beyond the blues

Dear Gawd, it’s been months since I wrote here, December 2010 to be exact.  Makes sense to me, I stopped doing just about everything starting around August of last year.  I got depressed.  Very depressed.  Words can’t even do it justice, but please don’t think I’m talking about weeping for a few days and not being able to get out of bed.  I sobbed everyday for  six months, cooked up a plan to kill myself, and let my self-owned business fall away, leaving me with no dignity, no self respect, and no will to live.

Things were bad.  And they had been bad for a long time, when, one night in January, I got moving on that plan I’d made and scared myself, thank gawd, before things got deadly.  I rallied the next day, got in touch with a psychiatrist, and have been doing the “better living through chemistry” shuffle ever since.  Try this med with that med in this combination:  stare at the ceiling for a week of nights.  Tweak that med, add this med:  eat as if there were no tomorrow.  Revisit med combination number one, add a prescription sleep aid:  go back to option three and up the voltage; sob daily, miss work, wonder if the depression before the medication wasn’t actually more manageable, wait and wait and wait and finally come upon a cocktail that has kept me stable for 3 weeks now.  The shrink is patting himself on the back and smiling gleefully:  success!  I’m skeptical.  But that might be the depression talking.

So, there you are on where I am.  I’m scheming to get myself out of the bad decisions I made while I was bottoming out:  I’d love to get out of this hovel I moved into, get my business back, quit the horrible job my Dad was good enough to give me.  It’s in accounting for a Defense Contracting firm.  I am a Holistic Health Counselor who majored in Art.  Not a good match.

Coming up out of the sludge and looking around at the wreckage of my present is a little, well, depressing.  But now that I’ve got some mental stability it’s highly likely that I can get my life back.  It will probably take more time than I want to spend, but meanwhile I have a roof over my head, a boyfriend who has stuck by me through all of the angst and late night suicidal ideologies, and health insurance, which is a true gift:  those drugs are expensive.

They’re calling it “bipolar with depressive episodes”.  I’m calling it “that bad time I had”.

something’s missing

I hate that I only write to this blog when my heart is breaking.  I’ve got another blogs, a good blog, that I write to almost every day, but this is the one that gets all my angst.  I suppose it’s good that I haven’t written here in a while, but, here I am.

Oh dear lord.  Am I really here again?  Or is it a totally different “here”, with misleading trappings of a past and painful “here”?

All the things I’ve thought before:  things are going really well; I genuinely love this man; I’m going to let my guard down.

The things I’ve heard before:  “you’re smart, you’re funny, I just don’t want to go out with you anymore”; “I can’t put my finger on it, but something’s missing“.

The last time I thought those things and was told those things was over a year ago.  That man knocked me for a loop: caught me totally off guard and dumped me without warning.  I went down for a couple of weeks, which surprised me – I’d let myself fall for the man, yes, but he wasn’t all that.  I knew it; I knew I’d settled – maybe a whiff of that dishonesty was part and parcel of why he left.

This current time as I’ve been thinking those things and have been told those things makes the last time pale in comparison.  It’s been almost a year we’ve been together, for one thing – a year of intentional, on purpose, spending time and getting to know this man with an anticipated end game of happily ever after.  I thought he was on board with that, he sure has been showing up like he was on board with that.

But last weekend we went to look at townhouses for Co-Habitation 2011.  We’d talked about it, we’d crunched the numbers, we’d professed desire to consolidate, come together, integrate.  But last night we weren’t talking about anything, he was talking about how he thinks I’m great, that we get along really well,  but that “something’s missing“.

So, here I am, back at my own house, considering.  Considering how I hate to get hurt.  Considering the previous man and that first conversation where “something was missing” and that last conversation where he lowered the boom. Considering how much I’d like to avoid the boom.  Considering that this man is not that man.  Considering he’s probably just scared and might calm down soon.  Considering that if what I’ve been feeling and thought he was feeling has been a misconception then I don’t think I can trust my judgment in love at all.

I do know I want a man for the long haul.  I do know that if this man doesn’t want someone for the long haul then he’s disqualified to be with me, no matter how smart, funny, warm, compassionate or good looking either of us might be.  I don’t want to dither on for another year living separately and staying over on the weekends.  A long term, integrated, intimate relationship.  That’s what I want.  Without it, I’ve identified for myself, there is indeed “something missing.”

easy mistake to make

You know it’s been a long day when that Italian Sausage you pulled out of the freezer for dinner – that one you tossed on the George Foreman while you ran upstairs to wash your face real quick – turns out to have been a frozen banana.

