I started thinking about this post a few days ago, but like many things, the events within haven't turned out quite the way I thought they would. The fact that I'm surprised by this makes me think I'm not quite as cynical as I imagine myself to be. I'm not sure if that's a good or bad thing, so I suppose it's neither.
A few weeks ago I found a lump in a place where it hadn't existed previously, where it shouldn't exist at all. One of the advantages of being an employee at BSMC (Big Scary Medical Center), I thought, would be that I should be able to have this looked into efficiently, preferably before I lost any sleep. Not so; the soonest the radiology department would accommodate me was July 31st. They were not impressed by the fact that I was an employee in need. But St. John's in Santa Monica was much more helpful and said they could see me in two weeks; time enough to fret, but infinitely better than two-plus months. So I waited. I didn't tell anybody for 4 or 5 days. Then I cracked and told my sister Donna, who did the proper big sister thing and told me it was probably nothing, lamenting that she would be in New York on business and couldn't come to my appointment with me (this isn't lip service; she actually would have come along, being that kind of a sister). And then I waited some more.
Roughly 36 hours before the appointment, I was over at the Writer's apartment. The Writer is a man I've been seeing for over 5 months. I've been on dates since the ex and I separated, but he's the first guy I've dated repeatedly. It's a strange thing; on paper, this relationship doesn't make much sense. In many ways, he's not my type, not who you think I'd be looking for. I've said a number of times that I know he's not the next Mr., but there's something I can't explain that makes me hope it's his name I see when I have a text message on my phone. I don't know how to define this relationship. Uncertainty makes me anxious and I feel better when I can slap a label on something, although in the case of my marriage, the label was frequently inaccurate.
But the Writer can be very perceptive about what I'm feeling when the mood strikes him. On our first date (or what I think of as date 0.5, since it was just a hour's conversation over coffee), he had me talking about myself for probably 80% of the time, atypical to say the least. And this wasn't chitchat about what movies I'd seen recently; it was about my family, my upbringing, what I want from life, things that are important to me and not revealed easily. I let my guard down in front of relatively few people, and the fact that I'm starting to do so with him is somewhat unnerving.
So on Monday night I told him about the appointment, and he offered (twice) to come with me. I never expected that he would do so, and although I was tempted by his offer, I turned him down with the excuse that I was going straight to work afterwards. But really I just didn't want to deal with the fact that I was scared that I might need him there with me if things went badly.
Wednesday morning, I woke up at 4:30 after a poor excuse for a night's sleep. My appointment wasn't for another 4 hours, and I'm not one to bounce out of bed even if I have something to look forward to, so I just lay there and fretted. At 4:45 my cell phone beeped - an incoming text. The Writer sent a message saying to call whenever I wanted. This isn't something we do, 4 am phone calls. My friend Angie has a man in her life who regularly calls in the middle of the night, but my general policy is that if my phone rings after hours, there had better be someone dead on the other end of the line. I'm kind of cranky when I'm woken up.
But I called, and we talked, and he told me that things would be okay and that he wanted to hear from me as soon as the tests were finished. I didn't manage to get back to sleep after that, but I was a little happier when I did finally haul myself out of bed. And, some hours later, I called him back to give him the good news that the lump turned out to be nothing. He sounded even happier than I felt.
Last night he came over. Me being me, I had been hyperanalyzing recent events in the hope of figuring out what it all meant, what we are or what we're doing. I feel like I should just be happy with what's in front of me without deconstructing it all in search of some bigger meaning, but I'm not. So I asked him what he thought was going on, if we were still in the 'dating other people' stage or not. I thought his recent behavior hinted at a turn towards the 'not' but I was wrong. He didn't seem perturbed by the question, but in essence, he said that while he hadn't been doing much dating of other people, he wasn't ready to not do so. He asked what my view of it was, and I told him that while I had been dating other people, I found I was losing interest in doing so. Mercifully, the subject was soon changed, and shortly thereafter he went home, and I found myself lying awake for the second time this week.
There are many reasons why I shouldn't want anything serious. I'm still waiting for my godforsaken divorce to be final (the ex is a bit slow with the paperwork). I'm hoping to go back to school and possibly move in the next year. But most importantly, right now I'm less than certain about my judgement regarding relationships. Last year, once the initial shock of my separation had passed, I began to realize how much faith I had put into my marriage - the concept of marriage itself and what I thought it meant in terms of commitment and the ability to work through issues - while failing to recognize the very real problems developing between the two of us. In hindsight it's easy to look back and see missed signs and opportunities for change, but most of you who have been there will probably agree that in the midst of it all, there are times when very little is clear cut, and you have to do the best you can with the information you have at the time. In worrying over my current situation, I'm trying to project myself to a place where things are clear and certain and logical, even though my experience tells me that such a place is little more than a mirage.
Today I am not calling, not texting, trying very hard not to become one of those girls pressuring the guy for commitment, all the while wishing for the time when the state of my union is a given, and I can focus my energies on more important things again. I've been reading books about Buddhism lately, and one of the truths of Buddhism is that suffering is caused by our desire for things to be different from how they actually are. While that makes sense to me, at times like this it kind of makes me want to smack Buddha across his fat little face. I'm hoping this will be resolved in a later chapter.
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