Get ex-husband off my back in court - check!
Get Anthony's diagnosis resolved - check!
Rewrite IEP, get correct treatment for him, create longterm ed plan - check!
Resolve the eating disorder - check! (okay, yea, work in progress, but there's been a lot of progress)
Lose weight the RIGHT way - check!
Get schooling figured out - check!
Get citizenship stuff nailed out - check! (I are a canuck! wheee!)
Paint like a goddamn mofo and create a ton of new things - check!
Get SELF to a happy place - check!
I bolded that one, just because it was a friggin huge deal. After intense amounts of therapy and self-exploration, I really feel like I've emerged from the darkness. I feel more whole than I ever have before, and completely on my own. I think the major turning point was there at the beginning of March. I felt...just happy, ya know? Content with my world, content with who I have discovered that I am. When I passed our anniversary on 3/15, instead of flipping out and becoming all sentimental and weepy, I saw it as sort of a blip. I breathed a sigh of relief that day, knowing I was not spending another minute wasting my life with someone who wasn't worth wasting it on.
I won't prattle on and on about the enlightenment, because I think anyone reading this blog over the last few months has seen it, and my friends that surround me apparently have as well. I've become pretty damn happy just being me. I actually really like the solo life I've carved out for kiddo and I.
Of course that's when the universe decided to say "Ok, folks, she gets it! Now let's throw her something new"
In my path of self-exploration and pursuit of self induced happiness, I discovered I really wanted to be more social. I also wanted to know what the whole "dating" thing was actually like, but in a non-threatening manner. Ya know, the whole boy-picks-up-girl, girl-wears-pretty-dress, boy-drives-them-to-restaurant-and-buys-meal, boy-and-girl-make-small-talk...blah blah blah. A date! I didn't really ever experience those, I was curious. So I put up a profile on a social site. I made sure to pretty much hammer in every possible way that I was just seeking friends. I didn't even check off the "short-term-dating" option (wtf is that, anyways?). I think I said about 8 different times in my profile that I only sought new friends. it's still amusing how many people completely fucking ignored those bells and whistles, tho! ugh. Ah well, I did manage to go on a few "dates", and actually, pretty much all of them were lovely. They were exactly what I had hoped to accomplish in my little experiment: a perfectly acceptable example of a "date", but without feelings of intimacy, and resulting in a few new friendships.
Anyways...I was "matched" up with this guy who had a really great profile, but lives in BC. At first I was about to completely dismiss him. I mean, I was looking for social partners here in front of me, not more long distance penpals (I have enough of those from OB). But he sent me a nice, disarmingly quaint message, so I decided I'd add one more person to the "sharona's friends spread across the globe" list. I mean, it's not like having another person to chitchat with was a bad thing, right?
Ahhhh, universe, you delightfully puckish thing...
We chatted a lot. A LOT. Like...every night, for a couple hours. It seemed such an innocent thing, really. As I think we were both chalking this up to a friendship that would doubtfully result in even meeting, we were pretty honest with eachother. It's strange, when you don't think you will ever stand in front of someone, you can become just intensely open with who you are as a person, as there's no fear of judgement. Here's who I am, and if you don't like it, screw you, it's not like I'll ever see you, right? Plus, as I am at this place in my life where I feel like I really, really know myself and am growing at peace with that, I felt it...well, almost necessary to have someone know me for ME. He's in a similar place, mentally, so he was doing the same thing.
Yea...it's the monk guy. Mr. "unique beauty".
As our chatting progressed, I think I went slowly from "hey, what a neat-o person!"...
to "wow, this guy is epicly awesome, I am so glad I get to know him"...
to "huh, ya know, this guy pretty much sums up exactly the type of person I want to find. And he sees me exactly the way I want someone I'm dating to see me"...
to "in fact, if he lived closer, I would probably want to date him"...
....
.......
Canada is only 2 fucking hours away. I really don't even know why he and I saw it as this crazy barrier. I think maybe we created a false barrier there, because we were focused on just enjoying building an honest and open friendship, and enjoyed the mutual lack of expectation. Even when he finally said "Hey, I think I'm going to hop on a bus and come see you", I think we were still firmly in the "No Expectation" zone. It was clear we were really starting to like eachother, but we were both heavily guarded about it. I mean, who's to say we weren't creating some weird fantasy out of what we were getting to know about the other person? Reality rarely ever meets up with the ideal created in a purely online connection (yes, we'd spoken on the phone a few times, too). I was really just intensely pleased with what we had managed to build, tho. I found myself delighting in simply just knowing him. Just having someone like him in my life, in a minimal capacity, well, I was grateful for it. He's an amazing, inspiring individual. In the peaceful gratitude I found in simply just knowing someone like him, I created a piece of art celebrating that. It was a very ornately embroidered tapestry, and was sort of an homage to who I felt he was, or at least, what he represented to me. The frame of it was Jorgumandr, the Norse serpent (the one biting it's own tale). He has a thing for Norse mythology, and actually has this snake tattooed on his arm. I liked the representation of balance, it was very suited to who he is as a person. Inside was the tree of life, Ygdrassil (yes, I did some serious reading up on Norse Mythos...for a boy. God help me.) in quite painstaking detail. The leaves on the damn thing, since I stitched them individually, took four days. On either side of the tree were representations of some of his own beautiful tattoo work, with the words "Harmony" & "Balance". I realized as I had gotten down to adding those last pieces, that it wasn't just a piece he was inspiring...but it would be for him. I've never created art specifically for, and about, one person. Yes, I find the concept of me even doing that incredibly fascinating.