And you eat it, anyway, because it’s dinner and let’s face it, grilled bananas are pretty good.

www.IndulgentHealth.com

and thus lose our senstivitiy to criticism

I’m feeling borderline weepy right now, and can’t think of anyone I can call, so here I am, writing about it anonymously to the blogosphere.   I apologize in advance for taking you hostage, but I’m working through some stuff.

I wrote this book, see.  It’s a self-help-slash-cookbook; emphasis on the cookbook because I can’t stomach the fact that I wrote a self help book.  In all honesty it’s mostly concepts with a couple dozen recipes at the end.  Anyway, I think it’s pretty good. It’s a first draft, really, I know, but I put in there everything I know about taking care of myself around food – the info I give my clients every single day and have gotten a little tired of saying over and over again.

So I put it in a book.  And I sent the book to a few friends, colleagues, clients to read.  I asked for some feedback.  I was very specific about what I wanted to know about:  was the tone too preachy?  was it laid out in a way that was easy to read?  was the information useful?  did it inspire you to think or do things differently?

I’ve talked to a couple creative people and taken myself through The Artist’s Way enough to know that criticism can be very dangerous.  I also know that if I’m solid enough with my own self esteem that criticism can’t hurt me.  But I got my first bit of criticism today and it’s hurting me.  Damn.

All she said was that my tone was alienating.  That’s fixable, I suppose.  But then she said she went on to sent it to her sister (ack!  who’s idea was that?) and the sister said the tone was “a bit preachy”.  Oh dear gawd.  Is there anything worse than a counselor who is alienating and preachy?  Oh my heart.

Okay.  Let’s regroup.  Here’s what I know.  That’s two people.  One of them is a mother of four who is not even my target market. What’s to be done?  I can wait to hear back from the other test readers.  I can soften a bit and consider ways to make the text more inviting and inclusive… but in tandem with all that I think I need to believe that my book is still darn good as it is, that there are people who will like it… and just find a way to be secure enough about myself that comments on the book can be comments on the book and not on me, my character, my value as a person…

It’s timely, actually.  I’m finding that if I can have a more solid sense of self I can have much better relationships.  Like if my boyfriend comes up with some complaint or criticism, if I can have faith that me, myself and I are sound then I can hear what he’s saying and engage as an interested third party, not take it personally and respond defensively.  It’s hard.  It’s going to take practice.  But I think it will make our relationship more interesting and less like a boxing match all the time.  ‘Cause if I’m gonna be in a relationship, if I’m gonna write books, if I’m gonna be out there like I think I’m meant to be out there, I’m gonna need a thicker skin.  Black and blue from the bruises inside and out can’t be sustained for very long.

you should always say thank you…

But do I always have to say please?

Not that I’m categorically opposed to saying “please”, I mean, I was not raised in a barn, for gawd’s sake.  Quite the opposite:  I was raised in a third generation Navy Officer family.  My manners, thank you sir, are impeccable.  Well, the capability to be impeccable.  The potential.   When I choose to use them.

Clearly someone has accused me of not having good manners and I’ve taken offense.  In particular, it was brought to my attention that I don’t say “please”.  Moreover, I was accused of not having respect for the person involved.  Further, it was suggested that if I can”t rally the common decency to start saying please, I need to find myself someone else to ask things of.

Clearly this someone was my boyfriend.  Clearly this became a very big argument.  If it weren’t for peach pancakes we’d probably still be arguing about it, but the pancakes were hot and needed to be eaten so that took precedence over fighting and somewhere in the butter and syrup we lost focus.

Until now.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this.  And here’s what I think.  I am not going to start saying please.  I am a wordsmith and a storyteller, and sometimes “please” messes up the beat, the cadence, the laugh line of what I’m saying.  I’m not willing to tamper with my god given gift of gab to slap “please” on the beginning or the end of a sentence, and I’m certainly not going to tuck it, unbidden, in the middle of an otherwise brilliant bit of prose.

Furthermore, there’s a lot more to showing respect and decency than just saying please.  Anyone can say please.  But do I not get any credit for tone?  What about the entirety of the ongoing relationship?  The daily demonstrations of love and caring?   And sometimes doesn’t the actual nature of the request preclude formality?  “Do me, baby, yeah, harder, yeah, that’s it, yeah, right there…”  Tell me where “please” adds to that moment.  I’m thinking in that moment we’ve already established a high level of trust, consideration, caring and respect.  “Please” would, frankly, spoil the moment.

