"Don't Worry, Be Happy"

Wowie-zowie is there a lot going on in my life. So much so that the thing that relaxes me the most, writing, is something I don't have time for. What sucks more, the idea of setting aside time for writing right now, with everything going on, doesn't feel relaxing at all. Well, okay, the idea of it feels a litte relaxing, but mostly everything, including writing and getting to my blog (to refine the 3-4 posts--about this and that--I've got stacking up in my que), all feels like one more thing to do. Oh, yikes me. But, here I am, for a just a sprell, tuning in...

My first question: Who decides to move from the place they've lived in for more than 13 years (and made a home out of) when they've only been in their new job for less than two months? Aparently me. (When did I become a pshycho chick?) Seriously, this is kinda nuts, but kinda cool, too. I'll get into the details later, about the move, about how the buttheads got to be too much, about how it's time for a change, but mostly, before I pull a whole look-at-what-a-stressful-intense-time-I-am-going-though song and dance, I want to say I am SO EXCITED to move that I might pee my pants!

I also have to say that Ava has been such a rock for me through all this that I could get so warm in my heart I'll wet myself twice. (Yeah, I'm apparently pshyco and Incontinent now.)

What do they say? There are five major things in life that cause the most stress: What you do (work), where you live (home), who you are with (love), who you've lost (death), and how you're feeling (health). Not too shabby. I'm dealing with 2 out of the 5 stressful things in less than two months. Well, I"m dealing with 3 stressful things in less than 3 months if you count breaking up w/ Watt. No, 4 stressful things in the last year if you count dealing with Jen's dad's death, which, incidently, the 4th of July this year marks the first anniversary of his death. Fine, I'm dealing w/ all 5 stressful things if you count my BP issues, my spring allergies...my... Yeah, yeah. I through in the health complaints for effect. I am really going for the major dramatics here. I'm fine. My BP has been really high lately, but I know it is more situational than health related and once I move it'll get it's self under control. (Here's hoping.)

There was one more little stress bomb I was dealing with, but I am not sure what stress category it goes under. I thought I was pregnant. I was late. I am never late. I didn't tell anyone I was worried, not even Jen, because in my mind if I didn't say it out loud it wasn't real. (Kinda like if you don't say Beetlejuice, then Beetlejuice won't show up), but that stressful thing is over as of yesterday. I'm good now. Phewww... That was so the LAST thing I needed. Can you imagine? Um... Hi, Watt. Yeah. We've got a little situation here. What's pathetic, is reality that the stress in my life is probably what caused me to be late.

But, today, during my lunch hour, as I ran my 80th, 81st, and 82nd errand towards moving (I was doing a drop off at the Goodwill of the last of the bus load of stuff I'm cleansing from my life), and was headed towards errand 82 and 83 (don't ask me if it really has been 80 or more errands, that's just what it feels like) which was towards Target for some returns (trying to earn back my moving costs), and to Trader Joes for more wine (duh!), I saw something strange which was so, so... well, let me just tell you...

I saw a dude, an older Mexican man who looked a lot like Cheech Marin (of Cheech and Chong), who was probably in his early 50s, just driving along Pacific Coast Highway. What's strange about that? Nothing, that is except all his car windows were down and the radio was blaring "Don't Worry, Be Happy" by Bobby McFerrin. Still not strange? What if he had a makeshift perch built into his passenger seat? "Perch?" you say. "Whatever for?" you wonder. Still, you're fine with that? Alright. A parrot was sitting on that perch. Yes, a real parrot.

My point? If this dude wasn't worried that his bird would fly off that Macgyver-ed wooden dow/built-in perch situation he'd permanently constructed into his passenger seat for his main parrot squeeze, his bud, his bird friend, his smoking buddy (the bird was probably stoned), and he had the "Don't Worry, Be Happy" up to the volume: LOUD AS HELL! Then what am I worried about a little 'ol move and a new job and a pregnancy scare?

Life is good. Just ask the the Cheech/Parot man.

More later... In the mean time, I am going to move to a FABULOUS new beggining!

Being open comes before being ready...

So yesterday Ava, gracious with her time, took me around to look at potential new places to live. Yes, I have absolutely decided that I can no longer live in a place where, because butt-head neighbors have irreversibly contaminated the energy, my home is not my sanctuary anymore.

Is this one of the hardest changes I’ve had to make? What do you think? I’m up. I’m down. I’m ready. I can do it. I’m not ready. I can’t.

The whole time I was looking at places with Ava I was excited at the prospect of a new place. This morning I am, too, and to that end I am taking myself to breakfast and then to check the neighborhoods out. But yesterday, when Ava dropped me off from our lunch/place-looking date, and as I’d returned home, walked up my drive, past Sparrow’s place, and past all the other neighbors who are my friends (and have become like family over the years), including and especially Chad and Heather, then arrived at my place to see my own mini front yard (with the garden I’ve grown and the happy pink and red hollyhocks winking at me), once I stepped through the threshold of my front door, I broke down in tears (just after I snarled towards the butt-head’s place).

Change is good. I know it is. And the universe is telling me it is time for a change. But this has been my home for 13 years. There is nothing about this place that I don’t love except the butt-head neighbors. Okay, my small kitchen has always been a point of contention, and I really would like more space in my living room, but I've been living with a small kitchen and a small living room for all these years and I know how to get around it. (It's called stacking high. Build up, my friends. That's how you take advantage of space).

Fortunately, just after my run this morning (which was planned so I could eat-treat again, or eat emotion again...not sure) I ran into Sparrow. She reminded me that first you open yourself up to change, then, little by little, you become ready. “Just because you’re open, and getting ready, doesn’t mean you are going to be fully ready overnight,” She said. “This is a big deal, it will take some time. But you know more than anyone if the universe is sending you a message, it’s time to listen.”

So, I am open. I am looking. I will be ready when I find the right place which I can also afford. Ava said it best yesterday, when she reminded me that, yes, a lack of money does mean a lack of choices, but that’s all. The right thing will come. Except, in my world, a lack of money is the biggest part of this. And that’s a lot. It’s why I’ve lived in the same place for 13 years. Insanely great rent in a great neighborhood, who’d give that up, especially when you are your own team?

Look, I come from a great family, but we are not a close family. I might hear from my parents five times a year, on holidays, birthdays, whatever. They never call just to just see how my life is going. What I am getting at, is that if I fail, if I start paying a chunk more in rent, then things crap, I don’t have the luxury of my family having my back. Jen’s got my back. That I know. If it all shit’s the bed, she’ll take me in.

But this place, this home that I’ve built for myself, it’s seen me through 4 layoffs, countless relationships, and on the list goes. This place has been my husband, my parent, my sanctuary, my garden, my fall back. It’s never let me down. I know that’s a lot to put into a place, but I am more so saying that’s what I have gotten out of this place.

It’s hard to imagine another place offering that. It’s hard to willingly pay $300-400 more a month in rent utilities (which is, at least, what I am going to be paying) and I won't know what potential evils are ahead. What I mean is, here I Know my evil. It’s the butt-heads. A new place, there could be neighbors who are even worse. (Okay, I know, that’s negative, but it’s also a reality I am facing and the fear I am trying to conquer.)

Alright…time to keep looking for the new place. I’ll find it. I’ll be ready. It will be a fabulous place!

Going the Distance to get the Distance

Sometimes when we are standing at the base of one of life's arcs (a new challenge or life lesson), like when we are just starting to learn a new job and we’re on the: I-don’t-know-crap-yet side of the learning curve, or when we’re just beginning or ending a relationship, we can't always see the big picture.

We, like I've been doing lately, tend to lean towards extreme emotions, towards polarizations. We draw clear lines in the sand on how we feel about things and we forget that there was ever such a thing as a shade of gray (a shade of gray that is sometimes necessary in order for us to add new colors). Consigned to oblivion is the notion, that, yes, this is what we are doing here; our lives are for learning. (Sigh! Friggen life. Do we always have to learn, man?)

In a round-about way, I guess I am trying to say that we human animals, when we feel threatened or afraid (which is usually when we are standing at the precipice of our most important life lessons) lean towards generalizations. We dismiss the 20/20 vision that’s on its way (as it always is) and we become incapable of seeing the light of nuance. That light which often shines the most beautifully. Mostly, we become humanized. Then, that part of us that is so deeply human, so intensely raw, starts to entertain certain sweeping thoughts:

I'm afraid I am not good enough…
I don’t like this…
This feels funny, different…
I can't do this…
I don't want to do this…
I don't know how to do this…

These thoughts, usually colored by negativity, are often our precarious egos at work trying take power away from the Now. The ego (evil, hungry bastard of mind-chatter that it is), tries like hell to do its job. It does whatever it can to keep rein over us and over the clarity of our hearts and our deep knowing (both of which are so much more connected to the Now than the ego is).

To take a hold of us as effectively as it can, the ego calls upon the past to be one of its soldiers, to be one of the diversions that keeps us from being present. Because... remember? There were those things before in the past. There were those people or those situations which made us feel like we were not good enough. (We didn’t get listened to.)

The ego, so good at being King, also asks the future to do some of its bidding. What a perfect servant to the past, and to the ego, the future is. If that thing in the past went down like it did, and that hurt, which affected us so, if it happened how it happened, how is this thing in the future that we want (so badly) supposed to work out for us? How’z it gonna go right?

