Not Ready, NOT READY!

Friends show their affection in different ways; Hugs, bottles of wine, late night gab sessions, sometimes they even help you pack (ahem)  - but the strangest of all these displays has to be the “Fix-Up.”

I mean, here you have someone telling you that they like you so much that they want to help you find love.  They think so much of you and your happiness, that they become positively giddy at the thought of setting you up with So-and-So (usually a friend of a friend) who they just thought would be “Just PERFECT for you!”

And it’s always with the best of intentions, but really, in all honesty, I’m still not even close to ready for another romantic adventure- even a day-trip!  I got totally TOSSED this last time – and not only was I tossed, I was trampled, squashed, and forgotten about.  Why, oh, why would I get back in the ring now?  It’s still too fresh.  I need more time to forget about the pain before I can even THINK about getting hoodwinked by the fun again.

Perhaps it’s just part of getting older, of having one’s heart broken so many times… of realizing that I keep giving it away to idiots who don’t deserve it (but who I sooo think do at the time)

I don’t want to do any of that again.

I like, SO, don’t want to.

I DON’T WANT TO!!!!

(pant, pant, pant)

So… I appreciate the thought.  I really do.  And if I were you, I’d probably think the same thing -”Oh, Tiffany is such a sweet girl, and she’s got such a big heart…”  But the heart-shop is closed up, and I don’t feel so sweet right now.

Really, you’re doing your “handsome, funny, pretty-good-looking” friend a favor by NOT introducing me right now… I feel like a tornado.  I would probably eat him alive.

* Author admits this attitude may be fleeting and anyone coming across sweet, funny, employed potential who likes cats should probably go ahead and inquire as to present state of Tornado *

Why do we fall for idiots?

After last night’s email you’d think I’d change topic, or be all flowers and fairy dust about “2010- the year Tiffany finds a man”  (yes, I know that sounds ridiculous)  But all my pining got me thinking about the men I have loved and all of them got me thinking “WHY do we fall for idiots?!”

Because I know this isn’t a psychosis belonging solely to me; Men and women alike seem to stumble head first into so many thoughtless versions of the desired sex that I really have to ask if we aren’t perhaps a little too stupid for our own good!  I mean, come ON!  The first thing the men I’ve loved have had in common?  Good souls.  The second?  They’re NOT READY!

Do I (like a hungry puppy) enjoy the chase?  Is there something (sigh) “Romantic” about the notion of a love you have to bleed for?  Have I bought into the Rom-Com scenario of “Girl meets boy, boy screws things up with girl, boy makes Grand Gesture/Grows-the-hell-up, and “Voila,” they Live Happily Ever After”?

Or, have I just got a thing for screwy men?

I don’t know.

I don’t know, but I’d better figure it out before I go handing my heart over to another one!

Maybe I just need to get more strict… more… unattainable.  Like, I need to demand better up-front and in writing.  Yeah!  The next guy who comes along better be bringing more to the table than a sloppy grin and his laundry!

And I’ll try really hard to focus on him, instead of the idiot in the back with all the sexy baggage.

Apparently Tall, Sweet, and SANE is a tall order…

I think that I shall never see

A guy who’s perfect just for me.

A man who’s bright and doesn’t bore me,

Who has the good taste to adore me.

One who’ll make my insides tingle

who is (dare i hope it!) single.

And who, if our lips should lock,

Can send my hormones into shock!

A man who’s passion doesn’t wane

When he finds out I’ve got a brain.

Yet one who’ll flatter, charm and flirt

(a lot of money couldn’t hurt.)

So if you see my Mr. Right,

Feel free to call me day or night

And if he doesn’t come along

I’ll consider Mr. Wrong

(From a postcard I used to have hanging on my fridge- no idea who wrote it, but I feel her pain.)

And then… and then…

… it happens.

I wake to find the little pain in my chest has dissipated into something… manageable – resurfaceable if I let it go too long untended – but manageable nonetheless.

And I start to breath.

Because I’m not dead, this heart not done for… just bruised.  Bruised good.  But still beating.

And his name doesn’t sting, his voice is long gone, and his smell… nearly forgotten (I think.)

All of it carrying a sadness, a weight that bends… but doesn’t quite cut (anymore) and I think, maybe…. maybe I will be able to try again.

Maybe.

Then a shiver, a shiver of “Not Yet” creeps up, slow at first then rushing at lightening speed… up, up, up into my heart and mind, sent directly from my soul “NOT YET!”

(swallow)

An apology.

An apology for embracing the freedom that my almost-forgotten grief left in its place as it stepped out for a moment.

The sadness is still here… but in a thinner form.

And my trusting heart, a heart who threw itself open for this man, still beats, still breaths… but it does not trust.  It does not trust in its own ability to love- for it was so wrong, so wholly incorrect in its estimations, that it prefers to heal in solitude.  And to consider solitude.

To meditate on one-ness.

