly a year and a half now... the final bonds of trust and respect were broken that long ago. Psychologists say that it takes most people two full years to really recover and rediscover themselves after divorce... some less, some more, but two years is about average.
All I want from him is to finally put his own joy first. But first he had to find it, because if you asked him what his hopes and dreams for the future are, he really couldn't tell you. That happens when you lose yourself in a relationship. Bad relationships tend to be all-encompassing. It's like asking someone living in a third world country whose life is stricken with poverty if he/she is happy... they really don't know, because they've never allowed themselves to think about it, they only know how to subsist from day to day. It's how you learn to survive.
He's been bearing his wife's cross for far too long and when I met him he was stooping under its weight. Whenever I see him now (with the exception of the movie day last week), he stands a little bit taller each time. Life as a cuckold does not suit him. He needs to make choices of his own and feel safe doing it; he needs to have the freedom to express himself and still feel supported and respected; he needs to follow his heart and the rest will finally come easily. We all need that, but when you go without it for so long, you forget where you were going in life and get focused on surviving from day-to-day.
But once the absence of happiness is pointed out, it can no longer be ignored.
He talks less and less about the possibility of going back to his wife, and more and more about the possibility of "us" working out in the future. He now sees the big D as inevitable. He thanks me for helping him see it, but I really haven't done that work for him at all... I've just held his hand and let him take the time he needs to see things for what they are.
It's his own feelings that have done that for him, and the freedom and acceptance that I've given him to go through that process for himself. I may have my opinions and will share them with him, but I also freely point out when my opinions are being swayed by my feelings for not wanting to see him hurt and when they're being formed by a more objective perspective. And I don't disagree with all of his X2B's feelings either. I just disagree with the very egocentric way that she expresses them without taking responsibility for her own actions.
The thirty-six hours that we spent together this weekend ran the gamut of emotions and revelations. The ice storm was cathartic in many ways. It froze time long enough for both of us to examine what we both want in our lives. The outside world was cold and treacherous, but inside was safe and warm (and occasionally steamy HOT too). We held hands during the whole walk to the store and back yesterday, despite the freezing temperature and our lack of gloves... and though the ground was slippery and sometimes difficult to traverse, we never fell once during the whole journey. During some of our quiet moments of our walk, I thought about how we were helping each other so naturally and how I really didn't notice the cold at all.
It was such a grand metaphor for what I've always been seeking: the freedom to venture out into the world, the companionship to make the experience more fun, a hand to hold to steady myself or help me up if I should fall, and the reassurance that there's a whole lot of warmth to share back at home. We're both still trying to discover what our futures hold, but more and more I'm hoping that we're able to explore that together.
It can and did happen! Tell-all blog about dating ... well, tell-most ... tell-some ... regardless, it's TMI.
Monday, January 31, 2005
Thursday, January 27, 2005
Bread and Soup
The stuff that dreams are made of . . .
You've been having a lot of them lately, haven't you? And they're filled with grand metaphors and upheavals, like the suppression that has long ruled your life has finally given way and your subconscious is spilling all over the place with sign after sign after sign.
The one you told me of before, while we were lying in bed together... the one where you were driving in some car with your dad and you had a 3-D map of all the states, but one of the states had a hole in it and you were trying to fill it with bread, and there was a road sign with words that were too blurry to make out... that's such a good example. It even had an actual sign for you to read.
Me: Why bread?
You: I guess that bread is money and my concern about my job.
Me: Isn't bread also food... sustenance?
You: Yes, it is, isn't it.
Me: You're in a state with a hole in it and you're filling it with something you need to exist.
You: ...Bread, sustenance, affection... you.
Me: [laughing] I'm your bread!
You: You are. You're my bread.
Me: And what kind of road sign was it?
You: Sort of a divide... a fork in the road.
Me: A choice ahead of you.
You: Yes. But why would my dad be in the car?
[...some time passes...]
Me: Didn't you tell me the other day that on the day of you were married, your dad said to you in private, "If you want to back out now, it's not too late; I have a car waiting outside," before you walked down the aisle?
You: Yes, that's true.
Me: Maybe you've finally gotten in that car?
You: [laughing] You are such a clever girl.
I haven't been having many memorable dreams at the moment, maybe because my waking life has been so dreamy of late. But recently I had a deja vu of a previously recurrent dream that I'd had over the course of most of last year.
Before I had the first dream, I had been going to bed each night and saying to myself, my subconscious, my guides, whomever or whatever was paying attention to my brainwaves, "Please show me my perfect match... my 'soul-mate'... my whoever or whatever you call it so I'll know him when I'm with him." It was a bit of a mantra I had with myself every night before visiting slumberland... a bit of an experiment to see what might happen.
What happened was the recurring dream that came back every 2 months for the whole year of 2004... maybe about 5 times total. It's been since October that I'd had the dream and it had almost slipped my mind.
In this dream, a man came to me from out of darkness, just appearing before me. I already knew him, or so it felt, but I couldn't recognize him because every time I tried to focus on his face, I instead saw my own face through his eyes. I only knew he was not much taller than me, and parts of our bodies were strangely equal in many ways, but he was definitely anatomically male. It felt as if I were meeting a masculine version of myself.
Without words, our clothes came off quickly and we made love. As he exhaled, I inhaled... and as I exhaled, he inhaled. We were in perfect rhythm... a perfect circuit. As we kissed, the circuit was complete and the orgasm became electrical in quality, with me feeling both my sensations and his. I tried to see his face many times during this beautiful dream, but all I saw of him was entirely in shadow and always quickly switched to a vision of my own face looking at him.
The dream orgasms were so strong and so real that my own moaning woke me from my deep sleep... only to find myself in a velvety flush of my own making. "Underpants soup," as I call it.
Thinking of this now makes me smile and sends an electric thrill throughout my body, into my fingertips as I type here, making me *sigh* aloud to release the charge.
I'd forgotten about this dream until this past weekend, when we were locked in a similar embrace and I looked up your face as it was half-obscured in shadow by the darkness of the room, half in candle light, but I could see that you were gazing at some far-away place in your head. In our heat and shadow, I attempted to bring you back to me by whispering, "There is nothing more perfect than this moment." Your sadness seemed to lift as you kissed me, while images of that dream flooded back into my brain.
[...interruption as cell phone rings...]
I just hung up the phone. You called me at 2AM, right at the moment that I was typing about you. The sadness in your voice made my eyes well up without even knowing why. I sensed that you desperately needed to lean on me... that if you were calling me so late it was because something had happened since last we'd spoken and it was weighing so heavily on you that you couldn't sleep.
The people who read the words that I write here cannot fully understand how hard it is to go through what you are going through right now... what I went through 5 years ago... unless they've been through it themselves. In this case, I really hope everyone could be blissfully ignorant. The power struggles and pain of a failed marriage are some of the harshest lessons in life.
I can give you pro-active advice, and I can tell you about the mistakes that I made, but ultimately my only real role is to provide you with emotional sustenance while you take the wheel and steer your own vehicle. I hope you're wearing your seatbelt. Try to read all the signs carefully. And when you need me, don't be afraid to ask me for directions. I've been there before, so I can point out all the landmarks and warn you about the bumps ahead.
I started this blog because I'd been thinking about you as usual. I hope you can get some sleep, but I imagine that it will be difficult. My insomnia started during the crumbling of my marriage and it hasn't improved over time. Now I stay up 'til the wee hours of the morning to write about you for the world to see... but mainly as a record for myself of this moment... to discover the stuff that dreams are made of.
You've been having a lot of them lately, haven't you? And they're filled with grand metaphors and upheavals, like the suppression that has long ruled your life has finally given way and your subconscious is spilling all over the place with sign after sign after sign.
The one you told me of before, while we were lying in bed together... the one where you were driving in some car with your dad and you had a 3-D map of all the states, but one of the states had a hole in it and you were trying to fill it with bread, and there was a road sign with words that were too blurry to make out... that's such a good example. It even had an actual sign for you to read.
Me: Why bread?
You: I guess that bread is money and my concern about my job.
Me: Isn't bread also food... sustenance?
You: Yes, it is, isn't it.
Me: You're in a state with a hole in it and you're filling it with something you need to exist.
You: ...Bread, sustenance, affection... you.
Me: [laughing] I'm your bread!
You: You are. You're my bread.
Me: And what kind of road sign was it?
You: Sort of a divide... a fork in the road.
Me: A choice ahead of you.
You: Yes. But why would my dad be in the car?
[...some time passes...]
Me: Didn't you tell me the other day that on the day of you were married, your dad said to you in private, "If you want to back out now, it's not too late; I have a car waiting outside," before you walked down the aisle?
You: Yes, that's true.
Me: Maybe you've finally gotten in that car?
You: [laughing] You are such a clever girl.
I haven't been having many memorable dreams at the moment, maybe because my waking life has been so dreamy of late. But recently I had a deja vu of a previously recurrent dream that I'd had over the course of most of last year.
Before I had the first dream, I had been going to bed each night and saying to myself, my subconscious, my guides, whomever or whatever was paying attention to my brainwaves, "Please show me my perfect match... my 'soul-mate'... my whoever or whatever you call it so I'll know him when I'm with him." It was a bit of a mantra I had with myself every night before visiting slumberland... a bit of an experiment to see what might happen.
What happened was the recurring dream that came back every 2 months for the whole year of 2004... maybe about 5 times total. It's been since October that I'd had the dream and it had almost slipped my mind.
In this dream, a man came to me from out of darkness, just appearing before me. I already knew him, or so it felt, but I couldn't recognize him because every time I tried to focus on his face, I instead saw my own face through his eyes. I only knew he was not much taller than me, and parts of our bodies were strangely equal in many ways, but he was definitely anatomically male. It felt as if I were meeting a masculine version of myself.
Without words, our clothes came off quickly and we made love. As he exhaled, I inhaled... and as I exhaled, he inhaled. We were in perfect rhythm... a perfect circuit. As we kissed, the circuit was complete and the orgasm became electrical in quality, with me feeling both my sensations and his. I tried to see his face many times during this beautiful dream, but all I saw of him was entirely in shadow and always quickly switched to a vision of my own face looking at him.
The dream orgasms were so strong and so real that my own moaning woke me from my deep sleep... only to find myself in a velvety flush of my own making. "Underpants soup," as I call it.
Thinking of this now makes me smile and sends an electric thrill throughout my body, into my fingertips as I type here, making me *sigh* aloud to release the charge.
I'd forgotten about this dream until this past weekend, when we were locked in a similar embrace and I looked up your face as it was half-obscured in shadow by the darkness of the room, half in candle light, but I could see that you were gazing at some far-away place in your head. In our heat and shadow, I attempted to bring you back to me by whispering, "There is nothing more perfect than this moment." Your sadness seemed to lift as you kissed me, while images of that dream flooded back into my brain.
[...interruption as cell phone rings...]
I just hung up the phone. You called me at 2AM, right at the moment that I was typing about you. The sadness in your voice made my eyes well up without even knowing why. I sensed that you desperately needed to lean on me... that if you were calling me so late it was because something had happened since last we'd spoken and it was weighing so heavily on you that you couldn't sleep.
