Going Postal

In the middle of my shit storm, I may have met someone, "may" being the operative word. No, it's not Rick, the smart, physicist guy from a week-ish ago. I never heard from that schmuck and, probably, honestly didn't want to. He was cute, smart as hell, older, put together, mostly, and I was intrigued. But, handsome and sail-boat owning as he was, he had thin lips I didn’t imagine kissing, and, then was that curly 1980s type mullet of his. 'Nuf said.

So now, despite my better judgment, in sharing something before there is anything to share, as I only met this fellow yesterday, since I've been out on a limb these days, what do I care? I'm so over my ego. If nothing comes of it, then that. Nothing comes of it. Next.

If something does, here's the meet cute moment, how it went down...

I walked into the post office to retrieve whatever mail I've ignored for the last two weeks, and just as I was about to turn the heavy, copper-ish PO-box key to see what my neglect has collected, I noticed this brown haired, medium built, nice looking fellow talking to the attendant who had helped me sign up for my PO box about 6 months ago.

This is the very same sweet faced, petite and thin, brunette clerk who found me in tears when I explained why I needed a PO box, why I was pissed I was essentially becoming homeless. I, of course, mean that I was losing, and have lost, a place where my heart had been at home, for a very long time, in exchange for a place that doesn't offer my heart a home or any comfort.

So if there are any homeless, non-apple eating chaps out there, who have internet access and are reading this post, and now want to kill me for calling myself homeless, I've got a Swiss army knife with my name engraved on the side you can borrow. Have at it. I’m getting life has pitched me a licking to learn from and even if I die, I've probably done enough learning in this life to come back as Oprah’s other best friend. Oprah will have me star in my own television series and I’ll have enough money to pay people to get my gas for me. (This life for all of us is payment enough.)

I can't recall if I ever mentioned that little mini meltdown at the post office those months ago, but, apparently, I was getting a jump start on what would be, and is now, my post traumatic stress disorder (from moving and changing jobs). There's nothing like consciously/unconsciously intuiting a future unraveling. I highly don't recommend it—even if, for me, I know what will come out on the other side will make me stronger than I’ve ever been.

Sick. That’s what I am. Sick or smart. I am rather glad this is all happening, my storm, SUCKS as it does. I’m getting something from it. Haven’t breezed it all up yet, or connected every dot blowing me in different directions, but the puzzle corners will glide together. (They always do.)

"You're not wearing your sunglasses like usual," I overhead him, the guy, say to her, the clerk.

He's right, I'd thought. She hasn't worn her sunglasses since that first month I'd gotten my PO box. I guess I wasn't the only one wondering what the deal was with this cool-cat chick. Medical eye condition? Laser surgery? Going incognito? Going postal like me—hiding out? What was with the sunglasses?

Then, I think I recognize this guy as the guy Cella and I had met months back, the night Cella had her a bit of fun. I am just about to bust him, and say something like, "Hey. What's your name, again? Didn't my friend and I meet you…?” and, “You never called my friend, you ass…” when I realize it's not him, the guy Cella and I met.

Yet, I'm staring at this guy still, a stranger, with an expression I know to be an I-recognize-you glare, mixed with a physical I’m-ready-for-a-mini-confrontation shoulder-puffing rumble. But what does he know?

He knows I am fixed on him, that’s what. Mid-gaze, amidst my mental reconciliation, of the actual reality of him being him, some stranger, vs. the assumption of him being someone else, we lock eyes. This snaps me to, so I disclose my confusion.

I say, "I'm sorry. I thought you were someone else."Then he says, "Damn. I thought I was about to get hit on."

Seeing how way more cute this guy is, and thinking I'm cool, even while my heart started beating so fast it was punching dents into my left breast trying to beat its way out, I say, "How do you know you’re not getting hit on?"

That's when the sunglasses clerk gets cooler than me and asks me, "What's your name?" Since I thought she somehow psychically knew I not only wanted to check my mail, but also wanted to re-pay my PO box rent for another 6 months, I give her my last name so she can start looking my shit up.

She's hip on me being a dip, though, but doesn't let on. She gracefully requests my name again, specifying that it was my first name she is after. I move closer to her and the stranger.

But I'm still none the wiser to where she is going with her inquiry, as I’m under the assumption she is now taking care of stranger guy and me at the same time and letting me bust ahead, take cuts, in front of the line starting to form. Feeling gently ordered to comply with the right answer, I say, "Oh? Levan. My name is Levan." She's a Federal postal worker, for heaven’s sake. I had to give the right information.

