Post Recovery

In a few weeks, couple of weeks, really, we will need to turn our clocks back and the night will come an hour sooner. Before I leave work, I can see through the giant windows that twilight was arriving noticeably sooner every day.

I get up before the sun does. By the time I get to the 7 train platform, dawn has just given rise to the sun behind me, illuminating the Manhattan skyline. I know, soon, within a few days, I will be at the platform before the sun rises. Of course, once we turn the clock back, the sun will get ahead of me again.

Time is passing quickly. I've been here for nearly half a year now. I still remember when I walk home the feeling of anxiety over moving the car away somewhere so it won't block street cleaning, and I had to strategize it so as to minimize the number of moves each week. I remember still a messy apartment, an apartment with guests while I myself felt still like a guest sometimes, in this foreign apartment. I didn't know then what adventures awaited me, just as now I have no idea what lies ahead.

I saw the pianist Saturday when she invited me to go up to Inwood with her and get some groceries from the local farmer's market. We then cooked and chatted. We never chatted about "us", about the breakup. After that, she gave me a one-hour lesson on what a sonata was, since I saw that word in her repertoire. Her lesson was her way of feeling the relationship less off-balanced since I was helping her a lot with just about everything. After that I gave her a longer lesson on the web, on how to make things work.

After that we went to the monthly milonga together. That part wasn't planned. I was slightly surprised that, when I told her I was going to go next day to a friend who lived just a few stops south, she told me it wouldn't make sense for me to go all the way back to Queens. I showed none of my slight surprise.

How I am handling this breakup is very different from all the other times. There is no drama after our talk last Sunday. I didn't write to her at all, let alone endless tragic and angry emails. I told her, as I have mentioned in earlier blog entries, that I would give her all the space she needed. My door would be open.

She didn't call me until last Wednesday, which wasn't that long after the breakup, and by then, surprisingly to me, I was very much over the pain. And that was the only contact last week. And here I was in her apartment talking about everything except the breakup, except "us". I could sense that she was getting more comfortable with me.

Nothing happened in bed. It was, ironically, very much like before, except that when I wanted to stroke her hair she resisted. I respected her small step away from me. I crossed the line, however innocent it was. I couldn't sleep much, not because of her, just because her corner is really noisy, and we went to bed a little after 5AM. I also couldn't sleep because of the French girl. We were starting another round of vicious fights.

I made the pianist French toast and she asked if she was being spoiled again. "Again" referring to how I was spoiling her plenty when we were together. I didn't hear any alarm in her voice, no fear, just being coquettish; I said I had to eat myself.

We didn't hug when I walked in that Saturday morning. It was a little awkward despite my determination to have a nice day with her, knowing that the next time I would see her would be uncertain. But that slight cool air between us warmed up as the beautiful Saturday wore on.

After I left her place on Sunday to go to that friend's place a few blocks down, I didn't call her or contact her in any way. I was slightly surprised to see her at the Sunday milonga later, perhaps because I still had a small piece of possessiveness that partially drove her away. I was expecting her to let me know she was coming, like before. But that feeling was small, even if noticeable. We walked out together but this time, unlike exactly a week ago, I wasn't sentimental. I was tired, having slept only 4 hours in her bed before the honking at the corner. I hugged her and I walked away without, unlike last time, looking back. I have to say that I did so with some effort. I wanted her to want me. I don't know if she looked back. But I want her to come to me. I don't want to chase after her when she doesn't want to be chased. I have shown her how much I could offer. She turned it all away, but it seems only momentarily. Today she called me to check on me, and to confirm our little date, romantic or platonic, tomorrow at the Lincoln Center to see her former teacher perform. She was giggly, happy, and silly. I didn't restrain my own happiness, but I did nothing sentimental.

Perhaps I have recovered. But I am thinking about something else. There is a certain degree of lamentation in all this. I have a lot of love energy to give and so far, in every case in my life since returning from Europe, it was sort of, wasted. It was as if I was sending a powerful beam into space and it just disintegrates eventually into the very darkness it vainly attempts to illuminate. This weekend was the monthly milonga, and all the crazy tango people from outside the city come down. I saw some of the women I had wasted this energy in, even danced with a few of them. And now I wonder why I seem to have it together with this pianist. I wonder if I still like her as much as before but figured out how to control my feelings. Or perhaps I am becoming jaded and losing interest in all things romantic. It's not just wasting the romantic energy; it's also believing that following your heart and showing your love is the right thing to do, and yet, you rarely, rarely get rewarded by it, reward in the sense of a different love of the same intensity and nature.

