Brave Alternate World

IF I WAS BOTH COURAGEOUS AND FOOLISH ENOUGH TO JUST STATE THE FOLLOWING (WITHOUT ANY CONTEXT OR WARNING) I WOULD. THEN MAYBE I WOULD BE LESS RIDICULOUSLY INSECURE BECAUSE ALL OF MY "UNATTRACTIVE" PARTS WOULD BE EXPOSED. AS I AM STILL A HOPELESS COWARD, INSTEAD I PUBLISH THIS LETTER TO... WELL, LET'S JUST SAY MYSELF... HERE. MOST OF IT WILL NOT BE UNFAMILIAR TO THE AUDIENCE HERE. MERELY COMPRESSED/SUMMARIZED.

What should/could you know about me (as I am not sure I am the best arbiter of what is necessary and what is not -- as I am the most opaque transparent person you will ever meet):

-- I have a tendency to be anxious/a little neurotic. I qualify it this way because I am a lot less anxious/a lot less neurotic that I was years ago, though I guess that even with that being said, I am a lot more anxious than the average person. I have learned over the years how to cope (well, cope better) when I feel anxious. I make a list and/or a plan. I take a run. I ask a direct question b/c usually the answer, one way or another, will make me feel better. It occurs to me that asking the question may make me look silly, but it is a smaller price to pay that carrying the larger ball of anxiety without pause. In this same vein, I am insecure. I know I am smart and there are moments where I believe myself to be attractive, but out in the field/in practice, I have a hard time exuding a belief in the whole package so to speak. In my dating life in particular, I think I am so hung up on my past failures and my internalization of all of the blame for such things, that I can't relax and just be myself, for better or worse. I really, really want to.

-- If I could, I would worry less about things. I will always try to do so, but to a certain extent, I think it is just my way. Silly, I know. But I was the chief worrier in my household -- my mother was cavalier, my father combative in his stress -- and I was always trying to smooth things over. It has become a habit in a lot of ways -- I worried about things that would never happen, and subconsciously, I think I began to believe that that is why they never came to pass. Because I was vigilant, or some such nonsense. These days, I try to ask myself the question as to whether my worry really makes a difference. Sometimes that helps, sometimes it doesn't. Being a BigLaw lawyer, paid to worry over the placement of semi-colon's as though they were a crises, did not help matters much; being a lawyer in a more relaxed in-house setting has helped matters a great deal.

