Where Am I Going Now?

Month one after T.E. pushed me away was all about “just go ahead and wallow and be sad and depressed and eat Pop Tarts for every meal (although that’s a joke because when I’m depressed I eat… well, nothing.  I eat nothing.  But if I’d wanted Pop Tarts I’d have had them breakfast, lunch and dinner…) and sleep whenever you want to or even can and… just whatever you want.  That’s what you should do.”  A good plan, but just.  So.  Exhausting.

So month two I gave myself permission to stop crying.  Stop being sad.  Stop thinking about T.E. all the time.  Before that I think I worried that if I didn’t feel all the sorrow and despair and other dramatic, English lit-sounding emotions all of the time then it would mean that my love for T.E. wasn’t so real after all.  But you can only pass yourself through the emotional meat grinder so many times before there’s nothing left to grind and I was emotionally liquid by the start of month two.  So I just decided to stop, and for that to be ok.  I specifically kept my mind away from any thoughts of him, and finished purging him from my world.  I’d mailed his stuff to him in the UK, as well as saying good-byes or thank-yous to those folks to whom my only connection had been him.  But in month two I finished taking all of MY things that I would never get rid of, but which dragged him to my head and heart whenever I saw them, and boxed them up and put them safely in the garage.  In month two the world was almost safe enough for me to just stop being the grieving widow for a while.  I dallied a little with some new men, mostly just to reassure myself that there was the option of “new men” somewhere in my future but mostly I just took the month off from being sad.  It felt good.

As month two was drawing to a close something very unexpected happened:  T.E. sent me an email. 

Now remember that the end of things with he and I… (wait, I said remember, but now I don’t recall if I really told you guys this before.  I probably didn’t.  OK, remember this if it sounds familiar, and if it doesn’t then Voila!  New Information!  Enjoy!) T.E. did some things I really didn’t expect.  He avoided me, going to actual lengths in order to not have to talk to me.  He rejected me quite coldly and it felt like an amazing betrayal, especially since he had been only months before someone I felt like I would always, always, always be able to trust with my heart.  And it is those feelings of betrayal and rejection and overwhelming pain that I’ve been trying to find a home for in my head and heart.  But I’m not there yet – not by a long shot.

So when I checked my email one day and found his name staring back at me I panicked.  I’d honestly convinced myself that he and I might never connect again because I knew I wouldn’t reach out to him and I couldn’t imagine he would reach out to me after his rejection.  I was surprised and also scared – what the hell could he want?  What did he want from me?  How could he already be ready to talk – was it that easy for him to “get over” things?  Or maybe he was writing to tell me that he didn’t want to be friends after all.  Unfortunately the only way to know was to open the damned message.

That took me, I hate to say it, about a day to do.

The email turned out to be short and sweet:  he missed me and was ready to have contact again when I was.

So there I was with the ball totally in my very own court, and I didn’t want the damned thing.  I felt better knowing that it was in his court and he had thrown it away.  In that scenario all I had to do was perfect the art of living without him.  But now I had a decision to make:  was I ready to reconnect with him?

Well that answer was easy:  no.  If it took me a day to even open the first email (oh, and two days to reply, by the way) I was clearly still working through stuff.  So I finally replied with my own short, sweet reply just explaining that I wasn’t ready, and that I’d reach out when I was.

As soon as it was sent I felt somehow relieved and tried, TRIED to find that safe, peaceful, almost-happy place I called Month Two.  Because really why couldn’t denial and distraction and “vacation from sad” be two month long?  Hell, I could make it as long as I wanted to, right?  So yeah, that was my goal:  not thinking about him, not feeling sad and keeping up my rather impressive level of distraction.  

Unfortunately T.E. wasn’t ready for me to go back to distraction.  He sent an additional email which, I think, was mostly to make sure I understood what it was he was asking for.  It felt like he was surprised that my answer was no, and that if he asked it a different way I’d come back with a yes.  He sprinkled a couple of temptations into the longer email such as “There are things I want to say” – how do you not get curious about such a statement?  Oh yes, I really want to know what it is he might have to say, but I honestly worry about those things as much as crave to hear them.  I wonder if he might also have reached the conclusion that we shouldn’t be friends, or that he’s also reviewed our relationship with some detachment and has his own regrets about what we were. 

But what I knew so clearly was that no matter what it was he wanted, I wasn’t ready to hear it.  Good news or bad, it was all scary to me.  I understood that some, but the sheer panic I really didn’t get.  What was it that I was so incredibly afraid of?

Finally I put it together:  right now I’m trying to rebuild a life that was, until a few month ago, incredibly focused on him and us.  I have these hours I’m trying to fill, and these urges to create or to care for or to give that I need to refocus.  And at my age it’s not easy to change so many things in your life.  I’m trying to add to my social circles, get back into my hobbies, build back up my flattened self esteem and it’s taking its time to get there.  And I realized that in my heart of hearts I knew that if I let T.E. back into my world while I’m still so brittle and unsatisfied with things it would be far too easy to let things fall back to where they were, but even worse:  focus my time and care and generosity on him when I couldn’t have anything I wanted in return.  I need to feel like I’m back on my own two feet and can go on without him anywhere in my life before I can let him back in.

I was finally able to send him the second “no,”  and I’m proud that I did it without anger or cynicism or lashing out at him – there were some drafts of the reply that weren’t nearly so clean.  He’s agreed to leave me alone until I reach out to him.  I worry that the things he wanted to say me will be gone by the time I am ready to hear them, or that he’ll be over missing me entirely by then.  But I know that is actually better for me than letting myself crawl back into the hole that was our relationship at that very bitter end.

…now if only I could find that distraction I was enjoying so much…

Ideal Distraction

4/26/12

In the months before everything went down the big toilet of badness and sadness I made an online connection with a guy, or actually he made it with me.  I had permission from T.E. and yet I still felt guilty even just sending the occasional email back and forth.  It could often take me a week, or even a month, to reply to his missives because it felt even a tiny bit like the disrespect I felt when T.E. spent nights with other women.  At the same time it was sometimes the only tonic for my beat-up pride, and so email I did.

The emails were tame, benign even.  Tiny bits of flirtations tucked in around “do you have any pets?”  “What’s your favorite movie?”  “Boxers or briefs?”  Then my world went “BOOM” and I asked Mr. Man to excuse me for a few weeks.  I needed to grieve; to show respect for the relationship that I’d had with T.E. and to have any interactions with some other guy, even of the benign type, was wrong.  Just wrong.  He was very nice about it, wished me the best and also big luck and left me alone.  And I figured that was probably the last I’d hear from him, having thrown cold water all over our tiny, little ember of heat. 

So it was a nice surprise a few weeks later when Mr. Man emailed again just to check how I was doing and let me know he was thinking of me.  (say it with me, everybody – Awwwww…)  We went back to emailing, but with the understanding that I was still all shapes and sizes of broken, still on the razors edge of sad all the time, still nobody’s flirt.  But the emails lead quickly to online chatting.

I had no expectations.  Wasn’t looking for a new guy or a new anybody.  Wasn’t looking for love or lust.  I wasn’t looking.  So the chatting was really… nice.

It was really very nice.

It took me a few days to figure out what it was I liked about the connection:  distraction.  I’d been drowning in thoughts and feelings, overwhelmed by introspection and now I had something completely NOT my dead-and-broken relationship to think about.   I could focus on learning the mundane details of this new person’s life instead of wallowing in my own. 