The French girl and I had a huge fight this weekend, as I mentioned. I won't go into the details. But in the end, I realized a few things. I realized I was ready to be her friend, that I had been ready for a few weeks now. But at the same time, my wound from all the drama of the past two years with her hasn't had any significant period of healing. We eventually made up and for now things are all right. But still, today, I thought, what was all that about? What was the point? Why did I waste my romantic energy on someone that is now clearly best fit in my world as a friend. Not why did "I" waste the energy, since I don't have control over whom I direct the energy to, but rather, why did the world, fate, God, or whoever, direct that energy to her. What was the point? The lesson? The two of us have expended immense emotional energy in fighting each other just to build the close relationship we finally have now. What a waste!

This, of course, is nothing compared to the drama with Rose, over more than fourteen years. And it's not like I will get wiser and fall for the right girl next time. You never get to choose whom you fall in love with, so there is no lesson to learn. The lessons are in how to deal with people, how to connect with yourself during these times of wasting energy. I have yet to see deeper about these lessons.

There is a part of me that wants to get excited about seeing the pianist. I don't know if I am simply no longer as excited as before or I am being much more careful. It's still too early to tell. For now, I want to get to know her. Just as I want to connect deeper with the French girl, as well as other elements of this new life in New York City. I will try to remember to do the same with myself.

Taking Space

I saw a picture posted by someone on Facebook that says something like, every human relationship is difficult, it's a question of which is worth keeping.

Every morning I emerge from the subway and hear a newspaper seller shouting something incomprehensible behind me as I rushed to the train track. That is familiarity. It is part of my routine. The memory of traveling from Washington Heights through Harlem in order to get to the Metro-North station still remains a little bitter. It was becoming a routine and now that routine has ended.

What is worth keeping? Part of the problem with pack rats like me is the irrational desire to keep everything.

Part of the problem with irrational behavior is that it's hard to know when it is irrational and when it is not.

The Swiss pianist organized a very nice little concert. For me, at least, very avant-garde (if that word isn't too cliché now) classical music. I was very touched. In any case, she shared with me a poem that she had written a while back, inspired by a piece by a composer I had never heard of until I met the Russian pianist, who has a piece by him as part of her repertoire. Scriabin. Reading the background of the poem and the poem itself, I realized I didn't know a lot about the Russian pianist that I would have liked to know. I never asked her about the pieces she played, what they meant to her, their relationship to her as a musician, the historical and present relationship. And while too busy writing her poems, I never asked about her poetic side. During the breakup talk (the one after I stormed out of her apartment), she told me she has actually a lot of emotions but that she devises ways to protect her lover from those emotions. I never tapped into that. I was too busy figuring out when the next time it was to see her, how often we were seeing each other, and what it all meant to me.

I don't need to be so harsh with myself. I found out a lot about her Jewish background, her ideas about being a Jew and carrying the legacy of persecution and survival. But that connection markedly faded a few weeks after we started dating. In the final two weeks I can't remember what our connection was. We cooked and ate together. We talked about tango. Surely there was more, but nothing as memorable as the connections we made earlier.

Time and patience. And what to do with the space that time and patience yield. I am not entirely sure what I was rushing to do. Perhaps I wanted her to get me to some ideal place in life, like being married, having children, or simply be in a relationship carved in stone by my imagination. I was rushing to something whose form and shape I didn't really know; there was just the insatiable need to attain that goal. And in the growing rush, that space I needed was shrinking. And without that space, the connection between us devalued or disappeared. What do I do with this space? It is for me, of course. To see what I can do for myself. What I can do to enjoy the road to whatever posts of goals there are in life. And from this space, I listen and not demand. I would listen to her relationship with Scriabin's music. With other music, and then, perhaps, I can finally begin to understand her interpretation of the music on the keyboard.

But what am I saying. None of this is likely to happen. What is important is that I learn to take that space. Next time I feel the connection between me and a girlfriend is fading, it's a good time to look inward and see if the reason is my own disconnection. It's a good sign that I am again at my old pattern, giving away myself too fast and too much, hoping someone else will take me to where I think I've always wanted to be instead of savoring every cobblestone that I lay on the path toward that end.

Recovery into Self

It hasn't been a week yet. Just half, I guess. My recovery, comparing to the past ones, has been quick. It's still hard to not think about the beautiful memories we built and what I wanted for our future. The leaves are changing colors quickly, as if taunting me with the defunct desire to spend the autumn days with her. Nevertheless, I am sleeping fine, functioning fine. I am almost as bothered by the memory of seeing the French girl leaving with her guy than with the pianist.