Our ego serves us up every bit of our past that it can. We’re handed back the experiences we had with our families, with our parents, with our friends, with the broken bones we got and with the falls off of jungle gyms we took.

Whatever it was, whoever they were, it was enough to pull our rug out from underneath us once, so, here again, how is this new thing, this new friendship, or new relationship (this new definition of family, which we all strive to belong to and to define ourselves by), going to be any different? Is this new challenge really supposed to give us a soft place to land?

Doesn't seem possible, does it? We weren’t good enough before. That’s what the voice of our broken ego tells us. And whoever or whatever it was that made us feel like we didn't measure up, we’re destined to be reminded of everything that got yanked out from underneath us, so why even bother?

Having our wicked egos press into us, that’s what makes us try and try to get rid of the baggage from the past. Oh, how we try. We do everything we can not to carry it all with us into our future. But, it happens. Stuff comes along wherever we go. We can’t seem to eat, smoke, drink, or exercise that hurt away, can we?

(Geeze, even now I’m looking at how serious I’ve been. My past hurts must be creeping up on me. I’ll need to lighten things up in a blog post or two. Sorry. But for now, just pretend I farted. That ought to lighten the mood for at least a second.)

The problem is, when we treat the symptoms instead of dealing with the cause, when we invite even more noise into our Now, it’s like being a business traveler and collecting up, and then lugging along, all the tiny little, free shampoo bottles from every hotel you’ve ever stayed at. After a while, all those little bottles, that seemed so cute and petite, so no big deal, when you add them up together, when you carry them all with you from place to place, the free part doesn’t feel so free anymore. It’s a lot to carry.

You start to realize that you can’t get down to the business of today or even get to the next place that you are going. You’ve got too much weighing you down. You’re not a hop-on-hop-off traveler at all. You’re a loaded-down, bag-checking, bag-claiming, bag-pulling, weary tourist in your own life who doesn’t know where the hell you’re at.

You’re lost.

That’s why, as much as I have been able to, I’ve let go of a lot of my proverbial shampoo bottles. Most of them, in fact. I’m sure there are some of those little buggers still packed away in a drawer (the recesses of my mind). I’m just as sure that out of nowhere one of those stinkers will pop up and will explode in a high altitude situation and I’ll think: Oh, yeah, there was that. That one is a big ache. Crap!

But, it was awhile ago that I started doing what I could to stop letting my ego take me back to the noise and illusions of yesterday that stink up my today like cheap, perfumed shampoo. I’ve been the better for it.

I stopped carrying a lot of head-crap around with me because I started to see that it was better to work through things and to leave the weight of them behind than it was to shove things down and wait for them to explode on me like a shampoo bottle does in your suitcase when the plane’s cabin pressure below gets to be too much.

Once a person becomes a little more weightless, they listen to life more (I just wanted to throw that in to look smart) and they develop new thoughts:

I don’t like this…
This feels wrong…
I don't want to learn how to put up with this…
This is not good enough for me…
I don't have to do this…
I won’t do this…

That’s why last Wednesday night I ended things with Watt. I’d decided to take some of my own advice and do some listening. Sometimes what we need to listen to the most is our own hearts. I’d wanted to wait until the weekend to call it quits, because that’s the difference between being a 40 year old woman instead of a 25 year old girl. It would not have been convenient for me to have the emotional drama that breaking up mid-week might have put into my work week with my new job and all.

I didn’t want to be sitting in my uncomfortable office chair and staring at a computer with puffy eyes or trying to use a brain that refused to concentrate on anything but the loss in my heart. I’d decided that I’d rather be in the comfort and privacy of my own home (even with the butt-head-neighbor noise) and take the time I needed to process the end of something that I didn’t really want to give up in the first place. (Hate those things that you know probably aren’t good for you in the big-picture end but you want them anyway. Or, you don’t want to give up the sex. Hard to tell which.)

Turns out, my rational 40 year old brain lost. My heart couldn’t take the discomfort in my chest a minute longer; it needed to be dislodged. Seriously, it felt like I’d swallowed a bicycle and one of the bike peddles was pressing into my left lung while the gears were clinking away in my brain. So there I was, just having gotten home from work (at 5:35 pm on a Wednesday evening) standing in my bedroom, pacing, and asking myself: Do I go for a run first, and then call? Or, do I call, talk to him, break up, and then go for a run?

Then I reasoned with myself: If I talk to him first, and break up, then I won’t have the energy to go for a run. Wait. I’ll need to run even more after I talk to him.

Then I yelled at myself: Go for a friggen run! You can’t even sit still, you freak.

Then, instead of running, I called. (Did you really think I was going to run first? We’re still on earth, here, and I’m still a girl.) I’d hoped he would pick up so I could get my answer and get the gray of it over with. When he didn’t pick up, that’s when I went for a run and ran faster than I’ve run in a long time.

After my run I’d seen that about 25 minutes earlier he’d returned my call and had left me a voice mail. He was on a break from work and said that he’d had another 30-40 minutes if I wanted to call back... His message had started with, “Hey! I’d been meaning to call you all day…” (Blah, blah, ikes...blah.)

The voice mail was pretty much the standard issue guy thing:

I know I’ve waited too long to call you. Now, you are calling me when I should have called you, and we both know I suck. I feel like crap because I know I made you feel like crap. So, my voice is going to be extra sweet, extra cool-casual, and the ends of my sentences are going to end in an ever-so-slightly higher pitch. (We’ll both know that’s my guy-guilt pitching my sentence-ends up that way.)

(Curious. When are guys going to get it that most of the time we know what they are doing better than they do?)

When I called him back he answered and immediately told me again how he’d been meaning to call me since he’d gotten back from his camping trip. That’s when the war in my heart started. The sound of his voice did what it always did; it began to sooth the savage hurt that had been collecting up in my heart from not hearing from him in a while. But the beast of that ache couldn’t be tamed anymore by just his voice alone.

Meaning to call me, really? My thoughts went ker-thunk. What about the week before that, Watt? Was that meaning to call me, too? What about every week since we’ve met, have you always been just “meaning” to call me but found it hard to get around to as soon as I need you to?

It was Watt’s camping trip that finally did us in, did me in. Watt was very far away from me, and not just physically. I could feel him letting go of me.

I know that sounds weird, especially since I know Watt wasn’t even conscious of how he’d been pulling away. Plus, as Sparrow pointed out, we’d not been together for very long, so this all probably sounds very dramatic, very: Ah, crap! This chick is an obsessive nut-job who just jumps in. But, that’s not what’s in play here.

I’ve already done nuts. I’ve done obsessive. I’ve done: Oh, please…abuse me, because I don’t like me yet. Go ahead. Bring it on. I’ll give you a treat for the extra hurt-me-so-good so I can call it love.

That was all in my twenties. That’s just about every girl’s twenties. For the peanut gallery, the 40s are fabulous for a reason. I’ve only been impressed with a handful of guys in the last 10 years for that reason. All grow’d up and over the crap now, thanks.

You ask: How could I feel so much for Watt in such a short time? How could I get the feeling, all along, that Watt had been meaning to want me in his life, and how could I feel that he really did want me to be in his life (because he knew how rare I was, how rare our connection was), but he also didn’t want me in his life, or, more accurately, he couldn’t figure me, a 40 year old woman, into his life?

It’s the same reason that from the beginning, from the moment I couldn’t walk away from him the day I’d met him, I’d been connected into him in a way that I’ve only felt with four other people in my life. Oh, and I don’t mean lovey-dovey connection. I hate the word psychic connection, but that’s as close to describing it as I can. That’s as close to describing why I know, right away, whether a man, any man, is going to be a part of my life at all. That’s also as close to describing what I am trying to explain.

Here’s an example (not having to do with a man, but makes the point): There was a time I was so connected to my cousin, who was my best friend as a kid, and who is still one of the most important women in my life, that before the phone would ring I would pick it up to say hello to her. Or, I’d go to call her and she’d already be on the line. “Hello? It didn’t ring,” she’d say. “I know,” I’d say, and we’d both laugh because this didn’t just happen a couple of times. It happened a lot of times. It’s like the twins thing. It’s a connection. You just feel it.

And, somehow, I got connected to Watt like that. I figured it out that I was dialed into him early on. I would start to feel his moods even before he’d call me. His moods weren’t any different than anyone’s moods. Watt is normal. What I am saying is that I’d know how his week had gone before he told me. And, I was feeling what he was processing, his human stuff, his normal life stuff, more than I might have wanted to.

In other words, the nature of his shampoo bottles, the stuff he was lugging around, was probably more clear to me than it was to him. That was hard for me to feel, to know how much he was not sharing with me. The point is, when you get connected to someone like that, when you get just as close to their noise as you are to their beauty…that opens you up to them even if you aren’t falling for them.

(Shit! that probably just sounded more confusing than clarifying. Okay, then I just farted again. That’s clear enough. Grab onto that. We’ll move on.)

What I am saying, or trying to explain, is that when Watt went on his camping trip I felt Watt disconnect from me. He’d gotten farther away from me, both in physical distance and in his heart than he’d been the whole time we’d dated. I felt him choosing to pull away from me even more than he did each week when he’d draw away and then bring us both back in when he’d need to get that fix of me. That’s when I realized that even if Watt never knew how much I’d been connected into him like that, I knew and I could no longer have my heart feel like someone’s yo-yo.