As I said tho, he's not like anyone I've ever met before. Yes, I've known buddhists, but not to the level that he is at. He's inner peace and sanctity I find incredibly inspiring. He is comfortable with himself, and has risen above a lot of the nonsense that surrounds me. No ickiness inside, no ickiness allowed from without. Yes, I celebrate this superficially (yay, no asshole drunken-ness! Yay, he's not going to smoke pot around me and kill me! Yay, I don't have to watch someone do drugs which make me all kinds of uncomfortable!). Everyone knows I'm not even big on drinking, so finding someone who was even more substance free than myself = win. The inner peace, and his quest for it, is nothing short of awe-inspiring. As I mentioned in a previous post, Jesse is just damn awesome in this respect. Who knew monks were so damn sexy?
He's a chef, so we share the insane passion of food. In fact, not a single night goes by that we aren't mutually swooning over some form of culinary fantasy. Talking with him about my love of food actually rekindled a lot of my forgotten passion during this latest round of anorexia. Ah, how his mind works within the culinary creativity is nothing short of breathtaking. When we talked gnocci, I was about a nanosecond away from proposing.
We have a lot of the good stuff in common. He's a meganerd, too, which of course as we all know makes my dorky little heart swoon five ways from sunday.
I mean, he games! A lot! So he doesn't mind that I do!
(in fact, he thinks it's pretty darn awesome!)
He likes the same comics I do! Sandman love!
He appreciates good sci-fi and zombie flicks!
Ah...there's a big word right there that comes with describing the boy...appreciation. He appreciates that I am a dork. He appreciates the fact that I can be pretty darn thoughtful. He appreciates the fact that I have a brain working a million miles an hour (usually about the subject of brains). He appreciates the fact that I am an incredibly devoted mother.
Oh, there's the typical desireable traits, of course...he's incredibly intelligent, articulate, and well read. He's quite witty, and always seems to pry a giggle out of me. I look forward to all of our talks, because I really enjoy his unique take on the world. He also has this inherent kindness, a sweet, gentle nature...it catches me off guard sometimes, because it's so rare. He's respectful, polite, and very very genuine.
I will admit, a few days before he came out, I heard the little click click click of the gears in my head as they flipped over to the next line of thought in the series...
"I want to date him"
Awwwwwwww.....crap.
I made the decision in front of my therapist to ignore those last few clicks and just enjoy the fact that this awesome person that I was stoked to know was coming out for a visit. I mean, this was clearly a rare person in the world, and if he was for real, I was simply blessed in knowing him and sharing some time with him, nothing more, nothing less. Besides, we all know how these things work...very little of the chemistry one thinks exists translates in real life, right?
And, well, I don't want a thing right now. I'm really damn happy just being me all by myself. I like me. She's pretty Fucking cool. And my solo life is pretty fucking cool. Why would we need to fuck with that?
Aaaah, Universe! You Puckish Thing! You awesomely puckish, "gotta prove her wrong" thing!!
Yea, needless to say, the chemistry in real life was BEWM! in every awesomely delicious sense of the word. He actually swept me off my stubborn little feet. Twitterpation x a billion. Seriously, pink hearts falling out of our ears all over the damn place. His romantic nature actually surpasses even my own rosey little heart, how's that?! And everything just felt...natural. Calmly, serenely, natural.
*happy lil sigh*
OK, I'll wrap up this gushfest soon. Does this mean Sharona got boyfriended? No, we're taking things realllllllly slow. Our artful dodging of actual definition has been amusing, actually. We're maintaining exclusivity, as, well, this gal really only operates in monogamy, and thankfully, so does he. We are "exclusively monogamous in an otherwise nonspecified fashion of seeing eachother".
And as I am in a pretty straightforward path right now and was really loath to be veered from it by any fashion of relationship, the distance thing actually works to our advantage. He's on a direct path, too, of personal growth, so he is incredibly understanding to how much I need to put emphasis on my individual life right now. So does he.
So, I get to keep rockin', and doing my own thing.
He gets to keep rockin' in his muted, zen-y fashion, and doing his own thing.
And then we get to be together from time to time, and do...uh...our thing.
Exclusively.
Which is pretty damn awesome.
Did I mention he's crazy hawt? cuz, um...yea...daaaamn. And he thinks I am still a "unique beauty".
D'awwwww.
I'm going to go blush in the corner.
No comments:
Post a Comment