the tenseness of future past imperfect

so i have mentioned briefly here and there that i have been attempting to date in this city. it has been a lackluster endeavor so far and not one that i really wish to chronicle. my hope is that one day i'll just start writing about fun things i'm doing with so and so and in that way it won't have to be a huge announcement. but my last two dates got me thinking about the evolution of my current dating life and the oft left out proper rules of dating that our parents benefited from, but seem to be alluding us in this fast-paced interneted world.

i remember when i moved back to my hometown. i landed there after dublin and felt stuck in every aspect of my life. i was back in my parent's house, working at a florist/hospital gift shop, dating my then boyfriend long distance from IRELAND and trying to figure out what the fuck i was doing with my life. one day as i was sitting in the relative calm of the hospital gift shop when an old high school classmate's mother walked in. now this woman was never very nice. not to me, my parents, my best friend, other classmates. she saw me as competition always. her child didn't always see me this way.

the girl seemed to discount me as any real sort of competition in school and for college placement not based on my intelligence but my relative disinterest in academics. she saw me, i think, as a comedic foil to my other friends. i tended not to pick up the required readings, kept papers to their stated minimum and never over prepared for anything. in my junior and senior years i carefully planned my schedule so that is was the perfect blend of ap classes, art classes and study halls (which i would also spend in the art room). while others learned the intricacies of physics i was unfurling rolls of film in a darkroom. i had long before given up the notion that i was going to be some great scientist, dressed in lab coat white and full of new discoveries. i pondered the idea of being a geneticist for a hot minute because that shit fascinates me, but i liked words better than formulas and calculations and dissecting poor, preserved animals.

i think i have digressed.

anyway this woman walked into the store and gave a surprised look and said something like, 'well what are you doing here?' and i was all 'duh, working. do you need a get well card or perhaps this large lollipop to shove in your obnoxious gob?' no i didn't say that. i smiled my sickly sweet 'if you know me, you know i fucking hate you right now' smile as she said something else like 'well what have you been doing then?' as if this couldn't possibly be it, this couldn't possibly be your JOB, but not in a flattering way, it was more in a way that said, 'well i always thought one wrong turn and you would be right here.'

so i very matter-of-factly let her know exactly where i had been, in just the right way, not bragging see, because that is gauche, but using key words in combination with the right delivery. if performed correctly it would puncture her bravado and be like a slow steady leak of her big balloon head. it landed just as i had wanted and upon learning of where i had been the previous year she pursed her lips and said 'oh well then isn't that nice.' after a beat she proceeded to walk backwards out of the shop. i think she knew if she turned her back on me i might just lob an ohenry bar at her head. you can't shame someone that doesn't have any bitch.

i knew that my position at the gift shop was only temporary and that made it easier to get past my own inner 'what are you doing here?' thoughts. it also helped me deal with the fact that i was still living with my parents and that my relationship was costing me both monetarily and emotionally. after our breakup, i made a move to be in a more career oriented job, i moved into a house with my friend and starting living my life back on one continent. but all of these decisions to be more permanent, more adult, more tied to my hometown just made me feel more stuck.

my first year after the breakup was a blur. the new friends i had made at my new job, blended with old friends who had returned home post-college and combined they tried to shake me out of my malaise. but everyday was like walking through thicket, a fog-filled field with no beginning and no end. i was easily turned around, easily broken down, easily separated into parts that hardly functioned and parts that didn't function. i wouldn't emerge from the rubble of my past unscathed. my inability to shake my feelings and my desire to continue speaking to my ex did me no favors and my friends found it difficult to stand by and watch. there were lines drawn, silent wars waged. and all the while, beyond the crying jags and the constant feeling that my heart might just rip right down the middle, with the friend complications and pressures of a busy job, the overwhelming feeling of never getting free, of being mired in the present by the choices of my past were unshakable. unbearable. my feet were locked in concrete shoes of my own design. i had chosen to move back, i had chosen to wait it out and give my relationship a chance. i played the odds and ended up with a middling result.

people encouraged me to date. my friends would take me out, get me drunk, introduce me to strangers and point me out to eligible men. it was ineffectual. i ended up in too many corners of too many bars to count. my parents also wanted me to move on. they wanted me to find a job and a home that they didn't own to live in, and happiness with some guy who would want to stay on the east end. i raged against this. i had never wanted to return and i saw the disappointment in the eyes of old friends when, upon seeing me around town, would say, but you were supposed to get out.

i half suspected that my parents thought i had an expiration date. my particular brand of uniqueness makes me, initially, what they call a hard sell. i am stubborn and opinionated. i don't really feel the need to people please and generally like to call bullshit on bullshit people. they both constantly mention that i will need a "flexible" guy. by this they mean someone that will bend to my will. although it is a running family joke, i generally do not find it funny. mainly because it is not in the least bit true. i never respect people that let others run roughshod over them. and i also think dating a pushover would get really boring super fast. for example i found my ex's desire to be difficult about the simplest things both the worst and the best thing about him. in return, he didn't let me get away with anything, ever. i do have plenty of positive attributes but when weighed with my age, looks, debt, gross income and gardening and housekeeping skills, i guess they thought i better get myself the hell out there and quick. but i was having none of it. i think i felt as if dating someone would make it all permanent and tangible in a way i never wanted it to be. i lingered in that state for most of my time on long island.

