In the Waiting Line

The last time I was at my hair salon my colorist, who has never done anything less than magic with my hair and has therefore known me for years, asked me whether I was still seeing the same guy (Summer Boy) as before. I told him we had ended things. Three times, to be exact, with the last one having stuck for close to a month. He asked whether I had any prospects. I said I had been getting to know someone that I thought had potential, but it was really too soon to tell.

He remarked that that was one of the things he loved about me, I always had a backup.

I hadn’t thought about it that way, but it’s true, I usually have someone in the pipeline, in case my current interest doesn’t pan out. I don’t intentionally line up guys, but I do think I hedge some of my disappointments with future prospects. I think everyone does, actually. Isn’t that the meaning of mantras like “you’re better off without him” and “he wasn’t the one for you”? We choose to believe there are other, better men in our futures.

It’s a comforting thought, especially if you believe that you end up with the person you’re meant to. But one could easily argue that keeping a mental waiting line of men prevents one from fully committing to new relationships. Knowing myself as I do, I have a hard time finding fault with this argument.

It may not be something I need to worry about, though, since recently the Universe seems to be clearing me out. The only reaction I had to the brief re-appearances of several old flames via text was to cross them off and delete their numbers. Any hope I had for a Hobbes connection was permanently destroyed when he blew me off and I’ve abandoned my online wanderings, disabling my OKC profile and seriously considering canceling my eHarmony subscription early since I haven’t had any requests for new communication since the Mr. Numbers debacle.

Normally this would freak me out, just one too-soon-to-tell-still-a-big-maybe guy with no backups, but surprisingly I feel just fine. After all, all you do in the waiting line is waste time. Maybe having a safety net was what was holding me back from really taking a risk on love.

I Say a Little Prayer for You

This weekend I did some much needed cleaning and organization around my place. While going through some old cards and letters I ran across this:

My dearest granddaughter,
This thought came to my mind while eating breakfast – Someday he’ll come along the man I love, and he’ll be big and strong, the man I love, someday. I love you, like I love all my grandchildren, so together we will keep praying that the man you love will come along.

My Grams wrote me this letter a few years ago when she was in her late 80s. Her caretaker told me she actually stopped eating breakfast to pen me this note, so concerned was she for my marital status.

When I was in my late 20s, my Grams suddenly became desperately concerned that I would die alone. She didn’t think this about any of her other seven grandchildren, one of which was several years older than I (and therefore the most likely target for spinsterhood), but she did think it was a very serious condition I was suffering from. Unprompted, she would often console me for my single status, reassuring me that he was still out there while singing old English love ballads.

I think regrets are a colossal waste of time, but if I do find a soul mate one day some part of me will regret that I was never able to introduce him to my Grams. She was fortunate to attend two of her grandchildren’s weddings and see three great-grandbabies born before she passed, but I would have liked to have relieved this one of her well-intentioned, albeit way off base worries.

Grams was a stubborn broad, though, so I take comfort in her likely having had something to do with it. Up there in heaven she can probably pick out the exact English gentleman of her choosing.

Thanks, Grams.

I Am Everyone's Fool.

That’s me, dear readers. And I am caught up in a vicious cycle. I am guarded because I have been let down before. Then someone challenges me to open up. I struggle with it, but I give in and put myself out there, because although hesitant, I believe that one of the times that I do I won’t be let down. And then I am let down.

Most of the time I brush off the feelings of disappointment, but every now and then I feel like a real fool. Like when I’m giving someone an umpteenth chance to prove me wrong reject me. Like I am feeling right now.

Despite agreeing to meet up with Hobbes, I only believed we would actually meet up for the briefest of moments after we had outlined the plans. I switched back over pretty quickly when I didn’t hear from him for two days around the time he was traveling out here.

The cancellation came in two parts. The night before he bailed on the “maybe” portion, because he could not say no to (free) dinner with family friends. He thought he’d still be able to meet with me after. I asked him if we should just cancel our plans then, or whether he wanted to keep the suspense going?

I wanted to cancel them myself, you see, but if I waited for him to do it so I could write him off forever with a perfectly clear conscience. I wasn’t surprised by the official cancellation, mid-day the day of our plans, but I was pretty blown away that he didn’t mention anything that sounded even remotely like he was sorry that he wouldn’t be seeing me. Or that he felt bad about doing exactly what I had said he would do.

I guess I had thought that after I had made such a big deal of not wanting to be bailed on that Hobbes wouldn’t have made plans if he didn’t think he could keep them. That if he made them anyway and then had to break them, for whatever reason, that he would have done so with an apology. That he would have felt bad. For me. For my feelings.

All Hobbes wanted to know was whether a rain check was possible. I think no. No rain check. No future plans. No emails, no IMs, no texts. No more going out on a limb.

And no thank you to whatever you, dear readers, might think are words of encouragement on this subject. I'll be walking this one off alone.