I also really enjoyed having someone pay attention to me.  For the last few months of my time with T.E. that was the thing I craved and got less and less of from him:  attention.  It gradually shaved away all my shiny surfaces and bright colors.  I got smaller and quieter.  I got dismal.  I got dull.  But all of the sudden someone was paying me even a fraction of the attention that I missed from T.E. and it polished me back up!  I got shiny again!  Like Dorothy and Toto I went from sad shades of grey back to Technicolor!  My life had a soundtrack and dancing midgets (munchkins, Oompa-Loompas, Ewoks – pick your perky poison) and special effects.  All from just a little attention.

Sadly this story of Mr. Man has a sort of lame ending – the cool guy ended up disappearing without even a puff of smoke or a "Sheboof!" noise.  At this point I have no idea where he is or what the hell he was looking for.  I also let the positive mojo of the interactions walk me into a stupid mistake, but nobody got hurt (most importantly me!) and I needed the lesson to complete the transition.  But even though Mr. Man was really Mr. Poof I still owed him thanks.  Thanks for attaching his towline to my bumper and using his winch to pull me out of the wallow mud that was my life.  Thanks for being a living example of the very wise rule “don’t get caught up in the drama” – a lesson I’ve always known but never proved was true.  (It is true, by the way.  Totally true.)  And thanks for giving me that little boost to my ego that I needed to think about moving forward to the next chance.  Because I think I will get another chance. 

(hope, hope, hope...)

Taking the lesson of "distraction" to heart that has been my watchword ever since.  Working out and reading and photography and hobbies and... and... and...  The most important thing has been rule number one:  DON'T THINK ABOUT T.E.  Don't think about the relationship or the end or the good times or the bad times or anything else.  Just don't think about it.  I know I'm not over things, but I'm not smothered in those things either and that's a huge step forward.  Distraction ho!

Trying Out the Woo-Woo Thing, Part II

4/16/12 – part II

When last we left our girl-hero-type-person (can’t say heroine – sounds like I’m on drugs) she was headed into a seminar geared toward making less-good things in her world somehow more-good or, at least, helping her figure out the difference between the things and determine what possible solutions there could be.  She feared spontaneous tears, over-sharing about the super-recent break-up and the potential group-hugs that lay ahead, but still she biked in and arrived on the first day of seminar.  Mind open, butt-cheeks clenched.

I’m not going to do a play-by-play of the entire four days.  In short:  many of the people got their epiphanies, some got their revelations, and the hugs flowed like wine over togas.  There were hours spent in audience to the woman who owns the company and runs this particular seminar – she’s a very impressive woman, completely unflappable with the sharpest fashion sense and impossible balance on Mt. Everest-inspired heels.  The supportive, earthy, “I’m ok, you’re ok, fish and mice and rocks are ok” music flowed like Helium at a party store (and even gave some folks the high, squeaky voices!)  And everybody reflected on stuff.  A lot.  One big room of funhouse mirrors all reflecting all over the place. 

I didn’t epiphanize.  Nor did I revelatorize.  Oh, I had a few moments where I either confirmed something I’d kind of already suspected about myself or figured out a couple of connections between things I’ve long since known.  But don’t get me wrong:  I’m certainly not saying that I got nothing from the experience. 

I got a room of 39 new people to whom I’d never whined about my relationship with and break-up from T.E.  By the time the seminar started I’d been a veritable fountain of sorrow, second-guessing, “why did’s…” and “how could I’s…” all over my family and friends and they were already done.  But here was a whole new group of people who hadn’t heard any of my shit yet.  A group who had to, HAD TO, be sympathetic to my whining because they were doing their own whining and I was being sympathetic to them.  It was why we were all there.  Tit for tat and other such interesting exchange rates.  What’s more, I could spread the pain out around the entire group – one story per participant so nobody got a clear shot at how pathetic I was right then. 

I got a 4-day break from my real life, which I didn’t even think about as I went in, but which may have been the single most valuable aspect.  Trying to juggle my grieving with all the rest of my life was exhausting, but somehow I could take great, big breaks from wallowing in my life to help folks wallowing in theirs, and when my shit did splash back all over me it was just that.  Just the shit.  Not the shit and my job and my bills and my social obligations and all the rest of it.  Things were much simpler for those four days, and that was just a bonus.

And probably the closest thing to an “Aha!” moment for me:  I got to confirm something I’d already started to figure out:  I had no “self esteem issues” I needed to work through.  Not on my own.  No, my only “self esteem issues” were due to being in a relationship with a partner who made doing other women more important than protecting my heart.  My “self esteem issues” started the day T.E.’s extra-curricular sex did, and that doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with me.  It means I’m sane.  That I expect my partner to respect and value me and my feelings.  That when I keep being told (in deeds if not in words) that I’m not enough to satisfy him it makes me feel less important.  (also?  DUH!!!  Big, fat, dumb DUH!!!)  I can avoid this little glitch in the future – when someone asks for an “open relationship” my answer will be the only sane one:  NO.

If you’re looking for some help in figuring out stuff that isn’t working in your life I highly recommend finding an event like this one.  All around me people gave teary testimonials about their life-changing decisions and lessons learned and sudden bursts of clarity.  They came in and got exactly what they were looking for, and I sure hope that they all went home and made the changes in their lives that they realized they needed to make.  I think the Queen was disappointed that I didn’t have the magical betterment offered, but I know I got all I was ever going to get from it and I have no regrets about the experience.

But come Monday I had to go back to real life.  That was the hard part.

Trying Out the Woo-Woo Thing

4/16/12 – Part I

My BFF, The Queen, works for a local company that specializes in making people better thems.  One of their taglines is “Ready to live a balanced and meaningful life?”  They do seminars which are designed to help folks figure out what’s not working in their lives, what they would like instead and, at least hopefully, how to bridge the gap.  Make the change.  Work the voo-doo.  Hocus the Pocus. 

Among my longtime friends I’ve been significantly outnumbered by folks who have done the Magical Betterment Seminars (or “MBS,” trademark pending) for literally decades.  The folks who’ve done the MBS’ have all come out the other side with stories of epiphanies and revelations and big plans to make big changes and get big payoffs and other things of bigness.  Most of them will tell you that they think that everybody – EVERYBODY – should do these seminars.  And yet with all of that I’d never done one.  Never even considered doing one.

Don’t get me wrong:  I’ve never been opposed to the Magic people and their seminars.  And I’m all for any of my loved ones doing anything that will make them happier, be that religion or seminars or sleeping with a Kardashian.  (ok, not the last one…)  To be honest, I just never had anything in my life that I wanted help to fix.  Not saying my life is or has ever been perfect, but my woes have been tiny compared to so many (and don’t you worry – I’m very aware how lucky I am to be able to say that!!!!) and generally things I felt like I had a handle on. 

Jump forward those decades of “no thanks, not my thing” to that dang break that T.E. and I had earlier this year.  While waiting for those two weeks to pass and having WAY too much time on my hands I did some thinking.  Lots of thinking.  Gobs and piles and oodles and frickin’ gallons of thinking.  Some of it was good, and some of it seemed really good at the time, but then later turned out to be utterly insane.  One of those thoughts was about how much time I seemed to spend needing T.E. to reassure me of my place in his world.  I decided, in my crazybrain, that this meant I needed to do something about my apparent lack of self confidence in relationships.  That I shouldn’t put all that pressure on my partner, and I needed to figure out how to reassure myself.  I couldn’t afford therapy, but thought about The Queen and those countless invitations to check out the MBS’s.  I decided I finally had something in my life that seemed broken and that I couldn’t fix, so this was the time.