Could you imagine, though, me telling him, “Dude. You have no idea how much I can feel you make me both your crack and your morning after hangover”?

That would be like saying, “Look. I’m not actually like a Sylvia Brown psychic chick. I swear. I’m not. I just feel things more than most people do and I probably know how you are feeling better than you do half the time.”

He’d put me in the 20-year old psycho/obsessive stack right quick. Nah, actually, he wouldn’t. That’s part of the point. I think Watt knew, that he could feel it too, how tapped into him I was and how tapped into me he was when he let himself be. And, I could be wrong, but I think that was why he’d pull away from me. Would you want someone to sense things about you that they didn’t tell you?

You know what sucks the most? As short as our time together was, the longer time went on was the more I could feel him pulling away from me. What sucks worse is that I was the one more consciously aware of this fact.

When Watt and I first started seeing each other I can remember how we’d be sitting on my couch and he’d look around at all of my paintings on my wall, then look back at me. He’d take a deep breath in, take me in, then look back again at the paintings, let that breath go, then he’d let his eyes land back on me, allow his lips to curve his whole face into a smile that was only for me, and then he’d say, “I can’t believe how incredible you are.”

That’s when I could feel him accepting, wanting, our possibility. My age, the difference in where we both are in life, that didn’t matter to him. I’d say he was also induced by the drug of our new, that that’s what lit his eyes up for me. But I’ve been impervious to that drug for a while. Just new, alone, that doesn’t do it for me.

In fact, I can’t even get to the new with someone unless I first feel that thing in my knowing that the person before me is even someone who is part of my path (however long or short). So my tolerance to the new, that’s how I knew it wasn’t things being new that had opened him up. That much I can say with confidence.

Anyway, Watt would do this; he would breathe me in and get caught up in me every time we were together. Every time. If Watt wasn’t saying it out loud, that I was taking his breath away, he was showing me. One time we were sitting in his backyard, next to the fire pit he had built, and Watt had just given me one of his favorite shirts to wear to keep me warm in the night air that had gone to a chill. After I put his shirt on he just shook his head, drew me into him, exhaled me satisfied at the sight of me in his shirt (contemplated a future with me), then he licked his lips before those lips of his went into my smile.

(Right now, I hate that I know how to read smiles, those that are for me, those I won’t get to see anymore.)

And that’s how the “I can’t do this anymore” conversation started. I’d call it a break-up conversation, but can you really call it a break-up when the guy never called you his girlfriend in the first place? Every one of those moments, that my heart had been gathering, watching Watt inhale me in, watching him want me, they stopped adding up.

The girl in me wants to say it was his fear. It was his age. It was my age. It was, as I had said, the difference between where we both are at in life. (Watch the girl in me keep-on keep’n-on and keep saying exactly that, for how many more paragraphs coming?) But my annoying, contingent ego doesn’t care what it was, what it is.

Everything that was leading with my heart and that was letting go in me, that just wanted more of Watt, also stopped feeling as wanted by Watt. Inch by inch, I was getting filled up by the achy place and finally had to ask myself: How much longer can I do this? This feels funny. I deserve more. This is not good enough…

For reasons I may never know, because just having a connection to someone doesn’t mean you know everything (and for all the reasons I may never ask for clarification to) all the while Watt kept taking me in, he started to breath more and more of me out.

I can’t tell you how that hurt. It wasn’t about not being seen. Watt saw me. I saw him. That is, perhaps, why it does hurt. When two people can see each other so clearly, and when at least one of them, me, is even more ready to listen to what she sees, when the other person won’t, can’t, or doesn’t want to look anymore… Ouch.

After I asked Watt about his camping trip, and he’d told me how great it had been, and then he’d started in on some annoyances that had just happened at work, and that’s when I realized I wasn’t going to be able to pretend to listen. I wanted to be there for him. I wanted to hear him. I did. But, I wanted to be there for myself more and needed him to hear what I had to say.

So, out it came. And, Watt’s response to me telling him, “I can’t do this anymore,” was, “Okay.”

Can you also feel that pain? The sharp poke to the heart I’d felt, when he just said Okay. That wasn’t a bad swallow and the bike pedal repositioning itself to take over my right lung. That was a gear shift that left a crack. I told him his Okay, just saying Okay, was precisely why I couldn’t do it anymore.

“You aren’t trying to talk me out of calling it quits. You aren’t trying to fight for me, for this,” I told him. Then he had some fight in him, assuring me that his Okay was merely an acceptance of what I seemed to want, for things to end.

Um, no, Watt, I don’t want things to end, I thought. I’ve been ready to fall for you from the beginning, you adorable, annoying twit! But, that’s exactly it. It appears to me that you can accept this being over. You are Okay whereas I am not. Now go ahead, shift the gear a little to the right and let’s see if you can poke my lung a bit, let some more of my air out.

(What was I saying from the beginning, that this thing w/ Watt felt temporary?)

One of the things Watt told me when we first started dating was that he didn’t like bullshit. Watt stuck by that as I was ending things. He, being more of a gentleman than most men I’ve encountered (in romantic relationships or otherwise), just listened to me and said very little as I listed all the reasons why I wasn’t built to stick it out with him with the way it was going.

There’s another bit of 20/20 for ya. It’s actually pretty impressive to me, as I write this, and further testament to who Watt is, that he didn’t interject one single guy-bullshit defense. I think he knew I needed the room to outline all the ways in which my feelings had been hurt, even if he never meant to hurt them.

The fact that he didn’t hold me back from letting everything emotional out, and that he didn’t diminish any of my emotions with guy defenses, well, I’ll say it again: Watt is a beautiful person. He may not have been mine to keep, because I was not what his heart wanted for keeps, and what we had may not have been everything I’ve been looking for, but those facts do not change who Watt is and how intensely wonderful his energy remains.

While Watt let me do most of the talking, he did respond to some of what I had to say. He reminded me (a couple of times) that he’d never wanted to hurt me. He didn’t want to be any reason for my tears. (I knew that. Duh. No guy, good guy or not, wants to be the reason a girl crys.) He also explained why he didn’t call or text as much as I might have wanted him to. He said that the time we spent together was more important to him than any calls or texts.

I, of course, agreed with him that physical time is better than phone time. “However,” I said, “There is something you need to understand. Most girls need and want more than what you’ve been able to give me. Girls want to know that they have a man in their life who wants them to count on him. Calling a girl as much as she wants you to call is part of that.”

The worst part? (Does there get to keep being a worse suck-ier part? That’s what my ego wants to know.) I knew Watt already knew that, that he’d not wanted us enough to keep himself from being the one who was hurting my feelings. That’s the part of the hurt I had been feeling.

Ah, shit. I guess I am better at this truth thing than I thought I might be. That felt a bit raw, admitting I could recognize that Watt wanted me less than he was hurting me. (Ouch.) My ego just took a serious hit. If this was one of those guy-war films, I’d be the soldier in the fox hole with the huge, gaping wound bleeding all over the place. The thing you can smell, that’s the stench of my ego burning. (Smells a lot like burnt hair, yeah?)

What I didn’t tell Watt was that there are those girls who are exceptions to this rule, the need for getting enough calls to tame the savage, insecure girl beast. Some girls don’t want or need a man to give them a place to fall nor do they care how much he calls. I also didn’t warn Watt that one of these exceptional girls might be one of his future heart aches before he gets to his One. (That was not my lesson to teach.)

It’s been the lesson I’ve already learned, though, unfortunately, and Watt, apparently, may have been the last of that lesson repeating itself upon me until I really got it. But, I get it now. I don’t want to be the general rule and have some man, who I think is exceptional, walk all over my heart, even if he doesn’t mean to. I want to be the exception to the rule and to meet the man who knows that I am that exception. I’m ready for the man who will do whatever it takes to rule my heart.

Just want me…
Just love me…
Just show me…
That’s all I need.

If ya can’t, we’re done here, son!

So, can I be done with this lesson now? I think I got it.

Going back to the girl who can play it cool, Jen and I even had a whole conversation about this, about when it is actually possible for a gal to be a gray-in girl, like what I was trying to do with Watt, instead of being an all-in girl. BTW, if there’s any question, not that it’s not already completely obvious here, I doubt, very seriously, even a centimeter of me will ever dabble in being a gray girl again. (Just saying. Play with fire: Ya get burned.)

Anyway, Jen and I concluded that gray is okay for a girl when, and if, the girl doesn’t like the guy as much as the guy likes her. In other words, if the guy is cooked and the girl could take it or leave it, then, yes, the girl can go gray. No problem. Gray away and sex away, black and white need not apply here.

But, even the girl who has got all the cards stacked in her favor eventually reaches a tipping point. She’ll finally care so little that she’s bored or done, and/or onto the next one. Or, she’ll start to care just as much, maybe not for the guy she’s with, but for the next. Then, she, too, will want more, require more, more than the stink of gray. She will not be able to accept any less.

That’s when it get’s laid out, how true needs and desires take over wishy-and-washy. That’s when gray needs the black and white of answers. Shoot, we should all know the answers to the basic questions. We should answer these questions for ourselves and we should definitely ask ourselves how the person we are with would answer these questions.