Even though it yearns to be two.

So I breath.

And I send my heart lullabies.

Because sooner or later someone else with loving eyes is going to deliver a host of butterflies to this body and I will undoubtedly begin to test the scar tissue once again…

… but no, my dear soul, not yet.

Land of the Sticky and its Hungry, Hungry, Hippos

D.C. is a hot sticky mess.  It’s monuments offer thrills aplenty, but the air outside wraps its humid tendrils around you with relish, sucking the exuberance from your steps like a sponge.  The sun burns hotter- as if magnified by each shimmering water molecule suspended above – driving the moisture from your brow as though it were of little consequence… leaving you parched with every step even though you’re already practically swimming.

And I’ve apparently arrived during a dry spell!

But I’ve got to say, once that sun goes down and the sky throws up it’s pink and orange curtains and the cool night air kisses you goodnight… it’s kind of lovely.  As long as you’re in the right neighborhood.

And far away from the hippos.

You see, the men here are shopping – and they don’t mind letting you know.

My friend took me to a D.C. bar last night to celebrate her and her boyfriend’s birthdays- not only do they adore and totally compliment one another but they share the same date of birth! – so what could be more fun then to tip a glass to their mutual happiness?  It was a cool place- very low key and fun – but the men… oh, the men!

You know those post-apocolyptic movies where the men are nearly gone wild with hunger and dirt and women are scarce… and then inevitably some half starved female stumbles into their midst and, like, the world ends again?  Because they all go INSANE?  Well, now I know what that woman feels like… she feels like committing harikari rather than have one more stranger place his hand on her shoulder, knee, or hand as he apes for her attention!

Perhaps I’ve been in LA for too long, where men are so inundated with lovely ladies that their favorite come-on is the “I’ll ignore her so hard, she’ll have to come over and take her clothes off.” routine.  But I’ve never seen so many men so obvious in their attentions and so… persistent.  And those who know me know that I am NOT a fan of fast-track-familiarity… I, in fact, loathe it.  But here were several immediately friendly guys, and I kind of felt like bait trapped in a pond full of hungry guppies.  I found myself in awe at their bold-as-hell manuevers!

In awe, but not in-spired.

So I make it back to my friend’s place and I tuck myself into bed, relieved to be alone after such a crazy night, and although it was a little weird and ultimately too much for my tastes, I had to admit that the singles scene in D.C. seemed a lot more direct and in favor of the women… so much so that I couldn’t help but say- All you single ladies out here, if you don’t mind mosquitos and extreme humidity, the men here?  They are a bitin’!

A tidy poem

There is a sculpture here,

moves in the wind

Tis made of metal and heart

Men are of such stuff

Strong, but unable to bend to pick up the pieces

And when their hears break

you cannot hear it scream

for it is tucked away

so very far inside

Broken behind steel and concrete

I found this poem tucked away in all the rubble residing beneath my bed.  It’s dated 2001.  I don’t know who I was thinking of when I wrote this, for most of my poetry is meant as salve to my emotional bruises, but it caught my eye and was thus spared banishment to the circular file.  In fact, it stayed with me most of the day as I pondered it’s meaning – what it might have meant to me then and what it means to me now.  For I’ve known many a man that has seemed to me an example of this phenomenon of stoicism… Seemingly fine on the outside, but their once broken heart sent away due to its painful past – put in a box on a shelf far, far away from the light of day.

It’s heart breaking really.  And I no longer feel like the poem should reference men alone.

I’ve been in the depths of heartbreak more than I’d like to have imagined I would ever be – and there is a little blind hope left in this heart of mine.  Hope that I will find someone who isn’t afraid of love – someone who is oh-so happy to partner up with me… But as I get older, that hope has lost a lot of its luster, and when it pops up it’s generally met with a fair share of skepticism, so that I feel that I am becoming more like the steel statue I observed all those years ago.

In fact, sometimesI feel as though my heart itself is steeling up… calcifying in this mortal shell, a testament of surrender…

Love, it seems, visits not either sex enough to make worth its pain.

Good Vibrations

You’ve heard it before – “If she can find someone, anybody can!” – an oft lobbed remark made when someone one considers un-dateable (or logging too many problems) gets herself partnered up.  But I am here to challenge that thought as vastly flawed.

If you were to liken people’s energy to vibrations, you would see that many of the middle-grounders (or for the sake of this conversation “Regular” people) occupy the same frequencies… a virtual hum of personalities, each blending in with those around him/her.  Those individuals that the general population would consider “Odd” hum at a different frequency – their quirks so prominent that it affects their whole being – Thus these vibrational “Oddities” would have a much easier time hearing one another over the din of the “Regular.”

So, you see, a mutual pairing of the “Unexpected” is not cause for celebration amongst the masses, for it foretells no such similar luck.  Rather, it speaks of one of the perks of operating outside the bubble (so to speak) – a just reward for an otherwise unfair suffering of judgement from the lonely class.