Though there are a bunch of seminars that these folks run, and many of them are specifically focused on things like relationships or communication or… possibly gardening?  I’m not sure.  There are many focused ones.  Anyway, though there are focused ones you have to start with the same one.  It’s designed to cover a lot of ground and give, I would say, a good starting point for the more focused ones.  The initial seminar takes 4 days (Thurs, Fri, Sat and Sun) and you’re in there and working a seriously long day – 9am to around 9pm or sometimes later!  I took the necessary days off of work and made excuses to the rest of my friends and family and headed in.

Oh crap, wait.  I should explain a couple of things here:

Explanation #1:  No, I didn’t tell anybody other than The Queen and her family that I was doing this.  Don’t get the wrong idea:  I wasn’t ashamed about doing the seminar or anything like that.  But this kind of thing doesn’t really resonate for most of my family.  Now I was going in with as open a mind as I can manage.  No kidding, my mind was super-open.  Thoughts and memories and very stupid limericks kept falling out of my mind, so open was it.  Really, really open.  Really.  BUT I knew that openness was a tenuous thing after having spent so many years watching my friends join the cult from afar and raising my eyebrow ala Spock, and the rest of my social sphere is still Spockish about this idea.  So I decided I didn’t want to let any of their possible doubts or concerns, or even their possible enthusiasms and potential dirty jokes, color my view.  Best to just give them vague and mysterious ideas of where I was going to be for four days and let them wonder if I was in rehab or just getting botox in my butt.

Explanation #2:  Though the inspiration for doing this was part of various plans and plots to save my relationship with T.E. by the time I actually WENT to the seminar T.E. and I were done.  Done for about 6 days.  So where as I was slightly worried about overly emotional moments in such a seminar when I signed up I went in knowing that I was going to be on the verge of big, dumb tears all the damn dumb time during this seminar and being proactively resentful about the situation.  I hate to show the vulnerable emotions to people who I know, and would pretty much rather gouge out my eyes rather than allow them to leak in front of strangers.  In short, I went into this seminar with every single worst fear and possible nightmare I’d ever envisioned totally real and in full freaking Technicolor.  Awesome?  No, no awesome.

So, there I was:  emotions as raw as an elbow that has been attacked by cheese grater and dipped in Tabasco Sauce; surrounded by people who were coming to this MBS for real issues and problems and seeking true revelations and epiphanies and doing it all on the down low.  (yeah, I’m regretting that last choice of youth-oriented slang too.)  What could possibly go wrong? 

To Be Continued…

Being THAT Girl

4/10/2012

So there I was, single again after three years.  The last time I ended a relationship it was my idea, and it was a really crappy relationship, so the break-up was a lot easier to get through.  This time, even though it only took me a few days to start seeing the reality of things and understanding that it was really necessary to end it, I was still a wreck.  The cliché of being a “raw nerve” is obnoxiously accurate – the smallest little things would start the waterworks and my poor, sad brain was too foggy to do anything like think straight.

As I’m afraid too many of you already know, the beginning of the break-up healing process is needing to talk about it.  All of it.  Talk every single tiny, miniscule, microscopic thought or feeling or idea to death.  It’s like you’ve become the coroner character in any police TV show and you’re doing constant and repeated autopsies of the relationship, the end of the relationship, your ex, things that he said, things you said, things you didn’t say, that funny tone in his voice when he said that thing, the other thing he said 2 years ago and did it have something to do with the thing he just said and oh.  My.  GOD.   But it’s annoying. 

It’s annoying to you and it’s annoying to everybody else.  And you know it’s annoying, so you go from being a person with friends and a partner and family and a nice, supported life to being that person that you’re embarrassed to be and that you know nobody else wants to be around because you just CAN’T STOP TALKING ABOUT IT.  That transformation took me exactly 5 days.

Once I made the transition I was stuck with still so much emotional crap I needed to spew and not really anybody I could dump it on.  I pulled out the trusty old journal and that helped for a while, but eventually I couldn’t even stand to cover the same ground, or even new-but-still-lame ground, in my lovely, leather-covered friend.  So I had a few weeks where I talked to myself. 

A.  Lot.

I have to tell you that it’s a very good thing there is no law against talking to yourself while behind the wheel of the car.  Also thanks to the evolution of cell phones I worried much less about judgmental looks from passers by when I took my bike rides, ranting on and on to nobody at all but me.  I struggled to keep myself together all day at work and thanked my lucky stars that my office-mate sits behind me and wears headphones all day.  And say what you will about judgmental cats – my furry roomies curled up around me in my safety zone on the couch and purred supportive comments all day and night.  (twice as loud when the treats were within reach.)

In the end I made it out the other side and I reassured myself that I can do that physician thing and heal myself when I don’t have resources available to me.  It’s a good thing to know, and I also hope I don’t have to do this kind of self healing again any time soon. 

Break-ups?  They suck.

Getting Back up on the Horse...

I’ve been wanting to get back to this blog for weeks.  Months even.  I have stuff to say and stories to tell and super-clever views on the world that I know you would all benefit by reading.  Seriously, they’d probably change your life.  And I want to change your life.  I want to write those life-changers and other stuff here, but I’ve been stuck.

Stuck behind THIS post.

Because before I can share all the new things I have to update you guys on all the stuff that’s happened since the last post.  And that’s a lot of stuff.  Also large amounts of that stuff sucked, so I really haven’t wanted to re-hash it.  Also it’s not a very interesting post – just exposition without the swanky flashback scenes that we’d do if this blog was on television. 

But still, it has to be done, so here we go:

Last you heard T.E. and I were “on a break.”  That lasted for those 2 weeks but at the end, despite about a million reasons from T.E. why he worried about staying together, we stayed together.  In hindsight I know now that was a mistake.  In fact I realize now that T.E. and I should have said a sweet, loving and genuine “good bye” at the airport before he flew home from his time here for the holidays.  Since that visit things were never right between us and they just got worse and worse.  But one of the things I know about myself, for better or worse, is I’m a fighter.  So I fought for us.

Oh crap, I’m totally jumping ahead.  Let me get back to the chronology.

We stayed together, but with all sorts of plans for how to make it better or more solid or less oval or more turquoise or whatever.  Those plans lasted for about a week and then it started to unravel again.  The last few weeks were awful, and some of the only things I could possibly categorize as a ‘regret’ in our time together.  But again, we fought to the bitter end and I give us credit for that, so I can’t really call it a regret.  It was painful and confusing and frustrating and completely, tremendously heartbreaking.  I knew that it was over for about 2 weeks before T.E. finally said the words.

And still, with all the foreshadowing and pain and heartache the first four weeks after it ended were some of the darkest days I’ve ever had.

I won’t go into details – I was depressed.  In all the ways that a person could be.  Daily tears and lack of sleep and crappy, crappy eating and things like that.  I decided to just let myself wallow in all the sorrow I needed to get through for those first four weeks.  If I felt like sleeping all day, even if the sun was shining and kids were playing in my front yard and birds were singing then I was gonna sleep all day.  Take that, stupid birds.

