Finding Meaning

It's been some time since I needed to write about any of this. Perhaps this blog will become a relic of my 20s, the golden age of dating and casual affairs. Sometimes I like to hope I am "older" than all that, and then I realize "I was so much older then. I'm younger than that now."

I met the Married Man through my museum work. I assumed he was (still) married the first seven or eight months I knew him. One email (under the influence - surprise!) set me straight; she had left some time ago.

We have had three lovely weekends together. Seeing music, dancing, laughing and laughing, museums, ferris wheels, drinking and drinking. Movies and crying and football and hooting and hollering. And more laughing.

But yesterday... it was as if it was over. Perhaps I was out of line in saying "we just got boring." He must have known I was joking - although perhaps not. Perhaps it was impossible for him to know that the boring was comfortable and I was glad we could just eat dinner at home and watch TV.

And yet, perhaps I wasn't. Entirely. I think I was ready to go home at that moment, just as I think he was ready for me to leave. We had both been drinking, so there was no way for me to leave, really - he doesn't drive under the influence at all, and my car was across town. I finally did just go, took the streetcar back to my car, stopped for ice cream and went home. To bed. At 8pm.


The thing I have realized is I'm not sure how well he actually knows me. Despite the fact that I have actually dated (how do you get to your 40s and married and never date?) I still feel I don't know the rules. Or perhaps I am thinking there are rules. I have not been open with him; or rather, haven't volunteered years of my history, my experiences, my life... but only because I haven't felt the need to. And he hasn't asked.

And I have seen the level of self-destruction, and his lack of self-love and it breaks my heart.. but as I said to him, I can't give you that. He is drinking less, or so he says, and having to find other things to do with his time.

In a funny way this whole relationship, however brief, has been about finding meaning. I have been struggling, both at work and at home, to find meaning in my life. And yet, I think I know for myself better than he ... no. That's not fair.

I have to find peace in this. Let go of analyzation and just let it be. Be whatever is it. Let it be if he doesn't like me. Let it be if yesterday was a blip. Let go of the hope of this - let go of the pressure that puts on everybody.

There are few things more terrifying than meeting someone so close to what you thought you were looking for... and not knowing.