The people who read the words that I write here cannot fully understand how hard it is to go through what you are going through right now... what I went through 5 years ago... unless they've been through it themselves. In this case, I really hope everyone could be blissfully ignorant. The power struggles and pain of a failed marriage are some of the harshest lessons in life.
I can give you pro-active advice, and I can tell you about the mistakes that I made, but ultimately my only real role is to provide you with emotional sustenance while you take the wheel and steer your own vehicle. I hope you're wearing your seatbelt. Try to read all the signs carefully. And when you need me, don't be afraid to ask me for directions. I've been there before, so I can point out all the landmarks and warn you about the bumps ahead.
I started this blog because I'd been thinking about you as usual. I hope you can get some sleep, but I imagine that it will be difficult. My insomnia started during the crumbling of my marriage and it hasn't improved over time. Now I stay up 'til the wee hours of the morning to write about you for the world to see... but mainly as a record for myself of this moment... to discover the stuff that dreams are made of.
Monday, January 24, 2005
Full of Firsts
Today I have a guest blog-writer. Everyone, please welcome the inspiration for my last three Wednesday blogs in a row: I'VE BEEN GIVEN REASON / LIFE IS NOT A DRESS REHEARSAL / LESSONS FROM CRUEL SHOES. The italics represent his voice, but you'll just have to imagine the British accent yourself.
S-
How do I start? What to begin with?
First wink, first meeting, first kiss?
Before the firsts?
Before the firsts.
What was my motivation to meet you?
So I post a profile. Knowing full well I don’t dabble with meaningless connections. I am honest, knowing I can’t move on without it. How lucky could I get? The first time I email, you don’t reply. Yet I hoped somehow we would meet. Corny but true. Did my subconscious remember you from a decade earlier? Was my visually fixated brain tuning into that momentary meeting? You never forget a face.
So perhaps I wasn’t aggressive enough. No reply from you. You have thousands of guys checking you out. (I thought I was special getting 300 matchees checking my profile) Why is she winking at me again and not writing? Why won’t she answer? So I decide to brag a little after the cyber ghost phantom wink. So I blab a bit about what I thought you would like to read about. I’m trying to figure out what the designer of an essay exam question reeeaaally wants to hear. What ever it takes, I want to know this woman. I’m selling myself, but being truthful too.
So my commercial catches your eye, thank god something is working right for me. Am I owed some heavy Karma? Are you owed heavy Karma? Is this simple coincidence, or is there another layer?
I knew you would be dangerous. Not “Scary; smack me with a frozen halibut” dangerous, but “Shit, I could really fall for this woman” dangerous. So after meeting you for Thai, I continue. Knowing, once again, full well, the potential I was creating.
First date with anyone…you. Why was unveiling my past so easy? Do I do this with everyone I meet? To certain degree, yes. Especially recently, when all was in turmoil. I was grasping for straws. Some advice, some gem to hold. It takes a lot to hold my ear. You hold mine, and you allow me to talk. Prying open my clam. My crab shell.
The story loses its thread because I’m getting lost in blur of weekend rendezvous. I could write about the first kiss, how our styles and urgency met. I could ponder the curves of your body, the sounds you make. ( I was so tense our first time). Each time I learn more about the way you tick, in and out of bed.
I’ve been in a holding tank for many years. Tentative to make the wrong move. Secure with the glass walls, yet scratching at each corner. Fed with half-truths and baited with responsibility. Seeking unattainable promises. Pushing gravel around to rearrange my base. Trapped inside with a strange species.
I still seek security. But I have a craving for you. A taste I can’t deny. My required ingredients for bread have changed. I know I won’t shirk responsibility. And I still will grieve for the bitter-sweet life I had.
I still have many questions, some of them I don’t know yet. I’m not in a rush to have them answered. I don’t feel rushed with you. You provide acceptance, freedom to check my baggage.
I don’t need to hide my feelings from you, yet I remain reserved. My feet still set in two worlds, sliding slowly toward yours. I feel guilt for my children, hotwired to my own homesick journey. I need to allow myself to believe. To take the proverbial leap of faith. Is this too good to be true? Am I too rebound fresh? Do I really know you yet?
I know for certain: You make me very happy at the very core. You have made me whole again. I would be a fool to deny myself that.
Just be slow with me. I’m classic wounded guy.
-S
S-
How do I start? What to begin with?
First wink, first meeting, first kiss?
Before the firsts?
Before the firsts.
What was my motivation to meet you?
So I post a profile. Knowing full well I don’t dabble with meaningless connections. I am honest, knowing I can’t move on without it. How lucky could I get? The first time I email, you don’t reply. Yet I hoped somehow we would meet. Corny but true. Did my subconscious remember you from a decade earlier? Was my visually fixated brain tuning into that momentary meeting? You never forget a face.
So perhaps I wasn’t aggressive enough. No reply from you. You have thousands of guys checking you out. (I thought I was special getting 300 matchees checking my profile) Why is she winking at me again and not writing? Why won’t she answer? So I decide to brag a little after the cyber ghost phantom wink. So I blab a bit about what I thought you would like to read about. I’m trying to figure out what the designer of an essay exam question reeeaaally wants to hear. What ever it takes, I want to know this woman. I’m selling myself, but being truthful too.
So my commercial catches your eye, thank god something is working right for me. Am I owed some heavy Karma? Are you owed heavy Karma? Is this simple coincidence, or is there another layer?
I knew you would be dangerous. Not “Scary; smack me with a frozen halibut” dangerous, but “Shit, I could really fall for this woman” dangerous. So after meeting you for Thai, I continue. Knowing, once again, full well, the potential I was creating.
First date with anyone…you. Why was unveiling my past so easy? Do I do this with everyone I meet? To certain degree, yes. Especially recently, when all was in turmoil. I was grasping for straws. Some advice, some gem to hold. It takes a lot to hold my ear. You hold mine, and you allow me to talk. Prying open my clam. My crab shell.
The story loses its thread because I’m getting lost in blur of weekend rendezvous. I could write about the first kiss, how our styles and urgency met. I could ponder the curves of your body, the sounds you make. ( I was so tense our first time). Each time I learn more about the way you tick, in and out of bed.
I’ve been in a holding tank for many years. Tentative to make the wrong move. Secure with the glass walls, yet scratching at each corner. Fed with half-truths and baited with responsibility. Seeking unattainable promises. Pushing gravel around to rearrange my base. Trapped inside with a strange species.
I still seek security. But I have a craving for you. A taste I can’t deny. My required ingredients for bread have changed. I know I won’t shirk responsibility. And I still will grieve for the bitter-sweet life I had.
I still have many questions, some of them I don’t know yet. I’m not in a rush to have them answered. I don’t feel rushed with you. You provide acceptance, freedom to check my baggage.
I don’t need to hide my feelings from you, yet I remain reserved. My feet still set in two worlds, sliding slowly toward yours. I feel guilt for my children, hotwired to my own homesick journey. I need to allow myself to believe. To take the proverbial leap of faith. Is this too good to be true? Am I too rebound fresh? Do I really know you yet?
I know for certain: You make me very happy at the very core. You have made me whole again. I would be a fool to deny myself that.
Just be slow with me. I’m classic wounded guy.
-S
Wednesday, January 19, 2005
Lessons from Cruel Shoes
In a previous life, everything I ever wanted must've been handed to me and I never appreciated it. In this life, I needed to experience absence to understand fulfillment... and boy, did I deal with a lot of absence.
I spent seven years in an ultimately empty relationship in which I only felt misunderstood. The fit between my ex-husband and myself resembled a longer, more drawn out version of the feeling that I had while being a member of a wedding party in early April 1992.
At that time, everyone in the wedding party lived in Orlando, while I lived in Atlanta and had to drive down. I missed all the fittings for the hideous bridesmaids' dresses and had to be fitted into mine in just a few hours on the day before the event. The front of the dress was cut way lower on me than on the other girls and the seamstress never managed to really fix that. Plus, the puff-ball shoulder thingies seemed to be as large as my head, whereas on the other girls' shoulder puffs seemed more managable.
Then came the shoes... black pumps. Yuck, but I can deal, except that the bride purchased the wrong size for me... 7 1/2. I wear an 8 1/2, same as her sister, who, because she lived nearby, had already grabbed up that pair and started wearing them around to break them in. I was stuck with a pair of shoes that were a whole size too small for me. Not just that, it was a 3 inch heel with a viciously pointed toe. There are no better torture devices known to man or woman than shoes of this variety.
On the day of the wedding, we all had our hair done at a local salon. The inexperienced newbie assigned to do my long, curly locks had no clue how to work with my hair type as he'd only had experience with short hair styles. Everyone else's hair was done and fabulous and we were out of time and there I sat... looking like the love child of Diana Ross and Bozo the Clown.
+ 
Some other pro rushed over, shoved him aside and said something that made him burst into tears, then began to rip through the rats nest in my hair (yet more torture) for the next 20 minutes until she'd created something that looked like a gift box bow on the back of my head... sprayed that until it was rock-hard and sent me on my way with the rest of the girls.
There are pictures of me from this event and I wish they would disappear. I look like a total asshat... a 21-year-old with the youthful face of a teenager, wearing a dress that could make Tara Reid blush, crammed into tiny shoes like Cinderella's step-sisters, and with what looked like a birthday present on the back of my head sandwiched between two growing MANITOUs. Classy. So very classy.
I was also mortified to be walking down the aisle with a white-haired man 35 years my senior. As a dancing partner later on at the reception and with several stiff screw-drivers on his breath (and not enough on mine because I was without my i.d. and the bartenders refused to believe that I was old enough), my dad's buddy insisted on grinding my crotch into his thigh as I kept trying to lean back for some distance, but I realized doing that only gave him a better view down the front of my dress. I'm guessing that as a paired couple, we looked like something straight off the cover of Pedophilia Today. And did I mention I was also being hit upon by a 12-year-old there?
I endured all of that for the longest 10 hour day of my life... even giving birth three times within the ensuing 5 years never erased the agony of that day. Got a good picture yet? Maybe this will clarify things: remember Molly Ringwald in SIXTEEN CANDLES? Think that... only much more fucked up... and with no cute beefcake to drive me away in a Porsche boxster afterwards.
The icing on the cake of this story is that rather than my only experience as a member of a wedding party being something as normal as, say, a sister's wedding, this affair was my damn FATHER's wedding, marrying a woman 15 years younger than himself and just 7 years older than me. Why? Probably because we're talking about something that involves me and my so-called-Jerry-Springer-Show-life.
Added to this, one of her sisters graduated from high school with me and we sat next to each other all of Senior year English Lit class just four years earlier. At that reception, she leaned over and exitedly said, "Sherri, can you believe it? I'm your aunt now! And I'm just 4 days older than you!" All I could think of were lines from BILL & TED'S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE, like: "'Remember when you asked your mom to prom?' 'Shut up, Ted!'" As I looked around at the attendees... many of whom were people that had gone to school with me, but none of them were invited by me... I realized that my life had become a John Hughes version of TWILIGHT ZONE.
My best friend finally arrived to my rescue near the end of the day and luckily had her i.d. with her so that we could finally start pounding a few drinks as I relayed the day's events to her. Suddenly we were yanked up from our bitchy coven as we were told that it was time to catch the bouquet while being forcefully escorted to the dance floor to a throng of desperate, single women. We decided that it would be safest to stand in the back so not to get tackled by some love-starved loser.
