Autistic Euphoria and The Guy Next Door, Part Six

I really wanted, as I always do, to fast-forward to friendtown. I didn't want to give myself space to let the rejection-hurt pass, I just wanted to keep being around him. But my OCD therapist gently pointed out that if I kept being around him, the feelings would just get bigger. (What happened to "maybe, maybe not," lady?!) I got really mad at her but I knew she was right. 

I texted to tell him about the spark, about needing space, about how sitting around listening to The National was not going to help me find perspective about him. He responded so kindly and so rightly! He said he'd look forward to being friends when the time is right and that he was still always up for catsitting whenever we needed him.

This was the night I was trying the mermaid wrap over and over, getting nothing but slipped loops and tangles. I HATED being called a friend and I wanted him to have seen me as desirable. OCD fired up and told me it's because I'm fat, and old, and not normal enough. OCD told me he couldn't see me, though I think in some ways he saw a me nobody else knows yet!

I texted and asked: Like, why not me? Why just friends? I retracted the question immediately, how could there ever be a satisfying answer?! I tried to call to try and smooth things over (If I'd just gone over there, would it have been more or less humiliating? The world may never know.) but just ended up leaving a short and bitchy voicemail. Not horrible, but definitely uncalled for.

I was HORRIFIED with myself. Ever since I saw Baby Reindeer  and probably before that too, I've been scared to death that I might be, deep down, a stalker. Two texts and a voicemail do not a Martha make, but I was scared RIGHT to death. I called BFF-Formerly-Sweetie to come over and mind me for the evening, to make sure I didn't do more. Definitely a little bit overkill, but having her here calmed me down.

There was more mortifying back and forth the next day, including the mistreatment of our respective artwork. (Nobody puts Ribbons in the recycle bin! That's how the Dirty Dancing line goes, right?) 

Blessedly, he'll be away for a couple weeks at a yoga retreat, and I'm so relieved to be temporarily offstage from that crush. I don't know what will come next, but I think, just like with Summer Princess, I took bad care of this connection. The time being his friend went by so fast and I wish it wasn't over already. 

I miss him and I feel afraid of him and afraid of myself. But the Autistic Euphoria was real, and I hope I can someday share it with someone in a healthier way. I've been browsing apartments to make myself feel less trapped, but this in-between feeling is sad, and there's nothing except time that can fix it.

(OCD Versus) Autistic Euphoria and The Guy Next Door: Part Three

Meanwhile

 After our first Art Night, The Guy Next Door texted a gentlemanly note thanking me for the evening, just like someone would do after a promising first date. Or a lovely first friend hangout! I should have just asked.

It didn't take long for OCD/trauma to take over for the euphoria feeling. I didn't WANT to devote so much of my consciousness of whether he was texting me at any given moment, but that's the illness. That 15-to-20-percent of my brain could have been used for lesson planning, for learning my knots, or literally anything else, but my brain remained fixed on the little green messages square, hoping a red number would appear. If I could have one aspect of my gorgeous neurodivergence just zapped right out, I would.

We talked in the yard sometimes, so I tried to gauge how much he would want to talk and how much he wanted to be left alone. I tried to do the insane math of how much he would want me to be out in my own yard. I'm doing a thing lately where I weed 10 minutes a day (Trying to avoid the dreaded weedwhacker!) so that kept me from hiding in my apartment and avoiding the yard entirely.

At one point, I sat in one of my Adirondack chairs to read and it broken underneath me. I have no idea if he saw, but in my head, I might as well have been onstage.

Both our sets of front windows are so big! But I felt exposed even with the blackout curtains drawn, even in the privacy of my own bed. It was hard to ever feel truly alone. I felt his presence when he was home and I missed it when he was out. I got entrained to his rhythms. I still am.

No more texts came for a few days. He missed saying happy birthday, even though I'd mentioned the date like a million times. Signals! The day after my birthday, when I was feeling satisfied but spent from my birthday adventures, news arrived.

"So it turns out that (Girlfriend Next Door) and I got back together, lol. She'll be housesitting for me this week. I hope you'll get to do some chatting, she's a delightful human being."

Things just change so fast. Sometimes I can't keep up, and this really felt like the rug being pulled out from under me.

He'd mentioned being poly, and this seemed like some poly bullshit, all of a sudden being expected to bond with her because he liked her. Or! Just some friendly neighbor stuff. I did meet her and we DID kinda bond, over his love of making hot drinks in overly complicated ways. She's curvy, chatty, femme brunette, it's possible he had a type. Or it's possible he just needed a stopgap until she came back to him. Or! Courtesy of Occam's Razor--friendship!

I didn't know what he wanted me to do or want or be, but I knew one thing--I didn't want to get tangled up with these two.

So I told him I needed to pause art nights for a bit, hunkered down to be sad about this mismatch. I truly wish I'd left it there.

Autistic Euphoria and the Guy Next Door: Part Two

 On Thursday evenings during the busy part of the year, I try to stop everything and make some art. Whenever I want to get to know somebody, friend or date, I invite them to join.

The Guy Next Door came across the yard to my door with a gardening book he'd picked out from one of the VERY numerous Little Free Libraries on our surrounding blocks. He showed me an illustration of a wall garden he wanted to create "for us both to enjoy."

(Ladies and gentlehumans of the kitten jury, I submit this as evidence that I wasn't crazy for thinking he might like me back! Not that you asked to see evidence!)