How emotionally invested are you in having a committed and lasting relationship in your life?
How emotionally invested are you in having that committed and lasting relationship with the person you are with?

Once a person is emotionally invested in having a relationship, and once the person they are with is The One they want that relationship with, that’s when we don’t get to decide how our emotions will work any more. Our feelings will run deeper than gray and start to extend beyond that which can be controlled. When emotions get that strong, or when we allow ourselves to feel that deeply, not even fear can get in the way.

But when we aren’t ready to go that deep, or when the person we’re with isn’t The One we will hurdle the fears from our past for, we don’t take any chances. We don’t let someone in to see where our true love lives…beyond our fear, beyond the noise of our past. (They don’t get to see the shampoo bottles we’ve been lug’n around.)

If we aren’t ready, things don’t go. It’s as simple as that. Not being ready colors our relationship with the kind of gray that clouds out the nuances so that nothing can grow.

That’s when someone says, “I wanted to call you more, Levan, I did.” And the other person counters, “That’s just it, Watt. You wanted to call me more but you didn’t. That means you didn’t want to call me enough to actually do it.”

“It has nothing to do with you, you know,” Watt said to me. “You are one of the most amazing people I’ve ever met in my life.” “I know, Watt. That’s also the point,” I said.

I pretty much told Watt that if a guy that was ready for a woman like me had a woman like me in his life, he would grab on with both arms and would make sure that no one else could hold my hand. If I told that guy I was like a cactus, and not a delicate, wilting flower, and that I only required a little bit of water, and that’s all he had to do to keep me alive, to keep me happy, he’d water me like spring and make sure every part of me bloomed to keep me overjoyed.

“Don’t you get it, Watt? I want passion and release and a place to fall. You didn’t even claim my heart, but you started to break it. I know that was not your intention, but that’s what was happening. See? I don’t work that way. I can’t be in a situation with a man that creates gaps in me Now where there aren’t any anymore.”

“I didn’t realize you felt that deeply,” Watt responded.

What I wanted to say to that, but didn’t say, was how surprised I was that he didn’t know how deeply he was capable of feeling. Part of me wanted to scream at him: What the F’, Watt! What do you think this is every time we see each other? Don’t you get how deep this runs, how rare a connection like this is?! We may not have been love at first sight, or even in love, yet, but this, what this is, this doesn’t happen every day, damn it! This is rare.

It almost sickened me, having that distance over him, the distance 14 more years on earth can give you. I wanted him, so badly, to know that the way we connected when we were together, that that thing he told me he felt (many times) where the whole world disappeared when he was with me (not a direct quote, but a reiteration of so many things of the like) is more than what most people will ever get to feel.

What made me more sad is that it will probably take him just as long as it’s taken me, 14 more years, to get that, to get how rare it is to find someone who doesn’t just make you laugh because they’re funny, or you are, or the jokes you’ve built together are clever, but because a lightness in being has filled the room and laughing is the only way to let that lightness in.

Nah, Watt is much smarter than me. Hopefully. He’ll get it quicker.

He’ll understand it when he’s with someone else, someone more his age, someone he see’s as more right for him. Yeah, a man like him, with his energy, he’s bound to draw in another amazing woman. And, that’s okay. My ego won’t like that one bit, that another girl will get to bask in all that is beautifully him (in all that he’s hardly even tapped into himself), but I’ve taken hits before. My cracks are good.

I’ll be happy for him that once he does learn to shine beyond words. He’ll be unstoppable. And my heart, beyond my ego, hopes for Watt that he can have a love in his life that cradles him and ignites him beyond anything he can imagine or want to control.

But, my heart, and not my ego, also remembers that Watt gave me a taste of what our love together might have been like. He probably doesn’t remember almost telling me that he loved me on our second date. I knew it wasn’t an official: I love you. (Remember? I don’t get drugged by new.) It was, rather, a recognition of the immediate pure love and energy between us. On that night and out of him came emotion without boundaries and without fear. Well, out of him this emotion came until a flicker of recognition, for how raw his emotion had reined, had squelched it all.

What a shame. If only Watt could have stayed, the whole time we were together, as open as his buzz that night had allowed him to be. What a shame that, even in a slightly intoxicated state, the power of fear, or the ego, or both (who knows what it was that stopped him), were able to nip the end off of Watt’s heart string. I’d so wanted to continue to hear it sing.

(Go suck it, ego! I swear. I am so sick of my ego, other people’s egos, so sick of fear.)

The biggest shame is that I still can’t forget what he almost said. I can see his face on that second date of ours; see us both there on my couch. After he had told me for the 4th time that night how amazing I was, and (broken record time) it wasn’t the new of “us” talking for him. (I kept seeing this expression on his face throughout our time together.) I remember him leaning into our kiss, and then drawing back from the impact of it and saying, asking, “Can you feel that?”

Then he leaned the rest of the way into what was taking over both of us, kissed me again, and the words tipped off Watt’s lips, “It’s as if…I feel like I already, like I…lo— Lo—v— y…”

Then that was that.

The “e” dropped off that four letter word and the “o” and the “u” never made it all the way out, leaving Watt questioning what he’d just said, wondering if I’d heard it, and, I think, hoping I hadn’t. Feeling what he’d felt, saying what he’d almost said, I could feel the fear of that fill the air like the smoke from a smoldering fire. The same smoke was what choked the air off to my heart every time he pulled away each week and waited that extra day to call me.

But I had heard it. I’d coveted that almost “I love you”. I’d been waiting for it again, hoping for it. I’d been seeing it come back and back again, in his smiles, in his exhales, every time we were together. But it never came back in those words.

And, instead of getting those words, and getting more of those smiles, I was left feeling, watching, over time, Watt go from the easy of the love we all start from, that we all need and want, and feeling the “us”, of what we could have had, slip away. Gone, in his barriers, was the hope of what we might have experienced beyond age or boundaries, and never to return was that l-o-v with or without that “e”.

I hung on to it, though. I put it in my knowing as more of the truth of us, and of him, and of what he had to give, than the him he started to hold back from me.

But you can’t remind someone of their own vulnerability and need. You can’t say: Remember the times, every time we were together, that you forgot your defenses and offered me more without saying a word? You can’t bring a person back to the understanding you’ve come to, because what if you’re wrong? What if those moments where that other person nurtured your heart weren’t even real?

What if your own past and ego noise (your stupid shampoo bottles) tell you: You’ve got it all wrong, you crazy bi-ach. Whatever you felt in your knowing, not so much, sweetie.

The point is, if Watt and I were ever going to have a chance, that chance was something he was going to have to come to on his own. I’d already given us that chance when I’d decided I didn’t care what the psychic had said about there being one person before the other person who was to come into my life (which, technically, would have been Watt). Watt was in my life Now. I wanted him. Every bit of hom.

The only thing I couldn’t shake was why, from the beginning, I felt things were temporary. Well, I get that now. Duh.

Watt’s understanding of what he’s capable of, emotionally, of what he has, of what he wants to give to someone, that has little or nothing to do with me or with our connection, in so far as he’s got to tap into the acceptance of his own feelings first before he’ll ever be able to plug into what he could have had with me or will ever have with someone else. What I was feeling all along was probably recognition of this.

Either way, we girls always make shit up to make ourselves feel good, and make things seem, or hope that things were, better than how they played out. We do this so we can justify how crappy we feel when something ends. That’s why sometimes we never really know if the truth of what we felt was real or if our ego has given us a good spiel to cushion the blow we haven’t accepted yet.

What I am trying to say is I, in all that is human in me, will continue to question everything I felt with Watt. I could have been totally off. My ego could have been drunk driving the whole time. I don’t know. (My deep knowing doesn’t think so, but I can’t know for sure.)

One of the things Watt said during my: I can’t do this conversation, which really struck me, was when he claimed, “I guess I am just more intellectual than emotional.”

When I heard that, my brain hurt, but, not for me, for him. The intellectual card vs. the emotional card? Is that really the line you are going to draw in your sand to keep you safe, Watt? I wanted to ask.

Part of me thinks that Watt was doing a little drunk driving himself, or a little whacked work’n it out. See, whatever Watt may or may not have been processing, which is what I may or may not have been feeling in my connection to him, which may or may not have actually been as intense of a connection as I’ve been describing, doesn’t matter.

(How was that for my ego going on tilt and questioning EVERYTHING!?)

What I mean to say is that if anyone, and I mean anyone, who says that they are more intellectual than emotional is just trying to avoid emotion. Sweeping statement? Do I have the right to make such an assertion? Yes, to the sweeping. No, to the assertion (only since I am not a psychologist, other wise, yes, damn it, I can say that, too, with confidence).

Do I care if am sweeping or asserting? No. I, personally, the student of life I’ve claimed myself to be, believe that that’s a cop out. (Sorry, Watt. I adore you. But, if you ever read this blog, that is the only bullshit thing you ever said to me.)

Then I overstepped, with Watt’s whole intellectual vs. emotional assertion. My hurt for him, and my assumption that he didn’t make that comment to “handle” me as a girl (to have me think he’s just not an emotional guy so I shouldn’t take things personally), but that when he made it he believed that to be true, that he was, indeed, more intellectual than emotional, led me to tell him how untrue that could possibly be.