She called me today. Just like the email we didn't talk about "us"; we just updated each other one what we have been doing the past few days. She asked if I was going to the concert organized by the Swiss pianist tonight. She told me that a common friend of ours went to this opera that she knew I had been dying to see; she said the friend thought it was great. But she stopped short of asking if I wanted to go with her. She did invite me to a concert next Tuesday of her former professor. And she wants to exchange Russian lessons for some computer lessons that would help her with her online self-marketing tasks. I didn't know how to take all this. I wasn't jumping for joy with hopes that she might come back. Perhaps it's because I have healed enough. Perhaps it's because I remember how I did that with the India girl after she started making plans with me a few month into our breakup. How I was excited and hopeful.

It hurts me to think that she would, like all the others, want to be just friend. At the beginning it didn't feel like it. She was giggling a lot, either from nervousness of talking to me for the first time since Sunday, or missed my company that often gave her so much joy. I know I can't be her friend forever. I am not interested in it. I am healing rapidly enough to know that life wouldn't be so bad if I never see her again.

On that front there's not much more to say.

I am going to the concert organized by the Swiss pianist, as I said. She won't be playing, but I am curious what kind of music she has put together. It will be something crazy but still classical. She herself is having some trouble with her boyfriend. Last night we shared a cab together (it was more like she shared a cab with me to Queens and then paid the remaining trip back to Williamsburg, Brooklyn; she likes my company). Her boyfriend is a Mainland Chinese living in Boston and is apparently becoming more and more possessive and self-centered. They had only been dating for about half a year and they are very serious. She's always been a contrast to the other pianist; although they both had a really rough time in their own ways with men, the Swiss is seeking something serious even more now while the Russian doesn't feel she is ever going to be ready. And so the Swiss pianist is serious about this guy and they see each other every weekend. They even went to Switzerland together. When I heard her say this I thought they had been together for years. But no matter how crazy you are and how intense the relationship is, time is always a factor in getting to know someone, and tango has a way of accelerating that. So half a year later she is finding his possessiveness very troubling; she's very worried about their future. I thought again how sometimes life really is easier when you're single.

Tomorrow I will see the folks, for the first time in a while. Without kung fu I do have more time. Of course, without dating I have even more time. Last night I went dancing after having dinner with the Swiss pianist in Brooklyn Heights. I sang our way to the milonga and she, as a musician, was quite impressed. It's a lot less dramatic being with friends. I had some nice dances after practicing for an hour. I have decided that I would stop dancing once I get tired. There is no more need to struggle on for the sake of being in a milonga. That is an important turning point for me, helps me take things a little lighter.

First Contact

Short sleep, but it was sleep. It was short because I went dancing and then I decided to get up early to catch the earlier train. The previous days I'd been catching the later train, arriving a little after 9AM. I went not so much dancing as practicing. By the time evening had arrived I was already feeling depressed. It was difficult trying to practice and not sink behind that curtain I spoke of in the last entry.

On my desktop is a picture I downloaded from the New York Times. I've mentioned this. It is the picture of the George Washington Bridge, sunset, before the the hurricane. It was the first time I was invited to her castle overnight. It was one of the many signs I took as an encouragement that this relationship might just work, might be different from the previous. I think I need to put this picture away, as a compromise between leaving it there as a tormenting reminder or deleting it with fury and resignation.

Because she hadn't ever stayed at my place, there isn't any memorabilia from her I can bump into there. But my computer is full of her stuff. It is a sign of connection, I guess, one that has ceased to exist.

Or perhaps not. She wrote to me. I found myself neither excited nor fearful. My only feeling was caution.

At the practica last night I didn't want to think about what had happened on Sunday. But my mouth was bigger than my heart sometimes. I asked one of the people if she thought I felt different on Sunday when we had last danced. She said I was softer, and asked me why. She showed me her sympathy when she found out; I wasn't sure if I felt more sympathized; I am not sure why I told yet another person. I had spent the evening alone before the practica. I had the opportunity to meet my tango buddy, who offered to have tea. But I felt I needed to be alone. It's great to have friends and a sister who opened their hearts and offered their company, but at some point, I have to stand up alone.

It didn't help, of course, seeing couples around. One of the teachers there to help with the practices was with his long term girlfriend. As I was leaving I saw him give her a little kiss on the cheeks. It stung me; just a few days ago I was giving someone I liked a lot a kiss on one of her cheeks. It didn't help that the French girl was there with her guy, whose relationship together is becoming less and less discreet. They were leaving together, and I didn't want to have anything to do with them. I didn't want to be rude to her because she has been one of the most important elements of my support group, and without a doubt the one who had given me the most attention in terms of time. I wanted to leave earlier so I didn't have to see them leave together, but that was not meant to be. My consolation prize was not to see them walking alone outside.

I was happy to see one of my New York friends who had been away (with her boyfriend) on vacation in Cyprus. I didn't have time to chat with her because of my back-to-back practices. Right now I just want to be surrounded by supporting faces, even if they don't know what happened.

