Dating

I posted before about the guy who came down in November and gave me the most wonderful day of my fucking life. We went into it just to be casual, just to enjoy each others' company, etc. and I kept myself at arm's length to try and keep it that way, knowing he wanted more (though I didn't realize how much at the start) and that knowing it was never really going to have a chance anyway because of the distance and the life circumstances (while I'm kind of flexible right now, I eventually want to move from WV to TN to be with my parents as they get older. He lives in NYC with a family business and aging parents as well who need his help right now). From the start I new that was basically a hard deal breaker. I didn't really know how I fully felt for him, either, and I didn't want to lead him on and I've been very honest and clear with him about that this whole time. He's acknowledged that and also kind of went it to this expecting to just be a placeholder, but he was okay with that because he just wanted whatever time with me he could get (and yes, he always hoped maybe it would just work out).

Back some weeks ago, there was that big ass snowstorm that was coming through. At the time, he was down in Florida on a rare break from his job to visit his brother for a week and help him work on his house. He was flying back to NYC the same day the blizzard was going to hit, so obviously that flight wasn't happening. I joked that he should just fly up to DC instead and I'll pick him up and he could get snowed in with me instead. I just wish I'd joked it sooner, because fuck, that was a perfect fucking idea. He tried to get a new flight, but by the time we thought about it traffic to the airport there was shit, flights were getting overbooked and cancelled and the one he was able to find a ticket for he couldn't get to the airport in time for. And while this should have just been an "aww bummer" moment, all I could think about was how that was most likely going to be the only realistic opportunity we'd have to spend that long together (he wasn't able to get back into NYC until Thursday, so we would have had Saturday night->Thursday to be together). And it would have been so nice to have nearly a week of somewhat "normal" days: I'd still be going to work, he'd be managing his shop best he could from a distance and otherwise finding something to occupy his time until I was free and then I could make him dinner, and we'd go snuggle on the couch or find some games to play together, and then we'd go to sleep together and wake up together. Not as much rushing trying to fill in every second together for the short time he was usually visiting, just a chance at the closest thing resembling every day life with each other we'd probably ever get. And I didn't realize until then just how fucking much I wanted to have that.

I kept trying to just keep it casual, though. But every visit and every goodbye after keeps getting harder and more painful and I just miss him more and more. This last visit from last week I haven't been able to handle. We had some hard conversations which were necessary and I thought I was going to be okay with them, because I knew from the beginning that this all was kind of doomed. But I'm not okay. He'd been wrestling for a long time not really knowing how I felt about him and I struggled because I wasn't really sure. I wasn't meaning to get into a relationship, I was trying to recover from the divorce and the job loss and everything else, still. But this was a fun, wonderful distraction from that and honestly a bit of a confidence boost and quite a bit of a mood helper.

I tried so hard to just keep it casual for myself and I've completely fucking failed. We talked about how we had both tried to think of or look for realistic paths that we could live closer together so we could at least try a relationship the right way and take it slow, but there really just isn't a way to do that without one or both of us making massive changes and taking huge risks and neither one of us wants the other to do that because honestly, we'd probably just get resentful about it and it would ruin us anyway. And there's also been the concern that, you know, it really hasn't been too long since my divorce and I haven't gotten all that much time to heal and get my shit together and figure out where I want to be and what I want in life and that's a completely valid concern. Shit, he'd even started to look at brokers to sell his place, started looking at places in NJ to move to, so I wouldn't have to be in NY (though NJ is still pretty shit, too, but hey, compromise). But even without getting into the emotional challenges of all that, the numbers don't even add up, either.

My dumb brain just keeps flip-flopping back and forth over and over between the logical, responsible me knowing it's best and healthiest to break this off and my emotional side breaking because I don't want this to end and grasping for any possible way to make this work. If you've read my shit in the marriage thread, you saw how much trouble I had just breaking off from someone who, according to most people in the thread, was a piece of shit that really didn't care about me. How the fuck am I supposed to handle letting go of someone who makes me feel like the most priceless thing in the whole goddamn world? Every time he looks at me, it's like he's in disbelief, like he won the fucking lottery, like he can't imagine what he could have possibly done to deserve being so lucky to be with me. He calls me every morning to wake me up and every morning has been so much brighter and better and easier because of it. I get to look forward to hearing his voice instead of dreading the morning. He gets home and we talk about our day. I can't make him dinner, but I can at least ask what he had. When he's here and he holds me, for the first time in my life it's like all the stress just vanishes and melts away, it feels like I can put the weight down and there's actually someone else there to help pick it up and is actually eager to do it because all he wants is to take care of me and protect me and make my life easier and for me to be happy. And I want him to be happy, too. When he comes home from work, I want to be there to hug him and kiss him and welcome him back and make him dinner and eat with him at the table. I want to make his day better when I send him off to work in the morning with a hug and a smile. I fucking hate my smile, yet he tells me it lights up a room brighter than the fucking sun. But I know if we did have the ability and we moved in together right now, it would still stress me out because I don't trust myself or my feelings and I'd be terrified that I wasn't sure if it was what I really wanted or what was just in front of me at the time, because that's what I've always taken in the past.