As I just said, in general I’ve always felt that certain claims, such as:
I’m more intellectual than emotional.
I say it like it is and I don’t beat around the bush. (Also known as the: I’m a strait shooter. A.K.A. the tough as nails wall-put-er upper.)
I’m independent.
I don’t really need anything from anyone else.

Those are all just another way of saying somewhere along the way, just like everyone, I didn’t get seen and this is my fear and this is my defense…

See? We’re human. I’m just saying. We ARE emotional. We do care about other people’s feelings. And, we DO need others. There is no escaping those truths. That’s pretty much what I told Watt

“No, Watt, You aren’t more intellectual. You’re human, which makes you just as emotional as me whether you like it or not,” I said. “Take it from an ex-cigarette smoker who tried to smoked away her feelings for 20 years. When I quit smoking I had more emotions than I thought I already had and they all rose up to take over me for the first six months that I quite smoking because I didn’t know how to deal with myself.”

I went on to explain to him how I’d used my smoking as distraction, a way to avoid dealing with all the emotion I’d tucked away for a very long time. When I didn’t have that distraction anymore I could no longer deny how human I was.

It wasn’t my place to say, but I told Watt that the fact he’d say he was more intellectual than emotional meant he probably had a lot of emotion in his life that he was trying to ignore and I insinuated that maybe it was time for him to start processing some of it.

Then, when I apologized to Watt for making assumptions about the emotional hurdles he might need to face, for using what I knew of my own experience, of my previous relationships and of a laymen’s knowledge of human nature to make implications about his own progress, Watt simply replied, “I’m going to miss listening to you.”

See why it’s so hard to give Watt up? He hurt my feelings because he didn’t want someone in his life in the way I want someone in mine. He, essentially didn’t want me. That’s not his fault. That doesn’t diminish me. (My ego is still in the gutter, but I’m still amazing.)

If only Watt had totally pissed me off. If only he’d been the kind of jerk I could put my finger on and say: This is what you did. This is what was unforgivable. Then it would be so much easier to give Watt up. But, his only crime is that he doesn’t want what I want right now or I am not the right Now he wants.

Damn it, again! It would have been so much easier if all the time we spent together didn’t make me so confused. If only I knew, all the time, every time, that he never wanted what I wanted. If only he had never looked at me the way he did. If only he’d never smiled for both of us.

In hindsight, while I try never to regret, I do regret (a little) being so forthcoming with my opinion on what I felt were emotions that Watt needed to start addressing. While I still feel there is validity to the “food-for-thought” analysis I offered Watt on his whole intellect vs. emotion thing, I’m smart enough to know that when someone doles out an opinion, to someone they care about and who cares about them, right or wrong it’s going to get in. It’s gonna to sting.

Sometimes it stings even more if the information we give or get is wrong, because then we have to first figure out what about the information/opinion was wrong, and then we have to get to what is right straight for ourselves. Then…we have to forgive the person (usually it is someone who loves us or cares for us) who had the wrong or bad opinion that maybe shouldn’t have been shared in the first place.

Yet, I don’t think I was wrong. But, if I was wrong about Watt needing to re-stack his deck, I think the truth holds for everyone that we’re all holding our cards too tight. If you are going live your life, and bet on yourself (as you should), you have to ask yourself:

Are you in it to win it?
Has the ego taken control and everything you do keeps you safe, keeps you on top, and keeps you from embracing chance and change?

Or…

Are you in it to let it?
Have you signed up enough with your heart and with the chances you take for yourself to let life excite your passions?

The answers to those questions, in my opinion, are two of the most important answers a person needs to define in their life.

Watt also asked me, “Is this it?” He wanted to know if he was still going to get to talk to me, to be my friend? He said he couldn’t imagine not knowing me in his life.

I didn’t know, I told him. I knew I wanted to eventually be his friend, too, and to talk to him, but I knew my ego wouldn’t let that happen for a while because if he were to meet someone else sooner than later, and he were to start giving her everything I’d wanted from him, even if I knew what we had would have been the catalyst that probably brought him to that point, where he could give someone more, the part of me that’s still 22 years old and carrying around a 200 pound ego-shampoo-sized bottle, wouldn’t have been able to deal with that, with being friends and watching him jump a new train.

Yet, when he implied that he couldn’t cut the tie, just like that, everything in me wanted to curl back up into him. I wanted to wait it out, to just see if he’d want me in his life more. I’m telling you, I wanted to wait and see if Watt could give me a place to fall.

Oh, yowza, fall, and fall more, how I would have. I’d have fallen so far I wouldn’t have wanted to come back up for air. But the part of me that felt Watt would never give me that place, knew I’d only be waiting to rip the Band-Aid off.

He told me he wasn’t going to loose my number, implying that I’d be getting a call from him in the future, as friends, as what…? I don’t know. I don’t think he knew what he meant to imply anymore than I did. But, I liked that he said that, that he, at least in some small part, didn’t like the idea of me not in being in his life anymore than I liked him not being in mine.

The truth is, after I’d hung up the phone with Watt, balance moved back into me. I felt my raging ego crawl back to it’s comfy place, and the part of my heart that knew my ego might have had a point, thanked my human me. That’s how I knew what I’d done, concluding things with Watt, was right, at least for now.

I’d taken care of myself, of my needs. I’d listened to and addressed who I am and what I want. As much as I wanted Watt, he didn’t want to be what I wanted. He didn’t want to want what I wanted, not with me. (Can you feel that? The sharper poke to the ego, the bicycle spoke in my throat?)

I knew it was right because I am not a dater. I never have been. I go on first dates, then we kiss, then they guy makes sure no one else gets to date me, and that’s it. I am a relationship girl. I am the girl who wants someone who is in it to let it. After all, we all have to live our truth. No matter how much I wanted to hold onto Watt, I knew I was trying to hold onto what wasn’t being offered up to me, and that wasn’t healthy.

I thought I’d cry the second after I got off the phone with Watt. But, I didn’t. Instead, I felt a lightness of being. That is, I felt 50% lightness of being, because I’d felt like I’d done the right thing by myself, and then I experienced 20% emotional mayhem (I missed him so much already I couldn’t stand it and wanted to call him up and tell him I didn’t mean anything I said). The last 30%? I was a little shell shocked, numb, and knew it would all catch up with me at some point.

The next day at work, I still didn’t cry. No puffy eyes. No problem. Nothing. I was fine. (I was still numb.)

Then, finally, the cry started to come. The first unavoidable leak happened in the toothpaste aisle at Target two days later. I was trying to decide whether to use the gift card/store credit from my receipt-less return on the value pack of Sensodyne toothpaste or if I should just get a single tube of paste and buy something else. (Why does the cry always have to come when it’s so inconvenient?)

Deep breath in. Sunglasses on. Breathe out. Try to keep the red face away. You still have to go to Rite Aid and to Trader Joes…

Damn it! Rite Aid doesn’t have the right hair pick either. Shit! Did I leave my favorite red hair pick at Watt’s house? I want that pick back. I want Watt back. Crap! I’m starting to cry again. Shove it down. Not now! I’m out of bananas and frozen fruit…one more errand…on to Trader Joes...

Why does that a-hole and his girlfriend have to hold hands in front of the bananas? This sux! I don’t want to watch this young couple get’n all kissy. I gotta get home. The big cry still hasn’t lodged loose yet and I am feeling a little jacked…

The big cry finally came when I went to send Watt a text, a text that I hadn’t planned on sending for weeks. I’d drafted and had saved this text to be ready to send when my heart was done hurting and my bruised ego was back where it belonged: back in balance, and not winning, not ruling, and not louder than my knowing that Watt was never as signed up as I was.

The text was nothing special. Again, it was just the text I was hoping to send when I was ready to be friends. (No one wants to give up such a beautiful presence in their life completely, even if they don’t get the whole of it that they wanted.) The text was me letting him know I still had the succulents I’d potted for his backyard and I wanted to give them to him at some point. I also wanted to ask if he had my red hair pick (I’m pissed I can’t find a damn pick like that one, a replacement), and I wanted to thank him again for the stack of Alan Watts CDs that he’d just given me (about 10 of ‘em. What a doll).

Then, he didn’t text back.

I’d expected that, and hoped against that, but probably texted him in the first place to prove to myself what I already knew. I had to say to myself: See? You did the right thing. If he wanted you he’d have texted back already. He’d have called.

(Eventually, he did text back and confirmed, that yes, he could not be anything for anyone right now and I was right to want to move forward without him.)

The trick is…it’s all still tough. Whether you have fallen in love with someone of not, when the sound of their voice, the curve of their smile, the tilt at the corners of their eyes when they laugh brings you to a place of balance, and you can feel them being balanced by you when they are in your presence, that’s hard to give up.

That’s why it hurt so much that Watt never gave me a place to fall, that he couldn’t. Every time I was with him the way my energy leaned into his, the way he let go and crawled into me, I felt like it would have been the best place (EVER) to fall. Every time we weren’t together, every time his energy pulled away from mine, I didn’t want to fall anymore. I wanted to run, to protect myself.

That’s not how it is supposed to work. You are not supposed to want to run just because the person is not standing next to you.

