Mr. Long Distance Is a Dear, Part One

 

I usually try to just hit on people who are within a half-hour or so, but the algorithm gets me sometimes. Sometimes I can’t resist hitting on someone who’s far away. He’s creative, he has a warm and welcoming face, and we even have a couple of friends in common.

The warmth was just as warm in his texts. I was so charmed that I didn’t even notice him telling me he’s allergic to cats! And I’m up to three now! I’m amazed I’m getting any writing done at all, with a kitten in the house!

Mr. Long Distance and I had a Facetime date, and his smile was so arresting that I stopped working on my puzzle! He gleamed at me. He teased, asked thoughtful questions, and made me giggle. His life fascinates me so much—there is absolutely nothing sexier than a guy who has a lot going on!

I was thinking he was about two hours away, far but not unheard-of for such a catch! But in reality, it’s like four hours. And he doesn’t drive. And the train makes his tummy hurt. But he could fly! It was such a nice fantasy, the long distance love affair that Get Up Kids songs are made of!

Even after he reminded me that he wouldn’t be able to stay with me when he visits because of the cats, I was still IN. He’s so easy and sweet to talk to. He made me cute-nervous, not that anxious performance-y nervousness that that plagues so much of my dating life. Instead of jumping out of my skin, I felt grounded and peaceful. No dithering, no hustling for attention.

“I’m bored, entertain me,” he said one afternoon when I was packing up for work. I sent him a fairly-chaste-but-lacy pic from the Hidden Folder and just sending it filled me with energy and hope. So I asked him if he’d like to try for some sexy video time the next night. He said yes!

I’ve never had sex over video chat before! I’ve made videos for myself before, and once for that guy who ended up telling me I was bad at virtual sex! So I was nervous, but also curious and so turned on! I knew just what I would wear, Easter blue. I did my nails to match. I felt glowy with possibility! I really hoped his dick would be as beautiful as the rest of him. Spoiler alert, it was!

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?

Bitterness and Giddiness Part Two: Infinitely Better Scrabble Guy

For a couple of days after my Instagram lapse, I felt AWFUL. I felt like I’d drunk poison—the particular rotten feeling of going backwards. There was no one to blame but myself, Usher, and Julia Roberts.

I wondered if I should take a dating break until the rottenness passed, at least until this breakup-versary month is behind me. But there’s always going to be something, some flower or sunset or moon giving me the excuse to be in a wistful funk. Forward is the only way to get unstuck and the internet is so full of faces!

I don’t know what possessed me to plan a call on the way home from a loooooong workday last Friday, but I did. (Boy, I work a lot in this story! I really work so much these days. It’s mostly wonderful and the gummies help!)

Infinitely Better Scrabble Guy was a sweet, gentle cutie from the facebook dating app. (Actually my favorite dating app right now, partly because I feel like I’ve used up the other ones!) We had like seven friends in common! I liked the way he went back and forth with his son about gaming while we were on the call, like I was immediately welcomed into his world. His work is similar to mine. When he mentioned that he plays phone Scrabble, I immediately invited myself to play.

Possibly some, though definitely not all, of my giddiness about IBSG was because it felt so good to return to Scrabble! I’d sworn it off after the long-ago Scrabble Boy saga, but I loved getting back in touch with my two-letter words! After not too many turns, IBSG placed “sex” on the board and then I added “thine” and “deepen.” I was in romantic Scabble heaven. He looked SO CUTE in his thumbnail picture, framed in gold with a little crown.

The next morning, before getting ready for my Saturday job, I strewed the peach and pink petals of my Valentine roses all over the snowy yard, feeling buoyant and set free.

IBSG wasn’t ultimately at match—I have GOT to stop pretending that “smokes occasionally” might mean just weed or just-at-a-party-sometimes. Boundaries are real and they suck, but love is addictive enough without smooching nicotine.

But it felt sooooooooooooo good to get totally silly about someone, to let my heart soar a little. I hope it comes around again soon! And I hope IBSG finds the very best partner, who’ll spoil him all to heck! He deserves it so, so much. He made me so happy.

In the meantime, it’s not such a bad thing to be all messed up a year later about a broken love thing, and it’s not a bad thing to revel in a Scrabble crush who wasn’t a match. I want to give my big weird heart time to appreciate both, to appreciate ALL the things, and to take it a little slow towards whatever adventures are next.

Bitterness and Giddiness, Part One

 

Throughout the whole one million years year that I’ve been broken up with The Shy One (Two months longer than we’d been together! I feel so impatient with this process!) I feel like I maintained some sort of dignity about the situation. At least, as much dignity as one can have while writing a million paragraphs and creating however-many art projects about a beloved ex a guy who dumped me right before Valentine’s Day.

