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i see singles posts. have read a couple. i've been single before. 8 years, going on 9. i was solid as a rock during that time. not financially, no. but i had a few brief attempts at relationships, and when i decided they werent working, i ended things. no lag, no nothing. done. calm and mellow. no angst. i knew what i was willing to settle for and not. i did love a man named scott, who didn't love me back in that way. but we talked on the phone every day for an hour, often more, for three years straight. god i loved the way he talked. so slowly that, in the beginning, i would want to finish his sentences. but i came to love the wait, the slow unfolding of a story. an hour a day, at least, for three years. once we talked for 3 hours. thats a lot of talking. but i cant get sidetracked by scott, bc this blog is not about him.
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keith came along and cracked my ability to say steadfastly, nope, not good enough, and move right past it. he did this originally with sexual compatibility, but much moreso, thusly: i remember him looking at me during that first month and saying, "i love you. my god how i love you." thats it. i know exactly where we were and how we looked and what the sun looked like coming in the bedroom when he said that. i see the look on his face. that look and that sentence bought him 8 years. ugh, how stomach-turning.
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i dont fall in love quickly. i take forever to fall in love. cause you cant love without trust, and i dont give trust automatically. but to him i did. he was so all in, so open, so not into game-playing or having hand that i let myself fall right in. i thought i was one of the lucky luckies. i thought my mother and my old boss (whom i loved and who loved me back and at whose funeral i met keith) had conspired to send him to me. i, holly, was amazed to find myself 100% open to the wonders of love, true love.
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well. you all know how that went.
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he was very into having hand, very into keeping me off-kilter, and that original passionate declaration was no more than a sign of his immaturity. i learned this when, this spring, he fell in love overnight with a married skank (SORry!), and my dear friend, when i was so upset, explained to me that keith's behavior was not real love, but immaturity. i thought back to that day with me, the one that i held onto for so long (i guess because i was equally immature), and realized he had the same depth of feeling for me that day, as he fancied himself having for said married skank, today.
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so, married skanks are one reason i am single. to me, married people who have sex behind their spouse's back, pigs. period. no more to say. i dont care about the hardship of leaving. my mother took her 7 kids and left her first husband. moved to another state. i left the ex, who was the love of my life and made a very good wage, so that my baby and i could live in my friend's sewing room-with-a-twin-sized-bed-in-it. so i dont cotton to, "its too hard," or "its complicated."
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but plenty of men dont seem to have a problem with married skanks. they will convince themselves (as keith did) that a married skank is, in fact, the one. how its possible to convince yourself that a person who clearly lacks integrity can be the one, i dont know. i cant love without admiration, and i cant admire a person who does not have integrity.
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then there are the men who love polyamorous bisexuals (again, SORry!). according to a friend of mine, half the women on the dating sites are self-proclaimed bisexuals. thing is, polyamorous bisexual is just a pretty word for slut, innit? i mean the real translation of the words "polyamorous bisexual" is "i like to have sex with anything with a penis or a vagina, and do not want to be part of a committed and sometimes difficult grown-up relationship," isnt it? i could say that in my twenties i was polyamorous, and by that i mean i was a floozy who essentially had sex with any man i wanted to. i wasn't, though, polyamorous. i was a floozy. and am i not allowed to be a floozy? do i need to make up a phrase to legitimize it, bc floozy is bad? if god didnt want us to have sex, he wouldnt have made sex feel so good.
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wanting a casual relationship with a woman who is sexual napalm? i got no problem with that. have at it. but dont call it something else. couple i know here in town are polyamorous. what this means to them is the wife has a boyfriend she goes away with regularly, the husband constantly tries to get in his secretary's pants, and the kids sit around pretending they dont know what's happening when mom "goes away for the weekend."
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then there is my friend who wants a boyfriend. he wants a best buddy from 9th grade. oh, he calls it a girlfriend, he says, "i want a girlfriend." but he describes a 9th grade best friend. he is looking for "a girl who smokes a little pot, drinks a little beer, watches the games, and likes to party a little bit." yeah, seriously. i dont think i need to embellish, do i? dude is 52. not another word.
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then there is my old friend who is so talented in so many ways. so interesting to know, and has, himself, so many interests. he is the best-read man i know, and he has one requirement for a woman. not that she be smart or funny or well-read or love his art or is kind or anything at all except: she must have a good body. that is the 100% sum of what makes him feel good sitting across a dinner table from someone.
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well, as you know, i dont fit into any of the above categories. don't want to fit them (well, i'd like a nice body. but so far, not at the price a naturally round, middle-aged endomorph would have to pay). i find myself, occasionally, wanting to share my torrid stories with one or other of these gentlemen, to try to make myself more desirable (well if they knew this...). thank god it always passes.
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i havent seen keith now in two weeks. i have more energy than i have had in a long time. at least a year. i feel clearer, able to focus, was able to create a plan for my job, which was not remotely possible till now. i cant swear i wont see him. i almost called this morning and said come for breakfast, but i wrote this instead. when i am done here i will shower, make myself a sunday breakfast (sans bacon. not really sunday breakfast without bacon, but...).