Despite all this, it couldn't have been so bad. I slept without interruption. I slept peacefully even after getting that email from the pianist. She mentioned nothing of Sunday, and the closest reference was the subject of "How are you?" I wanted to sound upbeat while being careful not to seem to be attempting to reach over into her space. I am not certain that I have accomplished the latter part of this goal. I realized my uncertainty is a sign that I wasn't ready to talk to her normally. She simply gave me an update on what was happening to her since Sunday (we really have just missed each other two days). She thanked me for the few things I did that Sunday before we parted.

I have memories of visions and thoughts from the experience with the India girl because there are some similarities between the two breakups that reflect problems with how I handle such breakups. It's hard to describe because I haven't fully figured out the problems. I remember, just as with the pianist, how the India girl was so sad but determined about stop dating me. That mixture of sadness and determination frustrated me. And soon after the breakup, she wrote to me, asking how I was doing. And then after some unnecessary drama, or perhaps necessary for this next step to happen, we stopped talking completely, during which time I was very depressed. Back then I didn't really have a big support group. Really just my best friend, who was in England and who probably had a hard time being supportive to a man whom she finally wanted after many years of rejecting him, but only to find him running for someone else (different story, not going to go into it now). And there was my Italian friend, the one who is about to move here in just over a week.

And after that respite of a few months, the India girl wrote to me and started talking to me. I guess the problem is that she couldn't take my attention, which sometimes felt like intrusion, or too much love. I don't know. But once she got away from it, she missed it. I was her best friend, on par with her mother, who was probably her only other person in her lonesome life that she had felt free to turn to. She was writing to me as if we hadn't broken up. She was looking into cheap tickets to Hawaii and had thought about me as company. In retrospect, I don't think she was thinking about the trip as something romantic.

Sometimes I feel I am so disarming for a woman that she gets confused about her feeling of attachment to me. And even after she vows to stop dating me, there's a big part of her that wants to be with me. Often times she calls it friendship. Of course, I call it cowardice. And I understand why now: I didn't "disarm" you on purpose; it is my personality to make you feel comfortable being with me, being in your own skin. But intention is unrelated to this disarmament; I do the same with someone I want to be friends with or want to date. And you should know better because ever since my ex-best friend from high school, I always make it very clear my intentions, and it is not up to you to decide that we are now going to be friends.

All these women have put up a fight to convert me into a friend, but it's harder than converting me into some religious person. All but one have given up and they are no longer people I talk to. The exception is the French girl, who still insists and is very patient and optimistic about it. So despite showing off more than more that she's in a relationship, she is still chasing after my friendship. I don't know where this friendship will go. Often times my feelings are embittered by the knowledge, forget the actual witness, of her relationship. And I can only get more frustrated and upset if their relationship becomes more open.

She knew I was feeling sad last night and tried to comfort me. But I told her, indirectly, that she could tell me that because she was, unlike me, not going home alone. The memory is still quite fresh: the memory of hoping she would be my New York girlfriend after I moved to New York, that we would be coming home from milongas together. When I was looking for an apartment I had her in my mind, in my plans. It is no surprise that I almost didn't shake the hand of her guy last night when he offered it before taking her home.

I don't know if it was a mistake to write back to the pianist. I don't want her to think now we can be friends. We weren't together long enough for me to be her best friend, but there was a lot of connection that I am sure she, just as I, didn't want to lose. Nevertheless, it would be another example of selfishness if she wants to pick and choose, pick the connections for a friendship without having to date me. The French girl did the exact same thing and I want that to be the last time to happen in my life. I may not be able to choose the kind of relationship with a woman, but I can choose not to have certain kinds of relationship. The veto is always within me.

Bumpy Recovery

The second night was far better than the first night. Perhaps five weeks, or even six if you count from when the romance started, was perhaps really not that much. The French girl said that I am hurting because I built up all these feelings and all these hopes for the future, so when they come crashing down, it feels a lot worse. She's right, but I somehow don't think I would have done any differently if I had known about this little simple rule. I behave as my feelings dictate, and, as a few of my friends say, that is something to be proud of, that is something many human beings are incapable of doing.

Still, I was hurting in the 24 hours since the pianist dropped the bomb on me under the George Washington Bridge. The sense of hopelessness, guilt, frustration with myself, poured through my body and heart like the roaring Hudson River on whose left bank that bomb was dropped. The anti-poetry of the situation can't escape my mind: we started out in the cloudy, misty day of the hurricane's tail, and ended it on a hopeful Indian summer so full of sun and smiley people on the same bank of the same river.

Nonetheless, last night was far better. I woke up before the sun, but then again, it is October already. I woke up a little before 7AM. That is an improvement from the 5AM that began many alternations of bizarre dreams and sitting up surfing the web for answers. For what answers? Something to make sense of all this when my mind was incapable of making sense of anything.