The huge bouquet got flung and, of course, headed straight for the back of the crowd. As if performing some synchronized, rehearsed line dance, she and I took one step away from each other and the bouquet landed square between us on the floor, spraying petals everywhere. We just looked at each other and shrugged, as neither of us wanted that hideous thing or the "curse" that came with it. Yes, it was partly fear that made us step out of the way, but we were also both too tipsy to give a fuck at that point. My new step-mother flew into a hissy fit and demanded that I pick up the bouquet and give it back so that she could give the "non-spoil sports" a chance... so I shrugged again and did as she asked, while my friend cackled and rubbed in the fact that I'd "touched it first!"
That one day sums up so much of my life in many ways: an uncomfortable fit, a horrible mess, a forced effort, and a jaded response.
Six months to the day after that wedding, I met my ex-husband. I had been getting to know a truly beautiful Norwegian man at that time, who was already a friend and the sweetest guy ever, but he started talking about marriage and green cards on our very first date and that scared me quite a bit after the whole wedding bouquet thing. So when my roommate from hell set me up with her boyfriend's sad-sack friend, I thought, "Yeah, sure. At least he won't be needing to get married real soon." And with that, I canceled my next date with my beautiful Norwegian friend and scheduled a first date with the sad, lonely friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend. Three months later to the day of our first date, I realized that I was pregnant. Since I had been through an abortion a year earlier, that wasn't an option. I told him that I was continuing with the pregnancy and he just shrugged and went along with my request that he join me in the same way that I shrugged when I was asked to pick up that stupid bunch of flowers.
I never had a wedding myself, not even after getting preggos, so my only experience being in one has come from that wretched freak show that's been permanently etched into my brain. You see... instead of a wedding, my marriage vows were "I-doed" in an oh-so romantic courthouse, because after you've already given birth 3 times, a wedding seems a little anti-climactic. So yup, there we were... squeezed in between some guy from the local grocery with about 500 bounced checks needing to be stamped for collection and an underage Guatemalan couple with their interpreter/guardian who, from what I could piece together in Spanish, wanted them to be married to either start making babies or legitimize the one they already started. I'm not clear on which it was.
Three children and seven years later to the day that we met, I found out that he was having an affair with a co-worker who was 11 years older than him. He said that he had a right to be happy at last and never once apologized for his actions. I used to blame my psycho roommate for the match up, but I could just as easily blame that fucking wedding bouquet incident too.
I tend to fall into things ass-backwards, I suppose. Once upon a time, I really had stopped believing in love. My parents were having the lives that I should have been having... mom going to college and graduating, dad getting married and talking about starting a family... while I was having an abortion and floundering alone in art school. So I decided to settle for less than my ideal fit and live with the dis-ease of being misunderstood just to find some sort of pseudo-comfort in a world that seemed to leave me feeling more and more isolated.
Unfortunately, if you don't really find the right fit and decide to settle for it anyway, you're going to live in pain and have scars for a long time to come. I twisted my face into a smile on a regular basis when people asked me how life was going while I was married to that man, much the same way that I did when I was forced to wear those cruel shoes and smile for the posterity photos all day at my dad's wedding. I tried to take my mind off the pain by distracting myself for years with ideas like, "Who really is fully happy anyway?"
If you've read my blogs this past December, most of you saw that I hit a mental "RESET" button at some point there. I changed my look on life and made a conscious decision to stop wearing the wrong shoes.
I really wasn't sure if it was possible for me to find a good fit because I'm so odd in so many ways. It's not easy being kinda artsy and yet want longevity and family-related stability. The artsy guys are allergic to family stuff and the normal guys all get a little freaked by my inability to toe-the-status-quo-line. But I recently found a great fit by accident. I thought, "No, those shoes still might belong to someone else who doesn't want them right now, but who might demand them back at some point. I should wait it out." However, I realized that I was being drawn to this perfect fit in a way that I'd never been drawn to someone before now. I simply couldn't stay away.
As you've read below, I met someone who seems like he was designed for me in so many ways. The only problem is that he's not free yet to fully be with me in every sense of the word and so we must exist in our own little bubble right now. This is my luck, to get someone made-to-order, who speaks and seems to be pulling sentences straight from my own thoughts, who also comes from a failed marriage, but who still has many hurdles to jump in his own pair of cruel shoes before he can catch up to where I am.
But if he decides that the hurdles look too high or taking off those ill-fitting shoes might be too painful, and he goes back to the starting line out of some form of separation anxiety or possibly a martyr complex, then I will only have had a glimpse of what a perfect fit feels like.
Still, it does give me so much hope, regardless of the timing. It's so easy right now, so comfortable... for the first time, there's no struggle to "make it fit" or feeling of mismatched soles/souls. I wish he could just tap into my heart and experience through me how hard that really is to find... how in five years of meeting people and trying them on, only to discover mismatch after mismatch and feel yet more alienated with each passing person... and that finding such an easy fit doesn't just "happen" like that every day.
This life can be filled with so many lessons from other people, like going through a terrible relationship in order to recognize and appreciate a really good thing when it finally comes along. Walking in the wrong shoes for so many years can leave you with some impressive scars, but it can also teach you to appreciate a comfortable fit when you finally find it. Hopefully, when such a lesson is put to the test, you are able to recognize it and not let the moment get away.
All this talk about shoes and weddings as a metaphor has suddenly jarred another thought loose in my brain. The first weekend of October 2004, I was visiting Chicago to put some closure around a previous visit that had caused a big rift in my life: a very brief and steamy affair with a man whom I'd considered my ideal since my youth... an affair that ended badly on both of our parts in 2001.
It was three years later and the weekend of his wedding celebrations, which I gracefully declined to attend out of respect for his new bride's joy and comfort... and I didn't want him to feel like he needed to apologize to me in person, even though we'd already put that to rest in email form. I just know what kind of good person he is and he'd take time away from his 250 guests just to make me feel better.
Anyway, I went to Chicago to just be there in the same city at that same moment when he was moving into a new phase of his life, with my own hopes that I could feel that kind of energy... moving forward, full of hope. And amazingly, it really was palpable.
My friend and Chi-town tour guide for the weekend took me into her favorite shoe store on my first day there, which was awesome, because I'd always admired Fluevogs on other people and wondered where those stores were located. While feeling full of energy and at probably the very same moment that my former flame was saying his I-do's in front of friends and family, I cheerily walked past pair upon pair of beautifully crafted footwear.
Suddenly, I stopped in front of a pair that I simply had to have... they were bright red with a pink flame swooshing down the length of them and part of the Fluevog "Angels" sole family... imagine bowling shoes, only much, much, much cooler. And they were on sale, marked down about $50, making my heart skip a beat even more and adding to the whole "kismet" feeling. (I know, I'm a dork.)
I asked a clerk if I could try on a pair in 8 1/2 and she said, "Mmm, well, all of these that you see marked down right here are limited editions and only one of each size was made. So what you see is all that we have, which means this is the only pair left, and it's ...[pause as she picked up the shoe]... um, incredible, it's an 8 1/2 exactly." I put them on immediately and they felt like they were made for me and are still my favorite pair of shoes today, getting me compliments and comments on a regular basis.
So on the day of an ex-lover's wedding vows, and exactly 5 years from the moment that I found out of my ex-husband's affair, and 7 years from the moment that we shared our own vows in the courthouse, and exactly 12 years from the moment that he and I met... there I stood in the only size left of a limited edition pair of shoes that felt like they'd been waiting for me to find them, right there in the city of my birth no less!
There is no key to finding happiness or to unlocking the mysteries of the heart, that's why it's a mystery. But everyone knows when they see two people cut from the same cloth and how beautiful they look together... it makes you want to spend time with them in the hopes to unravel some of that mystery for yourself. I used to look at those couples that make everything look so easy and wish I could be like that one day.
It occurred to me that I've finally stopped wishing for that day. It has arrived at last.
I know that I said that I wouldn't write about my muse again and I've tried to stay as far from our current musings as I could, but just like my feelings for the man himself, I can't seem to stay away for long. In my future life, I'll talk more openly about all the things I've come to appreciate in this great fit. But for now, I'll just express it all in one syllable:
*sigh*
I spent seven years in an ultimately empty relationship in which I only felt misunderstood. The fit between my ex-husband and myself resembled a longer, more drawn out version of the feeling that I had while being a member of a wedding party in early April 1992.
At that time, everyone in the wedding party lived in Orlando, while I lived in Atlanta and had to drive down. I missed all the fittings for the hideous bridesmaids' dresses and had to be fitted into mine in just a few hours on the day before the event. The front of the dress was cut way lower on me than on the other girls and the seamstress never managed to really fix that. Plus, the puff-ball shoulder thingies seemed to be as large as my head, whereas on the other girls' shoulder puffs seemed more managable.
Then came the shoes... black pumps. Yuck, but I can deal, except that the bride purchased the wrong size for me... 7 1/2. I wear an 8 1/2, same as her sister, who, because she lived nearby, had already grabbed up that pair and started wearing them around to break them in. I was stuck with a pair of shoes that were a whole size too small for me. Not just that, it was a 3 inch heel with a viciously pointed toe. There are no better torture devices known to man or woman than shoes of this variety.
On the day of the wedding, we all had our hair done at a local salon. The inexperienced newbie assigned to do my long, curly locks had no clue how to work with my hair type as he'd only had experience with short hair styles. Everyone else's hair was done and fabulous and we were out of time and there I sat... looking like the love child of Diana Ross and Bozo the Clown.
+ Some other pro rushed over, shoved him aside and said something that made him burst into tears, then began to rip through the rats nest in my hair (yet more torture) for the next 20 minutes until she'd created something that looked like a gift box bow on the back of my head... sprayed that until it was rock-hard and sent me on my way with the rest of the girls.
There are pictures of me from this event and I wish they would disappear. I look like a total asshat... a 21-year-old with the youthful face of a teenager, wearing a dress that could make Tara Reid blush, crammed into tiny shoes like Cinderella's step-sisters, and with what looked like a birthday present on the back of my head sandwiched between two growing MANITOUs. Classy. So very classy.
I was also mortified to be walking down the aisle with a white-haired man 35 years my senior. As a dancing partner later on at the reception and with several stiff screw-drivers on his breath (and not enough on mine because I was without my i.d. and the bartenders refused to believe that I was old enough), my dad's buddy insisted on grinding my crotch into his thigh as I kept trying to lean back for some distance, but I realized doing that only gave him a better view down the front of my dress. I'm guessing that as a paired couple, we looked like something straight off the cover of Pedophilia Today. And did I mention I was also being hit upon by a 12-year-old there?
I endured all of that for the longest 10 hour day of my life... even giving birth three times within the ensuing 5 years never erased the agony of that day. Got a good picture yet? Maybe this will clarify things: remember Molly Ringwald in SIXTEEN CANDLES? Think that... only much more fucked up... and with no cute beefcake to drive me away in a Porsche boxster afterwards.