I’ve been so strong, even with the Christmas mushroom gummies and the letters and the unblockings and reblockings and the endless wondering what to do with the just-not-my-style jewelry set he brought me back from his trip home. (Resolved: Even though if I wore it I would look like a deranged, appropriating haunt from the Island of the Well-Meaning-White Ladies, it’s beautiful and special and I’m keeping it. I’ll probably hang the earrings on the Christmas tree next year.) I’ve had, for the most part, willpower. Sometimes I was a bitch, sometimes just unbearably nakedly needy, but still, with some underlying dignity.

Until this year’s Valentine’s Day. I blame the movie Valentine’s Day—it’s a fave, but this Valentine’s lunch time, it really twisted the knife. Maybe it was a knife that needed twisting.

There’s this part where Bradley Cooper is telling Julia Roberts about his breakup and she says something like:

“Nothing to be done?”

And that just struck the saddest chord on the lobby piano in the overpopulated hotel that is my heart. I STILL think there’s something I could have done, some part of me I could have folded up and put away (Maybe in with the Christmas ornaments?) so that he wouldn’t have left me. In the background of all the love and joy and growth and vexation of time moving forward, my brain is still whirring away on that puzzle. I sincerely hope it will stop doing that someday.

I decided to be sad for a few minutes on the way to my evening job. I’d (Fit of well-being! Optimism! The life changing magic of tidying up my Spotify lists!) deleted my Grief Walk mix but, uh, luckily? There was this new single from Usher featuring Burna Boy, Coming Home. It devastated me all the way to my bones. It made me want to find The Shy One and just let him consume me until there was nothing left. I looked up the lyrics and it says “not just leave you for dead.” But metaphorically that’s what I wanted, to be so deep in shock and love and sex as to evaporate all the way to heaven and stay there this time, not drift back to reality and a Shy One QUICKLY getting his pants on to go, that last time.

It's fine, I can drive to work and self-immolate at the same time!

I knew there couldn’t be any seeking-out-and-being-consumed, so I did something maybe even less advisable—I looked at his Instagram in the few minutes before work started. There wasn’t much to see there, but there was this:

March 15, 2023, a little more than a month after we broke up. A stupid, generic meme saying “That feeling when everything’s just coming together.”

I know he wasn’t posting it AT me, but fuck you, dude. While I was raking the back terrace listening to fucking A Grief Observed, while I was going back to Unitarian Church to feel less isolated and alone, while I was planning to commemorate our first date/the first day of Ramadan with a street art project, his life had found exactly where it needed to be, at least in that moment of posting.

And I’m so mad at myself because the feeling he was having in that basic-as-fuck meme, it’s a feeling I wish for him! For everyone I love. It’s a great fucking feeling that everyone deserves. Resenting him for that moment of epiphany makes me seem so curdled and rotten, and in that moment, I was.

I reunlocked his WhatsApp thread and sent at desperate and devastated few questions, followed, not too long later, by an “Oops, please disregard.”

Fear and Devotion Part Two

Last week, there was an app guy who got mad at me when I wouldn’t come right over, that I wouldn’t change out of my pajamas and drive across the city to see him,  a stranger I’d just started chatting with that afternoon.

Before I blocked him, he said something like “I don’t know what game you’re playing, but I work hard and I want to be loved in my off hours.”

(Dude, don’t we all.)

There was a language barrier, but still. After I deleted the app guy, I didn’t feel like he was gonna come get me or anything, I just felt like—what am I? Am I anything? Can anyone see me here? Disembodied. So small as to slip through the cracks of existence and just dissolve into the ether. This is a pretty regular emotion of online dating, of dating in general.

So, my devotion to The Shy One was a safe place. I wanted to, not pine, exactly, just live cozily in my fake-chaste fake-platonic love for The Shy One. I wanted to be just as unobtrusive as possible, and free as can be, just able to pull my love for TSO up over me like a weighted blanket. Loving someone who loves me, but who I couldn’t have—the safest possible place. I’m tired of putting my body and heart and mind and soul in the path of strangers, I wanted the soft touch of something known. Embodied and of-the-soul, safe, safe, safe.

But then, TSO wasn’t in touch for a few days, normal friend rhythm that left space for that old quest to creep back in—how could I get him to see me? How could I try again to get his unavoidably divided attention? I wanted to send him a sweet-hot picture from last January and say, “I think these two deserve a chance.”

(The young people have a phrase for this: “down bad.” So apt it makes me queasy.)

I wasn’t really gonna send the picture, but looking at it made me surge with sadness. With anger! With abandonment and betrayal. He will always, no matter how much we love each other, no matter how much I empathize with his reasons, be the boyfriend who dumped me right before a trip, Valentines Day, and a minor-but-fraught surgery.

As good as it felt (still feels!) to rest in devotion, it felt terrible to be going backwards. My heart doesn’t know how not to think of him as The One, even though I don’t even really subscribe to the concept of The One. I hope that will change someday, but I don’t think texting the darling every few days is the way there.