i dabbled with a slight crush here and there, but overall i stayed single and untethered. i wanted my next move to be on my terms, a location of my choosing at the time of my choosing, for reasons of reclaiming self-possession and purpose. my love life, i reasoned could wait out this period of my life with me. with both the emotional and forward looking parts of myself left unsatisfied for so many years, i would make moves more quickly towards what i wanted.

it still took four years.

when i was saying goodbye to co-workers and friends during my last weeks at home before moving here, i had a running joke. people would ask, 'you hoping to find love out there in the midwest, with those nice milkfed boys?' or some variation. and my response was always, while living here i was able to say it was the lack of decent eligible men that kept me single, but if i go out there and still can't get a date, then i am going to know it's me.' but i didn't ever consider that it really was me.

but for the first year and a half here my still dateless/boyfriendless existence was starting to prove my hypothesis. it could be me. i would return home or visit friends in other cities and they would ask expectantly if i was seeing anyone new. it got easier to let them all down as time went on, eventually i just learned to cut them off in the introductory paragraph to my life update.

i'm doing good, nothing too exciting happening, jobs good, still not dating anyone, bought a new bookcase, have a standing date with my friends every thursday, been reading at this show every few months or so. moved out on my own, thinking of bringing my cat to live with me here.

and in this way it cut off the possibility of the conversation.

but then a few months ago i realized it really was me. but not for the reasons i thought. all these years i believed that i was a hard sell. that it was going to take a really special someone to get me and love me and take me for who i am. and that may still be true, but the fact was that i wasn't even letting anyone know who that was. i was someone completely different with strangers and acquaintances than i was with closer friends. my representative was awkward and closed off, not open to newness and change, impatient with certain personalities and judgemental of others all in an attempt to keep the unknown at bay, my heart closed and my nights desperately free to ponder why, in fact, no one ever asked me on a date. i was stagnating in my belief that no one was going to love all of me ever again. not really recognizing that it was a self-fulfilling prophecy. and then one day i cut off all my hair and everything changed.

i will admit to you internet ether, what i only told a few close friends at the time. i had kept my hair long for so many years on a promise to myself that i would not cut it short again until i was married. at first, it was just a silly thought, a whim that i was passively satisfying. but it soon began to weigh on me. each year, as inches grew, i felt more and more burdened by its very existence. it was always my most coveted asset, my hair. it was the thing, in my mind, that made me beautiful to others. people throughout my life, would remark on its texture and thickness, its ability to look great with minimal effort and the color oh my god the color! when i was younger i wasn't allowed to cut my hair, my father forbade it, subscribing to the traditional labels of femininity or some shit. by 16 i walked out of my bathroom, down the stairs and into the living room clutching a thick, long, reddish brown ponytail that not five minutes before had been attached to my head. my dad looked horrified, my mother seemed to brace herself on impact. one of them uttered why? i answered something like, i wanted to.

and just as i had felt that day, so too had i eventually reached the end of my proverbial hair entwined rope once again. last may i decided to shed my mane and forgive myself for not sticking with the silent pact i had made. and with the ponytail seemed to go a fair amount of self-censoring.

no longer able to hide my face from anyone, everything i thought or felt was now writ large upon it. i made moves, broke previously erected barricades and started, after several months of mental preparation, going on a series of blind and semi-blind dates. and it was awkward and painful and silent and sometimes not silent. but it was all new and that adrenaline high was the feeling i kept with me while recapping the evening with friends, especially when the date went just so-so. and this leads me to the original idea that started me on this long and winding road.

dating etiquette is a difficult thing to navigate, especially in this day in age when it is so easy to ignore those we deem unpleasant or not second date worthy. i myself fell prey to this after one first date. before we parted from the first, the boy, who my friends and i have dubbed swiss cheese, asked if i would want to do it again. i said sure, because i feel i never make a great first impression. afterwards, i emailed him to say thanks again for a good time (note: not great!) and he responded asking again if i would like to meet up. i replied asking what was he thinking for a second meet up. no response. i was heading out of town for a bit, so i thought maybe he would contact me when i returned, i even emailed him to let him know when i arrived back in chicago. nothing. and although i wasn't wholly devastated from the passive rejection like i would have been months before (this open dating policy has taught me to take things in stride) i was still aggravated by the person's obvious inability to be polite. i wasn't asking for an explanation, just an email back that said hey, i'm no longer interested. especially since he initiated talk of a second date!

in a desire to set an example or change dating karma or just be a decent person, i made a pact with myself that i would never do what swiss cheese did to me. i would be upfront and if at all possible, honest within the parameters of niceness. it is the harder thing to do, but don't we owe it to each other on some sort of basic human level?

so this weekend, after the second of two just so-so dates with this guy who had stated that he wanted to see me yet again, i decided i had to just bite the bullet and make a move to stop another date. i decided to email him and let him know that i thought he was very nice, but there was no chemistry between us. blah blah blah. it was difficult and awkward and it took me a full 20 minutes for wordy me to write two sentences just so, but it had to be done. it was the right thing to do. and i was happier knowing that he wasn't going to wonder forever why i didn't return the voicemail that was sure to come on monday.

just as that mother had made me feel less than for working at the gift shop, and swiss cheese had made me feel less than for whatever reason he gave himself, i never want to make someone feel less than. because sometimes things just work out or don't work out. sometimes life leads you in directions you never thought you would turn and sometimes you cut off all of your hair because you need to be free of something or everything that it stood for and discover that what you thought defined you, only held you back and that people may just like the new you better anyway.