2006-02-28
Jumping In
I was sort of seeing this guy.
And I realized that I really wanted to know more about him, for a lot of private reasons. But there seems to be a lack of launchitude right now and it might not be able to be attributed to my being a totally unworthy and aweful person, which is generally how the lowest self-esteemed of us think.
I�m really not in that category all the time anymore and from a much more accurate angle, I realized that my lack of hesitancy to get to know someone to whom I am attracted is not a character flaw at all but just part of who I am.
And I�m hardly alone.
I realized that in my family, most of the cousins have been accused by one asshat or another of jumping in and getting really serious, really fast.
I disagree that there is any jumping in and I disagree that it should be called a bad thing. Jumping in the pool doesn�t mean we�re going to take a swim. I might hop in and climb right back out, or hop in and kind of hang half-in and half-out down in the shallow end.
But I know that when my skin starts to wrinkle and get raisoney, it�s time to get out.
You can�t argue with how many times I�ve gotten out of a lukewarm pool, now can you?
We are people who have the grace to trust ourselves to jump in head-first and openly so that we can experience a relationship with someone as fully as it should be experienced.
Age has refined this characteristic in me - and I think it's beginning to refine in my younger cousins.
What some accuse as "jumping in", I assume is "trying on".
There's not one, single delusion that magically I will meet Prince Charming and life will be perfect, with perfect curly-headed babies and a perfect ranch house and a perfect vacation every perfect summer.
While Prince Charming isn�t on my life�s guest list, I meet a thousand Prince Pretty Cools.
I give each one the focused fitting that he deserves.
Trying him on in no way means I plan to purchase Prince Pretty Cool.
�In love you are a strange character,� was said to me by a darling and well-meaning friend.
�Am I?�
I thought about it.
I guess to a lot of people, I am a strange character in love. But there are Others like me.
Other people who are hugely wonderful women, and men, that are not capable of shopping for love according to the economics that more "capable" people use to find and buy what they want in a husband.
I don�t understand the rules (or The Rules).
I don�t get why it�s not okay to flow with someone and then change your mind after a bit - why do you have to be reserved and removed and THEN change your mind? This seems totally backwards to me. Shouldn�t you be wide open and back out, rather than closed and creeping, inching in? I want the big picture BEFORE I put any of my heart in it.
It�s backwards, I tell you!
I can�t make sense of why people assume they know of whence they speak, without talking to you about it first. Because I completely do not understand this, I often get accused of being manipulative when I genuinely need you to explain what you mean so I can understand where you are coming from.
I�m hardly manipulative because I want to understand what you mean when you say that to me.
When I want something, I don�t hesitate to ask for it � check on that with my mother, or any other person who has money or presents that he or she might give me.
When I want to talk to you about something that I don't like about you, I do so right to your face � ask my best friend. I�ve referenced the number of times she�s called me a See You Next Tuesday over the years, but did I mention my own colorful use of derogatory and profane name-calling toward her?
Only recently have I been weirdly passive aggressive and only at work.
At home, I�ll cluelessly knock on your door to tell you that I want a kiss or to tell you to fist off, depending on the day.
And a lot of my awesome family is the same way.
There are probably psychological or �poisoned water� theories that abound on the subject of how these little people named Wides can be so willing to seemingly throw themselves at the mercy of Potential Love.
The thing is�..
None of us is throwing ourselves anywhere.
It just looks that way to you because it�s not the way that you do things.
It�s perfectly normal to me.
And to a whole bunch of really kick-ass people who I love�. Call us romantics, lunatics, or Desperate Debbies. If you need to call being open to the possibility of timeless love some negative word or phrase, then I don�t really care to have you shopping around me anyway.
The possibility of love is awesome in its own moment, as awesome as the actual love - why do people run games on each other at the time of the possibility?
Why is the possibility so much less-honored than it deserves to be?
Last night, in a conversation with my brilliant cousin, you could have substituted the name she was using for the name I have been using in reference to Prince Pretty Cool of This Week, Located in Arizona.
Her Prince Pretty Cool of this Week, Located in Colorado seemed to assume that her openness should be translated as desperation or as a weird manipulative tactic to get him to put a boulder on her finger.
OH
MY
GAWD.
Have I heard that before!
About a hundred and twenty times� no wait!
One-twenty-two is more like it. My openness and interest in experimenting with you what a relationship would be does not mean that I have a robotic, Bachelorette, J-Lo mind-set that has me picking out china and wondering, �Engraved invitations, or hand-calligraphied? What will make people more jealous of my pretty, pretty princess wedding?�
Being open to you, Prince Pretty Cool, has no further implication or expectation than the idea that I want to know you at an honest and gut-level before I try to trick you into marrying me.
And you know, you should be thankful, all of you who get face-time with a Wides.
Normally, girls try to trick you into marrying them BEFORE they are real with you. They buy on credit � I pay cash.
NEWSFLASH: If I was desperate, or stupid, I would have been married and, given the heavy drinking and questionable employment decisions of my twenties, most likely divorced by now.
Ditto for my cousin and for every other brilliant, unafraid woman out there who likes to take big huge bites of the dessert she orders after eating a plateful of grilled meat and who will drink beer with little to no second thought regarding the empty calories.
It�s so frustrating to live in a world that doesn�t match the one in my head � one where people are not judgmental, where people interact with the basic understanding and belief that everyone has something to offer if she or she catches your eye a little bit.
Sadly, more people approach relationships waiting for the object of their affection to fuck up, rather than approaching relationships excitedly and openly and able to take the fuck-ups in stride.
Everyone�s going do things that you don�t like. Do you sit back and wait for the mistakes; or do you let someone be herself, without putting that critical eye on her, and decide if her mistakes or your peeves are grievous error or if they are merely annoying instances of humanity.
One of my favorite people on EARTH used to crack her toes in the most irritating and inconvenient way but� the humanity of the irritation overrode the absolutely disgusting and grating action itself.
Plus, she stopped doing it when I told her it grossed me out.
Love and relationships are creative, dynamic entities that exist in us, around us, and all by themselves. They're a little like those pulsing swarms of gnats you see sometimes when it�s really humid� like, "Was there something over there?"
Yeah, there was.
Some of us think we see something and turn our heads to see what it was we thought we saw. We might even walk toward the thing, into the gnats and realize that they are fruitflies with those heart-shaped wings and be really happy that our curiosity led us to see something so unique and so special. And others?
Others think they saw something and, not sure what it was, decide it must have been nothing but a shadow.
I wish I could find the people who are not related to me, and who turn their heads to see what was there.
arizonasarah at 11:55 a.m.