His Name Is Off the Mailbox

 

Thanks, Mountain Goats!

The Guy Next Door is gone. I finally had the courage the other day to retrieve my flower pots that had wandered into his yard. On my side of the border between our places, he left his beleaguered monstera-y plant, with crinkled-up leaves and bent stems. I'm not a healer of plants or men, so I put the plant at the curb for someone the plant has less baggage with to rescue.

It's lonely without him. (The man, not the poor plant.) Even after we stopped talking, he was kind of an imaginary friend. I liked knowing when his car was home, the state slogan on his license plate felt like a comforting/vexing chime in my head. Whoever moves in next won't be like this, I hope, won't get all tangled up--I'll probably only notice them if they're having a particularly loud conversation or smoking on the patio, or if they have a cute pet.

This guy, I was insane about him and insane with him, but the connection still meant something to me. The door that opened between us, that let two messed up minds find comfort in each other, I still think it's a miracle.

In the cold cold depths of winter, when I was still learning not to go to his door, I lit candles for myself in the window, both to ward off the pain and to show myself love. (Also there was an Indivisible directive about window-candles. Mine can't be seen from the street, but they still count.) I hoped the light gave him comfort too, snowday after snowday, but that really wasn't my business.

I'm still figuring out how to thaw. I'm DEEP in my step work and leveling up my family estrangement, trying how to figure out how to treat myself if I am, as I'm beginning to see, worthy of kindness and care. I took a dating break until at least June, but I'm starting to wish and hanker.

When The Guy Next Door showed up last summer with his red cups of hibiscus tea, I was jagged and at sea from last summer's trauma work, from a lifetime of trauma work. He gave me such a pretty spark and distraction, a (kind of fucked up) way to care for myself until I was ready for the next phase of growth and healing.

I imagine him out and about in some beautiful sex-positive frenzy, having all the fun my codependent ass isn't ready for. I imagine him going home to Think About What He's Done. I imagine him joining the life of some more copacetic and traditionally-shaped girl and hitchhiking that life wherever that takes him.

I'll probably never know. I get to stay here and try to be emotionally sober and not get swooshed into any more distractions while I face myself, while I learn to love myself. I miss my friend, whether he was imaginary or not. He doesn't live in my heart forever, I don't think, but I wish him everything good. And I hope someone is taking good care of that plant.

How Do I Grieve a Fantasy?

 I passed The Guy Next Door in the driveway this morning and he said three words: "I'm moving out." My main feeling about this is relief, with a healthy dose of the Universe loves me! But I also feel guilty and sad and I have the continuing sensation of waking up and realizing it was all a (sometimes bad) (mostly bad?) dream. I don't miss him like I used to, but I miss how much room he took up in my heart.

The first night we hung out, when he talked about creating a garden "for us both to enjoy," I saw an entire adorable future for us: Together but living in our respective apartments, meeting on his patio for tea. Having just the cutest story about how we got together. And finally, finally, being able to give up the quest for love! Because I found it right outside my door!

I've always had a vivid romantic imagination, but this was different. I'm scared about how much it felt like I "knew" he was the right one for me. I guess if I'd been right I could call it intuition, but as things are, I'm tempted to call it delusion. But I don't think I got there on my own.

(The day of the last date, he said a parallel to the "for us both to enjoy" thing, he said he wanted to knock out a wall in his place so we could have breakfast on my terrace in the mornings. I like leaving the terrace nature-y for the birds, but what a nice idea!)

I remember laying in bed that first night feeling ELATED, feeling sure that he would stay here and be weird with me forever.

In the end, I felt like we were a cult of two, caught on a roller coaster of shared madness. (Codependent Crazy, my sponsor would call it.) After our break-off I looked up his (stated) diagnosis, Bipolar 2, and it described exactly what I'd been through with him--unpredictable moods, various degrees of lying, cycles of happiness and misery. It helped me to understand a little,  to give myself compassion about it, but it doesn't explain why I made the choices I did.

I could sit here and list his lies and red flags as evidence I got gaslit, tricked. But the important thing is--I chose him! And then re-chose him! So I'm asking myself, what made the fantasy so powerful?

Maybe it's as simple as a desire to fall in love and still keep my apartment? Maybe it's my porous nervous system and mirror neurons taking my brain to the mercurial place where his brain lives? Or maybe my dang soul just thought I could learn a lot from getting tangled up in him! I sure did!

Maybe I was lonely and needed a friend just as badly as he did!

I like my fantasy brain and plus, it's an autistic trait so I refuse to shame myself for it! But I'm afraid to sweep myself up into something so one-sided and shifting ever again. I know I can create beauty and romance out of pretty much anything, but I don't want to do it on my own, independently of reality. That's what art is for, not relationships.

It's snowing again and I'm using all of my self-care/hunkering down skills, lighting candles and feeling all the feelings, being where I really am.

I think part of my TGNS journey was about wanting to escape my own life, wanting to evade whatever growth and pain and love I'm finding on my own.

Or, I just loved him. He was my friend and I miss him, and I miss the idea of him I made up in my head. Both. I'm never gonna sort out the real from the imagined, the lies from the information, the throwing-away-art from the making of art in the first place. 

These days I'm supposed to be all twelve-steppy and put things in the care of my higher power, so that's what I'm doing. My HP and his will have to figure this out. In this case, I think, the Higher Power might just be time.

Sex, Love, and The Shy One, Part Three

 

Sex, Love, and The Shy One, Part Three

I want to try and remember, the way our bodies loved each other so easily, traversed all the very real distances between us and bridged the gap. Together. The most possible together.