So, there you have it.  There are a lot of things about which one must compromise in relationship, plenty of opportunities to change and accommodate the other person’s needs. But this one, oh dear lord, on this one I’m not going to be able to budge.  Seriously.  Really now.  I mean, please.

funkilicious

I’ve spent some time recently belaboring deep eternal questions like:  “will my writing be any good if it’s not filled with angst?” and “does anyone give a rat’s ass about my angst anyway?”.   After many hours spent either lying in bed staring out the window or sitting on a park bench staring at the river, I’ve come to a startling conclusion.  You know when my writing is best?  When I’m writing.  Yeah.  The lying, the sitting, the staring, none of those get me any closer to good writing, in fact, none of those produce mediocre or even downright crappy writing.

So here goes, I’m gonna write.

I’m having a somewhat comforting deja-vu, in that I’m fairly certain I’ve been in this place before.  Lifeless, whining, D-frickin-pressed, and along comes the revelation that if I’d just have some creative output everything will be okay. The writing doesn’t have to be prize-worthy.  The painting doesn’t have to be frame worthy.  I just gotta have some output.

This is hard for me.  I’m probably not alone in this, but I’m a perfectionist.  I’m a Type A, driven, detail oriented, perfectionistic creative person, which is a little bit like hell on earth.  I don’t have notebooks full of rough drafts.  I don’t have sketchbooks full of, well, sketches.  I have half a dozen prize winning, grandiose framed watercolors, and a novel I wrote last November.

The exception being here.  Here where I can just move my fingers and somehow get restored to sanity.  Seems like every time I show up here I’m losing my mind.  Big heartbreak is a powerful and recurring motivator, although that’s not my situation right now.  Similarly, and perhaps more to the core of it, right now my situation is the big let down.  The big anticlimax that follows having done something really engaging and fun and wonderful.  Truth told, the depth of my funk right now is so overwhelming it makes me think I never want to do anything engaging and fun and wonderful ever again. Kinda like when I swear off men every time I get dumped.

I was in a show this Summer, a show I produced and wrote and nurtured and loved and now it’s over.  Before we got it going and throughout the whole process I was certain what I wanted more than anything was to be a professional author and storyteller, to write quirky stories about my life and tell them out loud to strangers in the dark.  Well, I got my wish, for a few weeks anyway, and now the biggest betrayal is that it was engaging and fun and wonderful and in the wake of it I can’t seem to get myself out of bed in the morning.  What if this means I’m not be cut out to do what I really want to do?

See, this is why writing is so valuable.  That last paragraph was pathetic.  Heartfelt, sure.  Honest, sure.  But oh so very pathetic.  Seriously.  Why would anyone not have a week or so of mental, emotional and physical exhaustion after such a huge output of energy?  Did I mention this show sold out four out of five performances?  That it got 5 out of 5 stars from DC Theatre Scene?  That it was the first time I ever did anything on that scale and that maybe, just maybe, there are some muscles to be built around regrouping after a show that can only develop with experience and practice?

Damn perfectionism.  This is why I never did sports.  I wasn’t the best the first day so I quit.  Well.  Hell.  This is going to be different.  I’m just going to fumble along and be messy about it.  I hereby formally dare myself to write some shitty first drafts, do some deplorable sketches, and to feel funkilicious about this show being over for as long as I need to.  Now, if I can just get myself back in bed or on that park bench before I say something deplorable and irreparable to my boyfriend, that would be ideal.

Fringes of Love – redux

Well, I wrote a charming piece of negativity and fear last week, and was feeling pretty good about myself until I got comments from a woman who is scared to be out on her own again.  As I read her comment I wanted to leap through cyberspace, take her hand and plead:  “No, no, don’t be scared!  Life is good!  Love is good!  It’s real and it’s worth looking for!  Put yourself out there, take a risk, I believe, I believe, I believe in love!”

But that’s not what I wrote about in my piece.  What I wrote was about giving up, giving in to fear and buying into the idea that happiness has an expiration date. I betrayed myself, and that’s really been bugging me.  So, I rewrote the piece.  Just a bit.  Just enough to shift it to the positive outlook I truly have about my present relationship, despite recent history and the mind-numbing repetition of my past three-in-a-row Summer breakups.