Last night I talked to my sister and everyone of my friends that I told about my unpleasant Sunday afternoon. I was tired by the time I returned the last call. But everyone made me feel more secure in one way or another, and each had a different perspective to offer. In every difficulty, there's the opportunity to learn something about myself, as I mentioned in the brief blog entry last night. And it's obvious that I learned again how caring my friends are, how great a person they see me. This reaffirmation of the love I am surrounded with is so far the most powerful counterbalance to the loss of all the love I have given away and I would have given away. I initially felt shameful that after telling every one of my closest people I was dating someone special to me, the relationship was over. But instead of shame, I felt love. So perhaps it is fine to share my joy with them, and when that joy is gone, they won't be shaking their heads with an I-told-you-so.

This morning I woke up feeling surprised, a little, that I have recovered so soon. But it's not a full recovery. I didn't feel the pain so much, barely, really, but then I couldn't stop thinking about her. I wondered if she thought about me. She must have. She was on Facebook, with that green light on. We never chat on Facebook, something I hate doing in general, and so I wasn't thinking about talking to her, but that green light was almost glowing, as if the devil had animated those pixels.

I thought about her and started imagining a letter I would write to her. I wanted to tell her that it didn't make sense to just end it like this when she still liked me. It was more a matter of figuring out a simple solution. If she wanted space, we can just agree to see each other less frequently. Be disciplined about it. It would be a shame to throw away what we had built and what we would have gained.

But who was talking? Who was devising this letter? I wondered if it's part of me that is scared to lose what might be the only chance left for happiness. That would be the irrational part. My tango buddy said that I had everything to be the good man a woman would want. I didn't need to be better at anything. What keeps me from being with the right woman is the disconnect within myself, but nothing that someone else would want. And remembering that is where I stopped imagining that letter to the pianist. It is not about her, not about her readiness, her walls, her inability to really love and be loved. It is about how I am disconnected with myself, failing to take care of myself, failing to give myself the space. When I know how to give myself space, which is yet another manifestation of love, it would be natural for me to give space to the person I want to love.

Right now, less than 36 hours after the Hiroshima by the Hudson, I should stop thinking about her and start the journey back into my heart, that inner journey the French girl calls "The Mission." The mission to rediscover that beautiful person that somehow all my truest friends see but I don't. I start out today with a lot more optimism. I hope I don't drift back into whatever road of mistakes that would bring back recurring suffering with this pianist. However, at this stage I miss her, and I do wish that she would come around and take little steps toward me. But I have a feeling she is too stubborn to do that, too fatalist, too easily giving up on relationships. And to be good to myself, and to her, I have to stick to my promise to her that I would give her space.

So that was the morning, very optimistic. Why not? It was really just a five-week relationship. We held hands, we cuddled, but not much more. So not much to miss. I should just go on with life. Easy. But then the day started to roll out its carpet of memories and dashed hopes. I started wondering if she would text me. At the weekly group meeting, I saw the tips of the trees outside turning red and remembered that she wanted me to take pictures of her for her marketing material in the fall colors. That is now just an echo from the past. And then I remembered how she often would call me up around 5. I would be anxiously waiting for her to call and be so happy to see her name on the phone. That wasn't going to happen today, and not going to happen again. Still, when 5 o'clock rolled around, I let my last remaining hope puncture my nerves. Throughout the day that familiar feeling hang in my head, like a stinky wet shirt that never dries in the humid air. It is the feeling of despair. It is very familiar. It was there when the French girl told me she was with someone else, when the India girl left my house (twice!) after saying it was over, whenever someone left me. It is as old as when I was in the old apartment of my parents before we all moved to a house they bought. The feeling of the sun being eclipsed by something impalpable, something dreadful. I remember being in the old house and feeling afraid. Afraid of being alone. The demon of loneliness was my only company. I am not sure where my sister was. I was just alone. And at work today, that curtain was there, blocking out the morning sun that made me feel so optimistic that I thought perhaps the recovery succeeded.

She, of course, didn't write me an email. But there's nothing to say. I am smart enough to know that it is impossible for her to change her mind, and even if she did, it would be bad for us for the reasons she had said, the same reasons I have elaborated. I have to stop wondering about her, and start figuring things out with myself.