So I said goodbye to The Shy One again, trying to be honest and kind but feeling unhinged and toxic. It felt horrible, but I felt better the next day. Reality is scary. Forward motion is scary. Strangers are DEFINITELY scary. It’ll take time and patience and breaks and chocolate and weed gummies and tears, but being at home in myself and in hope-for-love is worth it.

Fear and Devotion, Part One

I still think closure is a thing, just not the whole thing. Not a cure-all. My newfound friendship with The Shy One didn’t stay tenable for long—that probably comes as a surprise to exactly no one. I loved being able to share a little bit of my life with him, to send him a sunrise, a ring around the moon, a short video of my work area looking just so. I loved the glimpses of his life that I got while we were avoiding almost all topics. It was such a lovely respite from missing him. I felt peaceful, hopeful, and complete in a way I hadn’t for such a long time.

But.

There was a moment last fall that I’ve always meant to write about. I was at brunch with Rainbow Pal (Not too long before a 5% difference on Palestine/Israel made Rainbow Pal and me feel unsafe to be around each other—a different heartbreak for a different day.) It was a rough week—I was just back from a family trip and my body was pretzeled with grief. The war had just started and everything felt brutal and mean.

Anhedonic, is the word. But joy prevailed: RP and I were talking about whether we think I’m poly or not (the eternal conundrum) and I said something like “I don’t know, when I was with (The Shy One) I didn’t want anyone else in the whole world, it was all about him.”

Saying that unlocked my heart, and a butterfly swarm of giggles came out. An unlatching, a relief. A bubble of assurance and self-knowledge so profound that I couldn’t stop laughing. RP said later that they loved seeing me come back to life—they helped me come back to life. I miss them so much.

But anyway, devotion.

Back to the present day, dating is just being a little bit scary. Talking to so many people, sometimes rematching by mistake and feeling like I might be stupid or mean, sometimes not matching because the person looks a little familiar, getting a “Hello?” when I hadn’t written back in like ten minutes, it can feel so depersonalizing, so disembodied.

Most app-suitors are kind-if-boring, but the ones that aren’t kinda add up in my body and heart. Accreting.

Closure Is a Thing, Part Three

I think this story is taking me forever to tell because, to use a Jungian word, it’s lost its numinousness. I’m no longer trying to unlock some mystery of universal meaning and self-definition, I’m just celebrating an important and beloved thing that happened. So let’s celebrate.

I had the idea that we could be mail-friends, The Shy One and me, get to know each other literally as slowly as possible, an antidote for the (DELICIOUS) sugar-rush of our first and second go-rounds. But then, the waiting. I’ve never really bought into his assertion that we were toxic, but if we were, that’s where the poison lived—the desperate and disbelieving feeling of Waiting to Hear Back from Him. I wanted no part of that, I felt trapped and stuck in reverse.

There was a Band-Aid to be ripped off, and letters, though SO lovely, were never going to help me do anything but create daydream romance, false hope, and resentment.

Luckily, WhatsApp CURATES your blocked numbers for you. Or maybe there are just way fewer numbers to sift through there. I reached out and asked if we could try a closure conversation, and he very kindly agreed.

As luck would have it, I got out early that Tuesday night, 5pm instead of 8, and I had already decided to watch Good Grief on Netflix. Oh Dan Levy, righter of wrongs, healer of hearts.

Almost as soon as the Shy One and I started texting things through, I felt a profound sensation—heat moving up my body, through my achy shoulder, and out—the hurt and pain and worry that had lived in my body all year just left, just healed and left. The bargaining. The racking my brain to figure out how to make The Thing come back—it was gone.

A major part of the relief was no longer being (or feeling) alone in the love and the loss. All year, friends and even some professionals had stayed skeptical that the Shy One had loved me back. I knew it he had, but having it confirmed made such a big difference. Heartbreaking, yes, I wish neither of us had ever had to hurt, but
I found a new confidence knowing it really was star-crossed, that there really was nothing either of us could have done to hang on.

It was sad, accepting things as they are, accepting that we wouldn’t be a match again, that he’ll never be the right one for me. But at the same time, he debunked some insecurities I’d been carrying. It made me feel at peace and better able to face the realities of dating life—a Wizard of Oz feeling, I’d had what I needed all along.

It was such a loving exchange. I cried good, productive tears all evening and into the night. It felt good to tell him how important he was, what the loss meant, even how begrudgingly grateful I am to have been set free.

The other night, I was texting with a cutie on Feeld who was like “Oh, I travel a lot so I would definitely need something casual.”

AND! Instead of pressing myself to be casual and just see what happens, I said, very kindly, that I’m romantic through and through so that wouldn’t work. Saying goodbye to that nice traveling guy gave me such an epiphany:

It’s an incredible gift and accomplishment to be ready for love! In a sea of “casual but consistent” low expectations, I’ve found so much of what I really want and, though I can’t be sure that Boyfriend Guy will ever come along, I’m proud of my open, adventurous heart. I’m so proud to love what I love, and to have so much room for more.