Free Time

Slowly sipping my moderately warm coffee out of my new favorite coffee cup (a pastel two-toned blue flamed cup with a silver Harley-Davidson insignia and a simple hourglass shape); I wonder what my next move will be. Will it be the mundane of laundry and dishes? Or shall I sit on my porch with my said cup, listening to fall predecessors: masses of chirping crickets calling for a mate? Or how about emailing the five-thousand people I’ve neglected in during the summer’s chaos? For weeks now I’ve longed to forge some free time for myself and now that I have it, I am perplexed as to what to do with it.

Yet, I know what I should not do with it: think on loves disappointments. No, I will not think of the man who I sought for a year and that fell off the face of my world. I won’t fret on the handsome and witty customer I wanted to ask out until I saw him come in for breakfast with his girlfriend. I won’t think on the son my fellow (and more neurotic than I am) supervisor has been pushing for me to date. I don’t want to think about all the men who I’ve promised to call to make plans and haven’t yet.

I should devote my time to being about me and not about me and some one else.

(There’s only one snag in that philosophy. I’m bored with single ‘me’. I know myself incredibly well after an entire year of being utterly out of the dating scene. I’m tired of talking with myself, err, to myself at the end of the day. It’s not that I’m uninteresting, it’s just that I seek feed back and perspective that is not my own. I wish to have that deep, passionate intimacy with some other human that isn’t me. I’d like to dump a lonely night or two out of my week- cheat on myself with someone who enjoys sitting on the porch sipping on some wine (or coffee) being party to an actual interpersonal conversation.)

Much to my dismay, I do go on to ponder the ‘what ifs’ of loves past and presents. I remember commenting to a girl-friend of mine just the other day that there is one man that I would drop almost everything for and receive him back into my life if he should knock on my door tomorrow. Only one man out of dozens; I do not think a connection like that doesn’t come along but once or twice in a life-time. It bothers me that I feel that way. It bothers me that I have kept that little space and hope for him in my being.

I think, as I walk into my dimly lit kitchen, that I’m obsessing about what escaped me. The kind of love that is undyingly passionate yet serene and spiritual, intense yet calm. Love I’ve dreamed about since my child-hood. ‘Stop it’ I say to myself as I pull my half and half from the refrigerator. It’s not worth it to spiral into the series of questions that follows the initial thoughts of him: the 'what happened, what did I do wrong, why didn’t he ever call back'? It’s more than I can bear.

All my adult life, my relationships have failed miserably. Mostly because I didn’t know my worth in my younger twenties and partly because I wanted that love so desperately that I didn’t have patience to wait for the real deal. Those two factors lead to my naiveté and lot of problems thereafter.

After having learned my immense worth as a person and value as a partner and with a new wisdom of the way the world (and I) runs, I found myself with him. Older, attractive, ambitious, educated- on his way to his doctorate- and as passionate as I was, he was my ideal mate. We could talk for hours on any subject and be completely enthralled in our conversation. Or we could say nothing and be entranced by one another’s sheer being.

Ours was an intense affair, bittersweet and long-winded; however, the timing was off. I was still in the midst of pulling myself up from and recovering the devastation of my separation and thrust into utter poverty. Just making headway for me and my son, regaining ground in my work-life, I fought the love I felt for him- it was too much, too soon, too fast. And perhaps he felt the same fear I did. There is much to be said about the security and comfort of routine for two people who have lost both once before in the name of love.

(Ah, but those embraces! The world would melt away, and we into each other making everything seem so incredibly clear and simple. The kind of hug where one is just not enough and you have to force yourself to let go. I suppose I never really did let go.)

At what point it ended is still, to this day unclear. This is what leaves hope and smashes it at the same time. I’m in the dark still trying to find the light switch but my eyes have adjusted to the darkness enough to function in it. To be cliché (and I hate to be cliché), I haven’t had significant closure.

Perhaps it’s easier that way. Maybe I’ve not allowed myself to move on to prevent any future losses. How can I take any future risks or make any future relationship worthy investments when my hands still in a company that hasn’t officially closed its doors?

The coffee cup is empty now. The crickets are playing their symphony so loudly I can hear it behind closed doors. The dishes still wait and the laundry sits in color coordinated piles a glance away from me. Perhaps obsessing over love is necessary evil. My email still waits for replies, but I have dusted my feelings and put them away neatly in my mental filing cabinet. Perhaps I’ll being making calls and arranging dates more now that I’ve had this free time.