Release

I let him go.

It was a relief for me, but I'm wondering if it wasn't also a relief for him.
No one likes giving bad news. But it is so much better to give it than to wait and hope the other person does it first.

From my list of probable fallacies:

Once something is started, it can't be stopped without bitterness apparent for all to see.

It was a fallacy; at least, it appears that way at the moment. What I wanted to do was have it be simple. Have there be no explanation, because explanations often sound like excuses. I have no intention of leaving the dance community, and I wouldn't want him to either. But I also didn't want to encourage false hope. I do feel like a number of people have given me false hope and incomplete breaks, and I've found that horrible.

The answer in the end was simple: take my time. Give it a chance. Find the light in him and see if it encouraged my own. And then simply tell the truth. He said okay, perhaps a little too enthusiastically, gave me a hug, and said we were good. I can't help but think he was getting frustrated at my busy schedule and lack of initiative. As he should have been.

I can't even begin to list (because I don't want to put myself through enumerating them all) all the guys who have given me headaches over the years with their lengthy and detailed explanations as to why they couldn't date me. Somewhere there has to be a middle ground between no explanation and something that leaves the hearer searching for chinks in a very logically presented and well-thought-out presentation of a rejection. Therapist J asked me why I even listened when the last major crush went on his whole explainy thing.

I think last major crush thought he was doing the right thing by explaining himself and by talking it over (and over and over and over). At the time I thought he was doing the right thing too. We were really fricken proud of ourselves about it. It was only after I really thought about how much unnecessary information I'd listened to and how little time he spent getting to know me in the first place, that I started to feel dumped upon.

I don't want to cause people the same headache. And while I think when a relationship ends there should be some coming to an understanding and some discussion, I also think that laying all your issues on someone as a reason is not the way to go -- for their sake. And when you're not even in a relationship, when you're choosing not to get started with a relationship, the less headache for the other person, the better.

So I don't want to be too self-congratulatory, because I really don't know if his response was relief or a defense mechanism. I choose to believe that since he said we're good, we're good. In the end the simplest explanation -- I don't feel that way -- was all there needed to be.

Single

So, so, so much of my identity is bound up in being single. Being on my own. Being independent. Different ways of saying being alone.

Therapist and I are exploring this idea of being alone-independent-single.  It's weird. Therapy is weird. Someone listens to what I'm saying, don't realize I'm saying, or what I'm not saying, and tells me what I'm saying or not-saying. And then I'm like, whoa, because he just said in one sentence that thing that I am taking my whole life to say. And it sounds so simple and obvious and so frightening I cannot accept that it's true.

When the boundaries between me and my willingness to believe the truth are thick, I continue past the saying and not-saying and add on not-hearing.

I love working in my yard pulling weeds. However, I have a really hard time staying present for pulling weeds. I tend to have imaginary conversations, which would better be described as me-talking/someone-listening-and-being-very-interested-and-asking-me-many-questions. Whoever it is, is usually someone that I kind of like in a squishy-innards way, and is quite often someone who has already turned away. When it's someone who is still a contender, it begs the question, why am I not having this conversation for real.

Because conversations don't go like that.

In conversations I have to listen to the other person tell me about their day no matter how much I am just not interested in their job and the thing they had to get that didn't work even though it was a brand-new thing.

In conversations I have awkward moments when I'm going to say something and they're going to say something and I'm nice so I don't want to talk over anyone so we both stop and that's how I find out if someone's not nice, because they just keep talking. But then we have to figure out who gets to talk first.

In conversations I don't keep habitually finishing others' sentences like I do in real life because I can be a bit impatient.

I was having a conversation-in-my-head. It was with someone I could have with the snap of my fingers. Who I don't want and am not attracted to.

Except every day I let the idea in a little, mull it over, play with it a little.

But then I think about the time when it will be over.

I remember the last time someone came this close. I held out my hand, he grabbed on, and then he tumbled faster than I did, right into all kinds of future plans that I wasn't ready for and I got scared and I knew -- I knew -- that I would calm down if I broke it off.

The panic evaporated and I could relax again.

I script and practice how I'm going to let him down, how I'm not going to feed him 20 minutes of bullshit detailing all I've gone through in the last year and how that contributes to Not Ready and Need To Be On My Own.

Last time, the time when it will all be over was the time after it began. It hasn't even begun and I'm thinking about being on the other side.

And yet I don't go there. I don't say the dreaded words, "we need to talk." I sit down next to him to take my shoes off, let him hold my hand as we walk out the door at the end of the evening.

Do you see how far I'm talking around what I'm supposed to be talking about? Which is this identity issue.

Some examples.

1. I bought a house.
2. I ripped up carpet on a Wednesday after work.
3. I ripped up carpet at 9:00 on a Friday.
4. I painted rooms and their ceilings in a color palate that would make many a man -- and I expect, this particular man -- shake his head in disbelief.
5. I drove here, and there, and back again.
6. I moved to the Grand Canyon because a guy broke my heart. (Did I fail to tell this story? Maybe later. Maybe never.)
7. I always liked the guy my friend liked, especially if he liked her back.
8. I had to start school a year early, but Brownies a year late.
9. My legs were too short to reach the hollow below the swing. I was the only one who needed a push.

