The person you want to be

I stared at the picture yesterday, Eagles Super Bowl parade day, February 8th, 2018. It popped up on Facebook as my memory from two years ago. I can feel my happiness leap off of the computer screen and attack my current state of existence. The day to day seems to pale in comparison. Well, to be honest, I think everyone would think the same thing. It isn’t every day that you meet a man online who is your best friend and your deepest love. It isn’t every day that you move across the country to live close to him. It isn’t every day that your new home team wins the Super Bowl and it isn’t every day that you are taking a picture in the frigid cold on the Ben Franklin Bridge with the man who you believed, without a doubt, to be your happily, ever after.

We all think it and we all want it. This love that we see in the movies. Their eyes meet yours and a million butterflies suddenly appear in your stomach and you are more alive than you have ever been before. I can still create it. When I see a picture of us, or hear a song that he sent me, I can escape back and live in that world for a few brief moments. It isn’t often that I let people in. But I let him in. Completely. I couldn’t help it. Once we started talking, we couldn’t stop. We only existed on our phones. The other life was just what we had to do until we could hear each other’s voices. Then he started saying dangerous words about feelings and I tried to resist, but I couldn’t. All of my safety measures came tumbling down. Before I met him, I was jaded and skeptical. Now, I was open and I loved. Nothing was more amazing.

I didn’t see why it would ever stop. How it could it? Maybe I was just foolish to think that. Maybe I shouldn’t have let myself get into such a vulnerable position. He started to pull away and I was terrified. I was in another state, far from home. Far from anyone that I really knew. I was alone. And then I lost my job. It wasn’t the school’s fault. The budget was approved for me to work only part time for the next year. I couldn’t survive on that, so I needed to find another solution. Fear gripped me day and night. I never knew if I was asleep or awake, the nightmare was all the same. He stopped answering the phone when I called. I could barely get him to respond to a text. I cried, a lot. I was embarrassed to the core. No one wants to ride off into the sunset with a handsome man, just to be found later, lying in the dust by the side of the road, bruised and broken from the fall. 

My life was devastated and I was having to go on interviews trying to sell myself as someone that you would want to hire. I must have put on an Oscar worthy performance, because I did find a job. A pretty great one at that. I also did yoga and I meditated, even though all I wanted to do was stay in bed and cry, I made myself go out to Meetup events. I started a writing group and I opened an account on Bumble. The idea was not to date, but just to start talking to men again. I was pretty much out of practice. I had been working at an Orthodox Jewish school and other than that, I had really only talked to my ex-boyfriend and his brother since the move.

I would meet these men, have coffee or a drink and then never talk to them again. I didn’t want to let anyone in. And then someone happened. Steve. He is a different kind of love story, not the kind that I would have recognized. There were no butterflies, no romantic songs or whispers about feelings, just a gentle ease that makes him very comfortable to be around. With Steve, I have been able to be my true and authentic self, not someone who I hope is attractive to the other person. I don’t feel the need to put on a show or try to hide my flaws. I just am. He has been there for me through some very difficult times, always supporting me and helping me through. He has loved me without ever saying the words, because he knows that it would make me feel uncomfortable. Instead, he just says, “I look forward to you every day.” 

Honestly, I’m not sure how. Steve is the unexpected and it hasn’t been easy to reconcile that with the plans that I believed would happen. I try to push him away, because it isn’t right. In my mind, it isn’t right. I didn’t move here to be with him. I should have left a long time ago. These are what the voices in my head tell me. Because they are afraid. They don’t want to love again. On those days, when they are loud and insistent, I hate my life. I want to go anywhere, far away from here, where I don’t have to be that idiot who moved across the country just to get dumped. It’s painful. It has remained a raw nerve, just sitting there, waiting to get poked.

On other days, I feel great! I live with Steve who supports me in anything that I want to do. My writing group has recently gained some new members and I cleared a blueberry field this last summer, practically all by myself. Yes, I could tell you a thing or two about chainsaws, because I know a thing or two! Looking in from the outside, I have seemingly taken a bad moment in time and made the most of it. I just wish that I could feel that way, every day. That I could regain all of my confidence back. That I could be that person who boldly left her home, drove her car across thousands of miles just to say, “New Jersey, here I am!” That person would never be afraid to love Steve wholeheartedly, because she didn’t see failure as an option. The good news is, I am that person. I just need to be that person.