The best learning from this is realizing how worried I am that no one will like me or my writing if it’s positive, happy, confident and secure.  How attached I am to hooking people with my angst.  Well, all of life is an experiment, so we’ll see how this one goes.  Read both pieces, let me know what you think.  They’re both true, oddly enough, the difference is just frame of mind and point of view.

Fringes of Love

“Those who study history are unlikely to repeat it.”

July 2007

The Fringe

The Capital Fringe Festival.  So glad to be able to catch it, the silver lining to having had to come home from the beach early.  Nearly one hundred low budget, edgy and raw performances put on by regular people.  All you have to do is submit your name and if you’re one of the first hundred in, you’re in.  No jury.  No rules. Spontaneous dance performances on street corners.  Random images projected on brick walls in alleys.  Abandoned buildings-turned-venues featuring operettas, one-man-shows, puppetry… this is awesome.  And only $15 per ticket.  We’ve seen some amazing stuff.  We’ve seen some crap.  It’s been great.

To stay out of the pouring rain I stood under the awning, livid that he was taking so long.  “Just turn it off and walk away!” I shouted at no one in particular.  Fringe has a very strict No Late Admittance policy.  If he kept screwing around trying to find the perfect parking spot, I was going to be out thirty dollars.  Man, he made me mad.  Daily.   Finally, I saw him coming down the block.  His impossibly large green and white umbrella bobbing as he jumped over puddles.  My husband.  Tears welled up in my eyes, flowed down my face and mixed with the rain.  I felt sick.  I couldn’t stand it.  I didn’t want to be married anymore.  I couldn’t take another single moment with this man.

The Sex

We’d be married for seven years.  What sex?

The Trip

We’d gone to the beach to fix it.  “It” being everything.  The little fights, the silent scorn.

Sitting there on the beach, reading “Eat, Pray, Love”, I got to page twelve, the part where the author realizes she doesn’t want to be married anymore, but that “the only thing more unthinkable than leaving was staying”.  Blinking back tears, I put the book down, stood up, and told my husband I was going to get an ice cream.  By the time I got back to our blanket he had picked up book, and had read to that same page twelve.  Without a word we went back to the hotel, packed up our stuff and drove home, a day early.  At least we’d catch the last half of Fringe.

The Breakup

“Hon, I have got to go.”

“Where you gonna go, Jenn?”

“I don’t know.  But I have got to leave this mediocre marriage on the off chance I can find something amazing.”

It was the day before Labor Day.

July 2008

The Fringe

I love Fringe.  I’ve decided to make July all about Fringe – I’ve volunteered to work box office for as many shows as they can schedule me for, which is 19.  I’ve gotten tickets for as many shows as I can see in-between volunteer shifts, which is 12.  All Fringe, all the time.  Awesome.

We’d had our first real date over Memorial Day weekend, a day trip down to Fredericksburg for lunch and ice cream.  Now it was July and Christian had taken the Metro into the city to meet me for the Metamorphosis show.  I stood outside the theatre waiting for him, feeling a little sick to my stomach.  Sure, I hadn’t had anything to eat for hours, but what was really bothering me was that it was a year ago to the day I’d been standing outside this very theatre, in the rain, watching my husband and his green and white umbrella.  Now here came Chris, walking up the same block, but it was sunny; so no umbrella.  Odd, though, he had the same moody, disaffected gaze and, oh dear lord, I hadn’t noticed before, but he was the same height as my ex-husband.

The Sex

I think I can. I think I can.  I think I can.  I think I can have sex with someone other than my husband.  Mission accomplished.

I think I can.  I think I can.  I think I can.  I think I can have an orgasm with someone other than my husband (it’d been years) or my vibrator (twice a day lately).  Mission accomplished.  (although the vibrator is better).

The Trip

So very exciting to be invited as the girlfriend/guest of Amerivision’s top salesman – a four day three night all expenses paid trip to Chicago!  The first week of August, with black tie galas, top dollar entertainment and a suite at the Ritz.  This is living.  This is the life I was born to live.  Five-starring it with a tall, good looking man who owns his own tux.  A tall good looking man who tore holes in the tux he owned when, in a drunken rage, he climbed up on stage and assaulted one of Brian Setzer’s back up singers.

The Breakup

“Chris, I can’t see you anymore.”

