Three months

Zoinks, last week was one of those weeks. I went from 2 clients to 13 pretty much overnight, and added 8 students for my other job, and discovered that trying to keep track of 21 people other than yourself is do-able, but only if you don't stop to think about your personal life during the day. Or, really, any point during the week.

It's been over three months now; I don't know where I expected to be three months down the road, I just know that was the timeframe I gave myself initially to get over the worst part of a broken heart. Right after breaking up, I told myself I would wait at least three months before I made any major decisions, like to move to Kansas or quit my job or get another tattoo. I'm three months in and none of those things sounds remotely appealing, so I guess I'm glad I didn't make any rash decisions. I'm still settled, I still like my life, I'm still mostly content where I'm at. Even more so, in some ways, because losing the cross-town commute and double-life-mode has deepened my roots in the life I'm in. But doing "mostly well" possibly makes it harder when one of those days sneak in, when I still feel like my heart has been partially carved out with a dull grapefruit spoon. They're not frequent, but another one recently hit. And when they do, I feel like everyone must surely be tired of hearing about it by now, so I mostly keep it to myself, until I can't anymore, and I find a safe place/person and lose my shit for a half hour or so, then I pick myself up and move on for another month. All in all, I'm not too worried.

Dating has been interesting to throw in the mix.... mostly I've been meeting people that I didn't end up being interested in (was that Transformers tee-shirt supposed to impress me? It made an impression all right...), but then out of nowhere I realized I had... gasp... a crush on someone. It's been almost three years since that happened. I knew I was crushing, I suppose, when I realized I'd passed up a chance to go to an REI garage sale just to see him at a party... and if you know how much I love REI, and how much I love a good bargain, then you know I must have meant business. And I flirted, the perfect combination of shamelessly and tastefully, and it appears to have actually gotten me somewhere, and good god when did I learn how to do that? But it seems that while going on dates was easy (which, up until now, mostly involved having a drink with men I say goodbye to and never really think about again), liking someone involves a different kind of letting go. Because to even think about making real space for somebody new you have to start to let go of the missing, and the regrets, and the what-ifs, and all the other things you've been hanging onto to try to keep a piece - however scant and hollow - of the person who's gone.

In fact, I am coming to think that "letting go" is not so much being able to shake our hands clean of the thing that we're moving on from, but rather just loosening our grip - with every new conversation, every "yes" to an invitation, every "what the hell, why not drive to the next county on a Friday night to talk to someone who intrigues me?" - so that we put ourselves more directly in the path of something new coming along out of the blue, and bumping us, and perhaps a bit more of what we'd been holding onto goes flying out the window.

Talk Nerdy to Me

I appear to be a complete geek magnet.

I hate to even use that phrase, and put it that way, because tonight I went out with a sweet, gentlemanly, friendly guy for a blind date, who I had interesting conversation with for two hours, who did absolutely everything "right" (whatever that means for a blind date), and I in no way want to slam on him as a person... but yeah. Not geeky in a hot-geeky sort of way. Just geeky. He played the pipe organ. At one point in time he was talking about adopting cats, but he was concerned about being the "single guy with cats," and was wondering how many cats would it take to put him in that category? He thought four was definitely too many, but wasn't sure about three, and what did I think? What I was really thinking is that he had just officially confirmed what I knew, in the very pit of my stomach, the minute he walked in the door... I was going to have a very pleasant evening but, in no uncertain terms, I was not going to be interested.

The last two guys I went out with have been computer scientists (the first one - of "not-a-date-date" fame, who finally asked me on a real date last weekend - was much more socially inclined than this last one, though, and if he were to actually flirt with me somewhere in the middle of one of our great conversations I would probably not be upset), and I'm going out with another guy next week who will probably put the first two to shame (in a "Booger" from Revenge of the Nerds sort of way, from what I gather). Apparently I am sort of in the "what the hell? why not?" phase of returning to dating. Maybe I'm secretly dating geeks because it's so easy for me to talk to them, and therefore, honestly, a bit of a confidence booster before I actually put myself out there for real?

Don't get me wrong, I like smart people. But there are different kinds of smart. And while I get a kick out of a good conversation about, say, the future of artificial intelligence, at the end of the day I just want to fall asleep in the arms of somebody who gets me in a totally different way.

So perhaps if I took that line about "being good at math" out of my online profile, I'd change my odds?

Fish. As in, others in the sea.

I went on a date on Saturday. Or, well, it wasn't a date-date, but it ended up feeling like a date... the kind of thing that's definitely not a date, unless it becomes retroactive because you wind up together, old and gray, sitting around in your rocking chairs arguing over whether that was your first date, and really, how often does that happen? Thus, a "not-a-date"-date. I had a great time, he was really a nice guy, a friend of a friend. Then, of course, I came home and lamented the fact that I had a date-like-thing, because it reminds me that I'm dating, and I hate dating. But I'm trying to get over that, so I went on a second-date-like thing tonight (or a "second-hanging-out" or "second-not-a-date-date" or whatever the kids are calling it these days), and also had a very enjoyable evening, but then walked away confused, and realizing that I think we had both been possibly interested, but then waited on the other person to act more interested, and then both walked away not knowing whether either of us was really interested.

I just went to break-up therapy with my ex-boyfriend. Trippy. Challenging, to say the least, but cathartic. I mean really, who goes to therapy after they break up, just to do the breaking up better, unless they're working out a major co-parenting arrangement (well, or unless they're a therapist with a twisted curiosity to watch a professional handle an emotional un-coupling, even if it's her own)? Me, that's who. Who needed some support and safety and containment (as in, one hour, not-a-minute-longer, then say goodbye for now with someone there to tie up our loose ends and keep us accountable to not getting all mushy and misty-eyed and missing each other on the way out the door). I'm not suggesting that we're BFF now; we amicably agreed to steer clear of each other for a little while longer. And I won't pretend that I'm done being angry, but it feels better to have said some stuff and not just be beating my own head against the wall alone at the end of the day. Honestly, if we were never going to see each other again in social circles, then maybe just running for the hills would have been an easier path to take. Or if I were one of those people who could compartmentalize broken, cut-off relationships with no resolution. But for better or worse, I'm just not one of those people.