Then, again and again, I’d see him and we’d connect again, re-connect. And, again and again, I’d forget how it hurt when we were apart, how he’d pulled away from me. Then, again and again, I’d want to leap, and let, and go. Then, again, and once too many times again, he’d unplug from me. That opposite charge burned too much. He’d keep getting so far from me that he’d breach our momentum beyond that which I could rationalize away.

He’d marooned me. I felt him siphon himself out of us without even knowing he’d done it. That’s when I knew I couldn’t be his heroine anymore.

I miss him, though. Now I’m the one who needs a fix. I miss each moment he’d walk through my door, or I’d walk through his, and I’d watch his lips fill themselves up with me to smile out all the pure enjoyment we felt being next to each other.

You know? It’s interesting, what I’m starting to figure out (and this is a tangent, but I’ll come back). There is something funny about being a writer, or being someone who writes about things (who knows what the hell I am, really). We word spinners, those of us who have that desire (maybe it’s a need?) to find the words that can be strung together in such a way that it conveys an experience or an emotion, we get good enough at rearranging letters like beads on a string, and turning those beads into pearls so they’ll hang even better, that we start to know how to make anything look pretty or ugly, depending.

We learn how to wash things, wash words down, how to hide other things behind something else long enough to spin yet another thing around with yet another word hung out to dry. Then we hang it all out there and we come up with will whatever will work.

So, I could just as easily say, “Gee. This thing I just experienced with Watt, it was kinda neat. ” Or, I could exclaim, “Stand back! I just met one of the most beautiful energies in a man I’ve come across in a long time.”

I could continue to support my notion that that I don’t even think Watt was as aware of how rare of what we just experienced was. His 14 years less, of having his heart soar or be broken, hasn’t given him the tally for comparison my 14 years more has given me. And, I could also say that my ego has written most of what I’ve just recounted. Therefore, you can’t trust any of it because it was all designed to make me feel better or make you get enthralled more.

(I’m the liar. Yes? The writer with her truth, or untruth, messing with the reader.)

I could say the real truth is…it was just dating. I didn’t fall in love. So who cares? Watt was just plugging me, and he probably felt no where near what I’ve said he felt. He’s a guy. And I’m a girl, and we girls, we tell ourselves (and others) stories about what happened, and we say a guy is afraid. We say it wasn’t me. It was him. It was his fear. That makes us feel better, yes?

But, forget that! I’m telling you, as close to the truth as I can get to describing the difference in Watt, and in most men I’ve met, and the difference in what I felt, and putting it as succinctly as I can, I called him my beautiful Watt for a reason.

Watt, even though he is one of the shittiest callers, and a self professed free spirit who is, as far as I am concerned, rather, and mostly, not as free as he’d like to be, is still unlike a force I’ve ever encountered. Watt may still be searching for his own ground, before he can plug into someone else’s circuit, but he’s got an electricity like no other man. I’m gonna miss that spark for some time to come.

(Okay, I know, that was a little allegory thick. Sorry.)

I had such a small amount of time with Watt. He didn’t come close to inviting me to love him like other men have. Yet, without his invitation, and just because of how rare it is that I have encountered a man like him, I can say without hesitation that I would have loved him and I do love him for who he is. I would have fallen harder for him than most men I’ve fallen for.

And, writer or not, I’m not making up the connection I felt with him. That I know I felt. I know he felt it. I can’t be wrong about that. If I am, don’t tell me.

Sigh…

I obviously don’t have enough distance on this thing with Watt yet to know everything I am supposed to learn from it. But already I am thinking that perhaps Watt was supposed to remind me of what I don’t want. I can’t go half speed in relationships, with passion, or with love. My parts just don’t turn that way.

For me, getting half of what I want out of a relationship with a man is a lot like wanting a glass of water and getting handed a glass of cotton. Cotton may be soft, but you can’t swallow it, not without some water to help it go down. That’s why trying to swallow cotton when you asked for water doesn’t swallow right.

Maybe that was also what I felt from the beginning with Watt, what felt so temporary. It was never my unwillingness to fall, or my inability to embrace him and to jump into our Now. I’m an embracer. I’ll jump. I will. With whatever is first that wants to leap, feet, nose, head, heart, let’s go. I might hesitate. But, Mom, watch! I won’t even have to plug my nose. I’m going in! Let’s do this thing.

Yeah, maybe that was what was always my sense with Watt, that I was, am, here Now with him, with myself, but all the while I was miles ahead of where he was…is.

I guess my own personal growth is a lot like evolution. A person cannot un-evolve. Once you find yourself on a path that is a positive force forward, you can’t knowingly and willingly step backwards. You can’t halfway yourself or halfway your desire for love.

I might not have gone a long distance with Watt, but I got as far as I could go with him for how it was going and I am certain that going that distance with him will get me to where I am ultimately going (as it will him).

I probably have more to say, but I’m done saying it all about Watt for now. I think.

I’m gonna sleep fabulous now. (Good night, Watt. I hope the best for you.)

The Power of Listening

Remember when you were a kid and you were trying to get your mom's attention? You wanted her to watch you do your new, cool, trick (so bad) that you couldn’t stop screaming, “Mom, mom, mom, watch! Maaahhhm, waaatch!” It didn’t matter whether you were jumping into a swimming pool, one hand up in the air and the other hand plugging your nose. It wasn’t a big trick, but it was your trick and you wanted mom to watch.

Maybe you wanted dear mother to bear witness to your talents and genius as manifested through the masterpiece of a stick-drawn painting done in the wet sand beach. What about your gifts of intellect and creativity when it came to your architecturally phenomenal sand castles? And let us not forget how important it was for mom to see one of life’s truly spectacular creations, a divine structure that can only be created in an environment where water can mix with sand to make mud, which is the mud poop mountain. “Mom, see? Look how high I got it!”

I’ve used the: Mom, look! Mom, see! analogy before. The analogy is an important one. I’m sure, at some point in my writing adventures, I’ve also already talked about mud poop mountains (an obviously important part of my childhood, being a Southern California native, and growing up and going to the many of California’s beaches and lakes). But being a master poop-mountain maker (and I am) is not what I am getting at here.

All those: Mom, mom, mom looks, which are no different than: Dad, dad, dad, look (see me!) they turn into: Honey, did you hear me? And: Doesn’t anyone get where I am coming from?

From the time we put in a bid for our parent’s affections and attention, then started to fight for our turn in the sand box with the kids on the playground, and then we strive to be heard across the board-room table, we decided, maybe not consciously (but we decided) what it meant if we were or weren’t being heard. We decided whether or not the world was seeing us the way we needed to be seen. The world was, and is, our world, and is made up of everything we need to hear or see us.

What we think our world sees in us can be bad or good. Ever hear of a blond complaining that she's not taken seriously by anyone? Ever judged a book by its cover and decided you wouldn’t accept anything that book had to offer? Ever act in a different way because you wore something different that day, something more businesslike, more hoochie, less hoochie, or even frumpy?

On and on it goes, the way we listen to the world and the way we think the world listens to us.

When we’ve gotten someone’s full attention, or just got half of it, or got none of it at all, that was tallied. All those times we had to jump up and down again, or jump through the hoop, every time we raised the bar, screamed a little louder, or maybe we even went as far as getting a proverbial fire ring, a ramp, and a motorcycle to be seen, we collected those experiences as part of our tally. What we added up then became our definition of how worth it we are.

For some of us, if we collected too many of those experiences where we felt unheard, unseen, we stopped asking to be seen. We stopped wanting to be heard. We dropped out a little. Or, a lot. It wasn’t worth it, we decided. We aren’t worth it; our world told us. If our world said it, and we told it back to ourselves, it must be true.

For others, most of us (I think), we may not have gone as far as trying on the Evel Knievel regalia to be recognized (we’re all just trying to be known), and most of us don’t drop out, but we did stop listening to others. That’s our fire ring. That’s our win: I won’t listen to you so I can be the bigger one in this room.

This happens to us unconsciously, but there is a reason, well, many reasons, why we are closing our eyes and our ears to others, to what they have to say about themselves and to what they have to say about us. By not listening we are subconsciously attacking the other person and protecting our self. That doesn’t make sense? Doesn’t it? The brain (the ego), the part of us that tallied things up, is unconsciously saying: Humph! See? I win. I don’t have to listen. I don’t have to take it in. I won’t break the chain of hurt, I will perpetuate it.

Again, I believe this is a subconscious thing and I believe we don’t mean to do this, to actively not listen. But we do it. We do it too much. All of us. We’ve all seen someone do it to us.

This subconscious excursion: I am not going to listen to you because I need to be listened to, it’s loaded. We’re telling others: You may not have been the one who didn’t listen to me before, but you’re here now, and I need someone to see me now, and I can’t ask for that (because that’s scary, and I’m already carrying too much pain. Plus, I don’t want you to see the other side of my skin) so it’s easier for me to just talk over you, to talk faster than you, to talk louder than you, to talk more…to just TALK. Yes, yes, yes…I know. You want to do some of the talking, but too bad. I’m in more pain. Remember? I feel crappy inside, so I need to do what I can to feel un-crappy. Please, just LISTEN to me.