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so i am going to be single. i am going to accept that i am a misfit who doesnt fit in. i won't get to be independent together, which is a disappointment. i wont get to have the kind of sex you have with someone you've been having sex with for years. what i will get is peace of mind. clarity. time to enjoy life without worrying about someone else's terms, that don't match mine. i wont be disappointed, i wont worry about disappointing. i will enjoy my son infinitely more. but he will be gone soon enough (god willing! :-) ), and then it will be me.
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just me.
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living in a room in brooklyn doing fundraising, or in rome doing tours for curious americans. and i will go to museums endlessly, and the nosebleed seats at the opera, and to all the dog parks, where my heart will always be overfilled with joy. i will read, and do the dishes ONLY when i feel like it. except when i have company, when i have fabulous pot lucks, and what me and my friends like to call "boring nights." thats where we sit around and watch little house, and play scrabble. i wont have to worry if someone else wants to see the movie i want to see. i have recently learned some people are uncomfortable going to a movie alone. all i can say is wow. its BETTER alone. even when i was single for 8 years, and my friend and i used to go to movies together, we never agreed on what was good. finally she said, "it's not even like we are at the same movie!" and its true. i like movies solo. concerts too. if i need to dance, i dont want to worry about if you think i look stupid or if i embarrass you. i just want to dance.
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that scenario i just described lacks nothing. i LOVE that scenario. i cant WAIT for that scenario (not that i really want my boy to flee the nest. well, hell yes i do, sometimes. but the ice that grips my heart when i think of empty nest, well i just this second had to do a big exhale and make crazy janet leigh-in-psycho jazz hands, to stave off the dread). once, in a writing class, we had to write about our perfect perfect day. i wrote about mine, at length and in detail. sometime after dinner i realized, "hey wait! where's my husband??" so i stuck him in at the end of the day as an afterthought.
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chances are, when we get right down to it, that's why i am single. and it's certainly why it's best i remain so.
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Rodney Roe
Gerald Andersen
libbyliberalnyc
Reflections of a shallow pond
zanelle
john guzlowski
Salon.com
Comments
thanks for reading. :-)
i do agree about loving someone - i am known for quoting james taylor to my friends when they are not sure how to proceed - he said to shower the people you love with love, and i think i have, and i hope i still do. i might hold back a little, but...
thank you for reading, and i am sending love and hugs from ny to you.
:-)
Anyways, I like this a lot. One of your best. You sound happy, and that's best of all.
and i too am enjoying the quiet house, kicking around on os, which i havent been able to do in a long time. heading over to your place, next!
Somehow, this statement makes me laugh even though there is a lot of truth in it. Most of the single men I know are on the look out for "a good body" and that is it. It hardly makes sense to a 41 year-old woman (like me) with good taste and the desire for a relationship that transends. But, the truth is that we are animals. Mammals. No better than wolves and sheep and whales. So, when I see men who can't help but glue their eyes to some young girls breasts, I forgive them for the natural instinct.
r.
:D
Lezlie
This was just ok. Partly it's those hash marks ///. I don't like them. They look like claw marks. I think it would have worked better if you'd employed the more soothing tilde ~~~~see, don't you feel calmer just looking at it? ~~~~.
Also I don't understand why you'd come to such a dead-end conclusion when you lead such an interesting life and know so many people. You're a misfit??? Then I really am a freak!!! I guess I should just shoot myself because there's no hope at all.
And what the hell does Rudolph have to do with this?
I think I'm going to redo my post. I need some videos too like maybe Shrek and Toy Story. Or Pulp Fiction. Maybe I can get Algis to spice things up and insert some cool graphicky stuff. Like a guy in a Speedo.
For these reasons I give your post a 7.2 and I don't care if the judge from the Ukraine is threatening to break both my arms. I'll just use my nose if it comes to that.
cant find my glasses, so my page is huge, so bear with me with this answer.
matt - cmaaan is a VERY smart chicken. :-)
tai - oh the urge to look, hell. other day a man had a his shirt unbuttoned, and pulled back so his whole fine 25 year old torso was exposed. i tripped. right in front of him. but to actually CHOOSE someone based on that freaks me out a little bit.
jw - i feel certain he must have been a pretty special person. i think i need to try to find one in my neck of the woods to at least check out. i know people must have them.
lea - thank you. that dream has been sustaining me for a while. you know, my bubba used to run, from the second he could walk he was OUTTA HERE. and my friend said maybe in a past life, he was captive. i am starting to think i have the same thing. he also hates the sun, sunlight! i thought that was freakish, till i realized i do too, and am pale as a whatever here in mid july. and he is an old soul, which i found novel, till i remembered by 3rd grade teacher used to call me her little 35 year old. interesting how all that works, isnt it? thanks for the encouragement. :-)
L - it is healthy. i am not sure why it makes some people annoyed, as if its giving up. but when i was young, only 20, and my friends mom was happily single, it made me sad for her. but i was 20. by our age, people oughta realize its a perfectly valid choice.
margaret - i should mind being called skank, but i just cant help laughing. i know, right? i am SO LUCKY to have matt as a fan. he has made me take my writing much more seriously, even if you guys cant tell. i dont like those hash marks either, but for some reason i couldnt make spaces in between, so....
miss p - its not looking outside of me for happiness, hell i managed to wake up with happiness every day for 8 years with keith. its wanting to find someone out there who doesnt BLEED YOUR HAPPINESS from you that is the tricky part, and the part i am giving up on. thanks for being sweet - its nice to have some good energy, i must say.
:)