“Have you experienced The Insane Weekend yet?” he asked. He was a person I’d brushed digital shoulders with some time back, nearly two years now, on a social networking (not dating) site. While he lives locally, sort of, we’ve never met. We chat online every now and then. this was one of those now-and-then times. Over the last two years, I’d become his outlet to rant about his latest relationship that didn’t pan out. Since he’s also an FB friend, he knew something of the demise of the romance between Oz and I. He was trying to be helpful and commiserate. Seems he’d just broken up with someone he’d intended to marry. His situation, like my own, began in a gradual downward spiral and ended up plummeting to a disastrous end.
“The Insane Weekend?” I typed back. We’ve also never talked on the phone, only IM’d sporadically.
“Yeah, the weekend where you cry your eyes out, want to die, don’t want the end of the relationship to be reality but it is. I wept for two days and even prayed on my knees to a God I don’t believe in that He would take this reality from me. You act insane and you feel you’re going out of your mind with pain. You know, the insane weekend.”
I sighed. Yeah, I thought. Since 20 of October I’ve had plenty of those.
“Yeah, I’ve had a few of those, I think,” I messaged.
We went on to talk about the breakup and healing process. The pain when you finally realize conclusively that the someone you’d painted into your present and your future is erasing themselves out. Decisively. Finally.
The pain that comes in spite of the fact that you also had very real concerns about the other person and their “stick-ability”, especially after the recent events.
The sense of rejection you feel. The sense of loss. The very real experiences associated with the death of anything, anyone significant, important, cherished.
The fear that comes with envisioning a future by yourself, when it only days ago appeared to be filled with incredibly fulfilling companionship, love and hope.
The realization and the sickening dread that your current loneliness may well be your lot in life.
All these feelings we IM’d about and shared.
He related the pain and confusion of breakup sex and the back and forth situation he was still dealing with.
I was grateful that option is not possible for me, especially not now, since, as suspected The Wizard magically disappeared in a way that is convenient to do when you are 12,000 miles away and can simply unfriend a person, delete a contact and refuse to answer any email. At least I am not in the place where the breakup sex and the subsequent delay of the inevitable is possible. I’m realizing, as I usually do in situations like this, that things are working out, or they eventually will, for the better. In the meantime I’ve learned a lot about myself. Good to know. The Insane Weekends are over. Moving on.
Eventually, the IMing evolved to texting, since I had to get off the computer. Still battling a cold/flu and feeling very weak after my first week back to work I really could only take so much sitting up and squinting at the small computer print.
By this time our conversation had turned from dealing with what we regretted and had lost, to thinking about the present and the future. We both recognize that though our pain now seems to overwhelm us at points, it is not a permanent thing. We began bantering about his upcoming plans to spend some time eating sushi on his brother’s dime the next weekend. The conversation was gradually tapering to an end.
In the midst of this, I received a booty call. Well, it really was a booty text.
“You still up?” the text said.
“Yeah, just heading to bed.” It was almost nine o’clock.
“I’m not one to beat around the bush,” the Booty Texter replied. “Want company?”
I almost laughed out loud.
“I think I just got a booty text”, I texted to my other friend.
“I am in my pj’s, look like bat guano and can’t breathe. I won’t be great company,” I texted Booty Texter. “Wait!” I went on, “Was that a booty call and I just missed it?”
Booty Texter didn’t deny it and he wasn’t giving up that easily. He went on to mention that he was was also in his p.j.’s and could just slip on his slippers and come over. He then mentioned his CPR skills.
Really?! Are you kidding me?! What part of any of this is supposed to make me feel special, desirable and like he’s really into me? (None of it, that’s my point!) This also from a guy in earlier exchanges who said “he really liked me, but didn’t know about getting involved with someone with kids”. Yeah, he should have just said, “Let’s be f*** buddies”, after all, he wasn’t “one to beat around the bush”. As far as Booty Texter is concerned all I can say is, “Good to know his real intentions now rather than later”. He’s clearly into no one but himself. Good to know.
This booty call strategy must work for guys because they try it. Apparently they’re getting rewarded for it enough to make it worth the effort. Seems like a completely degrading place to go for a few seconds of gratification…if you could call it that.
The guy had to be totally desperate to want to get it on with an ill, snot oozing, barely breathing babe like me. Add to this that I’d already
refused to go out with him once that evening when he invited me “over to his place for dinner”. Right. He was hard up enough to take rejection twice from the same person? And don’t even tell me any of that is because “maybe he really likes you”. Excuse me while the tears from my recent breakup turn into gales of hilarious laughter.
This is my future? I wondered. Wasting time with freaks like this to find out what? They hope to get something for nothing?
“Yep” I texted to my first friend. “It’s a booty call and he’s not giving up easily.”
I texted a firm no to Booty Texter and he, like all the others before him, who’ve tried the same futile tact, ended the conversation in a huff but not before he’d put in his last “you’re really missing out” digs.
I’m pretty sure I’ll never hear from him again.
I’m pretty sure I don’t care.
I let my friend know that the booty text episode had ended and shortly after that we concluded our own lighthearted and delightfully non-sexual banter and said our own good-byes, encouraging each other to keep our proverbial relational chins up.
It is times like these, that I am grateful, for the humor of life. It is these times t
hat make me wonder what I was so worried about a future alone for? It is times like these that sitting at home alone by the fire with my one guard dog and two cats is really all I want or need. No demands. No pressure. No pain. Just lots of good old fashioned contentment mixed in with a bit of joy because I know I’m going to be okay, come what may. It is also at these times, interestingly enough, that my own internal focus and vision for my future become much clearer and more defined.
I’m done with The Insane Weekends. I’m done with online dating. I’m actually even feeling like I might be done with being sick. That’s the best part.
I might even be done with “dating” per se for a while. I just am really tired of the games, the dance, the eventual disappointment. Not that there would always be a disappointment, but quite honestly, more and more I’m becoming convinced that if I just go about my life…if there even is someone out there for me…then he’ll appear when the time is right. It will be more authentic and less artificial and staged. I’m not saying I won’t ever date, but I’m not going to worry about filling my weekend social calendar either. It somehow seems to do that anyway without much effort on my part.
In the meantime, I have better things to do with my emotional energy than waste my sorrows on those who clearly are uninterested and unworthy. I have far better things to with my time than sort through Booty Call Boys and Disappearing Acts in the hopes of finding Prince Charming.
After all, in every scenario, Prince Charming went seeking Cinderella, not the other way around.
Cinderella mourned the loss of her shoe but went on dusting in her rags till the dude showed up. And if he hadn’t shown up, something else interesting and magnificent would have happened to Cinderella. I’m certain of it.
I have far more interesting things to do than read fake profiles, go out for coffee only to find it’s a no, go back to the drawing board again, and so on.
Besides, it is far more likely I’m probably going to bump into him at one of those classes I’ll be taking at The Home Depot on how to install sprinkler systems, lay tile, concrete walkways, or prune my trees because that is where I’m going to be spending my time anyway.
The Wild Mind 