Incidentally, it’s two AM.
And I’m feeling this strange feeling that I’m watching
something minute and complicated implode.
Like the tiniest details in my life are spiraling wildly, chaotically, boringly
into dense nothing, and suddenly, I’m feeling like I shouldn’t qualify as an
adult anymore.
Maybe I don’t. Somehow, a fight with my mother, a friend
withholding information, and some pounds gained are making me question my
innate identity and worth. That’s
it. I’m doubting, doubting BIG, and
those items – those tiny, infinitesimal things! - are pretty significant
frontmen on the battlefield of dizzy confusion in my head.
The good news, though?
This melee may have prompted some sort of emotionally exhausted breakthrough. Like hope emerging from
the recesses of Pandora’s box, I may have hit upon the crux of a really significant
issue in the midst of the general madness escaping my subconscious.
You know, I’m fairly certain that my relationship evaluations
have never really been about my actions, my thoughts, my words. “Boys
don’t want me,” I’ve long written on my personal assessment sheet. “Boys
aren’t interested in dating me long-term. Boys I want don’t want me back.”
In the midst of my current, minute crisis, however, I started asking
myself how much I actually cared
about these guys. How I felt about these guys. The things I thought of them. And some
simultaneously fascinating and disconcerting patterns began to emerge.
I disdain men, to a certain extent. Not all of them. A fair percentage of single men, to be more accurate. The married ones are permitted, in my head,
to exist as fully fleshed-out human beings, completely capable of caring on a
deeper level, of seeing me, in turn, as a dynamic, three-dimensional
person. Single men, however, with rare
exceptions, present this bizarre, many-headed opponent, possibly entirely
fabricated in my own delightful brain.
“Don’t mess with me.” I demand of them as a whole. “Don’t assume you’re above me. Don’t think
I’m not powerful, intelligent, tough, or whatever because I’m possessed of
ovaries. And if you do, be prepared to be sliced to ribbons with words.”
There’s this sickly intoxicating thrill in knowing that even
if I’m putting a guy off me – making him believe that he might choose goats
first if we were the last two humans left on the planet – that he’s still
coming away with the understanding that
I’m an equal. A spitfire. A
pistol. Even a deeply unpleasant harpy. Anyone but a person to be trifled
with.
I cringe over how rare it is for guys in a position to date
me to truly care about me as a person, but considerably more damning is a
question fully within my power to influence: how often have I truly cared about
a guy I was in a position to date?
And there it is. A
question that strips my problems to terrifying nakedness.
Let’s see... Randy? Chris? Grant? Stephen? Christian? All
come with significant caveats.
Randy was marvelous and awesome to me in record time. As in ‘roids and blood transfusions kind of
record time.
It took me a good six
months before I stopped calling Chris “ginger” 75% of the time I spoke to
him.
Grant was fascinating, and not just because he somehow
voodooed me into an about-face from vaguely irritated disinterest to absolute
captivation in a single. month’s. time. All
while maintaining his own vague disinterest.
Stephen…well, Stephen has a boyfriend now, but also was a
great human who was unknown amounts greater due to his hot guitar-playing,
stupidly sexy singing, deeply irritating love of reading, and truly
aggravatingly attractive face.
Christian’s welfare always mattered to me like that of a
brother; his sexual attractiveness spun gleefully from desk lamp to cute boy in
sophomore English and back again, pulling me along in its inebriated wake; and
his personal qualifications as a long-term interest presented a considerably
more difficult word problem than any given in any calculus course I’ve ever
taken.
The real fact of it is, in harshest terms, it’s fairly
possible that the only guy I’ve REALLY cared about, in a call-me-when-you-need-me, foolishly,
soul-baringly familial, flawed-human (based on well-documented
experience)-with-divine-potential(also based on well-documented experience)
sort of way is Christian.
Why so rare?
Well, frankly, it’s because I’m still twelve years old. It’s because every unattached guy I meet
remains just a tiny bit the older brother who found me loud, angry, and
repulsive, just the barest hint the boys who always teased and teased rough in elementary school, and ever the
slightest whiff of the guys who forgot my existence in a school where our grade
literally consisted of thirty people. The
guys I meet on a daily basis have absolutely no idea that through my eyes, they
may well be guys who underestimate me, guys who think they’re better than me,
and guys who prefer girls who are every kind of more than me. However, what isn’t always crippled in my
sense of reality is that among these are guys who are occasionally actually
attracted to me.
And that’s when I get dangerous.
The unfortunately interested male before me has no idea that
he’s presented me with a sudden ability to set right injustices the existence
of which he has never even considered, much less held responsibility for.
Having him want me when I find him attractive is pure adrenaline, and watching
him squirm when I come down hard on him a sweet vindication. Knowing that I can make out with him and feel
the exact level of empty hormones for him that he feels for me is a heady shot
of potency.
I can get drunk on the absinthe of unresolved and blithely
ignored bitterness, and the intoxication almost
lets me overlook the overpowering damage I do with every successive binge. Meanwhile, the rising tide of the resulting
hangover which seems only to build on itself threatens to swamp me the longer
it goes unchecked.
Unpack your emotions, I always say. Are you feeling angry? Mean? Unforgiving?
Resentful? Ask yourself why. The crazy
miracle of life is that when you really understand those dully familiar demons,
you understand that YOU are the person feeding every one of them, and most
beautifully of all, you therefore can release yourself from every one of
them.
Granted, I can’t test this for every person in every life,
but in my own, it’s applicable on what I would consider a statistically
significant level. That would be my own
brand of statistical significance, which exists with absolutely no scientific
basis. The fact is that so much of our own bad behavior comes back to inattention
to our understanding of the situation.
MOST ESPECIALLY, our own smallness, cruelty, and negativity can almost
always be traced to a reptilian response to perceived threats to our
self-worth.
And really, this – the same devil that I’ve fought twelve
ways to Sunday - is here again. I am
kind, I am smart, I am loving, I am funny, I am loveable, but most unshakably
of all: I am a child of God. In dating,
as everywhere else, the smallest things can make me forget the crucial
importance of my own worth, and when I do, I stop acting in accordance with
that worth.
If someone doesn’t respect me, my value doesn’t
diminish. If someone doesn’t think I’m
smart, I don’t lose IQ points. If
someone doesn’t think I’m pretty, I can and will still be beautiful to someone
else. I’m enough. I don’t need to demand that boys see that or
else run home with figurative tails clamped securely between taut and terrified
hamstrings. I understand confidence as
the ability to be brave enough to love myself. There’s a higher plane of
confidence. That plane is peace – not spite, not sarcasm, and certainly not
sass – in the face of those who don’t.
