he is wonderful. really.

So for once, I meet this man. This fabulous man. He is smarter than me. He is attractive, and has dark hair and green eyes, which I love. He is a Taurus, which is not a Virgo, which I love. We look good together. He is nerdier than I am, which somehow makes me feel more comfortable in my skin. He has his shit together. He has his priorities straight. Fuck, he acts like a man- because he is one. Which I respect…a lack thereof usually being one of the biggest issues that I have with males in general.  They don’t act like men, and I don’t respect them.

He explains to me, that when encountering a new situation, he can’t help but logistically take the said situation to it’s end.  It’s a byproduct of law school. (That’s right, law school….way smarter than me.) And I counter, saying, that I usually just go with things, because if you spend all your time predicting the potential disastrous outcomes of how something might turn out, you’re dooming it from the beginning, not to mention just one depressing individual.

And then it hit me yesterday. It hit me, half way through the second beer I shotgunned on a bus ride to a basball game. It was approximately noon. It hit me that, there is no way this will ever work. It’s all logistics.

If a bus leaves from ZJs Mine in Fox Lake at 11:45 a.m. and is heading south at 55 mph, and a scrappy old Honda leaves Downers Grove at the same exact time and is heading west at 70 mph, when will they intersect, and where?

Never.

Because the people on the bus are too busy shot gunning beers at noon, and getting inappropriately drunk, and wasting their lives and their livers away at any bar with the best deal on tappers.  But, those people are my people.  They make sense to me. Their wrinkles may be deeper, and their lives may be shorter, but they get it. Most of them at least.  And the guy in the old Honda has way more important things to do on a Sunday. He is young, and smart, and idealistic, yet realistic, and has a cold, calculated plan to acheive greatness, and is ready to move and shake, and looking to change the world, to make a mark on his era. AND somehow, he thinks I should be a part of it. He is clearly, not as a smart as I give him credit for.

Logistically, I think the timing may be all off.  A good friend, and even better professor and I were having a conversation a few days ago, and he said to me, “Amy, we all have to grow up some time”. Which, I’m not sure that I agree with entirely…but even if it is true, some time is not now. And now, right now, I don’t think I’m quite ready.

But, he is wonderful. really. and he’ll go on changing the world one class-action law suit at a time. And, I am wonderful. really. and I’ll go on changing the world one shotgunned beer at a time. And maybe I’m wrong. Maybe the bus and the old Honda will find some common ground that they both can tread on, and get a GPS and reconcile the vast differences between the two and their journeys. Or maybe not.

unrequited love.

There is that one stretch of highway, miles long, and no matter how many times my tires race it, or my feet pace it, it doesn’t answer. Maybe it’s because I still find myself trying to articulate the question. out loud. to myself. when I think no one’s watching, and no one’s around to see me furrow my brow.  I try to form the words and I find my tongue heavy, and stuck to my palate, and they just won’t come.

I miss the feeling of unrequited love. I miss the feeling of wanting someone so bad it hurts. Or rather, I miss the hopeful feeling that goes along with it, that only exists before the first kisses and the last embrace.

Time, the proverbial healer, really fucked me on this one. It’s like I’ve had to trick myself into believing that you don’t exist. I know you are out there, somewhere, in that place you chose, so far away from me. In a life, so different from the one I live.  But I had to choose to only see  a one-dimensional version of you- a photo in an album, a postcard with a half-assed signature, a life-size, fleshless, bloodless, cardboard cut-out version of you.  

But then lately, it’s all come back to me in swells and rushes. In dreams. In insomnia. In restlessness and restfulness. In strange places. In my mind.

You were the first man that I had a real school girl’s crush on. In the most innocent, lovely, simple, even juvenille way.
I wanted you to like me, and think I was pretty.
I wanted you to notice me, and pick me first when we played dodgeball.
That was part of it. After spending so much time in a “grown-up” world, I somehow had forgotten how much holding someone’s hand could mean. how much a first kiss could take your breath away.

And then there was how much you fit my silly ideal description of what a man should be right down to the last detail. Not just physically. I mean you were tall, and dark, and handsome- not in a pretty way, but in a rugged, rough around the edges way.  And you were so strong, and bigger than me, yet somehow a vulnerability emanated from you. In a way that made me feel like only I was special enough to see it. In a way that made me allow myself to let you see mine.  It was like your being such a man, just made me want to be a lady. and oddly enough, I enjoyed it. Sand and glass, you and me. You polished me, and made me smoother, and softer, and more delicate, but also more fragile. You refined me, and defined me in ways that you still don’t know.

you still don’t know.