“Why not?”

“This isn’t working out, and I’m uncomfortable with how much you drink.”

“Yeah, well, you’re a bitch.”

It was Labor Day.  Good riddance to bad rubbish.

July 2009

The Fringe

Okay.  So this will be my best Fringe ever.  I’m volunteering twelve shifts.  I’ve got tickets to eight shows.  And I’m performing, yes, PERFORMING in a five show run.  Oh dear god.  I’m living the dream.  And Rob is coming to all five shows.  He didn’t tell me directly – I read it on his blog, where he wrote: “my girlfriend is in five shows; I’ll see all her shows”.  Girlfriend.

We’ve been dating since Memorial Day – well, that’s when I conceded that we were indeed dating.  He’d pursued me for months, but it was over Memorial Day weekend that I got on board.  We’d fallen into a nice routine of daily emails, suggestive texts, and making out in parking lots around town.  I was calling it The Summer of Love #2.

The Sex

One orgasm a night is good stuff.  Two is decadent.  Three wears me out and four?  Well, four just pisses me off.

The Trip

The light at the end of the exhausting Fringe season was a trip to Sarasota in early August. Once there, we slept late, took long walks on the beach, and ate out every meal.  On the flight home I was ready to tell him. I’d been stewing about it, stressing about it, talking to my friends about it for weeks but now I was ready.  I was in love with him.  I loved him.  We were sitting in the last row of the plane; the engine noise was deafening.  “I am so in love with you!” I shouted, but I don’t think he heard me.

The Breakup

“Baby, we have a problem.”

“What is it, Rob?”

“Well, baby, you’re funny, you’re smart, and you’ve got a smokin’ hot bod, but I can’t see you anymore.”

“Why not, Rob?”

“Oh, I should have a solid reason for that, right?  Damn.  Hmm.  Nope.  Just don’t want to see you anymore.”

It was the day after Labor Day.  This one took a while to get over.

July 2010

The Fringe

This year I’m volunteering box office for eleven shows.  Seeing nine.  Performing in five.  Four of them are sold out already.  I’m on cloud nine.  And dating a wonderful man.  I am crazy about this man.  He’s tall, he’s smart, he’s funny, he tolerates me and my mercurial moods I got the big ILY a few weeks ago.  Memorial Day came and went, marking our four months of dating, so this is not another Summer of Love.

The Sex

Once a day is good.  Taking turns is awesome.  Laughing and being truly present is sublime.

The Trip

We have a trip planned in early August, but I’m thinking about canceling it.  I’m feeling a little superstitious about the patterns of the last three Summers.

The Breakup

I don’t think it’s going to happen, but I’m nervous.  If this summer ends with my broken heart I’m going to officially quit.  I’ve even got a back up plan: I’ve always imagined myself the withered spinster, living in the dilapidated house on the corner with scraggly trees and lots of cats.  Forty-two is plenty old enough to get started on that.

But, I’m getting ahead of myself.  Things are fine.  Sure, we’ve started with the petty arguments, the spending more time apart, the getting caught up with our own things and the falling by the wayside are the good night calls, the check in emails, the spontaneous poetry…  But back here on planet earth I know it’s just that it’s just the pomp and circumstance of a whirlwind romance winding down.  It always does. Yes, it is the end – the end of the getting to know you, of best behavior, of impressing each other and of putting on airs.  Now comes the good stuff, fingers crossed, the real stuff.  The stuff that can last.  The settling in, the acceptance, the deeper knowing and trust and commitment – all the stuff I know I really, really want.

I’m in.  I think this is going to be the best Labor Day ever.

Fringes Of Love. Or, “why I’m scared”

“Insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results.”

“Those who do not study history are bound to repeat it.”

July 2007

The Fringe

The Capital Fringe Festival.  So glad to be able to catch it, the silver lining to having had to come home from the beach early.  Nearly one hundred low budget, edgy and raw performances put on by regular people.  All you have to do is submit your name and if you’re one of the first hundred in, you’re in.  No jury.  No rules. Spontaneous dance performances on street corners.  Random images projected on brick walls in alleys.  Abandoned buildings-turned-venues featuring operettas, one-man-shows, puppetry… this is awesome.  And only $15 per ticket.  We’ve seen some amazing stuff.  We’ve seen some crap.  It’s been great.

