I saw him three times that next week. Although on paper we measured up as completely incompatible there was something deeper there.
Darrin was in one of the darkest stages of his life. His father had passed away the year before, his marriage had fallen apart, and he was in a job (recruiting) that he absolutely hated. He used to come home from work and drink an entire six pack -on a week night. He smoked. He swore. His outlook was bleak.
Meanwhile, I was wild. I had spent the last two years piecing my life back together after a seven year relationship with someone who was emotionally abusive. He had gutted me completely, and I was left just a shell. A shell I had been filling with men. I had discovered I was good with men. I could captivate them, connect with them, but I was never ever satisfied by them. I had this deep longing to be needed by someone and in Darrin I saw a need I could fill. I made it my mission to make him smile. To hear him laugh, to give him hope. The fact was that in spite of everything, I was still an optimist.
So I would call him every day. Even when I knew I shouldn’t, because the rules of dating said otherwise. I would jump at the chance to be with him. And he tolerated me -not just because the sex was good- but because he knew I didn’t want anything more from him. I didn’t want his whole life and all of his baggage. Not interested!
…And yet…
He treated me better than any man ever had. He was kind and gentle. He opened doors and gave me compliments. He was not ashamed to be seen with me in public, even when we ran into his coworkers at the club. He appreciated things about me that no one else had ever seemed to notice. He pushed me to be brave. We would go to the mall and he would ask me where I wanted to eat. “Whatever is fine.” I would say. He would wait, unmoving, silent. I would grow increasingly uncomfortable and finally would blurt out a choice. He wouldn’t let me be the doormat I had gotten used to being. I started to wonder if all of the ways he was wrong for me weren’t also the same ways he was right.
My favorite game to play with him was “Tell me a story.” We would lie in his bed on a weekend afternoon and he would tell me about his past. He grew up in a small town in northern Idaho and everything about his childhood was foreign and fascinating to me. He had the best stories. And he would turn it around and ask me questions. Through simple conversation he forced me to define my likes, my hopes, my dislikes, my fears. He made me put to words concepts I had long ago forgotten about myself. “How do you know about Big Sur?” he challenged me one day. “Oh,” I laughed, “I used to want to be a park ranger.” I was so startled to hear those words come out of my mouth that I had to voice them out loud again. “I used to want to be a park ranger.” I breathed in surprise. It was something I had not thought about in years.
The more time passed the more I started to wonder about love. At that point I thought I knew what love was. I had been in love. I had fallen hard. I had given up, and sacrificed. I had known passion and romance and the deeply painfully gut eating butterflies. Being with Darrin wasn’t anything like that. It was easy. It was comfortable. And I began to formulate a new concept. Maybe love was not sudden and all-consuming. Maybe love was strange and slow-growing. Maybe love was something all-together different.
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