The other day I was talking to one of my New Haven friends about relationships. In the end, after talking about her uneventful adventures with the same guy with whom she had had this ambiguous and frustrating relationship, she said to me, well, I wish I could like someone new so easily. Yes, it seems a deceptive gift I have that I can fall for one girl after another when the previous didn't work out. But when every morning you wake up feeling the pain I feel, you realize that isn't a gift, but more like a liability. A liability on the heart. This morning I woke up with that same feeling, and then I started to think about returning to my apartment empty for the first time since last Saturday. Of course, I have come back to an empty apartment many nights during the week because this girl was always out taking classes, part of her goal of becoming a "world-class tango dancer/teacher in five years." But her stuff was always here. Yesterday evening, the evening after we had a short and tough talk about her lack of reciprocation of my feelings, I came home and saw the sofa bed all folded up. I was a little taken aback. I thought the whole awkward situation had made her move out without notice. My reaction showed how sensitive I am about returning to an "empty" apartment.
That is not to say that I want a roommate. I have lived with someone, first my sister, then various roommates, for nearly nine years, and the year before that I was living with my parents. And before that a girlfriend for more than a year. I don't mean I want someone to share the living space and cost with; I mean someone I had feelings about. Maybe that's just a way to lie to myself, to make up the illusion of having a relationship. It becomes a little more obvious when I leave the apartment each morning. I look at her sleeping there in the folded out sofa bed and feel the slight pang of not being able to come closer and give her a kiss goodbye, even if she's sleeping. Not even the thought of doing so because it would be inappropriate.
Part of loneliness is the inability to show your love. Obviously, loneliness is about not feeling loved. But while I don't know if others feel the same, loneliness for me is also the giving part. When I like someone I want to hold them, and show them how much I want them. That's perhaps part of the problem. Whenever I like someone remotely, I jump all over them, showing them everything, instead of playing the game of courtship. And there is no patience, no letting the relationship develop. There's the worry that it won't develop into the way I want, and there's the impatience to see how it develops. There isn't an appreciation of the road but the insane eagerness to reach the finishing line. I care too much about the sweetness of the fruit unpromised and don't really notice the green growth of the sapling.
I know I will forget about this girl soon after she boards the plane back to the land wreaked havoc by tornadoes. I remember feeling the same sentimentality in the same degree with other similar situations. At least this time there's not much drama. Far from the examples with women I no longer speak to, no longer have the compulsion to speak to. I think about the girl I went to India with, shared so much with, and I remember all the pain and hopelessness and exaggerated self-pity, but now I hardly think about her, and the pain merely has found new green pastures to grow. Like I said yesterday, "this too shall pass." And I know it's more important to enjoy the moments with her. Last night we went out to this bad milonga and we had a great time making fun of it. And brief as the break we had back home before going to bed, we got to know each other a bit more. Or rather, I got to know her a bit more.
So I know what the right thing to do is. But when you wake up in the morning feeling you still don't have someone to love, it's hard not to wonder about the future, hard not to feel sad about another missed goal.
The most difficult life lesson here is to overcome these moments of self-pity and fear of the future so I can do what I know is right. Here's a girl that is fully willing to connect with me, as one human being to another. She simply can't give me the fairytale ending I want, and too often, at least in the mornings, I think only about that fairytale ending and not all the words between the moment and the unknown future.
Today a friend of hers will come join us in my new apartment. I made the suggestion of busking in Central Park. It has hence been downgraded to busking in the subway train. I have never busked before, and always wondered what that feels like, at least when you are doing it for fun and not, as is the point of busking, trying to make some bare minimal income. I don't know if we will do it. But the fact that she welcomed my idea and even added suggestions is an example of how we connect. It is also she who suggested throwing a dinner party at my place before the Sunday milonga, her last one this trip. This enthusiasm is so attractive that I wonder if it also obscures what I really want from a woman.
Like I said, like my friend had noted with some jealousy, I easily go for the next girl as soon as I am tired of the drama with the current stubborn girl. As another friend noted, I don't really spend the time to heal, time alone to heal. Of course, when I am alone, that's when the pain is the most raw, but that's the beginning of the healing process. Instead of doing that, I run to the next person, and seek a temporary bandaid on the wound that can only heal when exposed to the cruel simplicity of bare nature, no antibiotics, no coverup. I started this new life wanting to have just friends for a while, and not allow myself any drama with anyone. We can't control who we like, even if there are reasons why we like one person and not another. But we can control how we approach the situation. There are other girls I like, as you know if you have been reading every blog entry. I would do myself a lot of injustice if, now that this girl is leaving without leaving behind even the tiniest morsel of her heart, I will jump to the next. But I am not entirely optimistic that I would succeed in breaking the pattern.
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