Last week I had one of the most absurd moments of my dating life.
Yes, it beat out the time I dated a guy for 3 weeks because I didn’t know how to say no. Yes, it trumped the time a guy revealed, post-coitally, that he was a raging racist. It even topped the time I had to stop everything (in bed, naked) and hold a remedial workshop entitled “See, this is why no one calls you again, here’s what you need to do about it”
Here goes: It was Monday April 15th. Two bombs had gone off on Boylston street in Boston. It was within 2 blocks of my former workplace and, due to the nature of Marathon Monday, a place anyone I knew could have been standing. I was 3,000 miles away helplessly watching a place that was so familiar to me engulfed in horror. I checked in with folks and watched Facebook, closely exhaling a little more and clicking that little “like” thing (because facebook) every time someone posted that they were safe.
Then I saw it. Two words from someone who I had forgotten also works within blocks of the finish line.
“I’m ok”
I saw this. I was happy. I went to click the little “like” thing (because facebook) and I paused.
To review: A horrific tragedy had just occurred, people were dead, people were maimed. Someone I care about was safe and I stopped to wonder whether it was okay for me to let them know that the news that they had not blown up made me happy.
I should probably give you a little background here: Since I re-entered the dating world I have clung tightly to a policy of “no feelings“* At first this was extremely necessary for survival (If you’re new here, there was a whole simultaneous divorce/death of my dad thing) and as I’ve gone on it’s just been convenient to keep things that way. It’s been great, actually. I casually see people, have fun and if folks go away it’s no bother to me. Then something weird happened.
I didn’t see it coming at all. I was getting ready to move across the country, my mind was definitely not on anything in Boston but suddenly I found myself wanting to be around someone in particular- this was unprecedented. This wasn’t someone I knew terribly well but something was grabbing me and I couldn’t figure out what why. Being a huge over-thinking dork I took a couple of days to examine what might have been happening and I arrived at the conclusion that, illogical though it may be, I was feeling feelings.
Before I could do anything with this conclusion I realized that the gentleman had disappeared. Not from the world or anything, I still saw him on Facebook (see, that’s how you know I really dug him- I never take friend requests from guys I go out with) He just stopped answering me.
That’s when I remembered that feelings kind of suck.
They come along at inconvenient times and are more intense than appropriate. They make you see things that maybe aren’t there and then you start to think maybe you just imagined a whole bunch of shit. Feelings make you feel like you are insane. As I said to someone just the other day, “feelings can be jerks”
So, I felt things. It sucked. I hated it and decided not to do it again anytime soon. Sidebar: this all happened at the end of January/beginning of February so I think of it as my own personal Groundhog Day- I stuck my head out of the “no feelings” hole, saw the hell out of my shadow and went right back in.
Then the bombs went off and he was alive and I actually wrestled with whether someone’s disinterest in dating me precluded me from expressing joy at the prospect of them not being the victim of a terrorist attack.
What the hell is wrong with me?
I think it’s this:
My biggest fear/thing I’m most certain of in any relationship (friendship, job, lover, whatever) is that folks will leave and that it will be my fault (please know that I recognize this line of thought is irrational) by turning off the feelings I have created a world where, when they go, it doesn’t change much. By being clear about the “no feelings” I don’t have to hurt when they don’t have feelings. By placing an embargo on feelings I’ve created a world of relationships with no sharp edges, no steep cliffs. A world that can’t hurt me.
That world is a bitch to maintain. It requires me to have no needs (I find FWBs who are actually friends are great for assuaging loneliness and stuff). It requires me to not ask for anything ever (I found that my shrink ends up saying “But don’t you deserve _______?” While I say stuff like “Whatever, I’m not chasing some dude”) It requires me to never show too much (once, during a really stressful period, an intense orgasm with someone I’d been seeing regularly triggered tears. Never saw him again. Coincidence?) It requires me to play everything so cool that no one ever knows how I feel about them because, well, then they’d know I experienced feelings. It requires me to hide everything.
It’s hard. It’s cold. It’s lonely.
Also, It’s pathetic.
Never was that clearer to me than last Monday when I sat helplessly at my computer watching my former home in disarray and wondering if it was okay to (just barely) let someone know that I think the world is better for still having them in it. Seeing that I had insulated myself to the point where I was afraid to share even that much shook me up. I don’t know that I’m ready to leave my “no feelings” bunker but I do know that what I saw last week wasn’t good. Okay, deep breath…
I’m the Redhead Bedhead and I may care about you and be really happy when you don’t die.
Baby steps, people.
*Really, “no feelings” is a little more dramatic than what it turned out to be- Yes, I have had several connections with folks whom I really felt nothing about and whose names I struggle to remember but I’ve also ended up meeting several men whose company I enjoy, who I have genuine affection for and who I care about as people but I don’t go any farther than that, none of this heart nonsense. I like friends who I can fuck. I like people with whom I know where I stand.