The icing on the cake of this story is that rather than my only experience as a member of a wedding party being something as normal as, say, a sister's wedding, this affair was my damn FATHER's wedding, marrying a woman 15 years younger than himself and just 7 years older than me. Why? Probably because we're talking about something that involves me and my so-called-Jerry-Springer-Show-life.
Added to this, one of her sisters graduated from high school with me and we sat next to each other all of Senior year English Lit class just four years earlier. At that reception, she leaned over and exitedly said, "Sherri, can you believe it? I'm your aunt now! And I'm just 4 days older than you!" All I could think of were lines from BILL & TED'S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE, like: "'Remember when you asked your mom to prom?' 'Shut up, Ted!'" As I looked around at the attendees... many of whom were people that had gone to school with me, but none of them were invited by me... I realized that my life had become a John Hughes version of TWILIGHT ZONE.
My best friend finally arrived to my rescue near the end of the day and luckily had her i.d. with her so that we could finally start pounding a few drinks as I relayed the day's events to her. Suddenly we were yanked up from our bitchy coven as we were told that it was time to catch the bouquet while being forcefully escorted to the dance floor to a throng of desperate, single women. We decided that it would be safest to stand in the back so not to get tackled by some love-starved loser.
The huge bouquet got flung and, of course, headed straight for the back of the crowd. As if performing some synchronized, rehearsed line dance, she and I took one step away from each other and the bouquet landed square between us on the floor, spraying petals everywhere. We just looked at each other and shrugged, as neither of us wanted that hideous thing or the "curse" that came with it. Yes, it was partly fear that made us step out of the way, but we were also both too tipsy to give a fuck at that point. My new step-mother flew into a hissy fit and demanded that I pick up the bouquet and give it back so that she could give the "non-spoil sports" a chance... so I shrugged again and did as she asked, while my friend cackled and rubbed in the fact that I'd "touched it first!"
That one day sums up so much of my life in many ways: an uncomfortable fit, a horrible mess, a forced effort, and a jaded response.
Six months to the day after that wedding, I met my ex-husband. I had been getting to know a truly beautiful Norwegian man at that time, who was already a friend and the sweetest guy ever, but he started talking about marriage and green cards on our very first date and that scared me quite a bit after the whole wedding bouquet thing. So when my roommate from hell set me up with her boyfriend's sad-sack friend, I thought, "Yeah, sure. At least he won't be needing to get married real soon." And with that, I canceled my next date with my beautiful Norwegian friend and scheduled a first date with the sad, lonely friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend. Three months later to the day of our first date, I realized that I was pregnant. Since I had been through an abortion a year earlier, that wasn't an option. I told him that I was continuing with the pregnancy and he just shrugged and went along with my request that he join me in the same way that I shrugged when I was asked to pick up that stupid bunch of flowers.
I never had a wedding myself, not even after getting preggos, so my only experience being in one has come from that wretched freak show that's been permanently etched into my brain. You see... instead of a wedding, my marriage vows were "I-doed" in an oh-so romantic courthouse, because after you've already given birth 3 times, a wedding seems a little anti-climactic. So yup, there we were... squeezed in between some guy from the local grocery with about 500 bounced checks needing to be stamped for collection and an underage Guatemalan couple with their interpreter/guardian who, from what I could piece together in Spanish, wanted them to be married to either start making babies or legitimize the one they already started. I'm not clear on which it was.
Three children and seven years later to the day that we met, I found out that he was having an affair with a co-worker who was 11 years older than him. He said that he had a right to be happy at last and never once apologized for his actions. I used to blame my psycho roommate for the match up, but I could just as easily blame that fucking wedding bouquet incident too.
I tend to fall into things ass-backwards, I suppose. Once upon a time, I really had stopped believing in love. My parents were having the lives that I should have been having... mom going to college and graduating, dad getting married and talking about starting a family... while I was having an abortion and floundering alone in art school. So I decided to settle for less than my ideal fit and live with the dis-ease of being misunderstood just to find some sort of pseudo-comfort in a world that seemed to leave me feeling more and more isolated.
Unfortunately, if you don't really find the right fit and decide to settle for it anyway, you're going to live in pain and have scars for a long time to come. I twisted my face into a smile on a regular basis when people asked me how life was going while I was married to that man, much the same way that I did when I was forced to wear those cruel shoes and smile for the posterity photos all day at my dad's wedding. I tried to take my mind off the pain by distracting myself for years with ideas like, "Who really is fully happy anyway?"
If you've read my blogs this past December, most of you saw that I hit a mental "RESET" button at some point there. I changed my look on life and made a conscious decision to stop wearing the wrong shoes.
I really wasn't sure if it was possible for me to find a good fit because I'm so odd in so many ways. It's not easy being kinda artsy and yet want longevity and family-related stability. The artsy guys are allergic to family stuff and the normal guys all get a little freaked by my inability to toe-the-status-quo-line. But I recently found a great fit by accident. I thought, "No, those shoes still might belong to someone else who doesn't want them right now, but who might demand them back at some point. I should wait it out." However, I realized that I was being drawn to this perfect fit in a way that I'd never been drawn to someone before now. I simply couldn't stay away.
As you've read below, I met someone who seems like he was designed for me in so many ways. The only problem is that he's not free yet to fully be with me in every sense of the word and so we must exist in our own little bubble right now. This is my luck, to get someone made-to-order, who speaks and seems to be pulling sentences straight from my own thoughts, who also comes from a failed marriage, but who still has many hurdles to jump in his own pair of cruel shoes before he can catch up to where I am.
But if he decides that the hurdles look too high or taking off those ill-fitting shoes might be too painful, and he goes back to the starting line out of some form of separation anxiety or possibly a martyr complex, then I will only have had a glimpse of what a perfect fit feels like.
Still, it does give me so much hope, regardless of the timing. It's so easy right now, so comfortable... for the first time, there's no struggle to "make it fit" or feeling of mismatched soles/souls. I wish he could just tap into my heart and experience through me how hard that really is to find... how in five years of meeting people and trying them on, only to discover mismatch after mismatch and feel yet more alienated with each passing person... and that finding such an easy fit doesn't just "happen" like that every day.
This life can be filled with so many lessons from other people, like going through a terrible relationship in order to recognize and appreciate a really good thing when it finally comes along. Walking in the wrong shoes for so many years can leave you with some impressive scars, but it can also teach you to appreciate a comfortable fit when you finally find it. Hopefully, when such a lesson is put to the test, you are able to recognize it and not let the moment get away.
All this talk about shoes and weddings as a metaphor has suddenly jarred another thought loose in my brain. The first weekend of October 2004, I was visiting Chicago to put some closure around a previous visit that had caused a big rift in my life: a very brief and steamy affair with a man whom I'd considered my ideal since my youth... an affair that ended badly on both of our parts in 2001.
It was three years later and the weekend of his wedding celebrations, which I gracefully declined to attend out of respect for his new bride's joy and comfort... and I didn't want him to feel like he needed to apologize to me in person, even though we'd already put that to rest in email form. I just know what kind of good person he is and he'd take time away from his 250 guests just to make me feel better.
Anyway, I went to Chicago to just be there in the same city at that same moment when he was moving into a new phase of his life, with my own hopes that I could feel that kind of energy... moving forward, full of hope. And amazingly, it really was palpable.
My friend and Chi-town tour guide for the weekend took me into her favorite shoe store on my first day there, which was awesome, because I'd always admired Fluevogs on other people and wondered where those stores were located. While feeling full of energy and at probably the very same moment that my former flame was saying his I-do's in front of friends and family, I cheerily walked past pair upon pair of beautifully crafted footwear.
Suddenly, I stopped in front of a pair that I simply had to have... they were bright red with a pink flame swooshing down the length of them and part of the Fluevog "Angels" sole family... imagine bowling shoes, only much, much, much cooler. And they were on sale, marked down about $50, making my heart skip a beat even more and adding to the whole "kismet" feeling. (I know, I'm a dork.)
I asked a clerk if I could try on a pair in 8 1/2 and she said, "Mmm, well, all of these that you see marked down right here are limited editions and only one of each size was made. So what you see is all that we have, which means this is the only pair left, and it's ...[pause as she picked up the shoe]... um, incredible, it's an 8 1/2 exactly." I put them on immediately and they felt like they were made for me and are still my favorite pair of shoes today, getting me compliments and comments on a regular basis.
So on the day of an ex-lover's wedding vows, and exactly 5 years from the moment that I found out of my ex-husband's affair, and 7 years from the moment that we shared our own vows in the courthouse, and exactly 12 years from the moment that he and I met... there I stood in the only size left of a limited edition pair of shoes that felt like they'd been waiting for me to find them, right there in the city of my birth no less!
There is no key to finding happiness or to unlocking the mysteries of the heart, that's why it's a mystery. But everyone knows when they see two people cut from the same cloth and how beautiful they look together... it makes you want to spend time with them in the hopes to unravel some of that mystery for yourself. I used to look at those couples that make everything look so easy and wish I could be like that one day.
It occurred to me that I've finally stopped wishing for that day. It has arrived at last.
I know that I said that I wouldn't write about my muse again and I've tried to stay as far from our current musings as I could, but just like my feelings for the man himself, I can't seem to stay away for long. In my future life, I'll talk more openly about all the things I've come to appreciate in this great fit. But for now, I'll just express it all in one syllable:
*sigh*
Wednesday, January 12, 2005
Life Is Not a Dress Rehearsal
Reason. Season. Treason. Pleasin'. Hmm. I sense a song coming on...
There's no good reason or right season to commit treason for some pleasin'.
I'm rambling. This is my "to be continued" to the I'VE BEEN GIVEN REASON entry below that you've all been waiting for and I'm rambling. I have a lot of thoughts... some are filled with mere opinion, some are filled with pure emotion, but some are also filled with solid logic and reason. I'll try to give them all attention here.
It's only been one week since I last wrote about this subject that has taken up a large part of my heart and mind... the "subject" being a certain man and his situation in life right now. I still have to speak cryptically about the details that do not involve me, because of precisely that... they do not involve me. I know to anyone else reading this, this is just a story that has them wanting more detail, but instead you'll just have to settle for the feelings rather than the facts.
The weekend brought more change. We connected again. Deeper. Our friendship has grown by leaps and bounds even though we haven't known each other for more than 10 days now. Seems so much longer.
We talked and talked and talked, all with the same ease and pleasure as our first evening together, but this time I think we both were waiting for that moment when we might kiss. And then we did.
It was natural. No, not natural. It was supernatural. There was a sense that I was kissing myself, if I could clone myself into a man. You know how rare it is to find someone that well suited to your own style. I felt myself get wetter with every touch of his hands or lips.
I suggested to him that we not go too far, because he wasn't ready for that... I think I may have suggested it twice, without insisting. I already knew we were beyond that at the moment his lips had first touched mine.
We never stopped and the clothing came off slowly, but surely. I'd made public declarations that I would not sleep with this man, I'd told friends and I'd told myself that I wouldn't... that I could and would resist.
I couldn't and I didn't.
He showed no hesitation. He is the reason why I withdrew my public declarations. He was ready and his readiness left me without doubt. I was the first new woman that he'd been with in nearly a score of years and I knew what he had to have been feeling... how different things are and how the same they are, but the twinges of guilt that you are doing it at all. I let him lead.
