Blue Ribbon Work Crush, Part Three

Three words, “no april fools” and then nothing.

I’d known I had to ask about the “smokes often” of it all. My hope was that it didn’t mean cigarettes, juts weed. IT NEVER MEANS THIS! But he’s my ******work crush****** and so beautiful so I had to at least try. Should I never have matched? Maybe? But I’m glad I did because I like this silly story.

Maybe I was too businesslike or cutesie or boilerplate or presumptuous when I asked him the cigarette question. Or maybe he just smokes, or maybe no answer was my answer for any other reason in the universe! If this were a stranger, I’d have felt pretty neutral about deleting the convo after a few days. Instead, I kind of…strived.

Spring is the perfect excuse to look extra cute, show a little more leg at work than usual. I posted a kind of Feeld-y lingerie pic on my regular dating app profile, hoping that might move the needle. When I wrote the first draft of this paragraph I felt a little judgey towards myself about the picture, but there’s something so tender and sweet about wanting him to just see me. I hope he did see that red lace. I hope he took a screenshot and put it in his hidden folder. Oh and a bad little part of me hopes he shows that hypothetical screenshot to the other guys at work.

The blue ribbon here is really for me, being so totally overflowing with fantasies and, at the same time, almost totally profesh! It’s almost like I have a sense of self-preservation.

The striving went on for a week or so, until one night when I had a beautifully hot hookup with a dreamboat who left a little too quick. That combination of satisfaction and melancholy opened me up enough to get a little bit honest with myself—Blue Ribbon Work Crush was the one I wanted, but he was probably a smoker and DEFINTITELY wasn’t a good texter-backer. I didn’t know what was going on, but I knew it wasn’t what I wanted.

I wrote him a note on our now-feeling-cursed dating app thread. I think it was a pretty good end-of-thread message. I apologized for my maybe-businesslikeness and was maybe a little too flowery about how great I think he is.

“Okay cool, I think you’re a nice person too.”

*dies a thousand deaths*

I’m not sure why it’s so devastating to be called a “nice person” but I hate it SO much. I cried, ended the thread, and realized it was only ever gonna be a flirtation. 

Probably, we're both just flirts! Some days I like thinking over every minute detail of what we say to each other, some days I feel mortified and ashamed if I pay him a little too much attention. Today, I’m tired of it and ready for something real.

But as I’m feeling the loss and muddle and awkwardness and BOREDOM, I also want to acknowledge the everyday gift of what has happened, the free-of-charge joy this not-quite-connection has brought. I liked the cute guy at work! He was attracted to me back! Huzzah! I’m proud to be walking away with a minimum of fraughtness. Learning and growing! I might be getting somewhere.

Knotty Thursday: Bowtie Karada!

 

*Choir of angels noise*

Friends, I don't think I really felt spring last year! I mean, I enjoyed it! The spring flowers and the flowers all year long were extra lavish and brilliant--it probably had something to do with climate change, but it felt like nature was loving me back, helping my broken heart take care and more forward. 

But yesterday, oh my, I could feel spring in every cell--fizzy, present, set-free. I know it's March and it'll probably get chilly again, but welcome, welcome, welcome spring.

I could also be feeling so loose and hopeful because I recently cut my work hours down a bunch--after a couple-month flare -up of depression, I realized that I need more margins everywhere, that I need to take care of myself or there will be no more work at all! This is an epiphany that always seems to arrive in February, because winter, because overwork, because my beautiful and cumbersome tapestry of traumas.

I'm so glad to be remembering what life was like before twelve-hour days!!! Art projects, field trips big and small, the spark coming back to me, like every year I doubt it will.

So, back to Rory's Brainworks! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8RzP5vML1g

The back of this one is really pretty, hope I get to try the whole thing before long!! I'm proud that the knots are so careful and specific, and I didn't space and start noodling around like I usually do. I really didn't think this picture was blurry when I took it! Maybe happiness just makes me blurry?

A Beautiful In-Between Time

 

“We are still somehow bound together in a giant conspiracy of love, mutual care, and ongoing life. As we are not lost to creation, we are not lost to one another.”

-Martha W. Hickman, Healing After Loss: Daily Meditations for Working Through Grief

The past few months have been a prolific untangling of griefs. For a while, I had a list of eight main griefs and I rolled a D8 each morning to see which one to think about. I only wrote about a page and a half on them each morning for a while, but they really helped my sorrows get less crowded and easier to think though. Then I found Ms. Hickman’s cute book in the Little Free Library and now I prompt myself by opening to random pages—that made the grief writing more floaty and free, more sourced from the divine.

The idea of my inner tanglings being part of all creation, being part of a “giant conspiracy of love” feels so freeing, so hopeful. I can feel the invisible string between me and The Shy One healing, transcending, becoming more of a spider web than a boat anchor chain. He’s starting to feel more like a wished-well and beloved but not-my-business stranger than a permanent gaping hole of want in my soul. Most of the time.

That progress is bittersweet. I’m gradually making room in my heart for myself and for whoever is next. I’m spending less energy spiritually reaching out. It feels like the pain of being without him won’t last forever. Sometimes. But that means that someday he’ll really be gone. He’s really been gone for two-and-a-half moons, I know, but the pain is still a way to claim him, a magical-thinking way to keep staying in touch.

A better way to keep the love alive is to appreciate the ways that he changed me. The goddessness he helped me to tap into seems to be sticking around. I do still worry that I’m not lovable, not family-able, but I’m convinced down in my bones that I’m beautiful and worthy. The hotness I felt with and from him extends beyond the sparkly box of frilly things, beyond ALL the gorgeous pictures of both of us saved in my Hidden folder. It’s starting to feel like a permanent part of me.

It's deeper, somehow, than the brazen sexiness that has buoyed me through these ten years of adventures. A soul-shimmer, a glint of mischief that sparkles out whenever I meet a stranger’s eye. Even on a bad phone date, it’s there, playfully jollying everyone through.

And there’s this thing that happened the other day! An app guy asked me what I’m looking for and instead of doing a bunch of poly/hookup culture-equivocating, I wrote back “Boyfriend material!!!” with three Care emojis. Such an ordinary thing to be looking for, but it made me feel like a QUEEN. Like a Crystal Gem tapping into her powers, Rose Quartz but maybe less problematic. Or not!

I hope I changed him too, in some beautiful way, though I thought he was perfect. I hope I somehow lightened the load of the world for him, the way he did for me. I hope I’m living in The Shy One’s bones telling him that he’s beautiful, worthy, and free, that he’s not here on earth for duty or punishment. I hope I’m in his ear when he’s writing fiction, nagging him to maybe let his protagonists win once in a while.

I hope, like me sometimes, his soul gets lit up by all these profligate Ramadan flowers and he feels buoyant, playful and, I’ll keep saying it, free.