Trying to stay out of the pouring rain I stood under the awning, livid that he was taking so long.  “Just turn it off and walk away!” I shouted at no one in particular.  Fringe has a very strict No Late Admittance policy.  If he kept screwing around trying to find the perfect parking spot, I was going to be out thirty dollars.  Man, he made me mad.  Daily.   Finally, I saw him coming down the block.  His impossibly large green and white umbrella bobbing as he jumped over puddles.  My husband.  Tears welled up in my eyes, flowed down my face and mixed with the rain.  I felt sick.  I couldn’t stand it.  I didn’t want to be married anymore.  I couldn’t take another single moment with this man.

The Sex

We’d be married for seven years.  What sex?

The Trip

We’d gone to the beach to fix it.  “It” being everything.  The little fights, the silent scorn.

Sitting there on the beach, reading “Eat, Pray, Love”, I got to page twelve, the part where the author realizes she doesn’t want to be married anymore, but that “the only thing more unthinkable than leaving was staying”.  Blinking back tears, I put the book down, stood up, and told my husband I was going to get an ice cream.  By the time I got back to our blanket he had picked up book, and had read to that same page twelve.  Without a word we went back to the hotel, packed up our stuff and drove home, a day early.  At least we’d catch the last half of Fringe.

The Breakup

“Hon, I have got to go.”

“Where you gonna go, Jenn?”

“I don’t know.  But I have got to leave this mediocre marriage on the off chance I can find something amazing.”

It was was the day before Labor Day.

July 2008

The Fringe

I love Fringe.  I’ve decided to make July all about Fringe – I’ve volunteered to work box office for as many shows as they can schedule me for, which is 19.  And I’ve gotten tickets for as many shows as I can see in-between volunteer shifts, which is 12.  All Fringe, all the time.  Awesome.

We’d had our first real date over Memorial Day weekend, a day trip down to Fredericksburg for lunch and ice cream.  Now it was July and Christian had taken the Metro into the city to meet me for the Metamorphosis show.  I stood outside the theatre waiting for him, feeling a little sick to my stomach.  Sure, I hadn’t had anything to eat for hours, but what was really bothering me was that it was a year ago to the day I’d been standing outside this very theatre, in the rain, watching my husband and his green and white umbrella.  Now here came Christian, walking up the same block, but it was sunny; so no umbrella.  Same moody, disaffected gaze, though.  Same height and pessimistic attitude.

The Sex

I think I can. I think I can.  I think I can.  I think I can have sex with someone other than my husband.  Mission accomplished.

I think I can.  I think I can.  I think I can.  I think I can have an orgasm with someone other than my husband (it’d been years) or my vibrator (twice a day lately).  Mission accomplished.  (although the vibrator is better).

The Trip

So very exciting to be invited as the girlfriend/guest of Amerivision’s top salesman – a four day three night all expenses paid trip to Chicago!  The first week of August, with black tie galas, top dollar entertainment and a suite at the Ritz.  This is living.  This is the life I was born to live.  Five-starring it with a tall, good looking man who owns his own tux.  A tall good looking man who tore holes in the tux he owned when, in a drunken rage, he climbed up on stage and assaulted one of Brian Setzer’s back up singers.

The Breakup

“Chris, I can’t see you anymore.”

“Why not?”

“This just isn’t working out, and I’m uncomfortable with how much you drink.”

“Yeah, well, you’re a bitch.”

It was Labor Day.

July 2009

The Fringe

Okay.  So this will be my best Fringe ever.  I’m volunteering twelve shifts.  I’ve got tickets to eight shows.  And I’m performing, yes, PERFORMING in a five show run.  Oh dear god.  I’m living the dream.  And Rob is coming to all five shows.  He didn’t tell me directly; I read it on his blog, he wrote: “my girlfriend is in five shows, I’ll see all her shows”.  Girlfriend.

We’ve been dating since right about Memorial Day – well, that’s when I conceded that we were indeed dating.  He’d pursued me for months, but it was over Memorial Day I got on board.  We’d fallen into a nice routine of daily emails, suggestive texts, and making out in parking lots around town.  I was calling it Summer of Love #2.

The Sex

One orgasm a night is good stuff.  Two is decadent.  Three wears me out and four?  Well, four just pisses me off.