After that first month I decided I was tired of being sad.  I was tired of sleeping all day and flinching when I heard someone say his name and being completely exhausted with overwhelming misery all.  The. Time.  So the second month, I decided, would be “take a month off from getting over your great and lost love.”  I cleaned up my house (many thanks to my Mom for helping me do that) and started caring about how I looked and found safe books to read and music to listen to and things to watch on tv.  And above all else:  distraction.  Don’t think of the relationship.  Don’t think of the break-up.  Don’t think of T.E. or heartbreak or any of the stuff that paralyzed me. 

I’m heading into the last week or so of the second month and I haven’t decided, yet, what to do with the third month yet.  I read somewhere that it takes a month of recovery for every year you were together – it was on the interwebs, so it must be true – and so I have just over a month to go before I can be “over it.” 

I can’t wait.  

Break, Broke, Broken...

T.E. and I are “on a break.”  When he suggested it I melted into a pool of “man I wish I could die right now” and could barely get words out, so discussing the parameters was pretty much out of the question.  Add to that the fact that I was very distracted looking around for a hole to crawl into (because this is where one goes to die, right?) and it wasn’t until, I kid you not, a day or so later that I realized that I have no idea what we’re doing. 

It’s a classic option when there are issues in the relationship – “we should take a break.”  And I’m sure there are situations when it’s the perfect option, and really does answer some question or address some problem or SOMETHING that makes sense in light of the relationship issues.  But right now I can’t think of any situations like that, and I REALLY don’t know what it’s supposed to be accomplishing for us.  Our situation looks like this:

• T.E. has a wonderful and exciting new social group that he’s spending more and more time with, and it makes him really happy.
• Unfortunately there are only so many hours in the day and the more of them T.E. spent with the new gang the less I got from him.
• I, being the genius that I am, first decided that I needed to solve this problem completely on my own without talking to him about it at all.  After all, that has worked incredibly well in so many relationships, right?  Sigh.
• In trying to find this magic solution all by my self (pats on my back, oblivious) I came to the conclusion (fueled by 40 years of being single and, therefore, being unable to imagine a world where I could possibly be worth anything as a partner) that T.E. never actually loved me, but was just really lonely.  Now that he’s got all these awesome friends he just didn’t need me anymore, and as such it was best for him if he dumped me. 
• Then I told him that.

Now, to his credit T.E. debunked my carefully figured-out solution, which I liked to hear.  But then my plan fell all apart (I’d really thought about how this was the solution that would make him happiest, so when this solution made him significantly UNhappy I was all confused and befuddled and lost control of the whole dang conversation) and the discussion spun off into crazy directions.  The next thing you know we were both in tears and feeling terrible about the place where we were, but totally unable to find a solution that made it better.  We knew we didn’t want to break up, but we weren’t sure of anything else after that. 

And then he said those words.

“Let’s take a break.”

Now I think I felt glad that he wasn’t going with my well crafted “you should dump me” plan, given that the idea of not being his partner anymore ranks right up there with being torn into a bajillion pieces by rabid possums, so I jumped on this ‘not yet breaking up’ option.  But if I’d had any of my mind around me at all at that point I’d have asked all sorts of questions about this break.  Questions that totally plague me now. 

Take a break to do what?  We said 2 weeks, but does it have to be that long?  Is this for him or for me?  Is there some sort of goal to be reached in this time?  Or conclusion or epiphany…  In short, what is the point of these two weeks?

If they’re for me?  Well we could have taken a break of about 45 minutes.  I apparently just needed enough time to bawl my head off until I was completely out of water, and then get the ability to think again for a minute.  Once I could think it was very clear to me what I want.

I want to be with him.  And I want him to reprioritize his time to give me a bit more of it.  I want him to decide that I’m worth some extra work on his part to juggle all the things he wants.  And I want to be one of those things that he wants.  I don’t need time to figure that out. 

So here I am, taking a break without really wanting to. 

Now the question must also be asked:  what is he doing with this time?  The crazy, pathetic, totally without any self confidence part of me pictures him happily hanging out with his friends, so glad to no longer have to make any time at all for his crazy, weepy, old girlfriend.  I see phrases like “why the hell did I do that so long?” and “man, it’s so much easier without the old ball and chain” tripping easily off those lovely, English lips in that hot, English accent.  And every time I see that I go into full-on, batshit crazy panic mode and want to call him right then and beg for a do-over.  Because please refer to the first part of what I want:  him.

But to be honest I know that if T.E. can’t find some way to want to work a little harder at this that really proves what I thought all along:  he’s ready to move on. 

So what am I hoping for from this break?  In short, I’m hoping that T.E. misses me.  I’m hoping that by the end of the second week he’s anywhere close to as messed up as I am and he’s sure that I’m worth some extra work.  If he needs time to do that, to figure that out, to reach that conclusion then a break it is. 

I just hope it doesn’t break us.

How Does One Stay The "New Toy" Forever?

I can’t remember (and am WAY too lazy to do the research to check) if I’ve ever mentioned this before, but one of the things I most adore about my Dad is the way that he always makes it feel like my arrival is a wonderful occasion.  No matter how recently we talked or saw each other or how mundane the occasion my Dad is always and sincerely thrilled to see or hear from me.  Like I’m saying he and I could talk on the phone for an hour and then sign off, and then I could realize I forgot to ask him what size shoe he wears or how many ounces in a gallon and call him right back to cover that super-important detail and even though we were just talking only minutes before when my Dad hears my voice he still honestly sounds thrilled to hear that its me.  This is about the best quality a person could have and my Dad has it in gallons.  (or a BUNCH of ounces, because apparently there are 128 of those in a gallon!)

When T.E. and I first met this was a quality that I recognized in him:  that he was so eager for my time and attention.  That he seemed like he, too, couldn’t get enough of me; wanted to hear all about me and my days and my stuff.  He would even be bold-faced in his interest to the point he’d ask incredibly personal questions or to read my emails or listen in on phone calls.  He knew that it was pretty danged nosey but he was unapologetic about it because it all came from wanting to know everything about me.  He was that enthusiastic and I will admit that I loved it.  I joked that it was just “new toy syndrome” – that thing that so many people do when they find a new person and are fascinated by the coolness and the differentness and the just plain newness of the new person.  But I was the Buzz Lightyear of his world right then and I would take every bit of it.

Now look, I know that everybody talks about how relationships can’t keep up the level of intensity with which they start – this has been repeated over and over, and I’m sure that just about everybody out there believes this to be the sad fact:  eventually things have to become boring and average and plain and you just can’t keep feeling so over-the-moon about a person.  You just can’t.  Honestly I’ve had some people explain it to me with such fervor and certainty that it almost seemed like they wanted it to be true; wanted to know that nobody could possibly maintain that level of intensity.  It’s just not possible.

Is it?

This spring I read this book written by the last woman to love the great comedian George Carlin.  Here’s this book about one of the crustiest, surliest, most curmudgionesque icons of this or the last century and it’s all about how he never, ever stopped courting this woman that he loved.  He, contrary to popular and very depressing belief, felt like it was totally up to him when he should stop doing the things that make us fall in love with each other in the beginning – notes, gifts, gestures, lovely words and amazing acts – and he decided that the time to stop doing that stuff was never.  And when the man is right, he’s just plain right.  So this became my rule too -- never stop courting.