Love or not?

I was having a conversation a few days ago with a dear friend when I shocked both of us by uttering this sentence “I don’t really believe in Love anymore.”  She looked at me askance, “But… you’re an artist!” and I thought to myself, well, maybe that’s why.  Living in a world where you are surrounded by people swayed primarily by their own fickle hearts… well, being an artist may be a recipe for romance for some, but from these wizened eyes it’s apparently become a party to pessimism.

It seems that everywhere I look there are “Happily Ever After” endings penciled into the margins – but not a whole lot of them walking around on the streets.  I’m thirty years old and I haven’t had a whole lot of luck with it myself.  It seems everytime I fall in love, I end up falling on my face.  Sooner or later, you’ve got to stop trusting the romance genie, right?

But what does it mean, to have lost faith in love…  I mean, I know it can work.  I know that there are people out there very well suited to one another and partnered up in opposition to the forces that would tear them apart.  I know that many, many people find happiness in their match – I just don’t believe that it’s destined, or gauranteed, or that Love necessarily “Comes along at the right time.”  Rather, it seems to me that the whole thing is really just a crap shoot, and you either get lucky in love or you don’t.

There isn’t any grand “Counter of Hearts” out there portioning love and heartache… there no such cosmic calculator waiting for you to hit “The right place” in your life for a mate…  and if there ever was a Cupid , he gave up a long time ago trying to help us flawed and ego-ridden humans make sense of one another.

But maybe that’s the heart of this whole thing… not that I’ve lost faith in Love, but in our ability to manage it.  For it seems that more than ever we are making a mess of love…  That it’s turned into some sort of soupy disaster, packaged, stamped and nuked in our microwave worlds.

Perhaps I’m not giving up on the gift, but in our ability to deliver it without tearing the wrapping paper, dropping it down the stairs and kicking it at our “beloved’s” nose.

Hmmm.

Maybe it’s not Love who’s to blame, but us who have disappointed Love.

Meaning what exactly?

Suddenly it hits me, like truck meeting insect on the interstate.  The intersection of what was thought and what really is, colliding with catastrophic force.  It’s knocked me up and to the ground.  I am literally sitting amongst the funk and fur trapped inside my carpet.  Mind realing from the revelation, backpedalling its way through the Why’s and the How’s, to the That’s where this began. This thing pressed firmly against my throat is fear and the thing pressing it there is my own godamned hand.

Witty phrases and collected quotes are batting against my skull like a flock of angry birds, their wings silently bleeding against my tightly closed eyes.  Repeating the beat, mercilessly in refrain-  The thing we are most afraid to do is generally the right thing to be doing.

I’ve been thinking it was left.

Smashed now, between the weight of what is realized and the unflinching stone-cold stench of the truth against my cheek, I bite down harder on the thing I must throw out.

I do not want it to be true, this epiphany of epic scale, this avalanche of thought collapsing around, over, inside of me…  But it will not let me move, shift, reshape, or hide.  Forced to stare into the pickle I now inhabit, I look around and it is ugly.

I’ve been assigning meaning to this thing… assigning it not from observation, but from what I wanted to see… from my own need.

And like the blind seeing sun for the first time, this lightening bolt has seared its image onto my very lids.  My eyes burn with it.  I cannot sleep, but it is there.

Floating in all it’s emptiness… a lie.  A malfeasance of interpretation.

Once again, I have guessed incorrectly.

Once again I hit the floor.

This is a fictionalized bit of stuff, I’m fine, don’t be worrying

A Tricky Orbit

Falling.

I’m.  Falling.  

Holding out my hands to grab… something… anything to help break the fall- 

But there’s nothing to catch hold of.  And so I tumble.  Knowing better, knowing that it can end in only a splatter, but tumbling nonetheless.  Muttering, yelling, screaming at myself YOU’VEDONETHISBEFORE!  but not being able to stop.

And the gentle smiling monster staring back at me is blissfully unaware of my internal fight.  Completely blind to the war raging inside me.  I want to run away, I want to let go of hope, I want it all to start making sense, and to stopStopSTOP fretting over this thing I cannot change.

But then he touches my arm, a thousand little explosions igniting at my elbow, traveling at speeds Einstein would marvel over, on their way to my heart, short-circuiting the brain and all its protests… And the lights come on, the fall eases into a float, and I look up at that which has caught me and it is him.  

And for the moment knowing, or not knowing, seems irrelevant.  

So I do nothing but try not to ruin this moment, this peace.  I breathe it in, I laugh, I take comfort in the company out here in my orbit.  And I try not to think of the screaming absence he will leave when he goes back to his planet and I mine.

Love has once again shown me why I keep coming back for more.  And in the colder hours it will once again show me why I despise it so.

And he will never know what he does, or doesn’t do, because to speak of it would bring it to the party, and the blues are never a welcome guest.