Then she looks at the stranger I mistook for someone else, who we are going to call Post, and says, "Levan, meet Post. Post, meet Levan." She, essentially, was the puppeteer managing our meet-cute moment and facilitated a shake of our hands. Contact.

Yes. I know the name Post is bland. But I’m not shooting for the stars at Love here. I’ve got no feeling one way or the other about this guy. No read. I’m so crazy lately I more feel no than yes on him, but I don't know if that's just because I don’t know my own up from my down right now.

There was something else there about it that was so much like what the psychic described as how I’d meet the One (standing in line, he'd say something funny, I'd laugh, etc.) I’ve dog eared the experience.

Plus, I met him in the Post Office. What can I say? If it goes, I might hate that I chose Post for his name. If it don’t go, it’s just a reference. Besides, whatever happens, a name is just a name. “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”

The other clerk, all smudgy and bland, in her: I can't even remember what she looked like way, who was just doing her job, and who wasn’t watching Post and I, like the line-O-plenty of Post-Office customer people collecting and on looking while we fumbled our way through a potentially cool-cat guided kismet exchange, broke the connection and called out, "NEXT!" in, what I’m going to remember as, falsely (for effect), a shrill voice.

"Uhm. Yeah. I wanted to pay for the next six months on my PO box," I drizzled out to the smudgy clerk.

As Smudgy checked the records, I readied one of my artist business cards to pass off to Post if I was done before him and had to be the one to do the pass off. Drats! It was.

Ready, set, GO! Act nonchalant in front of the other customers still watching the guy-meets-girl spectacle, which are now about 7-8 people who may as well each have had their own popcorn and an over-sized/over-priced soda pop in hand. Just hand him your card like a porn star who can have any man in the moment.

"The rest is up to you," I said, as I presented him my labeled over, wrong e-mail, artist (too cheap and too tired to buy new business cards) card. He had his card ready for me, too.

His card? Way more professional. And way more fun. He's a tax man, you see, yet something about his card made him look more like a member of The Monkeys, or a cover-band musician, than a bland accountant.

If I hear from him, I'll have to ask him: What's up with the card? I'm sure he's wondering the same from my card and asking: What’s up with the stick-em-on cell number label and the pen crossed-out and corrected e-mail? (Psycho, cheap bitch.) Honestly. Who spends the time putting cell number correction labels on business cards rather than just getting new cards? Sigh... me, the girl who doesn’t want to figure out how to re-format a graphic for printing and doesn't trust what her address will be next.

Now we know I really do love Mother Earth, or I really am OCD or crazy or lazy.

Will I be sad if I don't hear from Post? Probably. But only for a couple of days, which for me, these days, in love at least, is long enough to let go of the what if I used to hang on to for weeks or more. There was a time, with love, I'd cry over what was, and what is, and what hasn't become.

Now, I only cry, not because of love found or lost, but because I get edgy with all that I’ve learned, about everything else, but cannot always accept when it does come to what is, I don’t know how to completely surrender to the other parts of my life. I don’t know how to meditate my way out of stress when it comes to work and home. I can’t stop the inner turmoil from coming out on my body in the form of headaches or stress rashes.

But, and I might still be crazy, most of these tears I cry, while a bit knife turning, are mostly happy. Not ha, ha, ha…yippee my guts are on the carpet again happy. But, shit, I am making progress, and getting to know myself even more, happy.

Knowing how far I've come, not holding on to things and trying to cram them into a "meant to be" idea, but rather trying to un-cram the mental wedgies into acceptance, that’s enough to rejoice over for Now.

And, another reason I am posting about this guy, where nothing may come to fruition, is because it occurred to me that while I've come to accept that I may not meet the One I am supposed to be with any time soon, meeting my One Now would actually be the best time. Not because I am so exhausted I want him to take care of me (but it would be a break before I got tired of it and needed independence again), or because, naturally, the distraction would be nice, and I’d be getting laid again, but because I am so raw and so exposed from the changes in my life right Now that I wouldn't have any energy to put up any walls.

Right Now, I would not be capable of presenting any of the precursory and/or cautionary masks many of us put forth when we're in our best-foot-forward phase of a relationship (personal, professional, or spiritual).

I don't have any best foot left in me. I have no access to my usual, "I'm fine," and "I can take care of myself" shields.

It's just me right now, with all my beautiful flaws and all my messy perfection.

Take it or leave it.

Me? I’m going to take it. I’m going to learn from it. I’m going to do me some more crying. Probably some more resisting. Definitely some more misunderstanding before it all comes clear. But, I’ll take it.

It is what is. I’m going a little postal, but I’m getting, or at least looking for, the messages.