The enthusiasm that T.E. had for me in the beginning was intoxicating and made me feel fascinating and amazing and just possibly worth all this attention.  I ate it up with a spoon shovel industrial grade forklift.  I also made very sure to lavish him with the same level of fascination, which was easy because I felt it just as strongly.  And to this day I still do.  Every morning, no matter what time I have to drag my sad, old bones out of my super-snuggly bed, the thing I’m most eager to do as soon as possible is get online and see if T.E. is around to talk to.  There’s this tiny little whisper noise that our main chat application uses to indicate someone has logged on and when I hear that noise my heart skips a beat every.  Single.  Time.  I adore every minute with him, and I’m really excited and proud that my level of adoration has maintained even after years and distance and age difference and even a little heartache.

When T.E. and I first connected there was another big difference in his world as compared to now:  his social life was pretty quiet.  He was just finishing up his equivalent of high school and, as is often the case the end of the summer after graduating from high school, most of his chums were heading off to new adventures.  As a result he had a lot of time available to chat with me, his newest toy.  But as the years have gone on and he’s started his University experience and built an amazing new social group of bright, funny, cool people his “new toy” attentions have waned.  Given our time differences I’m often that thing he can do for a while at the end of his day before he goes to sleep.  The more social fun he has with his chums the later the end of his day is, and the less time before sleep needs to happen. 

Recently I’ve realized that gradually I’ve become his “if there’s nothing else to do” option.  If he doesn’t have fun social things to do with his group there’s always me to chat with, waiting eagerly on the other end of the skype line because I’m still that excited to make our connection whenever I can get it.  For a while it seemed romantic, but now I have to admit I’m starting to feel like the classic old toy:  that old, beat-up, dog-eared teddy bear that you’ve had since forever but you really only cuddle up to when the world has treated you roughly and you need the kind of hug that only your old toy can give you.  I love being here for him, but sometimes this dusty, lonely old shelf can seem a little sad.

If I were a better, person – closer to the person I thought I was before I actually fell in love with someone – I’d decide to walk away from this and show my independence and my ‘stand on my own two feet’-etedness and all.  But one of the rules that T.E. and I have been very clear about is 100% honesty between us, and if I’m being 100% honest all of this doesn’t change the fact that I think about him constantly and clamor for the chance to connect.  So for now you’ll find me where he does:  between the Rock ‘Em, Sock ‘Em Robots and that damned Jack in the Box.

Like a cat in a rocking chair factory. But where there's hardly anybody in the chairs...

So how do you do a relationship that has already been deemed “temporary”? 

T.E. and I are still together, still going strong – stronger than ever maybe.  Last Sunday we hung out together on Skype for 10 hours straight, with him finally going to sleep at 8am his time.  We’ve had deep, meaningful conversations (or DMCs as he calls them) several times in the last few months that have continued to grow our bond and deepen our connection.  In all the ways you’d normally diagnose a relationship ours would seem solid and secure, with nothing but a bright future ahead of us.

So why do I get so nervous?

There are a lot of things I guess you could point to which cause my nerves.  Some of them are all mine – when you spend the amount of time single that I have (of my 26 years of date-able time I’ve been in relationships a total of about 6 years with only a handful of men.  A small handful.  Little kid hands, or possibly midgets.  Or maybe squirrels – their hands are small too, right?) it tends to impact your opinion of whether or not you can attract and keep a partner.  Just does.

Some of the things are our logistical challenges – for those of you who are new and haven’t yet combed through the archives to find out just what the heck this crazy chick is talking about anyway I’ll round those challenges up for you:  20-year age difference, 5000 miles between us, 8-hour time difference, he doesn’t like bacon…  All big things.  Especially the bacon thing.  (Seriously, who doesn’t like bacon?)  But don’t let me focus on that.  (Bacon!  So tasty!)

But I have to admit that the biggest challenge for me tends to be the knowledge that James, ever the pragmatist these days, has really thought through the potential future for our relationship, with all those challenges, and determined that at some point we’ll end.  He’s not setting an end point, and has said he wants to stay with me as long as we can, but he’s not fooling himself that we can make it long-term.  Some day, he says, we’ll be done.  We’ll go from being lovers and partners to being friends.  We both know with complete certainty that we’ll always be friends and connected but he can see that there must be an end.

Ironically I was the one that started out with this idea.  In the beginning of our relationship I felt it was very important that I be realistic about this.  “All these challenges really say that having this relationship is flat out impossible and don’t you forget it!” said my rational mind.  “This is a fling.  Just a fling.  Don’t get too attached, and for the love of GOD do not fall in love.”  What changed my mind?  He did.

In the first year or so of our connection he kept telling me wonderfully romantic, idealistic things like “well I guess I’ll just have to keep you forever then.” Or “it’s a good thing that we found each other because we’re clearly perfectly matched.”  I tried to hold those ideas off as cute but crazy.  The cute was just so cute, that it trompled all over the crazy and left me nothing but cute to focus on.  Eventually I was convinced that we could make it. 

And make it we have!  We celebrated 2.5 years this December!  We’ve already beaten all the insane odds!

But part of what fed the break-up last spring was T.E. reaching his own conclusion about our odds, and it was that we had to eventually end.  We just can’t really last forever, and he has reminded me of this periodically since then.  I know he’s being smart and he’s most likely right.  I should try to get back there too.  I should get realistic and get ready for whenever that end comes.

But then I keep coming to that question:  if I know we can’t last then how do I trust in this relationship now?  All of those damned love songs playing on all those radio stations talking about how person A will love person B forever, until the end of time, til the world explodes, etc. – I shouldn’t be able to relate to those because I have been assured that’s not going to happen.  So even though I’m in this for the long haul, and have told T.E. that , I’m on my own there and it leaves me feeling a little out here on my own.  And from that?  Comes some nervous.  

Making the Necessary Adjustments

T.E. is back in his native land.  He’s talking the talk and walking the walk and eating the foods (although given where his native land IS you gotta wonder why he’s doing that last one.)  Although actually right now he’s most likely sleeping the local sleep, after 24 hours worth of travel.  Yes, you heard right – since coming back to Hippyville it now takes, door to door, an entire DAY for him to get home (if you define “takes a day” as “he leaves our home here in Hippyville at 11am and arrives home in England at 11am the next morning.  Which you shouldn’t, because it’s actually more like 16 hours.  But at the same time when you’re the person doing the travelling it probably still FEELS like it took a day.  So yeah, go ahead and define it that way if you want.  I’m sure he does…)  This is because instead of having an airport a short drive away (as we did when we were in the big, fancy city) we’ve got one a very, very long drive away.  Heck, we leave the house four hours before his first plane leave the ground.  Lame.  L-A-M-E.

Meanwhile though I don’t have the epic, awful, forever-and-ever-and-ever travel day that he does I have to come home to a house that I’ve been sharing with him for weeks or months and get used to it all sad and empty.  One thing that is part of his experience, and which I kind of envy, is that he has two lives.  He’s got the life of a young man essentially single and living in England, with his friends and his family and school and martial arts and all the other things in his life there.  And he’s got the life of the young man involved with the older woman living with her in America and with the US friends and family that he got through her. 