The warmth of him. The way he gave himself to me wholly and (almost) without reservation. When he held my hand, my hand felt home, it felt made to be there, folded into infinity, across ages, across universes, folded into whatever divine thing made him. The best possible hands, the best possible me, glowing with light and safety and hope and wholeness.

And the kisses, slipped together and seamless.

Last time I quoted Lottie, this time it’s Lettie. In the bonkers treasure that is Fast X, Michelle Rodrigues says to Vin Diesel something like “If you spend too much time looking in that rearview, there’s things you might miss…like eternity.” But eternity doesn’t work that way, Lettie! Eternity is everywhere and everything and always, you can’t face toward it or away from it, it wraps you up and winds you into the solidness of being, grounds you to the center of the universe and doesn’t let go. Eternity holds your hand. Is this the purple-est prose ever inspired by a The cars..they drift! Movie? I don’t know. All those big, big explosions.

The Shy One only slept over a handful of times, and each time, no matter how many times I’d gotten off (SO MANY) it was so hard to sleep next to him. I was wound up tight with excitement and wonder, not wanting to miss any chance to feel him breathing next to me. Mostly, I slept after he left in the early morning, exhausted and glowing. The sadness of him leaving so quick only occurred to me after I woke up. There should have been a way for him to stay and make me pancakes, but there was always the beautiful pull of home.

It wasn’t all a starfield of bliss. Once, he grabbed my hand to show me how he wanted his penis stroked, impatience and contempt glimmering through him in a way that made me wonder if I’d been doing it all wrong all along, if there was only one meant-for-him person in the world who knew how to do it right.

When I wrote the first draft of these paragraphs, my heart just melted and filled with peace: My darling just wanted to go home. I wish I’d found a way to be kinder about it, and kinder to myself about it. I wish, wish, wish I could have been a kind of home for him, that someday I’ll be that kind of home for somebody new. Somebody mine.

I got self-conscious sometimes about my blowjob skills. I worried aloud once that I was bad at it and I think he actually agreed. He could have meant “Yes, I know you’re self-conscious about it.” Or “Yes, you’re bad at sex.”

Given time, and maybe less judgement, I could have learned. I want to have that part of intimacy, where you take your time learning somebody’s body, letting him learn yours. Every pairing or constellation is a new beginning, and I hope for many more chances to learn.

This morning, I can see myself there in the middle of my biggest dream, maybe being bad at blowjobs, definitely fucking it up in other ways, and feel peace. Today, just for a little while, I’m tuned into my eternity wavelength, past present and future and never and nowhere all at once. Stillness and peace and ungrasping love. Something like acceptance.

The Goodbye Boys

Connection and attraction are weird. The two times that Mr. Adorkable came over, I felt like we were almost supernaturally linked, not just the way our bodies fit together, but personality-wise as well. We chatted and laughed like friends and played so beautifully. And then he’d go back home and hardly ever text—I should have taken that signal and kept it moving, probably.

Not-texting wasn’t how it started though. The first weekend that he had my number, back at the end of August, he was attentive, flirty, infinitely selfie-able. He was my cute text company on my solo birthday trip, to the point where I missed him when my hotel room turned out to be a Wifi-hole. I sent him a picture of a sunset mountain, of my outfit matching a wall of Warhols. Company.

But after our first date, the textiness stopped, and I don’t know why I didn’t just admit that I HATED that. Anybody can text anybody every day or so! Still, I was mindful of bandwidth. And he was so lovely and present and playful in person.

Before our second date, I reached out to ask him if he’d ghosted, a really bad sign! But he said he hadn’t, and I got more attached. Again, a song came on at the right time like we were in a movie.

But then, the not-texting again. We made a third date, but it took some nagging.

(My work life is mostly nagging--it’s my superpower! I vow to not opt into any more of it in my free time.)

(And I also vow to just recognize the next case of He’s Just Not That into You when it comes along!)

Anyway, when Mr. Adorkable told me a few hours before the planned third date that he “wasn’t feeling connected.” I wanted to be like: Duh. You didn’t even try. But I know things don’t work that way.

My point is, besides BEING TEXTED BACK IS NICE, that I’m feeling burned out from the goodbye part of dating.

A partial list of goodbye boys since last fall:

The Coach, (didn’t want to be in person, possibly dick-catfishing me)

The Lovely Guy, (very lovely, it just ran its course)

Superhot hookup guy who looked like Finn from Star Wars, (Gave me a fake last name)

This Charming Man, (Love, heartbreak, Chappelle fan)

The very-not-a-match-hookup who probably gave me Christmas Covid,

The Good Boy, (Can’t really complain about that one)

The Shy One, (GLAD I UN-SAID THAT GOODBYE!)

The Southern Charmer, (“Sometimes it’s all just…too much.”)

The Adorables,

The boy with the Sonic the Hedgehog tattoo, (Also one that said “Keep it real”)

The high school principal who had First Corinthians tattooed on his arm, (I thought this was the most romantic thing ever.)

The goth boy who was delightfully dommy in the car, (Also a terrible texter)

The Song Sender Part Two (Electric Boogaloo),

and Mr. Adorkable.

No wonder I’m so tired. I’m not writing this to slut-shame myself, far from it! I just want to acknowledge that that’s a LOT of hope/hotness/goodbye for one year. Some disappeared, some ended in wrenching conversations, one re-ended in a sweet, healing way, one un-ended.

So it’s time for a little break from strangers, time for my body and heart to process all the sexiness and wonderfulness and sadness and shame and loss and phone-checking. This year of adventures was a busy, beautiful, ravishing gift, but Mr. Adorkable was one goodbye too many for now. Just for now though.