I did something bad 8 years ago… give or take. I ghosted an absolutely wonderful guy named Andy. He was gorgeous, sweet and made me feel…safe? Seen? And obviously, not believing that that was at all possible, instead of waiting for the other shoe to drop, I scrambled out of there, knowing I would regret it. But he didn’t call me back… and I took that to be proof that I was right, that I had avoided the inevitable heartbreak. Yaay me.
I’ve never forgotten that moment that made me terrified. You
know that song “What did the fox say?” It’s an insane, ridiculous bop that appealed
very deeply to my chaotic soul. Andy played it for me one day. I walked into
his home, a bit out of sorts anyway, and he said “I have to show you something.”
And he took me to his bedroom and played this song. I watched it in total
confusion-changing-to-amazement as he stared at my face.
Now, to be clear, songs have been played to me before. I
have been serenaded from rooftops, I have been mix-taped to within an inch of
my life, I have been tik-tocked to kingdom come. But most of those songs have
been love songs. They have been the “more than words”, the “blowers daughter”,
the “why couldn’t we be friends”, etc. But that evening, as Andy watched me
watch the song, I felt that I had inadvertently left a window open to my brain that
let him see the lateral convoluted internal combustion vat of day-dreaming fumes that ran on freaky
laughs – and he gave me fuel to run it.
I can’t even explain the fear. I call it the “Blood and
Cinnamon Everywhere” syndrome. Without going into specifics, it references a
macabre story of a man who died – and it was hilarious. More fuel for the
chaotic brain and when another boy had shared that with me, I had taken it to
mean that he really got me. That it wasn’t just a fluke, that he really saw me.
And once you see me, how can you leave, right? But he did and many years later,
I didn’t want the cute fox with language problems to say goodbye. So instead, I walked out. I regretted
it almost immediately but I just couldn’t find the courage to go back and
explain my vulnerabilities.
Many years later, Andy and I reconnected on social media. It
was a birthday message and then a what’s up message and then congratulatory
message and then a covid message and then other messages. They were kind, and
playful and finally I gathered my courage and apologised for my shitty behavior
so many years ago. It was text, I didn’t look at his face and he didn’t see my
remorse. But he accepted it with “Don’t worry, we have all been weird with
people before. It’s okay, I only remember the good times.” That sounds like a
goodbye, right? Like closure? It sounds like “Thank you but you’re not welcome
back”, right? That’s what I thought. And it sucks! SUCKS SO MUCH because I want
another do-over.
Anyway, about 6 weeks ago, after months of denial and procrastination, I asked him out. It was albeit after two whiskey shots in the privacy of
my home while talking to my girlfriend who offered more courage by saying “If
it goes to shit, you never have to see him again.” And in the 10 seconds it
took him to text back, I had already gone through my spiral of dark despair leading
to belligerent threats of killing that friend who forced me to text under
the influence. But when he replied, those threats turned to songs of loyalty
and forever friendship, especially because he said he’d love to get a drink
once back in town in a few weeks.
It's now been more than a few weeks. And he's been in town for a while. He hasn’t called. And I’ve devolved into a
teenager who’s putting every text we have ever shared through the increasingly unscientific but obscure litmus scrutiny of analysis by friends to come to the
conclusion of “Did he forget or is he just politely letting me down or is he
just not that into me anymore or was it always a nothing or...” Yep, it’s not pretty and no amount of
reminding me that I’m a grown up is going to change my winning strategy of overthinking
and playing out increasingly depressing but non-existent scenarios. Or writing a blog post. Or basically
anything except reaching out again with a more serious and vulnerable and heart-on-my-sleeve invitation.
Why? Because I can’t imagine any winning combination of words that someone who left me could possibly say to me that would make me seriously consider letting them back in my life so many years later. And if I won't allow that disruption, how can I expect someone else to allow it either? I think about Andy’s life, about the people populating his world (as seen while clumsily browsing his social media) and the affection he gets from everyone and I find myself wondering “Would I be able to offer that consistently? Does he deserve an ex saying the "right" things to be welcomed back into his life only to discover that it wasn’t him she wanted but just SOMEone to scratch an itch?” After all, if you're trying to reenter a life you'd abandoned quite awfully, isn't the only meaningful reassurance you can genuinely offer is that you won't repeat your behavior and instead try to make up for the damage?
Eight years ago, we dated for just a few weeks. And while it was enough to make me trigger-jump ship, it really wasn’t enough to get to know him, even with all the momentum and excitement. But it was today, when I found myself checking out an astrology website for romantic compatibility that it hit me - what I want is reliable data! Because despite years, weeks and months of therapy and solitude later, I have to say I’m no closer to really knowing if what I want resides within a relationship with him (or anyone specific), or if he's just an attractive mental distraction from my large piles of work, and just how many of my walls - his and mine - I’m going to have to bring down to get the information needed to make that decision.
Like another cute fox (synchronicity!) says in The Little Prince, "One only understands the things one tames. If you tame me then to me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world. I shall know the sound of your step that will be different from all the others. Other steps send me hurrying back underneath the ground. Yours will call me, like music, out of my burrow...and we shall need each other... You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed...."
Basically, it's only after going out with Andy and feeling the feelings and encouraging his attachment will I discover if I want to go out with him, feel the feelings and take responsibility for the attachment.
The possible carnage of dating seems completely
antithetical for mental peace and emotional health, no?
12 comments:
Can one have a meaningful relationship akin to a fav pair of jeans? Should one? Being enveloped in comfort, once in a while, rather than being afraid to live without it being there all the time a la Linus....
20 years ago, I serenaded, and fell in love with someone. But she was going to be married and I already was... it didn't go, couldn't go anywhere.
