I've chosen to update you today on the state of my love life.
This is actually the first time I've ever "directly" addressed it in my blog. Over a decade spent with someone else and not even a single mention of his name on here. I understand now that my choice to keep his anonymity was just my own uncertainty about him realized.
For many of you who have been following me since my Xanga days, you know that I don't get too specific about this topic, but when I'm sad, it shows. And I've been sad for too long.
You have seen me through the ups and downs, been through moments where I've teetered on the edge of heartbreak, been through moments where I ran full speed into it. You've breathed faith into my crumpled heart, inflating it until I thought it would burst with hope.
You've forced me to take a good hard look at myself, readers. And for once, I'm liking what I see.
As I've said before, I look at relationships differently than I did three years ago, a year ago, hell a month ago. It's like I've taken a baseball bat and swung blindly, shattering the perfect snow globe into millions of little pieces, exposing what's really inside; two dimensional people forced to stand in front of a fake background for eternity. Meanwhile trying to weather the storm each time life decides to flip you upside down and shake.
It turns out, you better really like who's in there with you.
And finally, FINALLY I do.
No, not "I do" in that way. Sheesh. Let's not get carried away.
I've just decided not to settle down or for anything less. That I'm not perfect, but I'm not sure that's what I'm looking for anymore. And I think I may have finally found someone that thinks imperfection is as great as I do. Flaws? What flaws? He sees the best in me and because of him when I look in the mirror every morning, I see the best in myself.
So here it is, anonymity, be damned.
His name is Ryan.
He is (was) my next door neighbor.
I met him coming out of my apartment at the same time he was. It was deliciously movie scripted at first. You know, the classic "girl moves into apartment building, finds out she has a cute neighbor, cue random run-ins, flustered conversations, dropping of mail, struggling with keys" scenarios.
The only thing is, I was still set on the storybook ending for my current disaster (to my credit, it didn't feel like a disaster at the time, I was still hopeful) of a relationship with my ex of six years. I mean, I know I've abstractly written about it here, but he was literally MY LIFE. I ate, breathed and lived that guy for like a decade. He was all I knew. I'm still unsure the book is closed on that one, to be completely honest. He was my first love. My big love. The love that stops time while you mourn your break-up for THREE YEARS.
Three and half years I refused to become un-single. I didn't want to find someone else. I wasn't looking. Honestly, my heart was unavailable.
When neighbor and I met, I really, really truly didn't have a care for him. No inkling, no spark, no hunch, feeling, idea, notion.
Of love.
None.
I know that the thought of making it work with the ex consumed me. I know his voice on the other end of the phone, at my front door intercom at 3 a.m. felt like home to me. I know I couldn't see who and what that was turning me into until one day I just did.
Clarity of scope always comes too late.
But at least it came. And once I decided to let him in (figuratively AND literally) neighbor was relentless. He pursued me. It made me uncomfortable. It made me wonder what was wrong with him. I told him time after time that I was a mess, that he didn't want to date me, that I would only break his heart. I tried to convince him that I was crazy. That he would eventually tire of my manipulations and slink away, defeated. I closed doors in his face. Scoffed at his emails. Mocked his pursuit.
And yet he still tried to persuade me to give him a chance.
And then all of the sudden it was New Year's Eve at midnight and there he stood in his tuxedo across the room. Champagne spraying everywhere, people packed wall to wall into our apartments singing Auld Lang Syne. I looked at him, brimming with potential and promise, earnest and expectant, smiling at me as if he already knew I was his.
And that was the moment people. One for the ages. One good enough for all the writers in Hollywood.
That was it.
Now I'm the lucky one. For so many reasons.
He offered me partnership. Finally a street big enough for two people to walk down. For once, I am the girl on top of the pedestal, not the one trying to climb up it. All of those fears and hesitations I attached to relationships were curiously absent with him. I realized what I had been subsisting on for years and years were scraps not good enough for even the strayest of dogs. Words I wrestled with saying to someone else before were at long last easy to say. The poetry in my heart, safe.
And that my friends, is one hell of an update.
