How can it be?

How can someone – after being in a long-term relationship, be able to fall so quickly again?

I guess I’m speaking for both myself and my ex, as I think he’s involved with someone now. Actually, I’m pretty sure he is. Don’t get me wrong, I hope it’s a happy thing for him. I want him to be happy, I want him to find someone who could do for him what I could not. I’m actually kind of excited for him to be venturing out. Although it is just interesting to me that he is doing so now.

It’s been nine months. Almost to the day. And he’s in a relationship. And I’m still trying to figure out where I stand with YOUR NAME HERE. It’s just fascinating to me tonight for some reason. It may be that it’s 3:35 AM and Monica and I had a fabulous and fattening dinner at Fatburger (no-calorie Thursday) and discussed our obsessions with our own male objects of affection ad naseum. What are they thinking, why don’t they say what they’re thinking, what are we going to do with them, how do we deal with them.

Okay, this is gonna be one of those tangent-filled blogs so bear with me.

I was actually feeling a little guilty about being drawn to someone so soon because I’ve been drawn to YOUR NAME HERE for some time now. I always found it interesting and strange that I could be drawn to someone so soon but then I realized how long I had been feeling unloved and unappreciated and un-everything. So it made sense that I could find myself feeling this way about someone so quickly.

I don’t know why I felt guilty. After all, it’s not like I left him for someone. But I think if we had gone on, I might have been tempted. I was not getting the emotional care that I needed and found myself seeking out those who could provide that emotional care. Luckily, most of them were really good friends – mostly male, as I am prone that way- and even the one or so that I was attracted to, I knew nothing would happen because I couldn’t do that to my ex. But I understood how some people give in. When you’re that lonely, that deprived, that empty in a relationship, it could be very easy to just slip over the edge into something else without much thought.

In a weird way, realizing that he has someone else in his life makes me feel like the final piece of my freedom has fallen into place. Not that I felt responsible for him but I wasn’t sure how he would feel about my getting involved with someone else. Again, not really my problem but I have hurt him enough, I didn’t want to add more to that.

It also makes me feel… I don’t know. Odd. He’s found someone, which doesn’t seem like it was too hard for him. There’s someone I desire but yet, I’m not sure how to proceed and what I want out of it. I find myself being so cautious and guarded about my heart because I don’t want to be hurt so badly ever again. But as Monica was saying today and in her recent blog, you have to accept that the pain is going to be there or you can’t experience the joy.

As I’ve said before, the human heart is an amazing muscle. It can be bent, stretched, mangled, broken, shattered, stomped on, and basically ripped from your chest and pounded into the ground and, yet, it seeks to be put through all of that again just so that it can love. Resilient doesn’t do it justice. Elastic? Restorative? I’m not sure there is an adjective that can really describe it.

I do know that I have been finding myself ready to begin something with YOUR NAME HERE, if he’s really, truly interested. I don’t know if he’s been gentlemanly by keeping distance while I struggle through this journey on my way to somewhere. I don’t know if he’s been waiting for me to do something first, giving me time to figure out if that’s the step I want to take. I don’t know if he’s even really interested in being involved. I know I come with a cart or two of luggage and it’s not all matching and some of it will probably arrive by delivery somewhere along the line as I’ve lost it and forgotten about it.

I’m not sure what shape I would want this to be, this tentative relationship. I know I’m not ready to be joined-at-the-hip involved, where it’s that you have to see each other every single day or you’ll die. I think I’m too old for that. I don’t want it to be so casual that I don’t know when or if we’ll get together at any time. I think there’s a happy middle ground where it’s seriously casual? See each other as often as we both are comfortable with, whether it’s dinner or a movie or just hanging out on the couch, catching up on TV. Not being wounded that I don’t see him every day because, really, we’re both busy people. A pragmatic kind of thing?

Monica and I discussed tonight about how we can never seem to say what we need to say to the person we need to say it to when the opportunity is there. It’s too hard, it’s too vulnerable, it’s too… so many things. Back to arm-punching. Or maybe blogs are the new way of passing a note in class. “Do you love me, do you want to be my friend, check yes or no.” Hey, YOUR NAME IS HERE, if you recognize yourself here… check yes or no.

If only it were that simple.