I keep swinging back around to this, hesitant to craft a first entry, fearing it won’t be perfect. Why? The same perpetual inclination to reach and affect those who’ve reached and affected me in equal measures. Is it an egoic desire for recognition or mission to maintain and reciprocate balance?
That is ultimately my obsession socially: to know with certainty that the subject and I are on equal planes. But that can never be true, and one can never be certain if it were.
It has been some time since unleashing thoughts and feelings without a photo and real name attached, and I wonder if this isn’t yet another rabbit hole (I am susceptible to those).
Valentine’s Day is as memorable a marker as any other. My thoughts and feelings on it are hard to hide. I see people receiving flowers, aloof towards the gifter yet reveling in the accomplishment of being a recipient. As if that place were somehow earned!
I want badly to speak out, to remind these people that some are not so fortunate as to have someone think enough of them ON ANY DAY to take the time and send something sweet and beautiful (it was an impressive bouquet). But yes, make fun of your friend’s kind gesture while considering the possibility of romance with your next stranger.
Perhaps I am still bitter. Because I can relate to those poor, poor bastards and in some ways remain one myself. While I have found the discipline to refrain from making such gestures myself, my feelings are another matter. I wonder if those can ever be commanded…
Here I sit, alone at the moment but not particularly lonely, thinking of one who is not my lover and partner, lamenting the realization that I will never make her list as she has made mine. Poor timing all around, I suppose, and indeed that seems to be the way of it in my world. Shall I count the instances?
Something tells me I will. I’ve been called a lot of things as a result of my fondness for extraordinary women, but none quite so painfully inaccurate as “ladies’ man.” What some might wear as a badge of honor I deny while limping toward acceptance if only to shut them up.
I adamantly disclaim: a true ladies’ man exudes confidence and produces results, which is far from an accurate depiction of my exploits from ages 20 to 30. No, I stumbled and babbled my way into unbeknownst adoration and more often than not screwed it up with fear and doubt. I chipped away at the marble until a marvelous form was revealed, and when it reached out to embrace me I fluttered away to begin work anew.
That was no way to live, but it taught me the importance of appreciating exchanges while I have them.
And so here I am. Faced with a familiar jealousy regarding matters far outside my scope.
People often ask how I deal with jealousy when they learn that I’m in a relationship with a married woman. I don’t give them the full answer, which I’ve recently amended:
I’ve been accepting jealousy all my life. My mother was single and routinely distracted by men. I was awkward and routinely laughed at in school. Girls paid no attention to me except to participate in ridicule.
When I rose from awkwardness I became the best friend. And my sensitive self started falling in love. At first with superficial and fleeting traits, then with deeper and more poignant ones. But I still did not exude confidence or sexiness. No, what I did was listen. And watch people continuously contradict themselves.
Yes, I’m a contradiction too. And how can I expect someone with sights set on the epitome of humanitarian characteristics to even briefly consider such a lame and lifeless comparison? Even if she did, would I even let her?
Who knows. So I will take my own advice and be myself, here, unfiltered, for my own sake. Follow her example and reveal my own truths at whatever pace comfortable. Expect no dialogue on them. Expect that they will not be read. But leave them regardless on the off-chance she gets curious about you as you are about her. Then those truths can be evaluated instead of my bumbling attempts at conversation.
One day I will ask: Which is worse?
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