True, there are many of us who are not talkers. For those of us, we don’t always use talking as the weapon not to listen. Sometimes we use passive-aggressive hearing. We pretend to listen. We remain silent and have the appearance of being attentive, but we no more want to give up being the biggest one in the room than the talker is. We’re just fighting back in the way we can. Why wouldn’t non-talkers have their tally, too, and to that end have their defense? Saying too little, or nothing at all, can hurt someone just as much as saying too much and doing all the talking.

Talker or non-listener, one way or another we’ll find our control, dang it. We’ll get seen. We will! It’ll be about us if we need it to be badly enough.

Does this need, to be the one who the topic is on, to be the one doing the loudest talking or to be the best non-listener make us egotistical, narcissistic, mean? On the contrary. It makes us human, flawed, needing…normal.

On the opposite side, for those who can and do listen, in my experience I've found that the best listeners are also the best conversationalists. When someone really listens, when they hear and see who is speaking to them and they take in what that person is talking about, that good listener’s response is usually a response that will add value to the person being listened to and to their own self.

Unfortunately, that isn't what happens a lot of the time, not until we stop needing as much, so much. Many of us don’t get to that place. I know I try to get there everyday, to get to where I need less, to where I am grateful more. But, it’s not the easiest place to stay even when you do get there. It takes practice even getting there at all, being grateful more than being needing.

But, practice was never meant to make us perfect. Practice is what we do when the thing we’re practicing at takes constant practice. (And if you think I used the word “practice” too much, that’s the point. Everything worth it takes practice and practicing at whatever it is never, ever stops. That’s why it is called practice.)

Anyway, that’s how we end up where most of us mean to be there for others most of the time. We really want to be the part of each other’s lives that builds on instead of takes apart. It’s just that with so many of us walking around in need, and with so many of us not practicing what we need to get through a little better, we fall short for ourselves and for others. Plus, that need to be seen, and to be loved for what others see in us, runs so deep, the lengths we will go to in order to be seen can hurt someone else.

I know this because recently I very much needed to talk about something to a friend that that was turning over some pain inside of me, and in my effort to be listened to by this friend, every time the friend asked me how I was doing in regards to this situation, the friend didn’t let me answer. The question was only asked so that the friend could start a conversation that would lead to them talking about themselves.

That’s what hurt, to be asked a question by a friend who never really wanted the answer. The friend wanted to say, needed to say, what they had on their mind. Sadly, most of what was on the friend’s mind wasn’t life shattering. It was just chatter. It was: I need to be seen more than you so I’ll do the talking now.

I understood that. I’ve always understood that about this friend. Even if my life were crumbling around me this particular friend wouldn’t be able to be there for me, not really. This friend has so much pain inside that they’d rather talk about their ripe tomatoes or their dog’s pink collar just so they can be bigger in the room, to be the one more seen.

To that end, I honored this person's need which, again, given their constant state, is almost always greater than mine. However, that doesn’t change the fact that my feelings were hurt. I’m not a saint. I still needed to be heard and didn’t get that opportunity. I’m just not going to compete. It’s not worth it to try harder to share what ails ya when someone is talking over you.

However, this example makes the point that rarely, if ever, is it our intention to hurt someone else with our needs that keep us from listening. Down deep, when we are our true selves, independent of the ego’s needs, nothing we do to help ourselves is ever meant to hurt another person. But it happens. We could say, when it comes to the ego that it’s so personal that nothing’s personal. In fact the friend, who I just used as an example, would never want to hurt me. In fact, this friend has so much love for me that my tears are not something this friend can even handle witnessing. (This says a lot about the degree of this person’s pain, that they cannot even be in the presence of another’s pain.)

Regardless, and what sux, is that whatever we’ve done, whatever has been done to us, we’re still going to take it all personally. After all, we’re all vying for the same attention: each other’s.

That's why sometimes we can't even listen to what might be good for us. Ever found it curious, those times you’ve been completely impervious to some advice being given to you? No matter how seemingly attractive that bit of advice may be, no matter how tasty that food for thought is, you shoot it down. That’s not something you’ll be swallowing, thanks. It could never work because you needed to be seen, not fixed, not advised. (BTW, one of the things that had made me fall in love with Mr. Gold Standard, years ago, was because he never offered any food for thought before he fully listened first. Rare quality.)

The kicker, when we’re talking over someone, or offering advise, since we preach and teach what we ourselves need to learn, the person doing the talking might benefit to do just as much of the listening, at least to what they’re saying since it’s usually what they themselves are trying to learn.

What’s also interesting, that many of us don’t understand about our nature, is that when aren’t listening, when we interrupt each other, or when we just nod and wait for our turn to speak, whether we’re trying to get the subject back to us, or whether we’re delicately opposing the advise being offered (laying out how it could never work) we’re essentially admitting that we need to be heard more than we are capable of hearing. We’re rolling back the side of our skin we never wanted someone to see in the first place.

That’s why it might be useful to us for us to start watching the times we aren’t listening, acknowledging when we do interrupt, and take that opportunity to ask ourselves what our need is.

But sometimes two people gotta be able to just talk and have it not be about need and all this interrupting crap, right? Of course. There are many times it is like that, with close relationships, with lovers, mates, partners, good friends, with anyone we’ve felt seen by.

It works out like that, almost like poetry, for both parties, and works best when two people, who have consigned themselves to listening to life, just as much as they have learned to listen to others, have a conversation. It should be noted that learning to listen to others and to life is something that needs to be practiced EVERY day. But when two people can really listen to each other, man, now that’s something to experience.

I had that experience the other day, with a friend, Sparrow. She and I are in a similar place in life where we are talking, saying out loud and affirming the lessons we’re trying to securely fasten to our forward path, yes, but we’re also listening to anything that will get us moving in the right direction a little faster, a little more enlightened, and with a little more grace.

During our conversation neither of us was trying to protect themselves from any of the advice we’d offered each other. Our armor was to the side. In this conversation there wasn’t any: You can’t tell me anything I don’t already know going on. We weren’t puffing up or keeping the other from really seeing or being seen. In other words, our hearts were in the room, not our egos. This made it possible for us to talk with each other rather than talk to or at the other.

It was our conversation that not only inspired this post, but reminded me of why I had made a pact with myself, long ago, to in fact try every day to listen more. I wanted to become as good of a listener as I could and to let the person who needs to be listened to more do most of the talking (even if that’s me). Making that agreement with myself, that I’d learn, as best as I could, to listen to myself, to others, and to life with vulnerability, and I’d learn to allow myself to see that we all need the words coming our way, has made an amazing difference in my life.

If we don’t listen, what we need doesn’t get ever in. If we don’t listen, we’re only processing in one direction. We’re just letting things out. That’s how a person ends up empty. That’s how a person blocks the things that will actually fix the pain, the need.

BTW, letting the words in doesn’t mean we’ll always agree with what’s said, or that someone is always going to be able to see us how we need to be seen, but if the intention is good, someone else’s or ours, the words we disagree with can help us just as much as the ones we find agreeable. Words that are hard to swallow can also tell us where we’re going.

Slightly dramatic pause, here…

I feel the need throw something out:
Remember, I am not a psychologist, just a student of life. What I say may not be the truth, or it might be. Either way, I'm just here, on this blog, to share the experiences that being a student of life have given me. And, in my experience, I'd much rather talk with someone than to them. I’d much rather listen and learn than always need and exert.

Anyway, it was a great conversation with Sparrow and it reaffirmed the Power of Listening, the power of what can get in…

People have the opportunity to say the darndest things when someone else’s mouth is closed. There’s a lot of power in letting someone else do the needing, the exerting, the protecting, or the proving (proving to be right, to be louder, or to be bigger). Once you stop needing to exert yourself and your ache, even when if it’s a quiet ache, still, quieting it down a bit can be a good thing. That’s when the coolest things come your way. Information you already knew gets recycled in a way you are Now ready to hear.

There is just as much, if not more power, in what comes when it doesn’t come from a place of need. Light is shining throughout our worlds, our lives, even when words aren’t being used. We just have to listen and take the light in.

After all, they say that everything we need to learn will keep repeating itself until we get that lesson. What if we listen more? Maybe we’ll get to repeat less? Just a thought.

Keep being fabulous! Keep listening.

Whine, Whine, Wine!

What's that sound? The one where kids breathe in at the back of their throat and then they swallow air and make a rounded, muffled clicking, like imitating a bull frog, and then they do it again and again, like a record is skipping in their throat? Um…yeah. Noisy-throat-guy made that sound for an hour straight today. We're not friends anymore, him and me. I can’t listen to a bullfrog all day.

I don't care how interesting he is and how much he sweet talks his girl/maybe-its-a-guy baby. He's like a dripping faucet when you are trying to sleep. No, he’s worse. He makes me want to jump through that damn office window that is not mine, for real, even if it is on the first floor.

Plus, I am starting to hate the word "throat" because of writing about him and his throat sounds. That’s probably my fault, for not knowing another word for throat and being too lazy to be creative about describing his throat sounds, but I am going to blame hating the word on him anyway.

Oh, and that thing, that more than 50% of the people in this new office building do, where, rather than carrying on with their business and walking on to wherever they are headed to next in their office duties, they stand there and wait to see who is about to come in through the office door (you can hear on the inside of the office when the code for the security office door is being punched from the outside), and then, and only then (after they've waited, stared, saw who it was) do they proceed forth, yeah, it's getting old.