-- Factually "scary" things --

• I was a fat kid (not so scary), I had an eating disorder (on and off from the time I was 14 till the time I was about 28 -- more scary). Not hospitalization-worthy stuff, just more neurotic than anything else. I have always had body issues (see the fat kid thing), but this is actually an area in which I have made tremendous progress in the last 2 years between my nutritionist and having time for regular exercise. I am still probably more of a gym rat than I ought to be, and I am always conscious of what I am eating, but it is also important to me that I eat. Hunger is not an acceptable state of being, and I am okay with being a size 6 (at some point I had whittled myself down to a size 2, but looking back at pics, I don't think that looked good, and I know I certainly didn't feel good, and I was definitely not thinking straight, as I was clearly starving).
• I was raped when I was 14. It was a high school party date rape sort of situation -- which would have been issue enough -- if it hadn't been complicated by the fact that the party was at my house, hosted by my brother, the guy who did it was my best friend's older brother, and it happened in a newly constructed part of the house that had no curtains and faced out towards the backyard where everyone who was anyone at my highschool stood and watched what happened to me. I spent the next two years of high school trying to pretend it didn't happen, though getting reminded of it nearly every day. Years later, people still mention it to my siblings, and not in a sympathetic way, but in a laughing sort of way. Looking back, it is the way my classmates treated me after the fact that seems even more painful than the actual occurrence. I think this is also something I have overcome and that it does not affect me, but I mention it only because I would have said the very same thing 10 years ago, and it was only upon making such a statement to a friend that I realized that I also ended up in tears every time I got physically involved with a man. This is no longer the case, but I think it definitely made me very hesitant and unsure about physicality for a very long time.
• When I was at the firm, I ended up on antidepressants for about a year (I was also seeing a therapist regularly during this time -- at certain points twice a week -- more her idea than mine as it was really expensive). Anyway, I like to think of this as being evidence of strength because I reached out for help when I needed it, but truthfully, it does embarrass me that I was so overwhelmed by life that I had to take such actions. Nonetheless, while it prolonged the inevitable, eventually, I made the move I needed to make -- meaning I left the firm and BigLaw practice, and miraculously, my disposition improved immeasurably (and almost instantaneously). And here we are 18 months out, and I cannot imagine having to use such crutches anymore.
• My family is a little/a lot nuts. They are good people with good hearts and they are not nuts in a way that is mean or vicious, but it is pretty clear they all carry a lot of their own emotional baggage and it is pretty weighty. My parents -- married for 32 years -- did not really seem to like each other much till recently, and then I think it is because they realized they had been together so long, they actually do depend on each other. My mom is generous to fault -- she literally would give you the shirt off her back, on the other hand, she is also ridiculously divorced from her emotions or from the worries of everyday life. She believes absolutely in her own world view and struggles in understanding others. My worrying (a lot of which is misguided, but a lot of which comes from being practical and being a lawyer etc) has always perplexed her. She just doesn't get it. Sometimes this means she succeeds brilliantly, other times it means she crashes and burns in spectacular fashion. Her real estate speculation, into which shamefully, I allowed her to draw me in (as she did to one of my brothers) is an example of the latter. So yes, I am paying a mortgage on a house I will likely never be able to sell, and which is probably worth less than what I paid for it. Again, it shames me to this day, and it has, unfortunately, frayed our relationship quite a bit. The house made me feel trapped at the firm for a long time. Finally, I decided I would have to leave regardless in order to save myself. Things are okay, but again, to this day it still vexes me. I should not have to worry about money the way my parents did -- and I don't -- well, not to that extent. But I should be a lot more secure than I am. And, to a certain extent, as my mother purloins the rent check for the house every month, I am supporting my parents now (in part) as well. It makes for an uncomfortable dynamic, so I don't spend a lot of time with them, though they are geographically close. That being said, they don't exactly reach out either. They are odd folk. Very live and let live -- which is good, so as not to be crowded and smothered, but also there is no feeling of safe harbor, of a buoy of unconditional love. My father is a smart and kind man, who has worked harder and worried more in his life than any person ought to, but he definitely does not cope well with his own stress and worries. He takes them out as passive aggressive moments on the rest of the family. His unpredictable moods would color every dinner and every holiday. When things were good, they were very good. When they were bad, they sucked. Running around on eggshells and still he would find ways to be unhappy. As an adult, I understand all of the extreme pressures to support a family of 7 and to deal with my mother's flights of fancy and everything else, when I was growing up, and I empathize with him. The pressure must have been unimaginable. The man probably didn't sleep for close to 20 years. But it doesn't change the fact that it is for that reason that I have no stomach at all for even the slightest amount of tension or disagreement in my personal life and why I will do anything and go anywhere to ameliorate such a situation as soon as possible. It could be why I am constantly apologizing for things that are not my fault. I will take the blame if we can just move on. Again, he has mellowed with the years, and with children moving out of the house (well some of them), but every holiday still holds the possibility of dramatic exposition, so I always travel home with my metaphysical pith helmet in hand. My brothers all run the gamut of dysfunction from normal to sad. My youngest brother is a geek, but generally, these days, he has a sweet disposition. He is a good kid, and I love him to pieces. Much better than the mid-range teen years when all he ever said was a grunted, "Yes", "No" or "Fine" (or maybe I just caught on and realized I needed to ask more open ended questions). MY oldest brother -- also a sweet person whom I love very much -- has been caught in an arrested development phase for the last 15 years and is now an adult living with a wife and child, but is still enrolled in college classes full time, as he has been constantly, again, for the last 15 years. He broke up with the girlfriend he had before his current wife, just by ceasing to speak with her. Just stopped returning her calls one day. After 2 years! So I ended up dealing with his breakup (I was the only other person related to him for whom she had a number). My middle brother, whom I adore is smart and funny and wonderful, and has a lot of personal issues. At least he has a tendency towards depression, confirmed he has OCD, at worst he is an agoraphobic. He moved back in with my parents a year and a half ago after a break up and he basically hasn't left the house since. Needless to say, family holidays are always unpredictable.
• I am messy.
• I really, really want to be married and to have a family of my own. I am so tired of my own navel gazing. I really want the opportunity to take care of someone else, and to have them take care of me. I cannot think of anything else I want more in this world. I don't know what the "family of my own" would look like. I think it would have kids -- I find myself lately hoping that it would have kids -- but I would not have kids for their own sake. If my family of my own, was just my partner and I, then that would be fine too. Maybe I say such things because I am afraid that I won't be able to have kids, but I think it is more that I have learned enough to know that I can't be sure the shape that certain parts of my life will take. I just need to find someone who isn't afraid of all of the above. And I have to be willing to share it. Both of those things are very hard things, but I think they are possible. Someone who can be patient with me. I am slow to find my rhythm, but once I do, I can follow the beat pretty well.
  