For me I have this life that sometimes has him in it, and sometimes doesn’t.  So I keep having to make this adjustment between them each time he arrives, and each time he leaves.  The adjustment is worth it, but still hard.  So here I sit, way too aware of how much room there is on this couch and how little conversation I’ve engaged in today.  By next weekend I’ll be used to this.  But the first few nights are the hardest.

Hey, Isn't That Hell Up Ahead?

…yeah, so… anyway… what were we talking about?

OK, I’m sorry.  I’m super-flakey.  I think there’s some sort of corollary between being in love and being on top of stuff – the more you’re one, the less you’re the other.  (I have no science to back this up, but it sounds compelling, right?  Also if it has the air of science behind it then it’s totally not my fault.  It’s just science.  Science, people.  You can’t fight science.) 

I’m gonna try to be better, at least for the next several weeks until T.E. comes back for the holidays.  Am I making you any promises?  No.  I.  Am.  Not.  But there is the promise of trying.  Who doesn’t like trying?  Nobody.  Nobody doesn’t like trying, so that’s my plan here:  loads and loads of quality, grade A trying.   WITH a side order of really good intentions.  So good one might consider paving a road to a very fancy place with these intentions.

And now for the obligatory “what the heck happened in the last few months?” filler:  T.E. was here for a couple of months and it was awesome.  It continues to be awesome.  Stupid-awesome, with a capital STOOOOOO.  He’s coming back in mid-December for holiday-themed awesome, and for once I’m actually coming up with really good gift ideas!  Because really who doesn’t love Batman-themed footy pajamas and spam-flavored bubble gum?  Boo-yah…

I’m still working my job and loving it.  It’s all the goods kinds of challenges yet without feeling completely impossible and doomed to failure.  I can see all sorts of paths to a very solid career future and I even got a swanky raise!  And I continue, even in rain and cold and “oh hell, is that frost on the handlebars?” weather I still keep biking my way to the office.

The biking is helping me to get back down to my pre-T.E.-visit size, but I’m proud to report that I only gained 5 lbs while he was here.  My goal is to get rid of those pounds plus five more of their friends by the time T.E. returns, and so FAR it’s going well.  But I’m well aware of that huge, looming calorie monster in the future:  Thanksgiving.  (shudder)

All in all things are rolling right along and I’ll be sure to take you guys along for the ride.  At least a lot of the time.  Well, I mean when I get some time, and think of it.  If I don’t forget.  Or I’m not sleepy – I do get sleepy.  You know how hard it is to read when you’re sleepy?  Seriously hard!  But on the more wakey nights and stuff…

Man I Hate Being Right All The Time

T.E. ended things with me yesterday morning. It’s too fresh to give details – not sure if I’ll ever be able to do that. Enough to say he needed the freedom to live the life of the University student and having a relationship, let alone a long-distance one with an unemployed old lady, wasn’t so conducive. And as he so often was about most things, he was right about this too. So he’s gone. And I apologize for the tremendously dramatic following sentence, but honestly it’s the LEAST dramatic way I could find to describe me: I’m shattered. One million pieces is the tip of the iceberg.

Not sure what’s going to happen with this blog, folks. Right now it feels like anything I’d write would be so morose and self-pitying as to require the Smiths or the Cure or another band that starts with “the” to write the soundtrack. And I don’t want to be that blog. So I’m sure it will be quiet for a while. Take care of yourselves.

Full Disclosure

I have to buy a new pair of ice cube trays. I had two, but now I only have one. One works just fine but the other had to be thrown away. I threw it away because a significant requirement for an ice cube tray is that they be water-tight, and one of my two trays lost the ability to be water-tight due to the holes that suddenly appeared all over it. Suddenly appeared immediately after I smashed the sucker against the floor of the freezer 2-3 times in a FIT of rage after the ice cube tray had the audacity to dump all of its perfectly-made cubes on the floor.

I do not respond well to fits of rage.

I tell you this story in much the same way I need to be sure to tell it to T.E. Not because he’s a big ice cube sympathizer nor do I think he’ll notice the change of ice cube trays and be alarmed – he’s generally pretty easy-going in the area of ice cubes and the trays in which they come. But I need to tell T.E. in the interest of full disclosure because I do not respond well to fits of rage. I break things. Or sometimes throw things. Or throw things which breaks them. Or break things by throwing other things into them. All of these things have happened at one time or another after I’ve done the “rage fit” thing.

And the other thing is that it doesn’t take nearly as much as you’d like to think it would to rage-fit me. You’d like to think that something which would cause an ordinarily rational and calm person to start hurling office chairs would have to be a big deal. Like putting out my own eye. Or being mugged at gunpoint. Or taxes. For me a lot of the time it starts with me hitting my head.

I really. REALLY. Don’t respond well to hitting my head.

Honestly, I’m hard-wired on this one. Like there’s a special nerve in my head that is directly connected to my “rage” nerve. Or rage lobe, or whatever it is that leads to the rage-fits. I’m not so clear on the biology of it, but what I do know is that my world is pock-marked by silly amounts of damage I’ve done to things in the less-than-split-second immediately following my hitting my head. Freezer doors, remote controls, phones – all innocent victims of those things that I simply have to do when one immovable object (my head) meets another blunt construct (anything else in the world ever, ever, ever).

Another one is toe stubbing. I stubbed my toe getting out of the shower the other day and I remain quietly proud that all the breakable things in my bathroom are still in the same number of pieces they were in prior to the toe stubbing. Or at least I was quietly proud, but that was before I wrote of it and posted it on the whole big internet. But before that I was quietly proud. Yay me.

So anyway, these are the things that don’t come up between he and I, since I haven’t hit my head or stubbed my toe around him yet (knock on wood) or had any other thing to make me rage-fit-girl, but that he really needs to know about because when I eventually DO hit my head or stub my toe or have to talk to the cable company or drive behind a bus or any number of other things with him around he needs to know what’s coming. Understand how very much it has nothing to do with him. And know how to load the tranquilizer gun.

Here's the Thing...

So there’s a thing. About the relationship I am currently enjoying (which is a tremendous understatement – I’m not just enjoying this relationship. I’m loving it. I’m rapturizing in it. I’m rolling around in the wonderfulness of this relationship like it’s dark chocolate pudding with lovely, frothy whipped cream!) with T.E. there’s a thing. There’s an age difference. T.E. is younger than me.

By a bunch.

He’s enough younger than me that when I tell people his age (and they already know mine) there’s always – ALWAYS – about a 7-8 second paaaauuuuse. As if they’re running through all the knee-jerk reactions that first occurs, trying to decide “do I say any of the things in my head right now? Or bite my tongue? And also when did Femtastic lose her mind?”

And just in case anybody is worrying about these things, let me say NO, I am not breaking the law, people! Nobody is doing anything wrong! We’re just doing things most folks probably don’t. And even that’s not it because what we’re doing is what most people DO want to do, and in fact are dying to do or if they’re not they are sad, sad people who do not seek enough “awesome” in their life. But we’re doing it in a unique way. In a way that gives people pause. Really, really long pause.

