I’m not sure where this is going except to say that this dating thing is hard.
Perhaps I should also call myself The Artificial Optimist (hmm…potential next pseudonym??). I want things to go well. I want things to be happy and fulfilling. I put on the calm encouraging face. Try as I might, and I genuinely DO try, I just expect that things won’t stay that way long.
As I type this, I am experiencing an odd sense of deja vu – almost as if I’ve thought this process through already. As if the script is written and I’m just playing a well rehearsed role. There’s the eerie anticipation that I’ve put myself out there, shared my feelings, cautiously exposed my soul, opened my mind to consider a new relationship – and I stand here waiting for the air to be knocked out of my lungs, the chair pulled out from under me as I’m sitting – all the metaphorical comparisons of the humiliation and pain when ‘the other shoe drops’.
Is it going to be that I’m not enough? or that I’m too much? Is it some off-putting tendency or habit? or a more sinister dangerous bend? Is he too comfortable in his personal darkness and velvety mental anguish? Are his demons more intriguing bedfellows? Does he find my spiritual leanings offensive to his conservative belief systems? Am I too independent of a woman for him and his gender role stereotypes? Is there a vice that is more alluring than the prospect of a future with me? Are my walls too high? Are my boundaries too rigid? What’s it going to be this time?…or the next?…or the one after that? Solitude sometimes looks delicious on my table set for one….but then I realize that’s not healthy. I’m sitting here in my living room, and aside from the old lady dog’s tranquil snore by my feet, the only sound in the house is the soft gurgle of the fish tank. No chaos. No noise. No quiet whispers. No shared secrets. No sound of a hand tucking that wisp of hair behind my ear. No song to slow dance to in the kitchen. No scrape of the spoon stirring a pot cooking dinner for two….sometimes…just sometimes…I get a little sad and a little lonely. Then I start to think about ‘the other shoe’….and wonder if maybe we should just leave our shoes at the door. If there are no expectations we can’t let each other down. But no expectations means no boundaries and no boundaries means chaos….but what if barefoot chaos could turn out to be a beautiful thing?? What if the idea scares the hell out of me?
The Artificial Extrovert 