Mountain Out of a Molehill (but it's my molehill, and it takes a while to read)

Please do not read this if you don’t know me pretty well. You will think I am insane, and those who know me will be no more convinced of this fact by this entry than they have been by my words and behavior over the last several years. If you do know me, I am really sure I’m blowing this out of proportion, but I needed this one. No need to say you're sorry. You've been pulling for me to get everything I wanted for ages, and I'm sure that hasn't changed.

Ok, so here’s the explanation from earlier. I’m writing when the feeling is fresh on my brain, and I don’t expect this to be an entry of immense joy or enthusiasm. Because I’m not telling the world exactly who I’m talking about, I am going to use her real name. I don’t think she would mind.

It’s no secret to anyone who knows me that I have never been very good in the whole relationship department. I’ve never been in one that lasted more than six months. I never date, and I am horrified by the prospect of walking up to a girl and talking to her out of the blue. Figuring out how to handle a relationship or the potential for one has been a gigantic exercise in trial and error, and I have batted right at 1.000 in the error department. Yet, finding someone who “gets” me has been on the very front of my mind 24 hours a day seven days a week since I was very, very young. In fact, I think I might have been a very early bloomer in terms of developing the desire to be with someone. I’ve also been a very late bloomer in terms of the realization of this and several components of that realization. You know what I mean.

At any rate, since my last attempt (which started in January 2004, basically ended in December 2004, and should be used as the training manual for how not to do it), I had more or less laid low (so to speak) in spite of the fact that it had still been on my mind 100% of the time. I tried the online thing with very disappointing results, and had finally started to believe in March that it just wasn’t ever going to work out.

I began to contemplate no longer using the online services, as they had never resulted in so much as a single date… not one. As sure as I started thinking about quitting, I was contacted by a woman named Anne about a month ago. She is a professor in a field that I like a lot at a university a little over an hour away from here. A very thought-provoking conversation ensued, and I began to be challenged by our differences and intrigued by our similarities. She had so many characteristics that I like and that I rarely ever find, and she was absolutely beautiful to boot.

Pretty soon, I made the trek to her town for a first date. The email conversation continued, and it became more and more engaging as it did so. Then there was a second date, then a third, and I began to start thinking that she was just different enough for this to work in some form. Refreshingly, for the first time I stopped trying to predict the future or guess how far this was going to go. If you know me, you know that’s huge.

I was really enjoying myself. She would tell me how strange I was, and tell me that she liked that. She let me tell the truth about what I thought and felt and never judged me on it, even if it wasn’t the same as what she thought and felt. Again, the world changed for me a little bit, and I liked the change… a lot. Her quirks and idiosyncrasies, her earthy way of living, the smell of her house, and the unlikely Midwestern accent in a Texas girl became things that I liked, and things that I looked forward to continuing to experience.

Things were going great, and I was looking forward to her coming down here tomorrow night for dinner, an art exhibit, and a movie I had saved for her. And then in a bit of irony, a conversation we had about the “ones that got away” became very relevant as she told me today that one of her old flames had been unexpectedly rekindled on a camping trip with friends this past weekend. She was very kind, very apologetic, and as graceful as one could be when letting go of someone.

It may seem ridiculous that I would feel somewhat upset at the departure of someone that I’ve known for only a month. In fact, it probably is. I think about the pain of divorces that more than one of you have gone through, and I feel petty. I think about the hundreds of miles of distance that some of you endure between yourself and someone that feels like home to you, and I feel shallow. I think about the breakups that some of you have endured with people you have loved for years or the people I know who’s best and greatest love has passed away, and I feel like an incomprehensibly self-absorbed fuck.

It is, however, to be expected when I have had such a hard time finding someone that seems compatible with me that it hits me pretty hard – it’s the only thing I know. Add to that my lack of “profoundly intense ambivalence,” and you get a seemingly empty freedom that wasn’t so empty a few hours ago. Those little stimuli that were opening the world, distracting me in the most welcome of ways, and making me smile at random moments throughout the day – those things went from fantastic promises of imminent comfort to impossible memories of how I can not feel, in an instant.

And so I’m a little lost. I forgot what this felt like, and I wonder if it’s really worth repeating in pursuit of something that, with each passing day, I become more and more convinced does not exist. I feel like I’m too old to be dabbling in this anymore. I feel like I shouldn’t toss more money at something when it only results in consistent disappointment. And I would love to tell you that I feel like I should quit looking, but I would only be convincing myself of that in an attempt to motivate kharma or God or Fate or a character played by Michael Landon to present the long-awaited answer to me in the form of a chance meeting by taxi accident or not-so-inadvertent collision in the laundromat.

Truth be told, I would like to not want this anymore.

I’m not crying. I’m not writhing in misery in my den floor alternating between fetal and prostrate positions screaming, “Why?” I’m not even going to rinse this one away with a Jack and Dr. Pepper (well, we’ll see…). This isn’t about Anne (who I think many of you really would have liked, by the way). It’s about not understanding why I can not either find it or shake the desire to do so.

So, I guess I’ll do what I know to do. I’ll think about it. I’ll be a little bit amazed at how quickly reality can change. I’ll wonder what she’s up to, and be a little bit bummed tomorrow night when I’m working and monitoring Idol in the background instead of fulfilling our plans for the evening. I’ll be glad I didn’t find tickets to see David Sedaris tomorrow night. I’ll work today and tomorrow and try to get ahead. I’ll go to Atlanta Wednesday and enjoy the ease that is only available to me through the presence of my dear friends.

And in the process, I’ll be considering change. I’ll be trying to find the opportunity in an otherwise downer of a situation. I’ll be thinking about what I should be doing and am not, or what I should be thinking and am not. I’ll remind myself that I would rather be alone than wish I was.

And I’ll hope that I run into Anne one day. I’ll hope that, if and when I do, that we’re both happy and content, and that we’ll trade a big hug – that we’ll smile at each other, and in doing so acknowledge a fondness for the really brief period of time that just ended.

When I’m done thinking about all of these things, I’ll remember that I was fine before I met her, and that I’m fine now. I am.

But this is getting very, very old.