pirsquare314

I try and try,
To understand,
The distance in between:
The love I feel,
The things i fear,
I dearly say good dream.
I can finally see it.
Now I have to believe:
All those precious stories.
All the world is made of faith,
And trust,
And pixie dust.
So I’ll try…

Thank you, again, Jonatha Brooke for those inspiring words!  So yea… that was the theme today… I’ll try.  I promised my girlfriends I wouldn’t throw in the towel, so I logged back in to Match today with an open mind and heart.  After all, I had 5 lady bugs visit me last night–the oddest thing, they were all clustered together on one of my kitchen cabinets.  If you’ve ever seen Under the Tuscan Sun, you will understand the significance of the lady bugs.  Lo and behold, I had some emails and winks waiting (ugh… the winking I can do without… I prefer straight up emails… take the time to write me a short note, damnit!) 

And so, the process starts all over again.  I had two nice gentleman out of the bunch stand out from the ‘crowd’.  Let’s call them Match 11 and 12.  Match 11 seems like a nice, down to earth guy.  Divorced for a few years (good sign he’s at least able to make a committment), so hopefully the rebound relationship is long behind him.  He doesn’t seem to have the ‘edge’ that I usually find attractive, but you know… I think I’ve decided to be happy with kind and honest.  Time will tell if he is either of those things… hope *does* spring eternal.  Match 12 has an incredible writing style (that translates to SEXY for me…)  I’m not so hung up on looks, but hell, if you can spell and string words together with punctuation… and… you can make me smile/laugh… I’m there.  He’s got a profile pic of him playing a guitar (at least I hope that was him) which sealed the deal for me.  I winked back… and shortly after got a nice introductory email.  I promptly emailed back and we shall see…

Okay, as promised, we’re going to go back in time to meet Matches 1-9.  Let’s start with Match 1 as Match 11 asked me to share my worst eDating experience to date.  I started off with a bang… Match 1 was my worst date thus far.  So what follows in a excerpt from my email:

Hmm… let’s see… my worst Match date? That would probably be my first online date ever (not a good way to get start). He seemed like a really nice guy… great conversationalist on the phone and in email… funny… seemed interested in what I was saying, etc. But there were some major flaws with the date… firstly, he arrived 30 minutes late (I was heading out when I saw him walking in). He ‘stretched’ the truth about his height (I didn’t care about his height, just that he wasn’t honest about it). He was very obvious about giving me the ‘once over’ when we entered the restaurant… lol I swear; I think he looked disappointed! All that was minor stuff though, compared to the dinner itself.

We went to a lovely Italian restaurant and he ordered a hamburger (that should’ve been my first clue). The conversation was entirely about him… golf, money, golf, work, money, golf and more golf. LOL I don’t play golf (unless it involves a windmill). And while he might’ve initially looked disappointed about my appearance, he spent half the dinner staring at my chest (yes.. no joke) and the other half looking around the restaurant. Not once did he look me in the eye. As if that wasn’t bad enough, while I was eating my gnocchi, we were talking about favorite foods and he told me he loved pizza but didn’t eat it. Dummy over here asks…’why not?’ He explained, in excrutiating detail, how pizza didn’t agree with his digestive track… ugh… I could barely finish my dinner. I’m not sure what happened to him between the phone calls/emails and the date. It was like two different people.
Thankfully there was a very nice couple sitting next to us that was very friendly and got me through the dinner 🙂

And finally… we left the restaurant and he didn’t ask where I was parked or offer to walk me (the parking was across a busy road and a bit far). All that being said he grabbed me while I was saying thank you and tried to plant a big kiss on my lips… I ended up turning my head so he only got the corner of my mouth and my cheek. Now mind you, I’m okay with kissing on the first date… as long as I feel there’s some chemistry there and we’ve already spoken about another date. It just seemed out of left field when he barely engaged with me all evening. So really not a horrific date (I’ve heard some doozies from others), but not great either 🙂

Thankfully… I kept trying after that date…

But I’ll take it from here

I’ll succeed or I will fail, but I will decide

I’ll take it form here

Catch my breath and count to ten

And open my eyes… again.                                                                               

So a dear friend of mine got some funky stones today at a new age shop… beautiful, smooth stones engraved with words.  Such a simple idea, yet we spent hours on the phone discussing the meaning of each word and the connection of each to our own lives.   Some of the words were, knowledge, promise, trust, loyalty, higher power.  Good thinking words.  The stones arrived just in time. 

