From the Outside Looking In

I’ve been wanting to write another blog entry for some time. But every time I began to write, the words that would come out were sad, lonely, and depressive. So I’d stop. Tonight I realized that I’ve been shying away from posting because I didn’t want to expose my cracks. But the whole reason I started this blog was to express myself and so I wasn’t being true to what I need.

I’ve been struggling lately. Struggling with feeling connected. Positive. Wanted. Needed. I do not live a life alone. But I’m lonely. The kind of lonely that makes even the best days hard. My life is filled with people who care about me, whom I care about and make my life full. And yet, there is this emptiness that won’t be filled.

It’s been almost two years since the divorce. And almost three since we separated. And I needed time to figure out who I was and what I needed. But I also realized, early on in that process, that I had come to the point in my emotional growth to admit that I wanted, needed someone to lean on. Someone to share who I am and what I can be and who they are and just…. everything. But, how to do any of that in technological world of easy access, in your face, never make a clean break of anything? No start, no end, no clear lines of what is what and why try for anything real when you just swipe right and find the next person?

The look of incredulity on people’s faces when I tell them that meeting new people is hard for me is mostly amusing. I understand why most people don’t believe me. But what I really mean is that opening up is hard for me. And it’s getting harder.

I recently went on a few dates. The kind where you think to yourself, “this is good, I can do this, there’s hope here, did I just say that, seems to be okay, let’s do this again”. I have no expectations going into these situations. Whether it’s 2 days, 2 weeks, 2 months….. it isn’t about a plan for any future or a checklist of things in my life I need to do or want. It’s about making a connection and seeing where it goes.

So, when the realization occurs that you’re not in the same place and you need to move on and then it hits you that you’re hurt in a situation where that seems unreasonable, what do you do? You have to question it, or you don’t learn from the situation. So, here is what I’ve realized about myself. About why I feel like this crack, this exposed part of me is raw and getting harder to protect. If I’ve admitted that I’m interested, that there might be more to explore, you’ve somehow managed to make it past some of my walls, my insecurities, my fear. Enough to make me comfortable to consider opening up.

The idea of causal connections (and I don’t mean just sex, but simply casual interactions with people) is not something at which I’m not good. And I think that’s what you need to be able to do, to meet people, to date, to get to know someone and say, “You’re cool, but this isn’t going to work” and move on requires a level of fearlessness and openness that is just not in me.

What this means for me, I don’t know. What I do know is that what I want hasn’t changed. I want someone who will tell me I’m gorgeous, smart, funny, goofy, witty, sarcastic, sexy, interesting, and all the other things I am and mean it and not be just a friend (I appreciate my friends who remind me of all these things, but it’s not the same) and who wants to share who they are, their good, their bad, their ugly with me.