On Dating : Not The Best Parts of Me

Somewhere in January, 2020

Every morning I wake up a different person. I never know who will be there when my eyes open.

–

I laid in bed this morning for forty-five minutes. I slept well. I’ve been sleeping great. One of the benefits of the time change being back on the West Coast.  

Monday was a day of texts back and forth between Maddy and I. It started in the morning and went until goodnight. We covered a lot of topics and spoke about how we were trying to find the balance between feeling like we were complaining constantly while still being able to share the not great parts of our days. 

I think, like me, she tends to lean towards the negative. She has a knack for sending texts about people or things that are bathed in sarcasm or criticism. I felt at home here because, as Charlie would say, we are pulled together by our energetic signatures which we have little control over.

“I’ve always attracted women with a big past,” he told me in our last session. “Because I’ve had a big past.” 

The force that pulls people together can’t be reasoned with. What I want to know is if I can adjust my energetic signature to put me in the trajectory of a more productive and healthy pull towards someone else. Can I adjust my own level in order to participate in a higher field I haven’t yet had access to?

I re-downloaded Hinge this morning. The closeness to Maddy shut me down. It crawls under my skin until it wraps around my heart and makes me not human at all. 

Charlie would tell me that ‘it’ is ‘me’ and I’m choosing to feel this way. Mark might say it was the avoidant in me and that the real stuff happens on the other side of that wall. Both of them might be right and yet neither of them can remove the sheen the creeps into my psyche once the seriousness of a relationship hits me.

When I opened the app, I had a nice message from a witty and confident girl named Audrey so I wrote her back and now I am checking the app every thirty minutes for her response because I’m certain this is fate and we are going to be together.

It took me three months to realize I felt something after ending it with Alexis. There was so much freedom and range to move right after. I was high. Enjoyable to be around. Even pleasant at work. All these things that often happen in the beginning of a relationship – the best of me – were happening with greater potency after the breakup. I thrive in these moments. And everything between – I believe what they call the actual relationship – is a type of torture I have little appetite for. 

Then it finally hit me. She was a solid partner. She cared about me. Gave me space for all my mental “things”. And I just couldn’t step outside myself in the moment to realize how good I had it. Or worse, I could see it. And it still wasn’t enough. It hit me three months after the breakup that there might be something seriously wrong with me.

It seems I have been stuck in a long thought that goes something like this:

I want you to love me. Until you do and then I don’t know why you ever let yourself and now I have to deal with your emotions and it’s a lot of you to ask of me and I’d rather we just slowed things down to something more manageable and distant. But if you slip away then I will need you to come back and be with me again. If you are okay with repeating this cycle forever and constantly showing up with a fresh face that adores me and somehow finds what I am doing for us a noble and meaningful learning experience then we might be okay. That is, unless someone walks into my life that might do a better job at all these things. Then I can’t be sure to still recognize you because I’d rather be with someone who is actually gifted and skilled in all these areas I was hoping you’d understand. But this new person might suddenly have a laugh that is too loud or disappear when drunk and it might start to make sense at that point that you were very skillful but quiet about it and I might find that I need you in my life again for that steadiness you were able to bring. 

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