We talked after. All manner of things, but of course we talked about his estranged wife as well. I listened mostly... it's what I do, I listen until I feel compelled to speak my opinion.
We slept. Not very well, but we tried. And when we woke, he made us tea. We talked more. I sensed his sadness creeping in again.
We went out again two days later and drove around looking for places that were open. Everything seemed closed. It was Sunday, but still, you'd think there'd be a place to find lunch pretty easily. We did finally eat and I talked more than he did this time. I told him more and more of my stories from my five years of dating post-divorce. I don't want him to feel that I'm just playing his counselor. I want him to know me and I want to be his friend.
At that point, we'd only known each other for exactly one week. Perhaps it's because we feel so natural together that it makes it difficult for us to believe how little time we've actually spent together.
We went back to my house this time and made love again... and again, I have to call it supernatural... or "spiritual" as he later called it. I knew by the intensity of my own experience that afterward it would probably open some floodgates of emotions. I tried to talk about sex as a distraction, but I could tell he was thinking about his emotions.
I reached over and held him and let him mourn. It made me want to cry with him, but I held back so that I could just be there for him. I kissed his tears and wished I could take away the pain, but I can't.
I worry now about writing of this moment, because I simply cannot find words to do it justice. I've been accused of being cold or uncomfortable with intense emotions by others in the past. But with this man, I feel that I have to reach out to him... it feels natural and so easy with him. Maybe because he is me in so many ways. He holds his emotions in and only lets them slip out when it's safe. His exterior shows a quiet, stoic man... but with my X-ray vision I see a crushed, shattered soul trapped inside.
I understand.
I feel that I give him small moments of safety, where he can be himself and express himself without judgment. I hope he feels that I do this for him, because that's all I want for him... to be able to find his own self-expression again. I have no other motivation.
He worries that he's reaping all the rewards of this scenario, that he gets to work out his troubles and his pain while being able to offer me nothing, not even a promise of any future, in return.
He doesn't know that I am gaining so much from this. I've been unable to reach out for probably 13 years now. I walled myself into an internal cocoon that protected me from the crushing pain of the world outside. As a result, I never connected to anyone else. I was told by people that I was "a tough read" and "hard to get to know" even after I thought I had been open and bared my soul. It hurt hearing them tell me that, but I didn't know how to fix it or reach out at all.
I've never found emotions easy, but there was a time when I could love openly and did so rather well. It was before my marriage and I cut that part of me off probably when I decided to have an abortion at the age of 21.
I stopped writing about myself back then too. I used to keep a journal and filled it with my nightly dreams as well as my hopes for the future. Then after the abortion, I wrote my last entry that said simply to the matter of, "I had an abortion yesterday. What a strange thing to say." After that, silence and empty pages. I just walled up the feelings and created a dam so strong that it took more than a decade to dismantle.
If I ever find that last journal of mine lying around here somewhere, I may post the entries. You'll see, it's so obvious to me now. I fortified that damn cocoon of mine by then getting involved and having kids with a man completely incapable of expressing any emotion other than anger or fear. He most certainly has Asperger's Syndrome (mild autism), but that is really no excuse for the levels of disrespect that he gave me. And I took it all, because I was so cut off from my real feelings that I couldn't even tell when I was being hurt anymore. I was one of the walking wounded.
It's true. I was suffering from post-traumatic stress and walking around completely unaware of the internal injuries, making excuses and rationalizations for my situation that were being fed to me by the person doing the most damage to me at the time: my then husband. I think of the state of mind as being similar to Stockholm Syndrome.
Strike that. Take two: responsibility. I was the person doing the most damage to me. I built the impenetrable dam. I lost many years of happiness thanks to living that way... I've lost a few years since ending that just trying to tear down the figurative walls.
Inside my literal walls, I live in a house in which every room is under construction. It's been this way since shortly after my ex-husband and I moved in 9 years ago... 9 years this February 1st.
Nine years. Nearly a decade of disrepair.
About 3 months ago, I was supposed to head downtown for some meeting that I was required to attend, but before doing so, I sat down on my couch in my living room to have a cup of tea. The tv was off and in the reflection of the black screen I could see me sitting there, framed on either side by two doorways that are still under construction. I then looked around my house with my eyes fully aware and I began to cry.
I talk a lot lately about crying in these blogs, yet I'm really not as depressed as this would represent me to be... not anymore. But I do feel things very deeply, which is why I had to build that dam back in 1992. When I cried three months ago, it was because I realized that my interior rooms of my soul were just like my house... left unfinished for years and untended.
I sat motionless on that couch with the tea in my hands for 4 hours... the tea long gone cold... the meeting that I was supposed to attend was over... and there I sat. "The long, dark tea-time of the soul," indeed. Actually, I'd come to be reminded of Great Expectations. How did I become Miss Havisham? An imprisoned state of mind. A prison of my own making.
That sentence had created a somnambulist -- catatonic and unresponsive for one-third of my adult life.
Not anymore. I've felt the last bits of the cocoon breaking away this past year and now suddenly as I stand poised to take flight without a clue where to go, a man comes along and he's exactly where I was. "I can help if you let me!" I call out, hoping he can really hear me.
I want to change my prison into something else. Gone are the blockades and the cobwebs and the fear... up comes a new state of mind. It's not a prison if you put yourself there in the first place and hold the key in your hand.
Shift. Change. Switch. New point-of-view. New perspective. Open the gate and suddenly the safety of your prison becomes a quiet oasis.
We were together again last night. No tears this time, just discussion of things again, sprinkled with momentary bliss. I may not yet have the lush oasis that I've imagined, but it's growing. And by comparison to where this man is right now after walking towards a mirage for the last decade or so, my little safe haven is a very real oasis. As far as I'm concerned, he can stay and drink from it as long as he wishes. I enjoy the company.
And more than that, I enjoy feeling deeply again.
Post-Script:
This will be my last entry on this subject that has been the muse for such eloquent prose. The subject matter is far too deep and complex to present in such a flippant forum. I shall keep the rest of this experience close to the breast until further notice. Back to more trivial blogging pursuits, I go... at least for the nonce!
Post-Post-Script:
Regardless of my secrecy, I still appreciate your feedback.
--She...
There's no good reason or right season to commit treason for some pleasin'.
I'm rambling. This is my "to be continued" to the I'VE BEEN GIVEN REASON entry below that you've all been waiting for and I'm rambling. I have a lot of thoughts... some are filled with mere opinion, some are filled with pure emotion, but some are also filled with solid logic and reason. I'll try to give them all attention here.
It's only been one week since I last wrote about this subject that has taken up a large part of my heart and mind... the "subject" being a certain man and his situation in life right now. I still have to speak cryptically about the details that do not involve me, because of precisely that... they do not involve me. I know to anyone else reading this, this is just a story that has them wanting more detail, but instead you'll just have to settle for the feelings rather than the facts.
The weekend brought more change. We connected again. Deeper. Our friendship has grown by leaps and bounds even though we haven't known each other for more than 10 days now. Seems so much longer.
We talked and talked and talked, all with the same ease and pleasure as our first evening together, but this time I think we both were waiting for that moment when we might kiss. And then we did.
It was natural. No, not natural. It was supernatural. There was a sense that I was kissing myself, if I could clone myself into a man. You know how rare it is to find someone that well suited to your own style. I felt myself get wetter with every touch of his hands or lips.
I suggested to him that we not go too far, because he wasn't ready for that... I think I may have suggested it twice, without insisting. I already knew we were beyond that at the moment his lips had first touched mine.
We never stopped and the clothing came off slowly, but surely. I'd made public declarations that I would not sleep with this man, I'd told friends and I'd told myself that I wouldn't... that I could and would resist.
I couldn't and I didn't.
He showed no hesitation. He is the reason why I withdrew my public declarations. He was ready and his readiness left me without doubt. I was the first new woman that he'd been with in nearly a score of years and I knew what he had to have been feeling... how different things are and how the same they are, but the twinges of guilt that you are doing it at all. I let him lead.
We talked after. All manner of things, but of course we talked about his estranged wife as well. I listened mostly... it's what I do, I listen until I feel compelled to speak my opinion.
We slept. Not very well, but we tried. And when we woke, he made us tea. We talked more. I sensed his sadness creeping in again.
We went out again two days later and drove around looking for places that were open. Everything seemed closed. It was Sunday, but still, you'd think there'd be a place to find lunch pretty easily. We did finally eat and I talked more than he did this time. I told him more and more of my stories from my five years of dating post-divorce. I don't want him to feel that I'm just playing his counselor. I want him to know me and I want to be his friend.
At that point, we'd only known each other for exactly one week. Perhaps it's because we feel so natural together that it makes it difficult for us to believe how little time we've actually spent together.
We went back to my house this time and made love again... and again, I have to call it supernatural... or "spiritual" as he later called it. I knew by the intensity of my own experience that afterward it would probably open some floodgates of emotions. I tried to talk about sex as a distraction, but I could tell he was thinking about his emotions.
I reached over and held him and let him mourn. It made me want to cry with him, but I held back so that I could just be there for him. I kissed his tears and wished I could take away the pain, but I can't.
I worry now about writing of this moment, because I simply cannot find words to do it justice. I've been accused of being cold or uncomfortable with intense emotions by others in the past. But with this man, I feel that I have to reach out to him... it feels natural and so easy with him. Maybe because he is me in so many ways. He holds his emotions in and only lets them slip out when it's safe. His exterior shows a quiet, stoic man... but with my X-ray vision I see a crushed, shattered soul trapped inside.
I understand.
I feel that I give him small moments of safety, where he can be himself and express himself without judgment. I hope he feels that I do this for him, because that's all I want for him... to be able to find his own self-expression again. I have no other motivation.
He worries that he's reaping all the rewards of this scenario, that he gets to work out his troubles and his pain while being able to offer me nothing, not even a promise of any future, in return.
He doesn't know that I am gaining so much from this. I've been unable to reach out for probably 13 years now. I walled myself into an internal cocoon that protected me from the crushing pain of the world outside. As a result, I never connected to anyone else. I was told by people that I was "a tough read" and "hard to get to know" even after I thought I had been open and bared my soul. It hurt hearing them tell me that, but I didn't know how to fix it or reach out at all.
I've never found emotions easy, but there was a time when I could love openly and did so rather well. It was before my marriage and I cut that part of me off probably when I decided to have an abortion at the age of 21.
I stopped writing about myself back then too. I used to keep a journal and filled it with my nightly dreams as well as my hopes for the future. Then after the abortion, I wrote my last entry that said simply to the matter of, "I had an abortion yesterday. What a strange thing to say." After that, silence and empty pages. I just walled up the feelings and created a dam so strong that it took more than a decade to dismantle.
If I ever find that last journal of mine lying around here somewhere, I may post the entries. You'll see, it's so obvious to me now. I fortified that damn cocoon of mine by then getting involved and having kids with a man completely incapable of expressing any emotion other than anger or fear. He most certainly has Asperger's Syndrome (mild autism), but that is really no excuse for the levels of disrespect that he gave me. And I took it all, because I was so cut off from my real feelings that I couldn't even tell when I was being hurt anymore. I was one of the walking wounded.