One more point is about charm. Not mine, since I am not aware of it much. One of the reasons I am afraid of losing someone is I feel I am losing the effect of that charm on me. Whether it is the charm of a Southern voice and posture, or the charm of French humor and way of seeing life and food and wine, or now, the charm of the piano keyboard, the charm of a Jewish background, the the attractiveness of Israeli life, I am afraid when things end I will not have another chance. I was half joking with the Swiss pianist that she should find me a nice, single musician (I didn't say pianist since she would instantly figure out who it was that dumped me). I miss the sound of piano while I fall asleep in a nap. I miss how she plays the piano, with so much enthusiasm, love, that dance with the beautiful machine. I want it back. I know that the rational thing is to just love the experience I gained, feel grateful that life exposes me to all this amazing experiences led by charming women. Now I am not crazy about finding a Southern Belle, or a French girl with that sexy voice and charming sarcasm. And so this obsession with musician may simply pass as well. But for now, I miss her. I can only wonder how long this will last, considering how quickly I am recovering.

Before Sleeping

Before I go to sleep, a summary.

After wallowing in a lot of pain, sending a million messages of agony to, don't hold your breath, a friend, and not the pianist, I felt better. I could face the sun. I went outside, to the train, and ended up in Union Square, waiting for the Swiss pianist. We had a blast. Lots of laughter coming out of making fun of the situation. I was entering my "anger phase", but it was very much ridiculed. My life was a comedy show on display.

We went to Chinatown for what we thought would be free ice cream from the famous ice cream factory. No deal, but the girl treated me to it. We found ourselves in Columbus Square, where a whole bunch of middle-age to old Chinese people were doing lots of stuff: opera singing (Cantonese opera), instrument duals, Chinese chess, cards, and some sort of dance. Very happening place, made the Swiss pianist very happy. She has dated a bunch of Chinese guys, including the boyfriend she has now, and somehow none of these people told her anything about Chinese culture. It's very rare for me to find someone who is interested in Chinese men before they meet them.

After that I went back almost to Union Square and did yoga in NYC for the first time. Very liberating. At the end, when we were doing the "corpse pose", lying there in the dark very still, the instructor read out loud some passage from some Hindu prayer, I guess. It was something about difficulties in life, that in each difficulty there is the opportunity to learn something beautiful about ourselves. I was starting to learn about myself through this unpleasant difficulty.... Her words helped me put some perspective in the matter.

To show you how I was already recovering, I went into Strands Book and bought a real copy of the story the pianist (the "ex") had inspired me to read. She told me how all these poems I was writing to her made her feel like Margarita in "Master and Margarita". I instantly looked and found that book online and started printing out pages and pages to read. I lost interest last night, in Russian, in that book, as well as anything Jewish and Israeli (I wrote a whole blog last week just about how those things had always connected to me since I moved to this country). But after yoga I decided to get the book to continue reading it.

Then I met up with my tango buddy and we chatted over sushi. She always knew how to reinvigorate my self-esteem, how to genuinely tell me what an amazing guy I was. All the while the French girl was texting me and calling me, to check on me and try but failed to arrange for us to meet. In the end I called her and we talked. It's unexpected for me to be sharing with her something so painful but also very reminiscent of our own drama. It was helpful. And after that a whole lot of other people called, three more. Basically, everyone I reached out to called me back. I felt lucky. What happened to me was unlucky. I again got involved with someone who was emotionally unavailable to me. But what I was lucky about was having amazing friends and family to back me up when crap hits the fan.

Now I am going to catch up on some sleep!

Confusion at the End

I am in my unlit living room.

I am thinking, wow, I am alone here. She was here three weeks ago, right before I sent her an email that jolted her to start a train of thoughts that finally made her believe we aren't a good match.

That's what she told me under the Washington Bridge today. The same place where we started our relationship. It was a coincidence. That day was a rainy one, at the tail end of Hurricane Irene when she devised to get me to stay at her place. That was the weekend before Labor Day.

It has been a short but extremely intense five, six weeks. But that is the symptom of the problem.

She is someone who needs a lot of space. Things in her life are always upside down, thrown into chaos constantly, and at the same time, she has always had to juggle her problems alone, very independently. And emotionally she had to always shield herself from whomever she's dating. And this makes it very hard for her to connect to someone in the beginning. This is what she tells me, and I believe it.

While there I came, wanting to break down all her walls. I see all her problems, all her struggles, and I wanted to help her with all of them, whether she wanted me to or not. And she probably didn't want me to because she isn't used to anyone helping her. She has told me multiple times that I have "spoiled her." Not only with practical help, but also showing her how a man can really love her. It's not something she's used to since 2001 when her the dissolution of her last serious relationship left her devastated, and all the men since then have treated her far less than the woman she deserved. I spoiled her, and that shocked her and pushed her into a retreat.

That's what she said.

But what I also realized was my own pattern of misbehavior. This conclusion is with the help of that French girl, who experienced this pattern herself when I was with her. When I am crazy about someone, I forget about myself. I go doing everything for that person, make that person the center of my world. The French girl's complaint is that by doing so I don't give a chance for the girl to get to know me. That's true again in this case with the pianist. But one other major problem is that I keep taking space from her, not letting her breathe. Not only does she not get a chance to get to know me, but also she starts to become a stranger to herself because the network of her world was now being eaten away by my uninvited help. She needs space and I was not only failing to give it to her, but also taking away what she had before.