'Fraidy Cat

There is a reason it is imprudent for a woman of a certain age to get a cat. It never makes her look good. And, it seems, this maxim holds true -- whether the cat is literal or figurative.

I am a big 'fraidy cat, and it doesn't make me look good. And it makes me feel worse.

I cannot relax and enjoy the ride. I worry out the details till they are frayed and worn. I babble incessantly. I am afraid: Of relying. Of being hurt. Of expecting too much. Of being disappointed. Of messing up. Of ambiguity. Of believing my own eyes.

Again, in response to such fears, I am generally trying to take a deep breath. However, sometimes I just take to babbling. I have taken to babbling to the boy about behind the scenes matters. Chatter with my girlfriends. I think it is generally sort of funny, and in the end flattering, but it is also too much. There needs to be mystery. I can't let him know I like him this much. It makes me feel like I am fucking everything up.

In quieter moments, I like to think that, although it isn't in accordance with the rules, it is what I do. It is who I am. If it frightens him off and messes things up, well, that is beyond my control, because it is who I am. But I am not sure that it is.

What it is is just fear and nerves. Why am I still being this way? Why can't I just relax?

Deep breath.

I Am?

Dame fortune has been kind to me of late. I find myself -- all of a sudden -- presented with the possibility of spending more time with a person I find myself attracted to in every sense of the word (and, who, as far as I can tell, is not arrogant, unkind, or immature -- at least not more than the average person).

The situation has some contextual quirks. Among them the fact that we have a shared history, but not a shared past. Another, is that he is geographically undesirable as he lives far away, but he lives in a city with many people to whom I was once close (and am not today, only due to time and geographic circumstance). Then there is my abiding fear of the telephone, something which in this modern era of blackberries and IM'ing is generally not such an issue, but is more so when you are trying to get to know someone better from a distant three thousand mile divide.

I am struggling to write here because I am not entirely sure what I want to say. I like to write when I am confused because it helps me work things out, but I am afraid of my own words here. That to write anything about this situation is presumptuous and such hubris will then align the fates against me.

Ooh, look -- I am so important that the Fates would take time to align against me. Clearly, they do not have anything better to do. Ahem.

Anyway, perhaps stream of consciousness may help here. It will be inelegant, but I think elegance can be sacrificed to efficacy this once in the name of a worthy cause of allowing me to wrap my head around my love life. (I deem this worthy because I am imagining that, after all these years, people might be relieved if I took a break from my one-note lamenting with regard to this particular topic.)

So...

I like this guy. I really like him a lot. We have been out on two dates and what I saw left me wanting more. I want to spend more time with him and to get to know him better. I am excited and anxious (as in expectant, not as nervous) to do so. I am not, however, in love with him. I still have to know him better. I guess I feel like, given some of the quirks/impediments I listed above, I should have been struck by the thunderbolt of love at first sight to even consider any kind of long distance possibility (and to pick up and go make a cross country visit as I am soon going to do). But that is not quite the case. I am deeply "in like" with this man, in no small part because I can refer to him as a "man" and, unlike so many of my romantic attachments, the descriptor seems apt. I am accused of getting ahead of myself for using terms like "long distance possibility" and, well, I will be bold a write out the non-euphemism, "a long distance relationship" but I think that, for once, my consideration of a potential relationship and envisioning how it might work is not necessarily getting ahead of myself. By virtue of our ages (we are not the youngest chickens in the coop anymore) and the distance, it just seems to me that if I wasn't serious about the possibility of dating (as in committing -- not just perpetually playing around) this person, then why make the effort. In a very odd way, the fact that I don't believe that I am instantly in love with him, makes me want him more. The abiding curiosity of wanting to know more, to spend more time with him, is a very strong sort of parallel (precursor?) feeling. I could not tell you whether this will work out. My pessimistic side wrestles continually with my hopeful side. History is not on my side -- longevity of relationships has never been my strong suit. And because I am so particular and don't date that much, I also tend to vest people with more of a sense of possibility that they are probably entitled. I have written here about my issues with the "Last Best Chance" and how nervous that makes me. I am trying hard not to weigh this situation down with such expectations. Truly, I do not think I will be alone forever. But again, this one has so much possibility. Someone kind, yet ambitious, familiar, yet all new. He just has so much possibility -- or I guess I think that he and I would have so much possibility. There is something just different about it. I get nervous and tongue tied and worried. I will admit to a couple of stutters at the beginning of our one phone conversation since he left. I know I just need to be myself, that I cannot control how he feels about me, that all I can do is present to him who I am, who I genuinely am, and then just trust that things will work out as they should one way or the other. If he is to ever love me and I am to ever love him, I should hope we would be loving the most genuine version of the other person. I guess I am worried I don't know who I actually am. I find myself playing and replaying conversations and emails and all the rest -- proud of moments where I just surrendered to quirky, worrying about when I sounded stilted and awkward and weird. I guess those latter moments are when I am doing more of my plate spinning. So maybe the stutters are an indication I need to change course and get back to topic in a way that is closer to the real me.