It's true. I was suffering from post-traumatic stress and walking around completely unaware of the internal injuries, making excuses and rationalizations for my situation that were being fed to me by the person doing the most damage to me at the time: my then husband. I think of the state of mind as being similar to Stockholm Syndrome.
Strike that. Take two: responsibility. I was the person doing the most damage to me. I built the impenetrable dam. I lost many years of happiness thanks to living that way... I've lost a few years since ending that just trying to tear down the figurative walls.
Inside my literal walls, I live in a house in which every room is under construction. It's been this way since shortly after my ex-husband and I moved in 9 years ago... 9 years this February 1st.
Nine years. Nearly a decade of disrepair.
About 3 months ago, I was supposed to head downtown for some meeting that I was required to attend, but before doing so, I sat down on my couch in my living room to have a cup of tea. The tv was off and in the reflection of the black screen I could see me sitting there, framed on either side by two doorways that are still under construction. I then looked around my house with my eyes fully aware and I began to cry.
I talk a lot lately about crying in these blogs, yet I'm really not as depressed as this would represent me to be... not anymore. But I do feel things very deeply, which is why I had to build that dam back in 1992. When I cried three months ago, it was because I realized that my interior rooms of my soul were just like my house... left unfinished for years and untended.
I sat motionless on that couch with the tea in my hands for 4 hours... the tea long gone cold... the meeting that I was supposed to attend was over... and there I sat. "The long, dark tea-time of the soul," indeed. Actually, I'd come to be reminded of Great Expectations. How did I become Miss Havisham? An imprisoned state of mind. A prison of my own making.
That sentence had created a somnambulist -- catatonic and unresponsive for one-third of my adult life.
Not anymore. I've felt the last bits of the cocoon breaking away this past year and now suddenly as I stand poised to take flight without a clue where to go, a man comes along and he's exactly where I was. "I can help if you let me!" I call out, hoping he can really hear me.
I want to change my prison into something else. Gone are the blockades and the cobwebs and the fear... up comes a new state of mind. It's not a prison if you put yourself there in the first place and hold the key in your hand.
Shift. Change. Switch. New point-of-view. New perspective. Open the gate and suddenly the safety of your prison becomes a quiet oasis.
We were together again last night. No tears this time, just discussion of things again, sprinkled with momentary bliss. I may not yet have the lush oasis that I've imagined, but it's growing. And by comparison to where this man is right now after walking towards a mirage for the last decade or so, my little safe haven is a very real oasis. As far as I'm concerned, he can stay and drink from it as long as he wishes. I enjoy the company.
And more than that, I enjoy feeling deeply again.
Post-Script:
This will be my last entry on this subject that has been the muse for such eloquent prose. The subject matter is far too deep and complex to present in such a flippant forum. I shall keep the rest of this experience close to the breast until further notice. Back to more trivial blogging pursuits, I go... at least for the nonce!
Post-Post-Script:
Regardless of my secrecy, I still appreciate your feedback.
--She...
Wednesday, January 05, 2005
I've Been Given Reason
I've been quiet for a few days... I've been thinking...
Everyone who comes into our lives changes us in some way, whether profound or subtle, there is change. You can even break this down to a chemical level and say that when a person has a new thought, electrical impulses shoot through the brain, causing a new chemical reaction to store that thought in short term memory, later to possibly be processed into long term memory while we sleep or else meshed into other similar experiences in a less accessible area.
That's the technical way of looking at it. In a metaphysical sense, everyone comes into our lives for a reason. You've heard that before, but who can argue against it? We see it happening all the time, as people's lives are changed, enhanced, or affected in some way or another (better/worse) by another person.
Usually these effects are too subtle to notice. We're too busy in our day-to-day grind to really have time to notice all the minute signs of change occurring within and around us... unless it's something huge, like a new Super Wal-Mart going up just around the corner.
Where are these thoughts leading, you wonder? Well, I'm about to do something I rarely do: write about someone I only just met.
I don't do this because it usually takes me a while of getting to know someone to finally be inspired to write about them in blog form... and that is usually after my relationship to them has run its course. This is a new turn for me, but I feel that I must write about this now because I was profoundly affected by someone in a span of just a few short hours this past Sunday.
Despite my ability to speak freely in digital form, it usually takes me quite a while to know how I feel about someone after I meet them in person, and some of those people make great stories because of their quirks. Add to that equation the fact that if I do meet someone I'm truly attracted to, I usually clam up and appear to not like them because of my damned shyness. If I am truly intrigued by you, I am not the cyber slut you've read about in these pages... instead, I'm quiet and quite proper.
Is this a Jekyll and Hyde persona thing? A bit, yes. My true self is painfully shy, but I've taught myself to be social... trained myself in various ways, whether assisted through social lubricants or just relying upon acting classes or cognitive training.
On a few, very rare occasions in my painfully shy past though, I've encountered people who made me flee out of fear that I would do or say something so embarrassing that I'd never be able to show my face again. These lucky souls usually think that I hate them, when in fact I was actually attracted to them to a degree that I became mute. I can count these number of people (all men, of course) on one hand: three.
The funny thing is that I later befriended two of them. I never dated either of these men, but I feel a deep kinship to both of them that goes beyond the physical and I'm thankful for their friendship. Dating them would never have worked, as they were both men who could not be tied down by a woman with children, and that's okay. They're both good people and I consider myself blessed to call either of them "friend."
Until now, I thought these men were the only two that existed. But I've just recalled the third man. I'll get to that story shortly.
On to this Sunday: I re-upped on that dating site mentioned previously as "snatch rot bomb" due to a glitch in their system. Despite my deleting my profile from their system a few weeks back, I received some alerts that I had brand new messages there last Thursday. So I signed in again to see what this was all about and it turned out to be a mirage. There were no messages at all. I didn't realize that just signing in would reactivate an account, however, and so I signed out that night unaware.
By late the next day, I was getting a couple of new "winks" and messages, so I thought I might go delete myself from there again, but not before I got another message from a man with whom I had "winked" back and forth with weeks earlier and he'd then sent me a message, to which I couldn't respond because I refused to pay for membership there.
His new message subject line stated that I'd just "re-winked" at him. This was impossible, because you can't do that twice in one month's time and because I hadn't actually done that at all this time. It was yet another glitch in the system. I felt compelled to write to him and tell him about this glitch, so I did something that I'd never done in the history of my online dating experience: I paid for membership at "snatch rot bomb."
It was New Years Eve and I wrote him to befriend him, but that's all. His profile said he's currently separated, and I simply don't interfere with married men. But I guess befriending one is interfering, isn't it smarty pants? Yes, I know. Aaaaaanyway, I gave him my direct email info in case he wanted to have a new friend and we both live in the same circle of suburban hell, so I figured that we could commiserate together on the crap of divorce or what have you.
I immediately left for an exciting night of time spent at my mother's house for New Year's Eve... she bought me green apple martini mix and vodka. So about 6 hours and 5 martinis later, I returned home at the oh-so late time of 12:30. Yeah, woohoo! Party girl here! I thought it would be a good time to ethernet my 4 home computers together, despite the fact that (1) I was tipsy and (2) I don't know how to do that while sober.
I also thought that since I was now home, it would be a good idea to first guzzle the 2 small bottles of crappy Spumanti down that my mom let me take home. After those were in my gullet, I then had the good idea to write yet another message to the cupid-glitch-match man and give him my cell phone number. I never do that sober or drunk anywhere, yet I did it that night anyway. I hadn't even heard back from him yet, but there I was doling out my digits.
By Sunday I was sure that my second drunken email to the man had scared him away, since I hadn't heard from him yet, so for some reason I was compelled to send a third email apologizing for showing any signs of foot-in-mouth disease before. I usually have better patience than that, but I really wanted to talk to this guy... and his message to me had said that he reeeeeaaaaalllly wanted to talk to me too. Really.
Little did I know that while I was off dealing with the chitlins here in other parts of the house, he emailed me at last and apologized for the delay that came because of the holidays. I never saw those emails: one to my direct email account and one reply to my "snatch rot bomb" profile.
At around 3:30, my cell phone rang with a number I didn't recognize. Usually, I let those go to voicemail, but I'd hoped it might be this mysterious guy I'd been waiting to hear back from and... it was indeed.
At this point, I'd like to say how glad I was to hear his accent... or rather, to not hear any form of an accent that sounded like I was getting a call from Gomer Pyle. I cannot tell you how many times that I've met or talked to people who sound like the twangiest twangers to ever live in the Bible Belt and my "inability to relate" barrier instantly goes up. Alabama accents are the worst. Shut up, y'all know it's true.
My mystery man turned out to be a Brit and I couldn't have been more pleasantly surprised... like the first musical notes heard to a deaf ear after a cochlear implant.
In less than an hour of conversation, I knew I had to meet this guy. We discovered that both of our now 11 year old sons had attended the same day care center and had been in the same 1-year-old room a decade earlier. And that wasn't the end of the crossovers.
The details of why he was separated now mirrored the details of my divorce 5 years ago in a way that was eerily similar. I felt an instant kinship with him... and here I'd jokingly said in my first email to him:
"As for you and your sitch, I know that when I winked the first time I thought, "Wow, cute guy... too bad he's gonna be a head case for a while thanks to the impending divorce." I say that with all warmth and sympathy though, as I know first hand what it takes to get over a failed marriage... and you're still only in the separation stage. You've got MILES and MILES ahead of you on the recovery path, my friend. I hope for your sake that it isn't a vicious one like mine was. I'm now exactly 5 years post-divorce and I'm FINALLY ready to have a real relationship after all this time.
My ex, however, started dating someone right off the bat and has been married to ex.2 (as I lovingly call her) ever since.
Regardless of any baggage, you do seem like a swell guy, and we're here in the same town and seem to like a lot of the same things... it couldn't hurt to have a fellow pal who can commiserate with you and know where you've been, right? Plus, I have 2 boys as well (11 and 9) and a girl (7)... maybe both of our oldests know each other already. That would be funny."
I said all that with nothing at all to go on and days before I found out how true that might be. Uncanny, I tell you. Simply uncanny.
He asked me to meet him and I looked at my schedule: I was free that night, which is a miracle in and of itself. It was like everything just lined up for me to be prepared to meet him... my ex had even scheduled in advance for taking the kids out for dinner that night... something he hardly ever does on a Sunday night.
We agreed on one location (Thai) but reconsidered due to high costs, so changed the plan to right down the way from there (Mexican). I arrived first, just before 7pm, and the place was closed for the holidays! It took him a few minutes more and then he walked up.
Now you're all used to me commenting on people's drastic difference between how they represent themselves online and actually look in person. Not this time, people. He looked exactly like his photo and description and I probably could have picked him out of a crowded room.
We wound up having to walk over to the Thai place because they were at least open. Dinner went well. It was so easy to talk to him, though I'll admit that when I looked directly into his eyes, I'd get some butterflies. But I'd stated before we went out that this was a NON-date... I would pay my own way, we would only be hanging out as new friends... all because he's in no position to be dating at the moment. I could hear it in his voice over the phone and wasn't at all surprised to see him still wearing his wedding band when he arrived.
Still, despite my attempt to label it as a NON-date, it felt like one anyway.