The Trip

The light at the end of the exhausting Fringe season was a trip to Sarasota in early August. Once there, we slept late, took long walks on the beach, and ate out every meal.  On the flight home I was ready to tell him. I’d been stewing on it, stressing about it, talking to my friends about it for weeks but now I was ready.  I was in love with him.  I loved him.  We were sitting in the last row of the plane, the engine noise was deafening.  “I am so in love with you!” I shouted, but I don’t think he heard me.

The Breakup

“Baby, we have a problem.”

“What is it, Rob?”

“Well, baby, you’re funny, you’re smart, and you’ve got a smokin’ hot bod, but I can’t see you anymore.”

“Why not?”

“Oh, I should have a solid reason for that, right?  Damn.  Hmm.  Nope.  Just don’t want to see you anymore.”

It was the day after Labor Day.

July 2010

The Fringe

This year I’m volunteering box office for eleven shows.  Seeing nine.  Performing in five.  Four of them are sold out already.  I’m on cloud nine.  And dating a wonderful man.  I am crazy about this man.  He’s tall, he’s smart, he’s funny, he tolerates me and my mercurial moods I got the big ILY a few weeks ago.  Memorial Day marked our four months of dating, so this is not another Summer of Love.

The Sex

Once a day is good.  Taking turns is awesome.  Laughing and being truly present is sublime.

The Trip

We have a trip planned in early August, but I’m thinking about canceling it.

The Breakup

It hasn’t happened, yet.  Things aren’t looking good.  I don’t think I can take it.  If this summer ends with my broken heart I’m going to officially quit.

I always imagined myself the withered spinster, living in the dilapidated house on the corner with scraggly trees and lots of cats.  Forty-two is plenty old enough to get started on that.

I can’t do this again.  We’ve started arguing, spending more time apart, getting caught up with our own things and skipping the niceties of the good night calls, the check in emails, the spontaneous poetry…  It’s winding down.  It always does.

I won’t do this again.  I’m even going to skip Fringe next year.  I’m sure there’s some other volunteer, patron, performer who will gladly take my place. I wish I could warn her, though.  I would if I could.

Labor Day is right around the corner.

dating at 40

It seems to me time is going more quickly than it did when I was a kid, which is disturbing since that’s what I always heard old people say when I was a kid.  Next week will be Memorial Day, the beginning of Summer… I’ve still got stuff on my To Do list from January.  Somehow I missed March altogether and May seems to have alluded me, too.  So, time is flying by, I’m complaining about it like an old person, so I must be old.

This is problematic on many fronts, the most disturbing being that I’m dating.  I can remember being a kid, shuddering at the unconscionable suggestion that my parents (who were old) still had sex.  I can remember being very upset watching Love Boat, watching that nasty, wrinkly old Captain Stubbing putting the moves on some unsuspecting divorcee in a floor length gown.

To think about it now, my parents, and Captain Stubbing, too, were likely no more than, say, what?  40?  45?  Egads.  I’m presently 41.  So what must the children of Old Town be thinking about my latest shenanigans?  I’m dating this fabulous man, it’s new and fun and we have a shameless tendency to make out and grope each other pretty much anywhere, anytime.  Like last night, in the produce aisle of Whole Foods.  And at the coffee shop.  And walking down King Street at dusk.  And then on Washington Street by my parked car.  Oh, and before all that,  the foray in his car, while parked in the basement garage at Whole Foods.

We’re acting like kids, which feels amazing in the moment but now that I think about it, probably looks just horrid to the innocent bystander.  Two 40-somethings, in suits and heels, going at it in the grocery store?  It would hardly be bearable if we were in our teens, but the need to shout “Get a room!’ to fully grown, mortgage paying adults is just disturbing. This is not what I’d planned for, you can be sure of that.  I figured by 40 I’d be married, safely ensconced in the mundane drudgery of domesticity, reserving the hanky panky for the second floor master bedroom and keeping the “P” out of all my PDA.  Who knew 41 would find me divorced with hormones raging?

I guess the best I can hope for is that this settles down, that I can keep this man for the duration, and that I don’t find myself in twenty years nuzzling up to some tall dark and handsome while eating a 5pm dinner Denny’s.  I mean, we’d be in our 60′s.  And that, surely, has got to be too old for this kind of canoodling.

three little words

So, I cleared the hurdle of three little months.  I’d been worried about dating Mr. New Man for three months, in that the last two relationships I’ve been in crashed and burned at three months.  Prior to that, my most recent relationship did indeed clear three months, but he proposed at four months, and we were unhappily married for seven years.

