Okay, I'm Completely Lost

 

Mulholland Drive helps me.

Okay, Christmas was very cute, but I've been living in a fantasy for a little while and it's time for me to do as the cowboy says. Hopefully with a happier ending than Naomi Watts gets.

Skipping ahead in the story, The Guy Next Door and I had our first date! That's what he said it was! We had so much fun! He said I was beautiful and said he wanted us to try putting ropes on each other!! I can't prove that this happened, but it did. I can't prove that he was ever attracted to me, and to be fair, no court of law is asking me to.

(He told me yesterday that he's not "traditionally attracted to me," but that he felt something. It sounded really close to calling me "not traditionally attractive" which, in fairness, I am not. I have other qualities!)

Jesus fuck though, is there anything worse to hear than "I'm not traditionally attracted to you?" Just tell me I'm ugly already, this is taking forever.

ANYWAY we got back from the date (Which I don't really think is what it was.) (He called our two apartments "our place" though.) we settled in for a cuddle, which we'd tried a couple times, but this time, we were in my bed.

It felt good, so, so good. I felt hopeful and safe and beautiful. My head was resting on his heart and the moment felt almost right.

I said "I'm gonna kiss you, I'm just waiting for the right song to come on."

And he made the saddest little sound. It was the same sad sound he made when I put my head on his shoulder for the first time, back when we were watching some post-Christmas Bob's Burgers. (He'd downloaded a bunch for us to watch when my Roku was out for a day. I thought that was so sweet because it was, in fact, SO SWEET.)

Anyway, saddest little sound, so I asked, is that okay? and he said

"Not yet." Which a very good and appropriate thing to say when you don't want to kiss someone. Technically a Good No even though I hated it.

He kept acting like this was the start of dating though! I even tried to plan our regular (never was really that regular) Thursday Art Night, and he said he thought we should see each other sooner, so we picked Tuesday, which is today, and for which time slot I've booked a somewhat-emergency therapy appointment.

After he left on Saturday, I was very close to panic. I didn't understand the not-kissing! And I didn't want to ask because, that's just not the thing to do! I didn't want him to feel like I was complaining when things had gone so well. I wanted to have space to understand Saturday before I tried to understand what was going on.

With OCD, reassurance is the addiction, I have to keep it to a minimum. But in a new thing, you need reassurance! I need to stop thinking about that contradiction or my brain will loop forever.

I gave myself space from the panic, and eventually I chilled out and was able to experience the warmth and promise of what had happened so far. So I reached out and told him how beautiful I felt, and how I did want to do the ropes with him if I could put them on him first, and how I hope he was understanding what's going on in the new season of Stranger Things, because I couldn't make heads or tails of it.

OF COURSE that cute and very nice text was met with a mini-radio-silence on his part, and I got triggered. I wanted to ask "Am I being too much?" and then was LIVID that he was making me feel like I was too much. I am SO MUCH but I like myself this way. Or I usually do when it's not yesterday!

I told him about the trigger and he seemed very understanding, he even offered to change a few things so I could feel a little more oriented. It seemed like I was talking with someone I could trust, so when he said "Any other questions?" I went ahead and asked:

"You said it was a date, but you didn't want to kiss me. Can you tell me some more about that?"

He said he was just figuring things out and needed to give it some thought.

So I asked the real question: "Are you attracted to me? I'm seeing about 40% attracted, 60% terrified. Am I getting the math right?"

And he said he needed to ponder that too! 

What in the world were we gonna talk over on Tuesday if on Monday he had to ponder whether he was attracted to me or not?!

I went over after work to ask about that, if there WAS anything to talk over, and it just kept getting worse and worse. I said things like "How come they're (Girl Next Door and Yoga Camp Hottie) kissable and I'm not?

Questions there are no answers to and shouldn't be answers to.

 Questions I know I'm not supposed to ask and still can't let go of yet:

Why them and not me?

Is it the fat?

What am I missing?

I'm trying so hard to do this right, what am I not doing?

I teared up with a little self-compassion typing those questions. The longing, the hurt, the loneliness. The everlasting torment that there exist more kissable girls with more  (TRADITIONALLY) yoga-y butts.

On my part, there's love here, even a little acceptance but I can't get to it through a wall of obsession.

I have a mental illness that makes me and my experiences feel unreal, and sometimes I choose people who help make us feel even more unreal. People who are shifting, mysterious, in flux, at sea. That's who I've chosen for my last two crushes and my most recent play partner.

It's hard to have any hope for love right now. I have to give up on him, but I don't want to give up on love. I'm glad I booked a therapy appointment instead of waiting for him to come talk to me tonight. 

I don't know how a person with a brain like mine can be loved, and I need my higher power to help me find faith in myself again. Probably not today, but soon.

Goodbye to The Shy Ones

(art's a Rumi quote)
Time for me to take a little rest in the praise ocean.

My desire to love and be loved by them, whether it was the platonic love that I was just beginning to feel for her or someday being able to be loved by both of them, was so powerful as to be unmanageable. It was so big I couldn’t even see it until I’d started to let it go. I knew (Or was afraid I knew, it amounts to the same in the end) that it was too big a want, too feral a need to fit into their lives as they’re constructed. I was so scared of that big desire. It felt like Kaiju want, Godzilla love. If I was a movie, you’d have to pretend the buildings had been evacuated before they got smashed. This is a terrible way to see myself, I’d like to change it.

Maybe Mrs. Shy One felt that fear too, because when I, last Friday, the day after all the texting joy, asked her permission to blog about her, she decided I needed to check with her every time I thought of writing about her. From potential friend and metamour to editor, just like that. For the sake of “healthy boundaries,” for “honesty and transparency.” (LADY. You pretend your girlfriend is just a friend on your socials. Your husband asked me to do the same. Come ON.)

Mrs. Shy One reaching out to grab my writing process was, to me, the exact opposite of healthy boundaries. To put it in Downton speak, she was putting her oar in. It was clear to me that the only boundary she/they cared about was the one around me.

The bottom dropped out from the whole plan then, and I saw the situation for what it was, for what I was. To keep playing with The Shy One, I needed to be controlled. Managed. Shrunk or at least stunted. Even, my now-panicking brain added, snuffed.

The box I’d agreed to, their affable and understandable closet, was not going to stop shrinking around me.

The part that was absolutely NOT her fault is that I felt completely submissive about the two of them. I knew that they probably didn’t mean to try and control me, but I felt helpless, without a voice to negotiate. I did have a voice. The so-big-I-couldn’t-even-see-it desire combined with the submissiveness I couldn’t talk through without crying, made it feel impossible to listen to them or advocate for myself. It shouldn’t have been impossible, I know. My body was telling me that the options were to fall at her feet or flee.

So I fled. More accurately, I blocked both of their numbers so I could stop crying long enough to get through my workday and get at least a little bit of the story into paragraphs.

The next day, seeing where the paragraphs were going and not wanting to break things off via blog post, I asked The Shy One to come over or call. He couldn’t do either, he said, so we broke up by text. I told him the closet feels bad, that I want them to be exactly them and exactly where they are, but that I just didn’t fit.

He was just as kind. He told me I deserve to love without guardrails or artificial limits. That made me feel appreciated for who I am, and not Godzillalike at all.

I know there’ll always be guardrails and limits because humans are involved and nobody needs to be falling off a cliff.

I’m sure I’ll have more to say about him, and I know I’ve got lots of Unicorn Stuff to paragraph out, but for now I’m just sad, grateful and quiet. I don’t think it’s kind or helpful to compare myself to Godzilla, but for now I’m happy to be back in the sea, at rest.