But before you readers get your hopes up for some smut here, there was absolutely none that. Stop reading now if that's all you're waiting for.
Dinner didn't seem like enough time, so we walked over to Starbucks to continue talking. The conversation flowed really effortlessly. We talked about everything and anything... our marriages came up a bit, so did our kids, but we also briefly discussed science, religion, politics, movies, our parents, and all the details in-between.
Yet another weird coincidence: his father is a scientist (entomologist) and his mother took nursing courses before she started raising her children; my mother's career is a nurse and my father has a degree in biology, taught science at the h.s. level for a while, now is a laboratory equipment salesman. His family moved around frequently due to his dad's career; so did mine... although, admittedly, his father's career was far more interesting than my father's and they lived in far off places all over the globe, while I lived in suburban places all over the States.
We didn't even realize that 10pm had rolled around and they were closing the place and needing us to leave. Neither of us were ready for the NON-date to end, but here in Larryville on a Sunday night, the only thing left is the movie theater. He agreed, I called for times, and BINGO... next one started in just 5 minutes, so we zipped over in my minivan... we had our choice of two, his or mine.
I took him to see CLOSER. Yes, I'd seen it already, but it's a damn good movie and something that I knew he really needed to see... if only just to feel connected to something else because of what was happening in his life right now. I was apprehensive though. Movies can unlock some floodgates, like LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL did for me back in early 1999. Again, don't laugh. There was an element that touched a chord in me that resonated so deeply at that moment in time, I sobbed for the last hour or so of the movie and for 2 hours afterward.
I also recalled moments for me during the darkest and last months of my marriage when acquaintances said something that impacted me in a way that it was like a light bulb turning on for me at last. Actually, those comments were more like a lighthouse in the distance... with me adrift out at sea and not knowing where the shoreline could be.
Shit, there's that torch/looking out to sea analogy that came out in the German date. Dammit, maybe he was right in saying that he was actually me in this dream. Sorry, I'm digressing again.
Back to this past Sunday night. I felt the whole time that I was with him that I already knew him. When I looked at his face, I could see the sadness that he was hiding just behind the smiles... the way that I did 5 years ago. I was looking at him and seeing myself and wishing I could let him change positions with me for a brief moment so that he could see his current self from years down the road.
But I can't do that. All I can do is be a lighthouse for him, but he has to decide which direction he's going to steer the ship.
During the course of our evening, I also realized that I did in fact remember his son from the daycare center a decade earlier and that I could picture him as well, but for some reason I felt that we had some interaction... I was picturing the space and look of the moment, but not the words or the details.
Anyway, I brought him back to his car and we chatted a bit more about his situation. I told him a few more things that I haven't admitted to anyone else in 5 years, because who would've understood. I knew he would though.
Before he got out, he sweetly asked if he could just kiss my cheek. Of course I agreed, and I actually felt myself blush as he did it. I've done things on other first actual dates that could've made a call girl blush, but this sweet peck on the cheek actually made me a little dizzy.
As I drove away with no music on, only my thoughts and still blushing from the moment, that's when it hit me... our interaction a decade earlier. He was the third man.
I was in the Toddler I observatory/coat room where you could stand behind a two-way mirror and watch the goings on in the classroom. I don't know what I was watching, maybe they were just napping, and that's when HE walked into the room... perhaps to pick up his son. He stopped to look in the classroom too and he spoke to me. It was brief and friendly, I don't even remember the words at all now, probably just "which one is yours?" But I remember vividly what happened with me physically: I froze and became mute and blushed bright red. I know I got out of there quickly then, because even though the room was darkened, I was sure he'd see how red I'd turned.
I remember feeling not only the usual embarrassment of this thing, but also upset with myself for feeling that kind of intense and instant attraction for another man while I was married. I had to avoid him at all cost from then on out of fear that my secret would get discovered. I had no way to turn this feeling off once it happened like that, but I certainly could keep it at bay by running away from it.
Five years later, my husband didn't give me the same kind of courtesy. In his moment, he ran with it and began an affair with a co-worker. The movie CLOSER has a line about that moment where you have a choice... and it's really a long moment when you think about it... the initial attraction, the decision to get closer to that person, the decision to cross that line into intimacy or not... there's a place to stop anywhere before that. What allows us to overcome an urge? Strength of character, that's what. Integrity. Respect. Loyalty. Pick one. They all work.
When I got home that night from the NON-date, I began to cry. Not for myself, but for this man that I just met. For the place he's been forced into right now... for the decisions about his future that will affect him and his children... and for how unfair all of that is, really.
And tonight I found myself having a cry again. What's wrong with me, I wondered? Empathy, that's what. I felt connected to this man in just the span of 9 hours of getting to know each other. I feel intrinsically connected to him now and though I don't want to have any influence over his decisions right now, the fact that he knows me is changing him. Anything I say or do is changing him now.
What I blurted out earlier tonight in IM to my bestest gal pal Nadine maybe sums it up best:
"I honestly don't know how anyone forms lasting relationships anymore.
There are too many choices, too many reasons to keep from committing to any decision at all.
Nothing seems grounded to me anymore.
I feel like a dot on a gigantic grid... just one of many hundreds of thousands like me in my quadrant...
and then suddenly, for the first time in years and years... decades possibly... I could look at this man and see myself so easily and yet he's just out of reach and still lost... it all comes to that one moment, where I could be filled with so much compassion for one person that I just met that it makes my eyes well up...
...to see the pain he's hiding right behind the mask of a smile that he's using to "get by" in his daily life... trying to hide the pain of his confusion and loneliness... trying to keep people who already know what's going on from coming up and saying in that patronizing tone, "Are you doing okay today?"
He didn't have to tell me any of it. I just saw it all there.
And when I came home from our non-date that night, I cried for him. I couldn't help it. I know exactly where he is because I've been there.
And then the thought hit me that that might be the closest I get to truly feeling connected to another person ever.
So as I sat here tonight looking at all these women who "snatch rot bomb" says are "like me"... reading their profiles and seeing that yes, in fact, they are just variations of me... I realized that I might be the only person who sees this grid for what it is.
And that everyone else is playing that game without seeing the grid at all and never understanding why they're not connecting... because if they can't see the grid, they can't step off of it either... or won't, whichever.
And I think of this man, who is standing on the precipice of either going back to what he knows, or falling headlong into this grid that I've been on for 5 years and fading into disillusionment like the rest of us... and I see myself 5 years ago and sometimes I wonder if I could talk to me then, would I tell me to turn back?"
Last week, the answer would have been "perhaps." But all that changed this Sunday, when I realized by meeting this new person what all these past 5 years have been for: so that I can just be here in this moment to understand him. If that's all that it's been for, then it's been worth it. And if that's all there is beyond it, so be it. I would not tell me to turn back.
Everyone comes into your life for a reason, and usually right at that moment that you needed them to step in. The obvious would be to say that he needed to befriend someone like me right now, someone who's been there. But the less obvious would be that I needed to befriend someone like him... someone who is holding a mirror up and showing me where I came from at a time when I'm feeling jaded about where I am now.
Everything makes sense right now. Perhaps there really is a grander method to the madness after all.
Everyone who comes into our lives changes us in some way, whether profound or subtle, there is change. You can even break this down to a chemical level and say that when a person has a new thought, electrical impulses shoot through the brain, causing a new chemical reaction to store that thought in short term memory, later to possibly be processed into long term memory while we sleep or else meshed into other similar experiences in a less accessible area.
That's the technical way of looking at it. In a metaphysical sense, everyone comes into our lives for a reason. You've heard that before, but who can argue against it? We see it happening all the time, as people's lives are changed, enhanced, or affected in some way or another (better/worse) by another person.
Usually these effects are too subtle to notice. We're too busy in our day-to-day grind to really have time to notice all the minute signs of change occurring within and around us... unless it's something huge, like a new Super Wal-Mart going up just around the corner.
Where are these thoughts leading, you wonder? Well, I'm about to do something I rarely do: write about someone I only just met.
I don't do this because it usually takes me a while of getting to know someone to finally be inspired to write about them in blog form... and that is usually after my relationship to them has run its course. This is a new turn for me, but I feel that I must write about this now because I was profoundly affected by someone in a span of just a few short hours this past Sunday.
Despite my ability to speak freely in digital form, it usually takes me quite a while to know how I feel about someone after I meet them in person, and some of those people make great stories because of their quirks. Add to that equation the fact that if I do meet someone I'm truly attracted to, I usually clam up and appear to not like them because of my damned shyness. If I am truly intrigued by you, I am not the cyber slut you've read about in these pages... instead, I'm quiet and quite proper.
Is this a Jekyll and Hyde persona thing? A bit, yes. My true self is painfully shy, but I've taught myself to be social... trained myself in various ways, whether assisted through social lubricants or just relying upon acting classes or cognitive training.
On a few, very rare occasions in my painfully shy past though, I've encountered people who made me flee out of fear that I would do or say something so embarrassing that I'd never be able to show my face again. These lucky souls usually think that I hate them, when in fact I was actually attracted to them to a degree that I became mute. I can count these number of people (all men, of course) on one hand: three.
The funny thing is that I later befriended two of them. I never dated either of these men, but I feel a deep kinship to both of them that goes beyond the physical and I'm thankful for their friendship. Dating them would never have worked, as they were both men who could not be tied down by a woman with children, and that's okay. They're both good people and I consider myself blessed to call either of them "friend."
Until now, I thought these men were the only two that existed. But I've just recalled the third man. I'll get to that story shortly.
On to this Sunday: I re-upped on that dating site mentioned previously as "snatch rot bomb" due to a glitch in their system. Despite my deleting my profile from their system a few weeks back, I received some alerts that I had brand new messages there last Thursday. So I signed in again to see what this was all about and it turned out to be a mirage. There were no messages at all. I didn't realize that just signing in would reactivate an account, however, and so I signed out that night unaware.
By late the next day, I was getting a couple of new "winks" and messages, so I thought I might go delete myself from there again, but not before I got another message from a man with whom I had "winked" back and forth with weeks earlier and he'd then sent me a message, to which I couldn't respond because I refused to pay for membership there.
His new message subject line stated that I'd just "re-winked" at him. This was impossible, because you can't do that twice in one month's time and because I hadn't actually done that at all this time. It was yet another glitch in the system. I felt compelled to write to him and tell him about this glitch, so I did something that I'd never done in the history of my online dating experience: I paid for membership at "snatch rot bomb."
It was New Years Eve and I wrote him to befriend him, but that's all. His profile said he's currently separated, and I simply don't interfere with married men. But I guess befriending one is interfering, isn't it smarty pants? Yes, I know. Aaaaaanyway, I gave him my direct email info in case he wanted to have a new friend and we both live in the same circle of suburban hell, so I figured that we could commiserate together on the crap of divorce or what have you.
I immediately left for an exciting night of time spent at my mother's house for New Year's Eve... she bought me green apple martini mix and vodka. So about 6 hours and 5 martinis later, I returned home at the oh-so late time of 12:30. Yeah, woohoo! Party girl here! I thought it would be a good time to ethernet my 4 home computers together, despite the fact that (1) I was tipsy and (2) I don't know how to do that while sober.