He sat down at my table. I played my summer camp playlist, skipping the songs that felt too emo or too harsh for the occasion. We were doing watercolors and it was just...it was so easy. He talked so freely and I felt so comforted by how open he was about his life. Divorce, love, disappointment, sobriety (of the California sort). It felt so easy to share my own stuff back without feeling like it was too much, like I was too much.

All that sharing made me powerfully smitten, so fast! I knew I couldn't fling myself at him because I wasn't ready and he's LITERALLY my next door neighbor. (In retrospect, flinging might have been the safer choice.) Instead I made plans like this:

"If I knew you better, I'd scoop you up and take you to the beach with me on Sunday. Let's stay friends for at least a year so we can have a beach day next summer. You drive so I can be high on the way home. We'll listen to Atavista by Childish Gambino."

"Okay, I can do that!" He seemed happy to be included in my weirdly specific daydream. Art night dream.

I had tickets to a little-bit-out-of-town showing of Fire Walk With Me, my favorite David Lynch movie and maybe the second-scariest movie ever. (First place goes to The Blair Witch Project.) "If I knew you better, " I said, "I'd give you my extra ticket because (BFF Formerly Sweetie) does NOT care. I see us at a David Lynch event someday, you as the Log Lady and me as... I don't know, I'll have to pick a less obscure character than I usually do."

Typing these visions of the future, they feel more than a little nutso, but I promise, he looked so happy about these plans. He was, as they say on My Brother, My Brother, and Me, playing in the space with me.

I forgot to feel embarrassment or shame for being so enthusiastic and nakedly fascinated by him. (If there had been real nakedness, I think things might have gone better. OR worse! Who knows.)

He seemed nakedly fascinated by me too. (I wonder if that was just the fact that he was higher than me. As OCD therapy would say, maybe, maybe not.) Under his gaze, I bounced. I rocked. I fell into special interest holes and he said he was happy to fall down in there with me. I was giddy with unmasking, and he seemed to be in a giggly joyful state as well. Maybe he was. Maybe it was real, at least this part.

Mostly he sat across the table from me, but sometimes he came over next to me and we sat stonedly shoulder to shoulder. When he was leaving, he gave me a hug that just crossed the boundary over to sensual--his fingers moved over my shoulders in a desire way? Or just it was that over-familiar weedy hippie-boy hug that used to send me into an anti-Platonic tizzy in my college hometown in the mid-Nineties.

Maybe my evidence isn't incontrovertible, but I really want to convince you this wasn't just me fooling myself for the millionth time.

Yet.

Autistic Euphoria and The Guy Next Door, Part One

 Around the time I was processing the Summer of Trauma and writing my Summer Princess posts, my next-door neighbor and I started talking. I'd noticed he was cute when he moved in back in spring, but I'd said hello to him and his pretty girlfriend as they were walking down our shared driveway in dating finery, looking so beautifully Love on the Spectrum. (I don't know if that was me clocking them or just seeing what I wanted to see.) and I was all obsessed with Summer Princess, so I hadn't given his cuteness much thought.

(Holy moly! I just stopped typing to see if Autistic Euphoria is a thing other people noticed! And! This Psychology Today Article! )

The Guy Next Door uncannily resembles the guy I'd have imagined for myself in my 20s and 30s--a sweet-faced and vaguely hippie-ish white guy with longish curly hair and a beard. He's all-but-dissertation at an Ivy. He looks exactly like he has the taste in music that he has--dreamy indie rock. The perfect Death Cab for Cutie cutie of my dreams. I told him I could have written him, which doesn't sound like a compliment, but is. This story ends with us high and me swoony, sitting at my painting table listening to The National.

Anyway, I was in the one-chance-out-between-two-worlds state between summer and fall, trauma work and quiet healing, when he stepped out his door and handed me a clear mug of bright red hibiscus tea. We chatted for a while, and then he bought out another tea for Other Side Neighbor. The three of us stood around talking, looking for all the world like people who'd figured out how to gently share our lives with others.

There was something so attentive about him, something that made me feel profoundly seen. I felt giddily like I didn't have to mask around this person!!! I let my weird self out a little more, even letting out my David Lynch impression, which I usually only do in front of BFF-Formerly Sweetie and the cats.

WHAT A GREAT TIME TO BE ALIVE IF YOU LOVE THE THEATER OF THE ABSURD!

The next time he came out the door with tea (I cannot emphasize enough how close his door is to mine!) it was just for me. I'd mentioned that I thought the hibiscus tea would make good iced tea, so he brought it chilled this time. Same clear mug, same brilliant red color, but he'd made it this way just for me.

Some people just have such a delightful way of inspiring oversharing! Between regular what-we'd-like-to-do-with-the-yard talk, we shared about our respective mental health stuff and our different twelve-step adventures. (Alcohol for him, codependency for me.) 

I mentioned that the guys in my apps seemed to be a little unhinged lately, maybe due to "cuffing season." He let me know he and Girlfriend Next Door had broken up but he wasn't on the apps. I maaaayyyyy have let slip that he didn't have to look further than my door. Instant karma from those app guys I was complaining about--I out-un-hinged them for sure.

"Aw!" he said to that. Maybe it was an "aw" like "Aw, that's sweet" or like "Aw, it's kind of sad that you said something so open and strange."

The hardest thing about getting obsessed with a person is the way I'll avidly look for Signs and Wonders from them, the littlest things that might mean they like me, but also turn the most blinkered eye to any and all red flags on both sides.

Other Side Neighbor helped facilitate the exchange of numbers and, from my now perspective, my fate was sealed. My new OCD and Mindfulness Workbook says I should tell myself "Magic is silly" in response to ideas like fate, but I can't quite get there--in matters of the heart, magic happens all the time.