In all honesty I got a little pause the first time I found out T.E.’s age myself, so I’m not judging the people who do the pausing. I feel their pain, because I’ve had friends or family do things that I questioned and you have that struggle between wanting to be supportive or feeling like you are honor-bound to speak up and express the concern. What I would like, really, is the reaction that my oldest friend in all the world gave to me. She was HONEST with me, while supporting and listening both. She told me that she worried about this younger guy’s maturity and would he be mature enough for me? But she also told me that in the end she trusted my judgment and wanted me to be happy. And when I explained what makes this man extraordinary and tremendous and a huge exception to the rule she listened to me. This reaction gave me both respect but also honesty, which I know was hard for her, but so good for me.

Either that, or I want the reaction that another of my old friends gave me: she met T.E., loved him and is dying to see him again. Just like me! (OK, nothing near as much as me, but the enthusiasm is wonderful none the less.)

The Next Big Step

T.E. is coming back in the summer – I told you guys that, right? Right. Anyway – coming back in the summer and we just purchased the tickets and he’s going to be here for (get this. Seriously, this is extremely worth getting) SEVEN WEEKS. Not two, and not four (which would be a month, by the way, and this is MORE than four months which means MORE than a month, by the way) and not even six (which is kind of like a month and a half, so this is kind of like more than a month and a half. BY THE WAY!!!!)

So, so awesome.

Now I have had more than a few people react to this with “woah!” and “wow!” and those types of thing-deals. However when you slow down these reactions and play them backwards they, like the Beatles song Number 9, say something totally different. They say “are you sure you can spend that long together?” and “Dang, this will be a real test of your relationship!” and “Yeah, this will be it. This will be the end of this crazy boondoggle.” (oh, and also it says “Paul is dead” but I think that’s a fluke…)

I understand where this comes from – honestly I think even T.E. is feeling a little of the pressure. His exact quote was that he is “cautiously optimistic.” It’s not wrong that this will not just be more time than ever before, but it will be more than twice the time previously enjoyed. It will be over a month and a half! At a certain point I know it will stop feeling like a vacation and an indulgence and 36% magic with sprinkles of “fabulous”. Despite all the time we spend together now, this will be ALL THE TIME FOR A MONTH AND A HALF.

So how come I’m not nervous?

Honestly, I just see this as good. As a thing I want so, so badly. When he’s not here I just wish he was, so seven weeks of not wishing for something I can’t have feels like time where I can finally breathe. Where I will finally be living that moment instead of passing through it headed to the moment I really want. I worry sometimes that my life is screaming by these days because I’m living for these moments. The evenings and the weekend and the summer and the holidays and all those times that being with him makes me feel just a tiny bit more whole.

The time that we will get to spend this summer will be seven weeks – 49 days – 1,176 hours – where I will just be living each hour as just an hour. Each day as “right now” instead of “just waiting.” The things I long for I’ll be getting. And in the face of that I don’t know how I could possibly worry about it. The idea seems almost ungrateful! I’m not saying I expect it to be perfect – this will, in fact, BE a bigger test or challenge or ‘running of the gauntlet’ for us and this relationship and I honestly do know it. But I still don’t see anything to worry about.

So you tell me – am I crazy? Or just in love?

Wanted: Partner With No Past

I’ve been assured that one of the things that makes me both rare and possibly valuable in the “relationship market” is the fact that I’ve had so few relationships before. Supposedly people really like their partners to have very little or no baggage, and no ex-partners to have to contend with. For me I’m normally really aware of the lack of experience I have at the more complicated partner things, thereby making me feel all sorts of lost and confused a bunch of the time. But according to those who know better than I it’s rarely the problem I think it is. And for no ex's to worry about? Apparently awesome...

T.E., being a pretty amazing person, has ex-girlfriends. Well of course he does. One could ask “if he didn’t then wouldn’t you wonder what’s wrong with him?” (and then I go “but I don’t have hardly any. Does that mean there’s something wrong with me?” and then they go “no, but that’s because you’re really unique in that way.” and then I go “so then him not having girlfriends wouldn’t be a bad thing either if he were really unique.” and then they would get uncomfortable with this awkward conversation and pretend their phone rang and go somewhere else. Far away else.) Technically I have absolutely no problems with the fact that others have loved him before I got my chance. Technically I also don’t think of myself as a jealous person.

(Tangent: I know I’m not normally a jealous person, and here’s how I know: the
crappy dude I relationshipped with before was known for wandering and lived far
enough away that I couldn’t possibly keep track of his activities and people
even told me point-blank that he cheated on me and to this day I STILL don’t
suspect anything nor did I ever have a single jealous twinge. So there.)

And yet there is this one “Ex” of T.E.’s that seems to magically create buttons I never had before and then dance on them in swanky, foreign stiletto heels. We will call her “Aussie Girl”. (because she comes from there. I don’t have to be creative when I’m naming Ex’s)

When T.E. and I first connected he was also connected to her. In fact they were pretty tight, and he was really invested. She was exotic and exciting and dramatic – things to which I definitely could not lay claim. T.E. was totally upfront with me about the fact that there were other people with whom he was also connected at the time and since it was just flirting and fooling around between us I never questioned that. As we got more serious, he and I, things between the two of them seemed to hit potholes, but I had decided that I had no business having opinions about his other interactions and I stuck to it. I ignored those things that weren’t he and I, and I got pretty danged good at it.

Finally he and I spent our first weekend together. It was astoundingly good, and much more than just fooling around. I knew then that my level of investment was higher than I ever expected it to be, and I kept my walls in place, but became much more aware of them. So it was with a certain amount of (totally inappropriate and kind of bitchy) glee that I learned from him that things with Aussie Girl had crapped out. In a word: she’d disappeared. She’d forfeited the game, thereby giving me the “win” and I wasn’t at all sorry to hear it. I tried to keep my catty remarks in check, but inside I did the happy “I win!” dance full stop.

But then she came back. (and how dumb was I to not have considered this possibility when I’d had the win in the first place? If you win because they go away, you run the risk of losing if they come back. It’s simple math, people…)

She didn’t stay for long. (She’s exotic and exciting and dramatic, sure, but she’s also flaky and scattered and maybe a wee pinch crazy-ass-nut-bags, so…) I got my “win” back when she vanished again, but this time I knew how weak a win it was and it took me a while to get over the sense of impending “she could come back at any time” doom.

Still, a big bunch of time passed and she stayed good and gone. I got more confident with what he and I shared. He got more invested in me. One morning he said three words to me that I’d never heard from a partner before, (I'm really hoping you know which words I'm talking about, but I'll also expect snarky cracks in the comments) and in that split second the last of my self-doubt went up in a puff of smug, triumphant (pink and sparkly, smelling of jasmine and hot dogs) smoke. This was a “win” I felt like I’d earned all on my own and wore it like a goddamn badge of “ain’t I somethin’!” honor. Heck, while he was here during the holidays his phone began singing (iPhones – they sing. Have I posted about my total and complete love for my iPhone? I haven’t? Good god, what is this other crap I’ve been wasting words on! Soon, my pets. I will gush about my iPhone soon…) and when I grabbed it to bring it to him I only slightly flinched at seeing it was another ex. Because CONFIDENT! STABLE! NOOOO JEALOUSY! He’s MINE and I’m HIS and everything else is just noise.

