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.

Stories we tell

I've got allergies.

 

By mcfarlandmo [CC-BY-2.0], via Wikimedia Commons

Big, dry-eyed, sneezin, snot-drippin allergies.

I have never had allergies, I say to myself. I always check no on the allergic-to-anything box. For the past couple years, allergy season has rolled around and I've sneezed and people have said it's allergies and I've said oh, no, I don't have allergies.

And then Thursday before class I sat down to center myself and the first thought in my head was "So fine, so I have allergies, then."

And I had my thought to impart for the day. I've been sneaking them in, now that I'm more comfortable with the actual teaching of the poses, I've been adding a little "yoga-talk" or thought to the beginning of the practice. It's just another one of those things I knew I would do when the time was right, so I didn't set a particular date or goal of doing it. I didn't even have a thought planned for yesterday, but when I came to my mat and got quiet it came to me.

We define ourselves as someone, saying "I am someone who..." or "I am someone who does not..." and in defining ourselves, we create ourselves. When I say that I am single, I reinforce that idea. Certainly it does not help when the @#)%#@)%( optometrist asks me to check a box for single or married (still the only two options, and I don't check either because they are checking my eyes). The idea gets reinforced every time there is a box to tick, even if it's an idea we don't particularly care for. Not only our definitions of ourselves as requested by the boxes on a form, but the very idea that this matters.

So I don't check the box. And somehow that seems like a marked option too, like if I were more at ease with what is -- the fact that I am single -- then it wouldn't be an issue with me, to check it or not check it.

But I persist in wondering why it matters.

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.

Walls don't keep you out

They keep me in.

By Roger Bunyan (Own work) [GFDL, CC-BY-SA-3.0 or CC-BY-2.5], via Wikimedia Commons

And this is a thing I've been trying to figure out for many years, how it can be, that even when I feel myself connecting to people, they quietly slip away.

Even my very first boyfriend seemed to think I'd built up a wall around me, and I was only fifteen. Was it some romantic notion he'd got from a book or movie, and he was going to be the one to take down the wall?

The funny thing is that he was right. People have noticed it over and over again through the years.

The walls were put there to serve a purpose.

We don't leave our precious jewels, our treasures, or the ones we love out in the middle of a field in the rain. We wall them in. We protect them.

The problem with my walls, I began to see, was that they don't protect me at all. People get in. I see them, care for them, begin to love them. I look for the light and I see it and it amazes me.

Source: Uploaded by user via Katherine on Pinterest

But they're less like walls and more like tinted glass; more like a porous selectively permeable membrane that allows people to seep into my heart while preventing them from seeing what has happened. Prevents me from coming out.

And I see it all the time. When I choose not to do the things that would make me shine.

I spent all of middle and high school liking guys and never saying a word about it. The one time I did, he wasn't interested and that didn't stop my feelings, not at all, not even as I hid behind myself and liked other boys and said nothing, because I'd been rejected by one. I spent a good ten years choosing not to try social dancing unless I could convince the occasional date to go with me. I spent about as much time only looking for dates online, because meeting people in real life and talking to them and letting them know I was interested was somehow too embarrassing. Too ripe with the possibility of rejection.

Source: livebyquotes.com via Katherine on Pinterest

So each day I try to be out there, a little more. Try to ask for what I need. It's not easy. So many people have so much more practice at it than I do. But like all things, we don't choose not to do it simply because it's hard. We stay with difficulty, whether it's a handstand, a dance step, or opening to the universe.

Source: thehappyrunner.blogspot.com via Katherine on Pinterest

9 probable fallacies

1. If he knew my secrets, he would find me too complex.
2. If only one person is interested, that means I'm settling for the only thing I'm being offered.
3. Similar education, politics, and religion are indicators of compatibility. (Extra bonus example of fallaciousness: Whether these things are similar or different is unknown.)
4. Once something is started, it can't be stopped without bitterness apparent for all to see.
5. Having a large group of strange-quaintances know about my personal life is bad.
6. My friends will think he's not good enough.
7. He won't be able to relate to my friends.
8. He won't be able to relate to me.
9. Letting someone care gives him the power to destroy me.

Here I am: jumping the gun.

All the possibilities. All of them.

Is it a good thing that I'm trying to date again? Last week I spent a night in tears, refusing to do yoga, refusing to meditate, refusing to do anything at all to take myself away from the story I keep telling myself.

If we haven't formed the habit of staying in our center, when things get rough we will run in ever-widening circles away from or around our center. We may be more comfortable with our histrionics and with the drama ... than we are with the simple practice of staying centered.

