It's a Monday morning and I've spent what feels like the entire night dreaming, well, one of those dreams. It starts the way those dreams always start ohbabyI'msosorryIwassuchanidiot. It (d)evolves the way those dreams always do and when the alarm rousts me I swear I can still feel his lips and teeth on my skin and I desperately wish there was enough time to go for an extremely fast, frigid, five mile run.
Dreaming about men from your past is awful.
Dreaming about men from your past and waking up edgy to a Monday morning is worse.
Dreaming about men from your past and waking up edgy to a Monday morning alone is the absolute, unequivocal ohmygodthefucking worst. It's a punishment of Dante-esque proportions and I slam out of the house entirely pissed.
***
"This may be a bigger picture question, but why do you need to say anything?"
Carliene pauses and adds "That's a social worker AND friend question."
Social workers, it turns out, make excellent friends.
I said it last winter, after Carliene and Krista came up and took care of me when I was incapable of taking care of myself. I think it again, nearly a year later while Carliene and I are in the midst of a long walk. Not the best at navigating relationships in any capacity, I am in the process of attempting to ford the goddamn Rubicon of relationships. I'm no Caesar (not even a lesser), and need to bounce some of what I've been thinking off of someone who is . . . better at emotions? Isn't quite so myopic when it comes to another person's perceptions? Just isn't me?
"I'm better."
She doesn't say anything, so I plow ahead. "I am better because of what happened. In a significant, measurable way. But I don't know how to say something like that without sounding like I'm a bunny boiler."
"Have you considered not saying anything?"
"I can't. I've become a blurter. If I don't say something it'll accidentally come tumbling out anyway."
"That's pretty unfortunate."
"Don't I know it."
"That's pretty unfortunate."
"Don't I know it."
***
My heart is an idiot.
This is the thought my rational brain will have when it checks back in. For the moment, God alone knows where it went. I'm on the floor, rocking back and forth screaming into a pillow. There's an Adele album on the radio (I never claimed originality) and even if my face wasn't covered with a pillow, I'd have a hard time breathing.
In a few years, I'll be in a therapist's office, pointing to this exact moment as the moment when I gave up. When I decided that everything was "a whole lot of nothing worth losing or getting back." But that'll be years from now. For the time being I'm screaming into the pillow and trying not to make myself sick. The truth is, I'm howling over something I should just ohmygodbeoveralready.
Someone I loved married someone else.
That's it.
And let's be clear. He was, objectively, not good for me. We had a deeply unhealthy relationship, and at the end, I didn't even like him very much. But despite not liking him some small part of me still loved him. Very much. And that small part of me (the part I would like to abandon mid-blizzard on the prairie) maybe-always-just-a-little-bit hoped that he'd show up some day and say "Oh, baby, I'm so sorry. I was such an idiot."
Let's get real. My heart or lizard brain or whatever took over driving during that period of my life was unfathomably stupid. Because every single damn warning sign was there. Peter Pan Syndrome. Indecisiveness. Snobbish taste in books and music. An inability to just return a phone call or text. Aloofness. A million other giant, red-flashing "ACHTUNG" signs.
But (have I mentioned that my heart is an idiot?) all it took was one smile. One smart comment about a book I was reading. One self-deprecating remark about being so scrawny and I fell inconveniently, irrationally, unwisely in love.
Idiot.
***
At almost 30 I fall in love a lot less easily than I did in my early 20s.
It's inevitable, I suppose. You go through bad breakups and not so bad breakups, and you learn how to recognize the reasons why something won't work (emotionally stunted, lives on another continent, gay) and figure out how you're going to isolate all those stupid, swoopy stomach feelings and move on. You learn how to put your guard up.
Your heart becomes somewhat less of an idiot.
Until it isn't.
Until someone walks into your life, slips in under your guard, and maybe they don't quite turn your world upside down, but they turn your perception of yourself upside down. Suddenly you're no longer the girl who specializes in unhealthy relationships who is now a little bit crazy because of them, but someone else entirely. Someone who is funny and smart and just a tiny bit desirable. And in the midst of your life feeling very How Stella Got Her Groove Back you think to yourself. "This is a mistake. I'm going to get hurt."
And you do. You do get hurt because that's what happens. But somehow this time you can walk out of it not saying "My heart is an idiot" but "I am better. In significant, measurable ways."
Hopefully without sounding like a bunny boiler.
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