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.)