I guess I just need to take a deep breath and surrender to the possibilities. Wherever they may take me...

Defying Logic

If there is one thing that has been true in my life up until now it is that despite any protestations to the contrary, logic has little, if nothing, to do with anything I have ever done.

If someone refuses to be seen with me in public, I should reject them out of hand. If they refuse to follow through on promises, I should curse their name. If they only make contact when convenient (and typically at odd hours), I should disavow any knowledge of them. And yet, because I am a weak girl, I do none of these things.

The positive, I suppose, is that, out of sheer annoyance, I am writing about this now. (The annoyance being the positive part.) Of all people, I do not understand why this particular person is jerking me around. Then again, I do: Because I let him. I taught him to treat me this way -- not particularly badly or shabbily, but simply with very little fondness or regard (well, at least when we are not actually in the same room together -- and, also, I suppose, when we are fully clothed).

I did not think I was emotionally hung up. And, actually, even now, I don't think I am. Should someone else cross my path, I would not hesitate to be open to other possibilities. I guess I realize, however, that if this particular person were open to actually having a relationship with me, I would be open to having a relationship with him. However, he is apparently not open to such things, and it vexes me as I cannot understand why.

I think that this is life working itself out in the right ways again though. If he gave me even slightly more, I would get more involved, and that would not be good for me as I do not think , in the end, that he is capable of giving me what I need.

Till then, I need to stop responding the the half-way entreaties. Easier said than done.

Remainders

I have a longer post re. a concept known as "pitching to contact" in baseball which is a skill that many older pitchers (or those reinventing themselves post injury) must master. Rather than striking a batter out and thus winning by overpowering the offense, the pitcher throws the batters pitches he knows they can hit (hence pitching to contact) and relies on the seven men playing defense behind him to make the appropriate out. It is an orientation that requires a great deal of trust -- there are after all seven people covering a lot of ground in whom you must have absolute faith -- and it is especially difficult to adopt if your former approach was to mow down batters at the plate. The latter is the control freak approach (effective, if you have the talent to manage it), the former is the wise and more accessible approach. Using the former, you don't need to be a once in a lifetime talent to get what you want, you just need to be alert and astute and have a little faith.

So, my theory is that I need to learn to "pitch to contact" so to speak. I will never get what I want trying to control the whole game. I don't have that much talent. Very few do. It is a lot easier to accomplish the same thing by simply putting pitches out there and letting things progress.

Working on it. Currently caught up in a wave of nostalgia. My past has come back to me in so many different forms. Some complimentary. Some creepy. All educational, I suppose. Mostly in that I think that -- for me -- there isn't as much unfinished business out there as I thought. I feel like maybe I am on the precipice of a breakthrough, but I never quite seem to be able to break through. I can turn a boy's head, but I can't ever seem to get him to stick around. This doesn't make me sad as it once did. It just leaves me puzzled. I am utterly without even the first idea as to how I am to close the deal and convince someone that being seen in public with me on a regular basis is a good thing. I suppose that when the right fit comes along then it will all just work itself out. But as I am not getting any younger and my expiration date grows ever closer, I figure it doesn't hurt to be proactive.

Pitch to contact, indeed.