And now some of the most meaningful conversations that give me what I think I want, I have alone, even though they are with someone who exists.

But he does listen when I talk. He isn't just waiting to talk, himself.

So I'd have that. If I would let myself.

I can never get all the weeds. After two hours I'm tired. And the hedges still need to be trimmed, and all the other weeds, in all the other places, pulled, and the mulch spread, and the ivy cut back, and the basement vacuumed, and the kitchen floor scrubbed clean, and the living room painted and the gutters cleaned and repaired and the upstairs walls explained and repaired and painted and the vinyl removed or remedied and the furniture moved and the boxes unpacked... And I wonder what I was getting into.

 

I imagine that I could turn around tomorrow, dial a number, and have all of it -- everything I've ever wanted. Have motorcycle rides, ice cream after dance, sweet thoughtful texts that show he was listening, help with this never-ending project of house, and the last dance every Tuesday night.

What I will need to give in return is too daunting. Too precious.

S is right. I need to do backbends.

Creating happiness

Have you heard of The Happiness Project?

I have to admit, when I first saw links for this blog on Facebook, I was like, how annoying, another happy person telling me all I have to do to be happy is be happy and have a positive outlook.

Nope. Not so much.

I think it's really important not only to admit to ourselves that we are struggling with something, but to admit it to others. I struggled with this a lot as a teacher, as my colleagues waxed joyful with stories of sweet things their students did and lessons that went amazingly well.

 Source: Uploaded by user via Katherine on Pinterest

I had awesome lessons and sweet students too, but I forgot about them in the morass of kids who threw milk cartons and fell asleep in the back of class.

You can imagine how little I care for social media, then.

More and more, as I progress through my training, I start to understand the idea that though pain is inevitable, suffering is optional. I start to recognize those little efforts that add up to improvements in my world. I start seeing "positive people" not as unrelentingly positive but struggling, just like everyone else, looking for the opportunity in the difficulty, looking for ways to examine discontent and find a way to change it instead of wallowing in it.

Source: fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net via Katherine on Pinterest

Positive attitude? Maybe for me, this manifests as a belief that I can change my circumstances. That to accept what is, does not mean I have to be defeated by it. That there is something I can do, every day.

 Source: fridgedoor.com via Katherine on Pinterest

Help

On this path effort never goes to waste, and there is no failure. Even a little effort toward spiritual awareness will protect you from the greatest fear. ... No one who does good work will ever come to a bad end. (Bhagavad Gita, as translated by Eknath Easwaran)

I hate asking for help. This is partly from my own desire to appear strong and capable and partly from social anxiety and partly from something else that I haven't quite figured out yet, fear of being a bother to anyone, thank you, Jewish guilt?

It's so much easier for me when people offer, and I can choose to accept or decline their help. But offering is fraught with its own hazards. How can you know that someone needs help, wants help, will accept help? Without being able to experience the situation the way they do, you can't know how they will experience your offer. Imagine someone who is blind or has low vision. It might be tempting to reach out and guide this person across a street or to a seat on a bus. But how frightening it must be to have someone touch you when you literally don't see it coming.

Mr. Rogers told us that we ask people if they want help before just straight out giving help. Unless they're in imminent danger, most people want to show that they are independent, strong, capable. Let them be all those things, but offer help if you wish to.

Some people get incredibly, inexplicably offended when we refuse their help. They feel, I am offering, I am leaving my own little bubble of isolation to connect with another human being. How dare that person refuse my connection? Stated that way, it becomes obvious that they are helping, not out of a selflessness and love for others, but to satisfy their own need to be needed.

There is nothing wrong with wanting to feel needed and valuable. One of the greatest helps I have ever been given was for a friend to ask me for help during a time when I was unemployed, depressed, and feeling useless. The opportunity to be of use to someone probably benefited me more than any help I was able to give her.

Ultimately you have offered; you have made an effort toward good. That effort exists, whether the other person accepts your help or declines it. And that effort is enough.

Hosed

Here is a very short but fantastic story.

I do not get much mail beyond circulars and assorted local junk mail. Almost never do I get hand-addressed mail, and I'm a little paranoid, so when I got a hand-addressed envelope from some hose company (I'm not kidding, they make industrial hoses) I was like Whoistryingtosellmewhathowdidsomeonegetmyaddresswhatisthisjunk?

The letter informed me that someone was attempting to charge $7600 worth of hoses and air freight for said hoses to my credit card. This person had my name, address, and all the salient credit card info including the security number on the back, which I kind of always doubted was all that secure anyway.

The unparalleled honesty and kindness that this took - for the salesperson to decide something was fishy and ask the accounting manager to review it, and for the accounting manager to send me this letter - blows me away. I could have seen a crazy huge charge on my bill and had a coronary. Instead I called my credit card company and canceled the card.

Sorry, hose-buyer. You were dishonest, and just this once, you don't get to hose someone.