Bruises

        I had a disturbing thing happen to me recently. My heart was pulled from my chest, toyed with, lightly bruised and then put back in its place to go on with life as usual. I was a willing participant in this, I will admit, in the sense that I opened the door to my heart after keeping it shut for a few years, allowing entry to the eventual bruiser. I let him in, so I guess that was a risk I took. That's the thing about risks-- they're risky. You really have no guarantees when you take a risk how things will turn out in the end. One possibility is the end result won't be pretty. Knowing this, we sometimes choose to quit while we're ahead, protecting ourselves, and our fragile hearts. But sometimes, we decide to jump in anyway, to push aside the cautionary warnings because we feel that maybe the risk will be worth it in the end. That's what I did.

    I made a decision in the last few months to actively start looking for a romantic partner so I signed up for a dating site. This is not a new thing for me. Over the past 10 years, since my split with my ex, I've been on several dating sites at various times. I've even had a few relationships that came from these sites, but none lasted longer than a year. For most of the last decade, I've actually been off dating sites, doing my own thing. The past 3 years, I wasn't involved with anyone, by choice. I had decided I needed to work on myself, tackle some of my demons and work through my yucky baggage. I had a deep-seated inkling that if I really wanted to ever find a healthy relationship with a man, that I needed to heal some of my own crap first. So I did that. Fast forward 3 years, mission accomplished and I now felt ready to look for the love of my life again, so there I was, once again on a dating site. 

    I wasn't surprised when the usual clientele began presenting themselves to me. Typical of my experiences on there (and especially since turning 50), most of the attention directed my way was either from men quite a few years older than I, or from men in my age group who I didn't find physically attractive. The few men I found intriguing enough to message never messaged me back. Until one day, that changed. I received a message from a man not quite 5 years older (so better than the usual 8-15+ year range), and the bonus was that he was articulate, attractive, and seemed to have much of his stuff together. He was also incredibly charming so that didn't hurt. We agreed to meet so we could assess the situation in person and were both pleasantly surprised and thrilled when we discovered mutual attraction on multiple levels. This led to of course more texting, now of the regular kind, and plans to meet again of course, which we did, a few times. 

    We lived 2 hours away from each other and were both aware at the outset that the long distance factor was a bit of a barrier, but we both felt we had quite the connection on several levels- physical, mental, emotional- that we were willing to go with it, knowing that such connections are rare. Because of the distance factor, and because it was summer, our next meetings were lengthier than they might have been had we lived in the same city... dates that went on for 24 hours instead of the usual evening out for example. And those epic dates were pretty amazing. But it wasn't just the physical time together that was fabulous, it was all the texting in between that was off the charts incredible, as this man spread on the charm so thick I couldn't see straight. Truth be told, I didn't want to see straight. I wanted to be enveloped in that plush blanket of  lovey goodness. And tightly. There was, however, a very tiny voice inside my gut somewhere deep that said, "Hmmm this guy seems just a little too perfect. Be careful, because you know perfection isn't a real thing, not in the realm of humans anyway, so...". But that little voice wasn't strong enough for me to hear it fully, and that was when I decided "Fuck it, I'm just going to let him grab my heart if he wants to".

    In retrospect, it was easy for me to make that decision because of the things he was saying to me, both via text and in person. He appeared as into me as I was into him, in fact more so.  Analyzing his words and actions (as we analyzers are wont to do), I came to the conclusion that there was no doubt that this man was moving full steam ahead, and pulling my heart along with him. At times, it was hard for me to keep up with it all, mostly because I couldn't believe this was happening to me. I walked around in a daze, unable to believe my good luck. There was though, through it all, a bit of a sense that things were moving a little too quickly, that this guy had seemed to catapult into my life, and that I had taken on too-perfect dimensions in his eyes. I would sometimes say to myself, "If he can fall this quickly into you, he can probably fall quickly out of interest as well", using the laws of physics as my guide. I kept those thoughts to myself though, and allowed myself to be wrapped in a delicious cocoon of budding love.

    And then there was no cocoon. Just like that, it vanished, only to be replaced by some casual, distant text interchanges in a matter of hours. The temperature emanating from my newfound love interest went from hot to lukewarm to cool without warning. I was suddenly freefalling and not sure where I was going to land but I knew it wasn't going to feel good, wherever that was. When I questioned this new behavior, he denied it was occurring. At first. When I pressed the issue, he then began to give various reasons for the change, but none that made sense to me. The one that he grabbed onto and elaborated on was that we had the fact of a long-distance relationship on our hands, and that this was likely to be a barrier, not to mention that I wasn't yet retired and would not be moving to his neck of the woods anytime soon. Both of these things were true, but they had been true all along. They didn't suddenly become true. The fact of the matter is he was okay with those things before and then- poof- he wasn't. He became, as he said, "Mr Reality" overnight, ripping off the veil of loveliness that we had both covered over ourselves with one logical argument after another. When he tired of the discussion (which occurred by text and which is another issue itself but will leave that one for another time), he simply told me that I needed to think about the distance thing, that we needed to "sleep on it", and that he was exhausted and signing off.

    The next few days were blurry as I carried my now heavy body, complete with bruised heart, wherever it needed to go. My dominant mode was confusion as I had no understanding of what had just happened to me. Every morning, around the time he would usually text me, I waited. But nothing happened. No good morning text, no effusive messages, no kissy or heart or other fluffy emojis. Nothing. The nothingness that happens at the end of things. I was stunned, not only because he was now giving me nothing, but because he had given me so much before. The overthinker in me came up with hundreds of reasons why he had changed, and was saddened to discover that many of my hypotheses centered around some flaw of my own. Maybe it was this, that or the other thing about me, my essence, my being, that pushed him away, turned him off, made him flip the switch from a definite something to a solid nothing. It was me, because it couldn't possibly be him, right? 

    And then, in a split second, in a moment when meditating, I realized that it wasn't me at all. It was him. He was the one who changed, within hours actually, into a seemingly different person. He was the one who was able to act one way and then another towards me with barely any time lapsing in between. He was the one who couldn't communicate honestly about what was going on. He was highly changeable, not constant, not predictable. He was hot then cold. He was disturbing. And he was not for me. Not for this woman who I had worked so hard to become, the one who had finally become her own advocate and friend in midlife. I realized that I wouldn't be waiting for texts from him anymore, and that if a text did come, that it wouldn't change what I had decided: He would no longer have a place in my life nor access to my heart. As blissful as I had felt around this person previously, my bruised heart had other plans. Has other plans. Plans that don't involve rough handling, manipulation, half-truths or getting ones needs met at the expense of others. 

    It hasn't been long since this incident happened and so my heart is still sore. It's hanging out in my chest cavity where it always was but it isn't the same. I've noticed a few changes. It has visible bruises from this recent activity, but it's intact. And there is something else... I hesitate to declare it, but I think it's a wiser heart. It sits there beating regularly and hopefully, refusing to give up, refusing to let this define it or predict future disasters. It knows it is capable of great love, and so it sits steadily and patiently in my body, waiting...