As I was winding up a rather quiet day, I got a late night phone call from Number 10.  He said I had left my sunglasses in his car last week and wanted to let me know he had found them.  At 12:30 am in the morning?  Why not just send an email, or, call me in the morning.  The conversation was awkward and confusing.  I don’t think he knows what he wants… friendship, relationship… no contact at all?  I tried to be as upbeat and emotionally uninvolved as possible (God only knows just how difficult that was… I prayed he didn’t hear my voice crack at one point).  I stressed that I felt the ball should be in his court because I wanted to give him the space and time to figure it all out.  He initially felt uncomfortable about that, but, reluctantly, agreed in the end. 

So now, while he’s figuring it all out… I’m trying to make sense of something that has no sense.  Last night?  I was convinced we should just go our separate ways.  I pictured myself sitting next to him on the couch, watching a movie, and wishing he would just take me in his arms and kiss me.  Ouch… swallowing emotions like that could give you an ulcer.  I wondered if every time I spoke with him/saw him if  it would be like ripping a scab off a wound?  In the end, I don’t think I need to worry, he seemed non-committal and really not that anxious to make plans. 

So I called my friend at 2 am and we consulted the rocks :).  The stones aren’t supposed to give you answers, they’re supposed to help you work through the questions.  We picked out a bunch, but the one that resonated the clearest with me was… loyalty.  It’s not the loyalty between Number 10 and I, it’s the loyalty to myself.  I want to stay loyal to my desires and wishes.  I want to be loyal to my peace and balance.  And so… in the immortal words of Jonatha Brooke:   I will take it from here and decide.  I’m going to catch my breath, count to ten and open my eyes… again.

I am digging deep, I am digging wide
Looking for clues, in the grand design

Yea… So I’m on a Jonatha Brooke kick… perhaps I’ll work my way through my favorite tunes and link them to my experiences.  So this one is called “Digging” and is pretty appropos for the moment.  I am digging deep and wide… I can see truth.  I think I’ve decided to work backward for the first 20 or so posts and start with my most recent dating experiences, first.  This most recent dating experience has somehow managed to leave me open and feeling exceptionally vulnerable.  Yup… I’m guilty of breaking the first commandment of online dating… letting emotions creep in too quickly.  Ugh…  

So I met Bachelor Number Ten via Match.com.  Younger guy… good looking (to me anyway ) and seemed exceptionally down to earth with a slight edge.  My first impressions were confirmed by our first meeting–a 4 hour lunch.  Lots of great conversation and laughter. A wonderful tight hug at the end of the date (he asked for a second one) and a quick peck on the lips.  We planned on meeting later in the week and again.  The next date was dinner, out to a movie, then back home for another movie.  Throughout the date, he was a total gentleman, and it wasn’t until it was time to go home that we had a kiss, which led to more kisses… which lead to more.  Okay, so I’m figuring there is some chemistry here…. great!  A couple of dates follow with similiar success…. and then suddenly… the pull back.  I can feel it… sense it… even though I tell myself I’m just being overly sensitive and reading way too much into things.  Friends tell me to relax and just enjoy the journey… have fun… let yourself be hopeful and enjoy.  So while I want to do all that, there’s something holding me back… my intuition.  Of course, a few days later, I get “the” email.  I think we’re moving to quickly, there’s someone else I’m interested in too, blah, blah, blah… I’m not ready for an exclusive relationship.  But what I heard and felt (and still feel) is that he wasn’t ready for an exclusive relationship with *me*. 

In this case… I think the digging wide and deep lead to me sharing a bit too much of who I was too soon.  I think there is something to be said for an air of mystery.  Allow the other person to become intrigued with you and want to work a bit at peeling back the layers.  Don’t serve them your soul on a silver platter.  I tend to wear my heart on my sleeve and perhaps my attraction for him was too evident and it scared him off.  Then again, maybe he just really wasn’t attracted to me in the first place (flashes of scars, cellulite and stretch marks blot out my common sense).  In any case, I sent my final email to him tonight (and no, I wasn’t drinking wine… ).  It just felt right to find some closure for myself.  Enough time wasted… yes, even some tears wasted… It’s time to let it go and move on.  I hear some sappy music playing in my head and that poem I had written on my high school math book comes to mind:

If you love something set it free…  If it comes back to you, it’s yours… If it doesn’t come back, it never was yours.  

Obviously overly dramatic, as ‘love’ was certainly not involved… but there was a good amount of “like”.  And the truth is, I’m not waiting for him to come back (well at some point in the near future I won’t be waiting… I’m still checking my phone hourly… UGH)  He says he doesn’t know what the future holds for us, I say I do know, for me at least.  I make choices and take risks that mold my future.  I want to be an active participant–driving my destiny, not a passive observer waiting for life and love to ’happen’ to me.    So perhaps what I found after digging wide and deep is that Number Ten and I have different fundamental beliefs on how to live life.  Yep… I’m going to stick with that because I think it’ll help me forget his sweet smile, great kisses and that adorable birthmark on his left eye lid