So she told me in the sunny sky under the awesome bridge that we weren't a good match, that she was convince of it. The final trigger for her conclusion was a reaction to an email I sent last Thursday that detailed a plan I had for this long weekend, how we would spend time together outside the city, etc, etc.

Mind you, this is a plan for two people who have only started dating a month ago. It has been an intense month, but the intensity didn't make her feel more intense about me, which might have justified such an elaborate plan for a long weekend.

I was devastated to hear what she said, even though part of me was not surprised. I have indeed been feeling the strain of the imbalance of feelings in this relationship, and lately, I have been feeling her apathy more and more. And now it made sense. Not only was I making her feel inadequate with all my help that she couldn't "pay back", but when I showed any sign of complaint, like with that whole intimacy problem, and now her refusal to go to this long weekend trip with me, her guilt of this imbalance was justified.

That was what she said to me; she didn't want to continue feeling so bad about the imbalance of the relationship. She said that although I always said "I like you", she knew that I really meant I was in love with her but that I was afraid such words would scare her away. That's when I realized how I have been lying to myself. Not just for her sake, for mine.

There wasn't much we could say, or that I could say. I am not for changing anyone's mind. I accept my fate. There was a few minutes of silence. I was plucking off blades of grass and breaking them. I couldn't look at her.

We walked back up to her place I had called the Castle a few weeks ago. It was a painful walk. And I started feeling really guilty. I felt I have made the same mistakes again. I thought about the French girl, about her warning. I realized I have been like this since I can remember.... Since when? Since Switzerland. I show my love in the way of unsolicited help, of getting into someone else's space. And in the meantime, I forget who I am, I forget to build myself.

I asked her if she liked me just as a friend. She said yes. I was devastated again.

In her apartment, I gathered the stuff I have left there over the past few weeks. Some clothes, some kitchen stuff. Memories, bitter now, memories of the fun we had together, the connections we built. Now there was no connection. I was just trying to finish the last bit of this relationship by finishing up a few things I was doing for her. I made sure she didn't give me anything. I wanted to remember nothing about her. No reminders. When she started to play, I begged her not to play anything. I was leaving soon, and playing would sadden me a lot. That point I could hardly hold my tears.

After I finished what was needed, I picked up the bag of belongings, along with the bag I brought with me, and walked out the door. Just before walking into the elevator, she asked if she could at least give me a hug. I said to her, "No, that would remind me how you just want to be friends."

I have something against becoming friends with someone who just dumped me, and not just anyone, but someone I liked a lot, and in her worlds, someone I was in love with. How can I not be in love with someone who plays the piano, who had shared so much with me?

After I left the front door of her building, and feeling absolutely devastated, I turned around and rang her apartment bell. And the next thing I knew we were embracing like, well, like a bad novel would have, I guess.

Embracing as friends with a very complicated connection. But the important point is that there is a connection, finally.

She asked me to come in and talk. She just wanted to talk a bit.

The embrace was the starting point of a connection.

But that wasn't the reason I came back. I told her that. And I proceeded to telling her why I came back. I wanted her to tell me in my face, and this time I wanted to look at her, if she really just saw me as a friend. She hesitated, not sure if that was out of amazement that I was so deaf, or if she wasn't sure. Then she repeated that it was true, she only saw me as a friend. "So like any other of your friends? You don't find me attractive?" I inquired. She gave in and said, "Of course not. I find you attractive!"

That didn't change matter, of course. That didn't change what was said above, how we aren't a good match, how we weren't giving each other what the person needed.

I was taken back to the world of the India girl. She told me similar things: I was a great person, an amazing person, but she constantly felt inadequate, felt I was giving a lot to her but why should I when I got nothing back from her.

And she said something else too: that in reality, despite everything I was giving her, I wasn't giving her something she was looking for, that no one was.

This was the same case again. I wasn't giving her space. I wasn't her savior to get her out of her emotional barriers. She believes the only savior was herself.

I got what I wanted: to hear that she still liked me. I am not sure what good that did, really. The outcome remained the same. We were no longer together.

But I told her one thing in response. I said, "I like you a lot. But I will give you the space you need. And whenever you're ready to take a step toward me, my door is open."

That is the conclusion I actually drew yesterday while I was on the beach alone. Going to Fire Island was part of that insane long-weekend plan. Now I was implementing that part of the plan alone. I had many hours swimming in the sounds of the ocean and the winds that competed with the sound of the waves. And in the end I concluded that for my own happiness, and for hers too, I had to give her all the space she needed. And if that meant she would stop dating me, then so be it.