I often think of reconnecting, but I no longer know how to. And that saves me the from being impaled on the horns, so to speak.
Being uncomfortable could be just what the doctor ordered. Who knows!
Hey Anon,
I think you should go for it. Go all out, say the words, and once you're done, come back here and tell me everything. I'm serious - I really want to know it all, including what she said, how you felt, what (if anything) you regret, etc. Gimme data and perhaps courage to risk myself. Help a girl out, please?
But also... I think we settle for the once-in-a-while being enveloped in comfort kind of relationship because, for whatever reason, we believe we can't have it all the time. I also think that the GOAL is the "all-time-all-comfort" model but the truth is, once our bones have set in a way that only allows only part-time-comfort, it will take a serious effort of will and a tolerance of pain and deep-diving for some grace to offer us that chance. And in the cost-benefit analysis, it's possible we often choose the absence of pain rather than the possibility of something more painful or more amazing.
In that situation, I put to you this question : What are you protecting yourself for? I ask myself that same question... And my answer is, if all things fall apart, like always I will only have myself to glue me back together again. I have to be super strong and also immensely vulnerable at the same time. That paralyses me. What's your excuse?
Oops. When I said "I don't know how to" it was stating a fact. I don't have her number, email, or any other means of connecting.
Yet, even if I did, that was 20 years ago. The thing with a pair of jeans is that they kind of grow with you. It would terribly sad if we connected now and she had grown in a way that she could still feel me, and me, her... I don't think I want to feel that kind of regret, just as yet.
Do we grow/change by a lot early on, and then ever so slowly? Perhaps we're better placed in our 40's (as are you) or in the 50's (as am I) to find someone who while being ossified in their own unique jalebi-like-fashion, still manages to complete us. Something to consider.
I stay where I am as I no longer am alone. There are others to think about. While scarred by own dysfunctional upbringing (dysfunctional only in my eyes - nothing remotely compared to what you have gone through), I have consciously tried to not make the same mistakes with my kids. And the fact that we can communicate, regularly and reasonably articulately, gives me hope that the karmic cycle, on both sides, may have been broken.
I hide behind many other similar constructs (excuses?) - but true freedom to me would be the chance to be "super strong and immensely vulnerable at the same time". Seek your Rock of Gibraltar. I have found my virtual rock, and that works for me, but I often wish I had a physical one as well.
Is that your key to true freedom?
Ah Anon, so many things you've said make me want to write separate posts for them all. But the most poignant of it is "I don't want to feel that kind of regret yet"... leading me to think perhaps you believe there is a perfect time in the future for that? :D I'm laughing but I also know what you mean. What's a 'virtual' rock? Online dating? Seeking but discreet? I'm not judging, I'm merely curious about what is tolerable pain. As for my Rock of Gibraltar, I don't know what that looks like. Usually it's just me that I can completely count on to pick up the pieces. And that's a sustainable if sometimes-lonely situation.
-\_(:/)_/-
A Rock is immutable; doesn't keep you tethered yet can be counted on to reset your bearings. Not being an actual rock, "it" does have it's own journey, but its intrinsic nature ensures alignment, empathy as well as a virtually infinite capacity to absorb what's thrown at it.
I have found my Rock in spirituality - not passive but active. That brings a certain energy to the process of understanding and forgiveness, and yes, to love. The toughest thing to do, and I've figured this out the hard way, though still learning the lesson, is to love oneself, warts and all.
With my virtual rock beside me, I still yearn for intimacy, the kind found in long silences enjoyed together while doing separate things, perhaps.
Lonely for me has never been sustainable. I suspect your writing, your audience and their occasional comments, do provide some company. I would want more, as I know you do, hence the thought that perhaps a Rock may be the key.
Oh, I consider myself deeply spiritual. I spend hours alone, introspecting and reading and writing - which I guess is my active practice - and staring out of the window. That would make me, as Simon and Garfunkel wrote ages ago, a rock and an island. I agree, loneliness isn't sustainable and fortunately I suffer from it only sporadically. But my worst moments have also been when I've been painfully alone even with a warm body next to me. So I'll mix my metaphors here but intimacy feels like the proverbial pot of gold found in someone else, and thus that's where my the search for it continues...
I had also thought of the same song! Yet the meanings are diametrically opposed.
Your pain reminds me of these lines I read - You deprive me of solitude without providing company.
I figured out fairly early in life that intimacy is very different from being intimate. The latter is easy, the former, not so much. I've often been able to connect deeply, yet unable to replicate that connection post being intimate. Feels like it was inauthentic in some way, and yet I am still unable to see the warning signs.
Does your search for a pot of gold preclude the need for a Rock?
Such a great line "You deprive me of solitude without providing company..." A pot of gold and the proverbial rock aren't mutually exclusive but I hear what you're saying about Intimacy vs intimate activity. I wrote something about it in my post "one night catch and release"... but I gotta warn you, I have no answers, only more questions.
That was next on my reading list!
But you are echoing in a way what I called the inauthentic, not withstanding the brilliant metaphor! Authentic in its internally accepted, limited promise; cringe-worthy beyond that.
Maybe another day, another time it could be different, with the pressure of "performance" and "expectation" not being so raw and fresh.
But then men do tend to think/act with the wrong part of the anatomy, so you can never be sure. I am sure though that the person in question did not cogitate at length in this manner!
(As an aside, would a call the very next day made it different?)
To be fair, I did see him again, a few months later. He texted, and we indulged in 4 hours of late night strolling and talking, coffee and wine and some light canoodling. It was nice. Didn't take him home. I am unclear why.
Did you feel a sense of closure? What you seek does come to you albeit with a time-lag.
The lingering, mild odor of what-if still hasn't left me... i don't think it ever will.
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