I'm always so private about my dating. Because it doesn't work out. Because I'm ashamed it doesn't work out. Because talking about it might jinx it. Because by the time there is anything to say it's over. Because I shouldn't have to be dating at my age. Because I've still never had a long-term relationship. Because everyone remembers being single, but everyone also remembers being secure in a loving relationship. I don't know how that feels.

J says it is good that I am trying to date again, because failure is not an option.

The problem is that failure is an option.

It has been an option all this time.

In such a state of contraction, it is just as impossible to let go as it is to open up to the potential freshness of the next moment.

It is an option I cannot control.

When I say "I am open to all possibilities" that includes the possibility that has become my current reality: the possibility that I will be alone. All the possibilities means all the possibilities.

I found a way to buy a house.

I found a way to keep earning money.

I have not found a way to do this, in twenty years of trying. I know nothing more than I did then. This is probably not true. I know a lot of things that don't work. I know there is not a formula, and that works with one person doesn't work with another.

I have been told that there must be something very wrong with me, if I have not been in a long-term relationship at this point in my life.

Unfortunately, the thing that feels most concrete is often our deep place of holding and our scars.

More than once.

... the monsters aren't stuck to us, we are stuck to the monsters. We become stuck to them by thinking and believing that they are who we are.

I know that the sort of men I am attracted to are
not finished with something that is finished with them
arrogant
concerned with material things
extroverted
strong-willed
bad at listening

They have some good qualities too, but they are not good for me, because they choose not to be.

Not only is the same thing happening, we choose the same reaction to our problem.

Every time I open this book, she says what I need to hear.

Any attempt to keep the heart open when we most wish to close down is a movement in the right direction.

Source: amazon.com via Katherine on Pinterest

The waiting room

Please don't ever be late to meet me. I try not to be early, but exactly on time.

I hate waiting not because it takes up my time, but because I am afraid you will forget me.

I do not believe the bussubwaytrain will ever come.

Please call me back. I am afraid you have forgotten. I am concerned that I will not get to have the thing done that I need done because I am not important to you.

I hate getting my car serviced. They take all day to call back and tell you that they are going to have to replace the whatchamagajjit and then they're not sure they're going to have it ready by the end of the day.

Texting feels urgent, but it could take hours to have a conversation.

Sorry I forgot to send back the contract. I procrastinate.

I'm waiting for my real life to begin. 

(Colin Hay)

Tick Tock by marmal8 on polyvore.com

In which, for the first time, I openly blog about the horrors of dating

When I started this blog, the tag line was slightly different. I described it as "The adventures of a single girl and her house." Recently, with no fanfare, I took out the "single." Not because I wasn't single. But because I felt like I needed to stop claiming that as part of my identity. I don't want to be single, so I shouldn't use it as a descriptor.

This has not made me less single.

Truth be told I wasn't even trying to date. After another one of my Divorced-Guy-Not-Ready-and-Not-Right-for-Me-Anyway mishaps (sometime I'll tell you about the other two, and why I bought a house, which are the same thing), after losing my job, my Jerk Detector was broken and I needed to get a few things straightened out.

>Source: 25.media.tumblr.com via Katherine on Pinterest

I wish everyone did that.

I'm trying to get back out there, but I have no idea how except the same old strategies that have led to meeting Divorced Guys who are Not Ready and Can't Communicate to Save Their Lives. No one has any useful suggestions for me, so I just keep going on first dates.

The good news is the last couple first dates have not been horrible. Last summer I was going on dates with rude, arrogant people who told me how they told off their boss or who didn't even wait for me before leaving a room in an art exhibit. These have been better. Conversation and laughter have flowed. What there is not is second dates.

Source: via Katherine on Pinterest

Unfortunately, there are lies. I am wondering when I'm going to meet someone who doesn't lie. These lies are probably well-intentioned, because no one wants to feel like someone did not enjoy meeting them. But there is a difference between "Thank you for meeting me" and "Let's do this again." There is a difference between a handshake and a hug. To me, saying "Let's do this again" and then dropping off the face of the Earth is a lie. This is pretty much the standard farewell phrase now, and I'm not sure what the phrase is that actually indicates a person really does want to do this again. Similarly, a hug says "Meeting you was important and I feel positively about engaging in physical contact with you." That's what I mean about can't communicate to save their lives. If you want to communicate "Thanks but no thanks," don't hug me. Don't talk about meeting up again. Just say farewell.

But then I go to yoga. And K says, this too shall pass. Nothing lasts forever. Not even holding one arm in the air for three minutes. And the other side. And now both arms out to the sides, opening your heart, vulnerable and strong. This is the hardest pose for me

Source: ashappyaskings.tumblr.com via Katherine on Pinterest