"So be it."

Easier said than done, because that's exactly what she has decided to do. What we, now that we had a connection again, decided to do. Yes, she still likes me. She's afraid of me because she's afraid of hurting me, afraid of feeling even guiltier about the imbalance of feelings and help. Yes, I hope she would take some steps back toward me. But for now, we agree that she needs all her space back and keep it that way for an indefinite amount of time. I will leave her be.

We got tired of talking, so she started practicing, and this time her practicing didn't hurt me. It made me feel more connected. I was, with her request, helping her figure out what to do to make her computer go faster. Before that, before the practice, we cooked together. I don't know like what. We didn't say anything. In other words, she didn't make me feel we were "just friends", a phrase I hate with all my heart, though she, parroting unwittingly the French girl, said that for her friends were closer, dearer, and faced far fewer walls than a boyfriend.

What kind of crazy women do I have to encounter??

After the practice we went to the milonga together. Picking up my stuff again was suddenly hard. The evening since I came back in seemed like a dream away from the nightmare of the breakup. Now that I was picking my stuff again, reality hit me again that clearly, it was over, clearly, I was not coming back tonight to enjoy her beauty tomorrow morning, to listen to her breathing, to feel her warmth. Clearly, that was not going to happen, and probably never going to happen. Walking out of that door I realized it might very well be the last time I was walking out that door, the door that for a week in the beginning of the relationship I had my own keys to.

This is all very sappy, I know. It sounds worse than the cheese in the tango songs, and nearly as sappy as American pop songs. But as one of the dancers later told me, we love the sappy songs because we identify with them, because at least once in our lives (and in my case, multiple times) we experienced the sappiness not with rolled eyes and sarcasm, but with a great deal of pain and disillusionment.

And so the trip to the milonga was difficult. I invited her to dance the first dance. It was difficult to invite and difficult to dance. The memory of how we started, all the uncertainties and flirtation typical of the beginning of a courtship, now seemed so remote. I suddenly remembered all the things we talked about that connected us, and worst, how she introduced me to her favorite place in the city where we talked about personal experiences that shared a lot in common.

And at the end of the milonga, we walked out just one block. No longer would I be allowed to walk her to her train station like I was doing from the very beginning when the courtship started. That was our agreement: giving her space. I just reminded her of that, but that my door was open if she decided to take a little step.

Turning around and walking away from her, well, you can imagine how deeply that cut into my heart.

Part of cowardice way of dealing with all this was to tell the closest people in my life what happened. It's sad. This final week of our dating adventure was when I told two of my friends about her, introduced her to them. I wanted to be more open. Too late.

I guess no more taking morning rides across Harlem. No more frustrations with the A-train.

I find myself starting to think about whom else to date. Who is my next possibility.

Of course, I catch myself doing that and slap myself for being weak.

I have mentioned some important lessons here, lessons about how to really love a woman, how to give her space, how helping her, especially financially, isn't anything good when what she really wants cannot be bought by money.

But the most important lesson is about me. If I am more connected with myself, if I allow myself to remain the center of my universe, I wouldn't be chasing after someone, losing my own identity and trying to interfere with theirs by becoming part of theirs. This whole talk of space and patience wouldn't be an issue if I was busier giving myself space, giving myself patience and attention.

I think it's possible to be in love with someone but not make them more important than you. It's still my dogma in life to follow your heart. But that heart is not allowed to stray away from my soul. To love someone is actually very hard, even though falling in love with someone is a matter of luck and can happen quickly. To love someone involves giving them what they want, not what I think they need.

I am in the mourning mode. I feel lonely in this dark living room. I can't help remembering what we have done. I can't help remembering what else I wanted to do with her. I wanted to live with her so she could save on her rent. I wanted to help pay for the piano she had always wanted. And if she decided to move back to Israel, I wanted to follow her.

I write this out so I can see for myself how insane I have been, would have been, and how, as my best friend said (I finally got in touch with her 2 in the morning), it's better this ended now than later. True true, and she didn't know half of my craziness. As the French girl reminded me, this relationship was starting to make me unhappy. A few days ago I actually bumped into her in the train and I was telling her that I was unhappy enough to want to break up. That was about the long weekend plan that the pianist refused to partake. Now I got what I wanted, and more. This breakup did not end in the sort of drawn out drama that I had to experience with the French or the India girl. It ended rather sweet.

And the pain is really from the normal cut from the past memories and the future that would not be arriving. I hope this pain will pass. And similar ones in the past had always passed. What is important this time is whether I truly will do the right thing: take care of myself, whether single or deeply in love. I really don't want to lose another woman I like as much I did with the last few....