Last night we were Skyping, as we are wont to do on… well on pretty much all nights actually… and he said suddenly and from nowhere “Oh look. Aussie Girl just popped up.” After a little more chatting they settled that they’d both like to at least try the “being friends” thing – an idea that I’ve always supported. In the abstract. With people who are not "MINE." Now what I should have thought and felt and all was “oh really? Tra la la, who cares? Because ever so confident and stable am I, and did I also mention that I am impervious to the feelings of “jealous” and such?” I even thought that was how I was thinking and feeling at the time. I was proud of my reaction! ‘Just look at you,’ I thought to myself ‘bein’ all fine and not caring.’ I may even have mentally punched myself in the mental shoulder, all ‘nice job!’ like.

So it was a pretty crappy kick to the shins when all my dreams that night seemed to be various versions of “and here’s how you lose the whole shebang…” Dreams where his attention wandered or his interest waned. Where I found myself helpless and lost and sometimes even sad. I seriously resent being sad in my sleep! This is a total miss-use of sleep and I won’t stand (-er, lie) for it!

You’ll be pleased, my people, to know that I did raise the subject with T.E. I set boundaries for what I could and couldn’t handle, and to his never ending credit he assured me repeatedly and emphatically that she was a pool of crazy he had no interest in diving back into, that he wasn't even sure the friend-thing would work and that he loved me. I don’t doubt his veracity at all – he’s honest with me; he’s someone I know I can trust. However I also know that relationships of ANY kind tend to evolve, and I’ll never totally understand what the appeal was the first time around, so how can I know what sort of appeal might come through again. I’m nervous. He’s told me he’ll sever ties if I want it, and though I love him for offering I feel like that would be a fail on my part. I don’t want to be that chick. I just don’t like being nervous either. Wish me luck with my own bag of crazy, people.

(I mean come on. How could someone with a super-cool IPHONE be nervous? It just makes no sense…)

Cracked Mirror

The last time I had a serious relationship (or actually any relationship at all really) one of the big, BIG mistakes that I made was not being me with him all the time. I became more and more bogged down in being what I thought HE wanted me to be, or wanted from a partner. While it sure seemed like a good idea at the time, especially because my self esteem was a little lacking at the time so being me seemed like a really BAD idea, in the end it was pure catastrophe. Because eventually “me” kept bleeding through, and every time it did it pissed HIM off. Hard to blame him, really, because it was me that kept changing the rules there. When all the chips had fallen, along with a great deal more tears than I’d have preferred, I promised myself that if I ever had another chance at trying love I would be very sure not to make that mistake again.

I’m proud to say I’ve stayed true to that promise so far (knock on wood). In fact, T.E. and I kind of fell into a rule early on that we are always honest with each other. Always. Even when the truth is harsh or sad or what have you, and it has been all of those things at one time or another.

But what I struggle with this time around is when I’m being me, but I don’t particularly like who “me” is in that moment. I have the harder time with our honesty rule, not because I don’t want to be honest but because there are times when the truth of the matter is one I’d rather not admit about myself. Case in point was tonight.

Managing our communication when we have an 8-hour time difference is not an easy task. More often than not it’s T.E. that ends up having to keep late hours to make it possible, and I appreciate his sacrifice always. For a while we honestly indulged too much, resulting in not a few days or even weeks where he was going to bed only a few hours before I was! While that was fun it was really hard on his life and finally saner heads prevailed. We set rules and boundaries on our time, saying that we’d only be able to connect for a couple of hours each weekday night. But we also made ourselves a bargain that the weekends we could go crazy. Stay up as late as we wanted. Who cares if we slept all funny? Who cares if the rest of the weekend we played catch-up? It was worth it to be able to put in some quality time together when we could.

One of the things that I’ve come to understand about myself is that I don’t respond well to surprises. I’m not a spontaneous gal. I like to know what’s coming, and especially true if what’s coming is disappointment. So tonight when he climbed into bed at our weeknight curfew of 2:30am (his time) I was a blue roo because I didn’t know it was coming. I felt like I’d been doused with ice water, and felt those stupid chin tremors starting to come up. And with them those feelings of “ok, now you’re just being stupid…”

T.E., as I’ve said before, gets me. He knows when my sentences have become clipped, or when I’m letting the silences last a little longer than normal. After a while he sensed something was up, and he checked on me. He asked how I was, and I said those 2 words that I always say when the real answer is “I’m shitty” but I don’t want that known: “I’m fine.” But I also know him, and I know that he’s on to me and my standard answer, so I quickly covered and changed it to “good. I’m good.” And then I wondered if I was breaking our honesty rule.

I wasn’t fine – I was blue, and kind of irked that I’d expected the reward after a long week and diligence on our curfew to be a nice, long evening together. But I didn’t like how I was reacting, and so didn’t want to share it. I didn’t want him to feel responsible for the pouting that I was just barely keeping at bay. It was my damage and I wanted to be damaged by myself, so to him I was “good”. Even when I wasn’t.

So now I’m trying to figure out if I broke our rule. If the rule is “honesty all the time” but the honesty feels like something private is it still wrong to keep it back? Sigh. This relationship stuff is hard. I think it would be much easier if I were only a little bit perfect. Maybe I’ll work on that next instead.

Meeting Our People

When my sweety (wait, what are we calling him again? Right, The Englishman. T.E.) was here around the holidays we went back home to Hippyville and he had the joy panic-driven fear-fest experience of meeting my people. Practically ALL of my people. Family, the Royals, and even the ‘rents. I give him BIG credit for throwing himself to the wolves like that, and he passed with FLYING colors. Witty, friendly, classy and the snazzy English accent can’t HELP but impress.

The big worry was really meeting the parents. Because let’s face it – parents are scary. Even uber-cool parents like mine are scary because HELLO! They’re the PARENTS! And the funny thing was that my Dad, who has always been the very picture of “not your average guy”, went very much into average guy mode when he got the details of my relationship with T.E. He did ‘posturing’ and ‘glowering’ and even a little ‘he’d BETTER be worried about me!’ I honestly waited for him to grab his dick and spit, so dude-like was my Dad all of the sudden. So I was mostly worried that this new-found dudeness was going to spill out when he and T.E. met and I was going to have to splash them with perfume and a hose to break things up.

But to my “yay!!” everyone was on their best behavior at the first, and that segued nicely into just being the cool guys that they actually are after a day or so. No competitive hand-shaking or ceremonial dick-measuring necessary after all. I was very proud of both of them.

Since I don’t go to London (there’s reasons for that. It’s not like I don’t WANT to go to London. It’s LONDON! There’s rain and pubs and a place where words like “bangers” and “mash” describe FOOD! Logistically it’s just complicated is all. But I digress.) there isn’t the same opportunity or requirement for me to meet his people. So I’ve been sucking up long-distance. I sent his parents a Christmas gift – one that actually reflected what I’ve been able to glean about them from my sweety. This seemed like truly high-quality suck-upping! And it seems like it payed off, as I’ve been promised a “thank you” email in response. (yes, I am this excited at getting an email. Shut up.)

And then tonight T.E. introduced me, via crazy swinging Skype party, to his very best mate. After the ‘rents T.E.’s best buddy (who we will call The Romantic, or T.R.) is really the most important person in his world, so this was a big deal to me. It came w/out planning or warning, so I had all of about 30 seconds to consider the idea, prepare my most fabulous anecdotes, do the virtual breath check, etc. In the end it was pretty much an accent-fest, with these two FABULOUS-sounding voices bouncing back and forth like a sexy tennis match! A good time was had by all and according to T.E. I passed muster with the buddy too. If we like each other and our people like each other what else is there, right?