Do I want people to know every time I have come back from going pee, or from somewhere else? No. Do they need to stand there, gawk, just to see who is coming in? No, again. Bored, lame, nosy people. Get on with your lives.

Working in an office...still not for me. (I’m breathing through my nose now with my lips pursed realizing I need to realign my energy and get back to the acceptance that I need to work to support my life. But, there is still Mexico.) But here I am. My back still hurts, my office chair still sucks, and while I still don’t want to show up anywhere where I have to wear a bra every day, I’m also still too chicken shit to move to Mexico.

Am I whining? Should I just be grateful that I have a job in these hard economical times? Yes and yes. Do I need more wine? Hell YES!

I think I am going to go become an alcoholic now. It's the most inevitable conclusion to how I am feeling in this moment.

But, am I done with my whine? Let’s insert “no” here, too.

First whine: I've decided, and I think I am about 70% on this, that I am going to end things with Watt. I've got the conversation I am going to have with him all worked out. For strategic I-don’t-want-to-get-all-jacked-up-before-a-meeting-w/-the-big-boss tomorrow morning reasons, I am going to avoid his call tonight, then avoid his call tomorrow night (for just-screw-you,-my-feelings-are-hurt-when-I-don’t-hear-from-you-for-days reasons), and I am going to avoid any of his subsequent texts, that is if he even calls or texts.

The problem? The F'er didn't even bother to call or text me that he was home from his camping trip. Technically the last time he contacted me was, to date, one day short of a week ago. It was a text letting me know what a wonderful time he had with me the night before. Then, a day later, I texted him something to the effect of: Not sure when you are going on your camping trip, but have fun… (Blah, blah, blah). He texted back. He was sick. Sick as death, he said. I gave him the standard sleep eat lots of garlic advice I give everyone. End of texts that night.

A day or two later, well, a me-buzzed-night or so later, I texted: How are you? Feeling better?

How was he? He was fine. He was on his camping trip looking at the stars, as he said. I texted back, enjoy them starts… (Blah, blah, blah).

Has he texted/called me since? No. We covered that. So, when we do talk, it’s going to go down something like this:

First, I will apologize to him. I will say:

Sorry I didn't call you back, or text you back. It's just that I've got too much riding on my job, and I couldn't have this conversation mid-work week… (Blah, blah, blah. Who cares?)

Then, I am going to lay it out (with some shorter version of the following points):

I've come to realize that a person can figure out what their lessons in life are with or without a person in their life. That said, to me it feels like whatever you are trying to figure out doesn't involve me. It feels like you don't want it to involve me. I feel like more of a distraction than part of your process.

Independent of you, of us, I need to know that the person I am spending time with wants to spend time with me. I want someone in my life that wants me in their life and shows me that. I want a friend and a lover…and more. (Dare I say “boyfriend” to him?). Every week when you wait that extra day or three to contact me, to text me, or to show me that you are thinking about me and want to see me, my feelings are hurt. I realize all we’re doing is dating and I’m not a dater.

So whatever it is that you need in your life, however it is that you are re-defining yourself, based on your actions I don't feel like I am part of that re-definition. That's why I cannot do this anymore.

I don't feel like I get to be the girl w/ you anymore. I feel like a girl who keeps getting her feelings hurt because she’s nagging the guy she is with to give her what she deserves, and he doesn't seem to really want her in his life.

Bottom line: I want to fall. I want a future. That’s what I want in my life. Yet, I have no place to fall with you.


Of course, after he does call tonight, then again tomorrow, and after I finally talk to him and he offers to fix something for me, or brings me more A. Watt CDs (his proverbial flowers for crapping in my lap and flying so loose with contact), because that’s been his pattern so far, then I'll remember how good the sex is, how beautiful he really is (even if he is confused and young) and I won’t want to give that up.

I'll hear his voice and my ache will wash away. I’ll keep feeling how beautiful his insides are but how 26 his life is. I'll wish that what we have is different, could be different than how it felt from the beginning, temporary. Then, it won’t be.

Which brings us to next week, or the week after, which will be just like every other week, where he'll wait too long to call again, and my ego, my feelings, my girl heart, my I-can't-do-this-half-way-shit any more, and my I WANT MORE will get another dent and I'll not be able to do this anymore. I'll really, really follow my own advice and give up the guy hurting my feelings (even if he doesn’t mean to). Then that will be that.

Or, he'll get it together. He’ll suddenly start stepping up. Do I believe that? What do you think?

Even if I still haven’t totally figured out if he’s really the one hurting my feelings or if I am hurting my own feelings with the things I want from a man, with the comparisons I am making with the way my relationship with Watt is playing out (slow as molasses) versus how things have progressed with other men, I am not stupid. Jen’s dad’s words are forever in my head… If you want to know how a man feels about you, look at what he’s doing.

That could be another excuse, too, that I am hurting my own feelings. (Silly girl.) I could also be waiting one more week or so until Watt fixes the problem with my i Tunes. Selfish? Nah. He’s the 26 year old man who is getting laid by an experienced, open-minded 40 year old woman who has let him get away with barely calling and just seeing me once a week for weeks, when, at this stage, I should be getting 2-3 calls a week, at least.

The way the guy at Lowes put it today, Watt should be calling me at least once a day by now, to see how I am, and should be wanting to see me at least 2-3 times a week. This guy at Lowes, he told me this after I admitted to him that I wasn’t really pissed off about trying to find a solution for re-hanging a stupid shelf back onto a wall, it was something else. He prodded, so, fine, I told him it was a boy.

Then, he gave me advice. He reminded me that I deserved what I wanted and that a man who wanted me would give me that and more. He wasn’t as succinct, but he got his point across and was pretty adamant about it not being good, the lack of calls. And, while he was almost as cute (but as young as Watt) he wasn’t even flirting. He was just a nice guy who thought I wasn’t getting enough of what I deserved. (Okay, I inferred that, too, about him thinking I deserved a lot—that’s all me—but I gotta tell ya, this guy really wanted to make sure I was set straight and knew I should be getting more calls.

Calls enough, shmuff! Watt is a good guy. I get that Watt is just trying to figure his shit out and I think he thinks, like all men do (if a girl lets them go on thinking it), that he can have it his way. He thinks that this whole blaze approach works. He gets his cake, his sex, his time, his space, his… (I am so onto Blah, blah, blah right now.)

Dramatic pause… And what have I done not to support that way of thinking?

It’s happening, isn’t it? I am doing what I said I’d never do again (since I was 26). I am letting a guy make a nag out of me. A girl should never have to nag a guy for what she needs or deserves.

Besides, between you and me, it's just going to get pathetic if I become a broken record in my own blog: I adore him. He's beautiful. He's annoying. He's hurting my feelings.

Ah, well, I guess that's how blog works. The truth doesn't get put on hold because I want to sound less like a real girl and more like an evolved being. At least I know coming to this decision to quit this is only going to take me weeks, if things don't change, rather than months or years. I DO have that going for me!


Second whine: I still have that drowning feeling in my new job, where I can feel them wanting 1000 things from me, yet, I can't get over the learning curve quick enough to even give them even 20 things. This is, of course, 55% self-imposed stress/45% reality.

The powers that be want so much from me, they want me to train so many of their processes, but I have to learn these process first and since I am not being trained pound for pound (this goes this way, now tell someone else how it goes), but rather information is being thrown at me like 52 card pick up, I can't quite get my bearings and figure out how to stack the deck. I keep picking up a card, a process, thinking this goes here, this comes next, then something else, some more info, another need, comes flying at me from another direction, and I am like, Dang it, did that go that way? What's this person saying to me now? What was I doing? Did I ever have a brain?

I know I’ll get it, but I need to get it all sooner than later. I’m too tired for a new job right now and for yet another broken record blog complaint.

Third whine: I did just start my period the other day. So, this might all be hormones, the annoyance with working for a living, again, all day, EVERY DAY, and this heart ache over Watt, my little black dress guy who won't seem to treat me like a white-dress girl. (Suddenly I want to be Ava, where the man in my life wants, wants, WANTS me.)

Either way, if this is hormones, apparently this means I am only a rational/evolved human being 20-24 days out of the month, if I am lucky. And, when my heart hurts, and when my brain is overloaded, I also seem to be incapable of saying one single thing that resembles something other than a rant or a complaint.

Fourth whine: I actually yelled at the wall last night. Not loud enough for the crappy neighbors to hear me, but just loud enough to release the anger from the frustration and stress that keeps building from the constant noise.

I yelled to the wall, to them: Really? You assholes! Do you know how much I cannot stand your inconsideration, your noise?!!! GAWD, can't you just please, friggen PLEASE, for one single moment give me a moment's rest?!!!"

Then I cried a little, because that's what a girl does when her home, which used to be a haven for 11.5 of the last 13 years, isn't a place of rest and relaxation anymore because butt-heads have destroyed it w/ their noise. (Broken record complaints suck!)

Now, after my whine, I think I need even more wine, please!

Shoot. Any one got the number for AA? No. Don’t give it to me. Just get me some more wine from Trader Joes, please. I can’t drive anywhere. I’ve been drinking.

Okay, now off to TV land, the place of where numb and don’t-want-to-think-about-that-or-that is celebrated!

Keep being fabulous. (Do it for both of us. I feel more drab-ulous.)