Somewhat of a tangent. When I picked him up from the station this last visit, I asked what I thought was an important question while we were driving home. Maybe this is weird as fuck or something, but I figured since we are banging and nothing is 100%, it's important to ask him if something happened and against all odds with my health issues and IUD, etc. that I got knocked up, without my opinion affecting him, what would he want to happen. Now, here I think I'm being a nice, responsible adult, but I didn't fucking realize that his brain interpreted this question as me trying to gauge his feelings/response before I would announce that I was pregnant by him. Whoops. His response, though, was that yes there'd be a lot of challenging conversations and choices, etc. that would have to be made, but his first reaction was...excitement and happiness and that he thought I'd be an amazing mom. Now, I've posted plenty before that there's never been a point in my life where I've actively desired kids and in most cases have actively not wanted them. My thoughts have been a mix of fearing the lack of sleep, the loss of my free time, the stress (I'm already neurotic as fuck, and I can't imagine how much worse I'd be trying to keep a tiny human alive), the disgusting diapers, the possibility that they grow up to be like my nephew instead of my niece, maybe they pop out as a low-functioning autist and that's basically a death sentence for the rest of my personal life, my lack of patience for noise and mess, the thought that I'd honestly just be a shit mom, maybe they grow up to just hate my ass, etc. This past half a year or so, before me and this guy even started getting together, I started wondering is my lack of wanting kids because I actually don't want kids? Or is it my health issues and my tumor that fucks with my hormones? Was it the depression, where obviously if I don't want to be here anymore, why would I want to bring someone new in? Or was it a way to cope with the fact that no one would have ever wanted kids with me? I'd often think that it was lucky that I didn't want kids because there was never a chance for them anyway and how much worse I would have felt all these years watching the clock tick away knowing there was nothing I could do about it. But when he told me he was excited, suddenly all those reasons that I bitched about as making me not want to have kids...didn't seem so bad anymore. I'm not saying I suddenly switched and want to shit out 6 of them. But it made me realize that I never got to actually truly think about it and make that choice. That door closed before I ever really got to look at it. And it kind of feels that way with a lot of things. My whole life I've struggled with trauma and depression and literally just trying to survive another day without ending it. I'm going to be 40 this year and a little after my divorce finalized, it finally seemed like I was able to start just...living. I started going out of my house, went to trivia nights, I went to a weather spotter class, a weird ass "mythical oddities" expo, which was full of exactly the demographic you'd assume, even went to a speed dating event. And I did all this not because I felt I was obligated or someone wanted me to do them, I did them because I fucking wanted to do it. But there's a lot of things now, at my age, that I'm just not going to ever get the choice to want to do at this point. And that fucking sucks and there's nothing I can do about it.

Anyway, we spoke this morning about cutting it off and going back to just being friends. Maybe for like 6 months or something. Revisit it later. Neither of us want to do it, but both of us also feel it's probably the smart thing to do. In my mind I feel like once it's done, it'll be done forever. I'll never get to enjoy his kisses, feel his arms around me, or see that fucking incredible smile as he looks at me again. No one has ever just made me feel...special. It is fucking tearing me apart. I am not strong enough to handle this kind of pain and a good part of me is not going to want to invite the chance for that again. But then again...we say that every time we lose a pet, and then sure enough there's another furry asshole in the house in short order. He's said, even if I'm not with him, I'm far too amazing to not be shared with the world. Now I might not believe that, but I'm pretty sure he does which makes it all that much harder to let this go. Maybe there's something we haven't thought of...IDK. But I love him, and this fucking sucks. I don't know what to do, yet I'm pretty sure no matter what I do, it's going to fucking hurt like hell. Thinking of all the things we talked about doing and never will is too fucking much for me.

Also, goddamnit. I have a stupid Jeopardy! calendar on my desk and every day I send him the clue so we can kind of play together. And sure enough today, after he mentioned this morning about how he's had dreams of me in a white dress as we get married one day, the fucking clue is asking about Jewish wedding ceremony shit (did I mention he's part Jewish, though not particularly serious). Fuck you, Jeopardy! calendar. Fuck you right in your fucking ass.

And also, because I'm sure Izo is dying to know, I don't think I've ever actually enjoyed sex until this. It's been amazing and we're super compatible and have had quite some fun trying new shit we never knew we'd enjoy. Was certainly a nice little bonus to everything else.