You can see my trepidation at approaching the three month marker again.  But I did it.  Mr. New Man and I are now well into our fourth month, with utterly no sign of nuptials on the horizon, so all is good.  All feels good.  Well, all was good and all felt good until last night, when I got the text.

I’d been at dinner with a friend, talking about me and Mr. New Man and my three-month-angst, waxing dreamy about him and how much I was enjoying dating him.  Extolling his virtues, marveling at the way I’ve had to up my game to match is wonderfulness, just going on in general.  Finally I summed it all up:  “I am utterly in love with this man.”  “Is he in love with you?”, my friend asked.  I had to concede that I didn’t truly know.  Yes, he sends flowers.  Yes, he writes me poetry every day.  Yes, the sex is great and we laugh most all the time but love?  Not sure.  What I am sure of is that this Man takes things like that very slow.  He’s guarded, he’s cautious, he’s a thinker and a consider-er and I am fairly certain that even if he does love me, he won’t say so for a while.  Like maybe a year or something.  We’ve talked about it, actually, in loose terms, that he’s careful and I just fall.  I like to fall.  It’s fun.  Kinda leaves me empty handed, though, all gushing and girly and clamping my jaws shut lest I let loose an “I am so in love with you” in a moment of ardor and freak him right out the door.

So imagine my surprise, when, after dinner I checked my texts to find this from Mr. Bides His Time:  “I know three little words you’ve been longing to hear.”

My first reaction was to go weak in the knees, literally, which I didn’t think really happened outside of stupid books but there you have it.  My second reaction was to give a little girly squeal, which was downright embarrassing as I was in a restroom full of strangers.  Those heartfelt initial reactions aside, I began to think.  I got suspicious.  What was this?  This was not a man who would offer up three little words easily, much less via text, dear god.  But he had gone to therapy that afternoon, maybe he’d gotten really clear and just couldn’t keep his feelings in check a moment longer.  That sounded nice but improbable, so I went back to being suspicious.  I spent a few minutes offended, I decided “longing” wasn’t how I wanted to be seen in the world.  Bouncing off that insult I felt injury set in as I realized he was surely making a joke of some kind.  His next text was going to say “Free Haagen Dazs” or “Discount Back Rub” or “Eddie Bauer Sale”, something like that.  A three worded joke.  A ruse.  A play on my emotions at my expense.  And that’s when I started to get pissed.

I spent an hour driving around Alexandria, ending up at Whole Foods where I walked the aisles to clear my head.  Driving home I gave him a call, determined to keep it light.  “Hey, we still on for tomorrow?”  I asked.  “Did you get my text?”  he asked.  “Do you want to go to the Arboretum or see a movie?” I dodged.  “Did you get my text?” he asked again.

“Yes.  Yes.  I got your text.” I conceded, not able to keep the ire from my voice.

“Don’t you want to know what the three little words are?”  he asked.

“No.  No, I don’t.” I said.

“Why not?” he pouted, clearly unaware of the gravity of the situation.

“Because you’re either going to tell me something really sweet or something really mean”.  I said.

“Oh, it’s not mean” he said, gathering enthusiasm.  “It’s really, really sweet! The three little words are “chocolate covered strawberries!  What do you think about that?”

“Awesome.  Great.  Yummy.  Let me guess, you made chocolate covered strawberries.”  I said through clenched teeth.

“Yeah, yeah, I made them for you!” he said gleefully.

“Uh huh.  Listen, I’m on the Parkway and I’m going to lose you, so let me hang up now.  I’m thrilled about the strawberries, we can eat them tomorrow.  I’ll see you then.”

I hung up, tossed the phone in the passenger seat, and burst into tears.  I cried the five miles home, I cried walking up to the front door, I cried putting away my groceries and for the next ten minutes while I called friends and left tragic messages on their voicemail.  I felt like such a fool.  I’d harbored hope that those three little words were the three little words, and although I’d surely have to chastise him for not saying them in person, I had hoped beyond hope that this man was going to step up and join me on Team Love.  But no.  He was just being funny, just making light of something I consider sacred, and I’d gotten my heart bruised. My fault for leaving it out on my arm like that, I suppose.

And now I’ve got to pull myself together, splash some cold water on my face and go spend a fun day with this man I am utterly in love with, this man who has every reason to believe we’ve got a fabulous, chocolate-covered-strawberry caliber relationship underway while trying to not let on that he just unwittingly broke my heart.