affairs of the heart.

It's hard to be the Cool Girl, to pretend indifference. It's hard for me, anyway. I don't hide my emotions with even a modicum of grace, hard though I may try. Part of the problem is that I have too many feelings to hide. I wear my heart on my sleeve. Sometimes, really, I feel like my heart's wearing me. Which is good, I think. Hard, but good. More and more I'm realizing that I'd rather teeter on that heartbreaking edge, so full of love and nerves that I'm sure to fall right over, chest first. I'd rather feel too much than too little.

And that, in a nutshell, is why I am absolutely horrible at dating. I have no poker face, and I am an emotional fire cracker, and I REALLY hate it when people don't intuit all that super quickly. It never ends well.

When I started dating, I was a WHOLE lot worse. I gave everyone the benefit of the doubt. I was coming off a five year relationship that had ended badly, and naively hoped that the next dude I met would be the dude I would marry. I didn’t have time or energy for any other outcome. This could be--no, WILL be--the one, I'd always say to myself, though I never really meant it. But it's nice to hold out hope. I'd hold out hope, and I'd let people get away with a lot. Oh, you're in a 12 step program? That's okay, I am really happy that you're on the path to recovery. An ex accused you of date rape? Well, acknowledgement is the first step toward atonement. Sorry you forgot your wallet, no no, I've got this one. You're falling in love with me and telling me so on the third date? Great! Yeah, maybe we SHOULD move in together! In those days it was a very short path between the first date and my best friend coming over to help me change my locks. And yet, I pressed onward. Over the years I learned to steel myself against the inevitable insanity of riding in cars with boys, but it was all purely superficial. I could only hide my heart so much, and nine times out of ten I'd end up betraying my Cool Girl exterior, letting my utter excitement or complete disappointment shine through.

And here's the problem with that: in dating, it always seems like you end up feeling the exact opposite of how you ought to, in any given situation. It is a truth universally acknowledged that a man you really really like on the first date would probably prefer to be friends ("You're such a great girl, though.") and a man with whom you shared absolutely no chemistry would like to marry you ("I can't stop thinking about you, here is a terrible poem."). Affairs of the heart exist in a delicate balance, and the scales are perpetually tipped in the wrong direction. This is a really hard thing. It makes you feel like you don't really know what you're looking for in the first place. It makes you feel untethered and uncertain. And when the good things do come along, it makes you wonder if you can really trust that they are the good things. You start feeling like you need to play a version of yourself rather than trust your own instincts, like you need to protect yourself. And it is fucking exhausting.

I don't really have a great piece of advice to tie this one up. I'm pretty sure I'm going to be working on figuring it out for the rest of my life. But recently I was on retreat with my first teacher, and she told me something that amounts to this: if you feel firm in your own foundation, rooted down somehow, you'll be grounded enough to let things into and out of your heart. You'll be secure enough to open up. You'll know what's right. I really liked that. I'm not there yet, but I hope I will be someday.

So yeah, I still give everyone the benefit of the doubt. I'm a little more careful now, but I'm also a little more certain of who I am and what I need. As I get older, I get more and more comfortable with the fact that I might not get everything I need from one person. And yet, I foolishly still believe in soul mates. Granted, I'm pretty sure I'm never going to meet my own, but I bet he's out there, trimming his beard and thinking about writing a letter to the editor about community gardening, considering which version of Bob Dylan's Tonight I'll Be Staying Here With You he likes best (It would be great if he was into the one from the Rolling Thunder Revue recording, but I'm not picky, I'm really not). Knowing my track record, he's already married to someone else. Maybe I'll catch him on his second pass. Till then, I'll keep on looking. I'll let more people in. I'll take calls from boys I've never met, boys who live far away and yet seem to know me better than I know myself. I'll let the ones I have met drive me home and keep me warm. I'll keep promises and accept them from others too. I'll keep on looking. Something's out there for me, and I might not know exactly what it's supposed to look like, but damned if I'm not going to seek it out.


(Footnote: It's wicked hard to find ANY original version of Tonight I'll Be Staying Here with You on the internet, so here's a worthy substitute. Really, as long as he's into Nashville Skyline, he can stay on my soulmate roster.)