I also thought that since I was now home, it would be a good idea to first guzzle the 2 small bottles of crappy Spumanti down that my mom let me take home. After those were in my gullet, I then had the good idea to write yet another message to the cupid-glitch-match man and give him my cell phone number. I never do that sober or drunk anywhere, yet I did it that night anyway. I hadn't even heard back from him yet, but there I was doling out my digits.
By Sunday I was sure that my second drunken email to the man had scared him away, since I hadn't heard from him yet, so for some reason I was compelled to send a third email apologizing for showing any signs of foot-in-mouth disease before. I usually have better patience than that, but I really wanted to talk to this guy... and his message to me had said that he reeeeeaaaaalllly wanted to talk to me too. Really.
Little did I know that while I was off dealing with the chitlins here in other parts of the house, he emailed me at last and apologized for the delay that came because of the holidays. I never saw those emails: one to my direct email account and one reply to my "snatch rot bomb" profile.
At around 3:30, my cell phone rang with a number I didn't recognize. Usually, I let those go to voicemail, but I'd hoped it might be this mysterious guy I'd been waiting to hear back from and... it was indeed.
At this point, I'd like to say how glad I was to hear his accent... or rather, to not hear any form of an accent that sounded like I was getting a call from Gomer Pyle. I cannot tell you how many times that I've met or talked to people who sound like the twangiest twangers to ever live in the Bible Belt and my "inability to relate" barrier instantly goes up. Alabama accents are the worst. Shut up, y'all know it's true.
My mystery man turned out to be a Brit and I couldn't have been more pleasantly surprised... like the first musical notes heard to a deaf ear after a cochlear implant.
In less than an hour of conversation, I knew I had to meet this guy. We discovered that both of our now 11 year old sons had attended the same day care center and had been in the same 1-year-old room a decade earlier. And that wasn't the end of the crossovers.
The details of why he was separated now mirrored the details of my divorce 5 years ago in a way that was eerily similar. I felt an instant kinship with him... and here I'd jokingly said in my first email to him:
"As for you and your sitch, I know that when I winked the first time I thought, "Wow, cute guy... too bad he's gonna be a head case for a while thanks to the impending divorce." I say that with all warmth and sympathy though, as I know first hand what it takes to get over a failed marriage... and you're still only in the separation stage. You've got MILES and MILES ahead of you on the recovery path, my friend. I hope for your sake that it isn't a vicious one like mine was. I'm now exactly 5 years post-divorce and I'm FINALLY ready to have a real relationship after all this time.
My ex, however, started dating someone right off the bat and has been married to ex.2 (as I lovingly call her) ever since.
Regardless of any baggage, you do seem like a swell guy, and we're here in the same town and seem to like a lot of the same things... it couldn't hurt to have a fellow pal who can commiserate with you and know where you've been, right? Plus, I have 2 boys as well (11 and 9) and a girl (7)... maybe both of our oldests know each other already. That would be funny."
I said all that with nothing at all to go on and days before I found out how true that might be. Uncanny, I tell you. Simply uncanny.
He asked me to meet him and I looked at my schedule: I was free that night, which is a miracle in and of itself. It was like everything just lined up for me to be prepared to meet him... my ex had even scheduled in advance for taking the kids out for dinner that night... something he hardly ever does on a Sunday night.
We agreed on one location (Thai) but reconsidered due to high costs, so changed the plan to right down the way from there (Mexican). I arrived first, just before 7pm, and the place was closed for the holidays! It took him a few minutes more and then he walked up.
Now you're all used to me commenting on people's drastic difference between how they represent themselves online and actually look in person. Not this time, people. He looked exactly like his photo and description and I probably could have picked him out of a crowded room.
We wound up having to walk over to the Thai place because they were at least open. Dinner went well. It was so easy to talk to him, though I'll admit that when I looked directly into his eyes, I'd get some butterflies. But I'd stated before we went out that this was a NON-date... I would pay my own way, we would only be hanging out as new friends... all because he's in no position to be dating at the moment. I could hear it in his voice over the phone and wasn't at all surprised to see him still wearing his wedding band when he arrived.
Still, despite my attempt to label it as a NON-date, it felt like one anyway.
But before you readers get your hopes up for some smut here, there was absolutely none that. Stop reading now if that's all you're waiting for.
Dinner didn't seem like enough time, so we walked over to Starbucks to continue talking. The conversation flowed really effortlessly. We talked about everything and anything... our marriages came up a bit, so did our kids, but we also briefly discussed science, religion, politics, movies, our parents, and all the details in-between.
Yet another weird coincidence: his father is a scientist (entomologist) and his mother took nursing courses before she started raising her children; my mother's career is a nurse and my father has a degree in biology, taught science at the h.s. level for a while, now is a laboratory equipment salesman. His family moved around frequently due to his dad's career; so did mine... although, admittedly, his father's career was far more interesting than my father's and they lived in far off places all over the globe, while I lived in suburban places all over the States.
We didn't even realize that 10pm had rolled around and they were closing the place and needing us to leave. Neither of us were ready for the NON-date to end, but here in Larryville on a Sunday night, the only thing left is the movie theater. He agreed, I called for times, and BINGO... next one started in just 5 minutes, so we zipped over in my minivan... we had our choice of two, his or mine.
I took him to see CLOSER. Yes, I'd seen it already, but it's a damn good movie and something that I knew he really needed to see... if only just to feel connected to something else because of what was happening in his life right now. I was apprehensive though. Movies can unlock some floodgates, like LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL did for me back in early 1999. Again, don't laugh. There was an element that touched a chord in me that resonated so deeply at that moment in time, I sobbed for the last hour or so of the movie and for 2 hours afterward.
I also recalled moments for me during the darkest and last months of my marriage when acquaintances said something that impacted me in a way that it was like a light bulb turning on for me at last. Actually, those comments were more like a lighthouse in the distance... with me adrift out at sea and not knowing where the shoreline could be.
Shit, there's that torch/looking out to sea analogy that came out in the German date. Dammit, maybe he was right in saying that he was actually me in this dream. Sorry, I'm digressing again.
Back to this past Sunday night. I felt the whole time that I was with him that I already knew him. When I looked at his face, I could see the sadness that he was hiding just behind the smiles... the way that I did 5 years ago. I was looking at him and seeing myself and wishing I could let him change positions with me for a brief moment so that he could see his current self from years down the road.
But I can't do that. All I can do is be a lighthouse for him, but he has to decide which direction he's going to steer the ship.
During the course of our evening, I also realized that I did in fact remember his son from the daycare center a decade earlier and that I could picture him as well, but for some reason I felt that we had some interaction... I was picturing the space and look of the moment, but not the words or the details.
Anyway, I brought him back to his car and we chatted a bit more about his situation. I told him a few more things that I haven't admitted to anyone else in 5 years, because who would've understood. I knew he would though.
Before he got out, he sweetly asked if he could just kiss my cheek. Of course I agreed, and I actually felt myself blush as he did it. I've done things on other first actual dates that could've made a call girl blush, but this sweet peck on the cheek actually made me a little dizzy.
As I drove away with no music on, only my thoughts and still blushing from the moment, that's when it hit me... our interaction a decade earlier. He was the third man.
I was in the Toddler I observatory/coat room where you could stand behind a two-way mirror and watch the goings on in the classroom. I don't know what I was watching, maybe they were just napping, and that's when HE walked into the room... perhaps to pick up his son. He stopped to look in the classroom too and he spoke to me. It was brief and friendly, I don't even remember the words at all now, probably just "which one is yours?" But I remember vividly what happened with me physically: I froze and became mute and blushed bright red. I know I got out of there quickly then, because even though the room was darkened, I was sure he'd see how red I'd turned.
I remember feeling not only the usual embarrassment of this thing, but also upset with myself for feeling that kind of intense and instant attraction for another man while I was married. I had to avoid him at all cost from then on out of fear that my secret would get discovered. I had no way to turn this feeling off once it happened like that, but I certainly could keep it at bay by running away from it.
Five years later, my husband didn't give me the same kind of courtesy. In his moment, he ran with it and began an affair with a co-worker. The movie CLOSER has a line about that moment where you have a choice... and it's really a long moment when you think about it... the initial attraction, the decision to get closer to that person, the decision to cross that line into intimacy or not... there's a place to stop anywhere before that. What allows us to overcome an urge? Strength of character, that's what. Integrity. Respect. Loyalty. Pick one. They all work.
When I got home that night from the NON-date, I began to cry. Not for myself, but for this man that I just met. For the place he's been forced into right now... for the decisions about his future that will affect him and his children... and for how unfair all of that is, really.
And tonight I found myself having a cry again. What's wrong with me, I wondered? Empathy, that's what. I felt connected to this man in just the span of 9 hours of getting to know each other. I feel intrinsically connected to him now and though I don't want to have any influence over his decisions right now, the fact that he knows me is changing him. Anything I say or do is changing him now.
What I blurted out earlier tonight in IM to my bestest gal pal Nadine maybe sums it up best:
"I honestly don't know how anyone forms lasting relationships anymore.
There are too many choices, too many reasons to keep from committing to any decision at all.
Nothing seems grounded to me anymore.
I feel like a dot on a gigantic grid... just one of many hundreds of thousands like me in my quadrant...
and then suddenly, for the first time in years and years... decades possibly... I could look at this man and see myself so easily and yet he's just out of reach and still lost... it all comes to that one moment, where I could be filled with so much compassion for one person that I just met that it makes my eyes well up...
...to see the pain he's hiding right behind the mask of a smile that he's using to "get by" in his daily life... trying to hide the pain of his confusion and loneliness... trying to keep people who already know what's going on from coming up and saying in that patronizing tone, "Are you doing okay today?"
He didn't have to tell me any of it. I just saw it all there.
And when I came home from our non-date that night, I cried for him. I couldn't help it. I know exactly where he is because I've been there.
And then the thought hit me that that might be the closest I get to truly feeling connected to another person ever.
So as I sat here tonight looking at all these women who "snatch rot bomb" says are "like me"... reading their profiles and seeing that yes, in fact, they are just variations of me... I realized that I might be the only person who sees this grid for what it is.
And that everyone else is playing that game without seeing the grid at all and never understanding why they're not connecting... because if they can't see the grid, they can't step off of it either... or won't, whichever.
And I think of this man, who is standing on the precipice of either going back to what he knows, or falling headlong into this grid that I've been on for 5 years and fading into disillusionment like the rest of us... and I see myself 5 years ago and sometimes I wonder if I could talk to me then, would I tell me to turn back?"
Last week, the answer would have been "perhaps." But all that changed this Sunday, when I realized by meeting this new person what all these past 5 years have been for: so that I can just be here in this moment to understand him. If that's all that it's been for, then it's been worth it. And if that's all there is beyond it, so be it. I would not tell me to turn back.
Everyone comes into your life for a reason, and usually right at that moment that you needed them to step in. The obvious would be to say that he needed to befriend someone like me right now, someone who's been there. But the less obvious would be that I needed to befriend someone like him... someone who is holding a mirror up and showing me where I came from at a time when I'm feeling jaded about where I am now.
Everything makes sense right now. Perhaps there really is a grander method to the madness after all.
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