Design Crush featured him today…and I fully agree…LOVE.

I even bought LB one for our anniversary

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M-6 at 131 Interchange at 4:00pm. Black VW – m4w

I gave you a hand gesture. Your passenger gave me one also.
I would like to meet either or both of you sometime.
Tell me what the gestures were and let’s see where it goes.

Dear CL Missed Connections,

Thank you for bringing little gems like these to brighten up my work day.

Love,

VV

I’ve been dreading trying to conquer this post.  Probably, due in part, to the simple fact that I don’t have it all neatly figured out and compartmentalized yet…and will have to admit to myself that I probably never will.

So, the Ex.  Maybe I should begin with how we met.  I was a 22 year old college student who was bored.  Most of my friends had gone home, abroad, or were interning for the summer, while I was stuck with the drudgery of a retail job and trying to brave wearing shorts.  (I rarely had prior to this summer.  Childhood rules and all that jazz.)

I had spent most of my life being painfully shy around members of the opposite sex.  Partially due to me just being me and partially due to dating rules imposed on me by parents and church.  (Basically, no dating/male interaction outside of school or adult supervised functions until the age of 18.)

So here I was, 22.5 years old and I had never been kissed.  Not even a peck.  Not even a giggly 5 year old, playground moment to be claimed.

I was an AIM junkie.  I could be as witty, brave, etc. as I wanted to.  AOL was my social outlet, as I would often find myself quietly huddled in a corner or madly dashing about playing mousy hostess in any “real life” setting.  True to my English Major focus, I had a quote from John Donne‘s “Break of Day” in my personal profile.  One night, as yet another boring evening found me sprawled at my desk, an IM popped up from a boy I didn’t know.  Wonder of wonders, it wasn’t a salacious message, but rather a remark regarding Mr. Donne himself.  I was enthralled quickly.

We spent the next 8 days talking until our phones died, staying up into the wee hours of the morning with the glare of blue screens blinding our eyes, and shirking responsibilities so we could dig out a few more photos to exchange.  He lived roughly 1.5 hours from me and I was unwilling to drive the entire way to meet him.  (I may have been enthralled, but I wasn’t completely stupid.)

So, one blindingly hot summer day we met halfway for breakfast.  We spent 8 hours together that day, laughing at the way I cut my french toast, wandering through the zoo, me brazenly grabbing his hand, and me falling asleep in his car just moments before my dash back home for work.  (I was going on just a few hours of sleep.  Retail inventory is hell.)

We both dove in head first.  In less than a month he was proclaiming his love, and I was handing over my golden kiss.  It was blissful for about 2.8 months and then real topics began.  I remember numerous hours spent talking at the park.  Looking back, oh the things I would have told that weeping girl, but then again, all experiences influence who you become…and I kind of like me

So, slowly, piece, by piece, I decided it was more important to give up bits of me rather than lose him.  I don’t think this is something that he consciously asked for, or maliciously plotted.  I think it was just the natural course of a strong willed boy/man and a shy girl who grew up in a very male dominated world.

Creepingly, blindingly, frustratingly, years passed.  I wanted to get married.  It was the next logical step, I still wasn’t considering a life without him as an option, and I’m far enough from it now to admit that I felt trapped.  I had so enmeshed my life into his that I didn’t have any activities or friends that were separate.  So, on the 5 year and 1 month anniversary of our first, zoo date, we got married.

Oh, the wiser girl/woman that I am now looks back and is shocked by things that became okay.

Two years in he told me that I was not “the One”, but that he didn’t want to lose me.  I wept. I experienced vertigo for the first time.  I stayed.  (This happened two more times.)

I yearned, pled, demanded, and cajoled for attention, for affection.  He was dismissive.  Told me that I asked for too much.  (I asked for cards and an occasional date night out.)

I handed over 80% of my paycheck for “joint” bills.  He owned a house.  I was not on the deed.  He drove a $20,000 car.  I had a ’97, mercury mystique, on it’s last leg.  He was practically debt free.  I struggled with student loans.  He got a credit card in my name, remortgaged the house, and changed jobs, all without talking to me.

I asked that he call me in the morning, just to say hello.  (I usually got up hours before him.)  He said he wasn’t a morning person.  I found out later he called his bff every morning on his drive to work.  The chatted an average of 15 to 20 minutes at the beginning of each day.

He didn’t drink at all and judged me for doing so.  I was once 2 martinis in on a quiet night at home, at the age of 27, and was fixing 1/2 martini more to use up the last of the mix and he commented “haven’t you had enough”.  Then the lecture of me becoming a “lush” was launched.  (I typically only drank on weekends and was rarely more than delightfully buzzed.)

One month after getting married he asked me if I could pretend to divorce him every once in a while so he could get the panicked rush of love.  I was hurt and cried.  He claimed it was a “joke” and I needed to “lighten up”.

Two months after getting married, on our way back from a week long honeymoon, I bawled, letting my fears tumble out that “something wasn’t right”, that I felt alone, that we weren’t “connecting”.  His response was the equivilant to a pat on the knee followed by a hope that I felt better now that I had “gotten that out”.

This is not to say that I was without blame.  About a year into our relationship I started an emotional, online affair with someone shortly before breaking up with The Ex.  It lasted a week.  The break up, not the online fling.  That was much shorter lived.

About 3 years into our relationship I convinced him to allow me to kiss someone else.  At the age of 25 I had never kissed anyone else and just wanted to see what it was like.  Neither of us realized the impact this would have on our relationship.

I gave up parts of me, which was unfair to him.  I became a quiet, crackled shell of the girl he had met.  The vivacious spark died.  A weepy, needful girl took it’s place.

Marriage seemed like a noose that would only continue to tighten with each passing year.  Panic attacks set in.  A chasm began to widen.  A silence began to deafen.

The end of the Ex and I was impending.  I didn’t know what to do.  I tried desperate, last ditch efforts.  He attemted to go to church with me.  (One of our biggest differences.)  And afterwards, showed a lack of understanding, and then verbally berated Christians and Christianity.

The times that the “old me” would creep out and I would joke around and giggle wildly were rare.  They had started their creep towards extinction about our 2nd year.  As giggles would subside, and the unfamiliar delightedness glowed, sadness would come crashing in as I relized what an unfamiliar feeling this was.

I put on a happy face and ignored that they only time we spent together was to stare at the same TV set.  I became a whirlwind of activity, refusing to pause and look in a mirror, lest the facade start to crack and crumble.

But of course it did.  That Night was on it’s way.  I didn’t exect it.  I didn’t look for it.  I didn’t welcome it.  And yet, there it was, unknowingly in my future.  Ready to shake up my world and change everything.

“Love is a temporary madness. It erupts like an earthquake and then subsides. And when it subsides you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have become so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion. That is just being “in love” which any of us can convince ourselves we are.

Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident. Your mother and I had it, we had roots that grew towards each other underground, and when all the pretty blossom had fallen from our branches we found that we were one tree and not two.
- Captain Corelli’s Mandolin. “Love is the beauty of the soul.” –St. Augustine

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