-------------------------------------------------------------------------
somehow I just don't give up.
Even though I have less free time than a sitting president and am picky and mean.
Why then, do I keep trying?
Ahhhhhh - I think it is that pesky feeling of HOPE. The hope that I'll remember what it feels like to come home from work with someone waiting, someone who is happy to see me and wants to hear about my boring day. Someone who'll see a movie they think is lame just because they KNOW I would love it :)
So the online presence continues...
And finally I run across someone who doesn't disgust me with the first email! WOW! Look! They know how to use punctuation! But not gratuitously!!!!!!!!!!! THEY DO NOT TYPE IN ALL CAPITAL LETTERS! And they ask me questions about my life while also sharing stories about themselves! Giddy with expectation, we begin to online chat (this is known as second-base in the online dating world).
Chatting is going well too...she doesn't care that I am unemployed. In fact, she is super impressed that I am in nursing school. She adores children and has a fancy degree that she uses in a field I find INTERESTING! HOLY EFFING CRAP! It is like a fairy tale! She asks for my phone number (third base) and I throw caution to the wind and instead ask her out. I am tired of the protracted "hi" and "where are you from" and blah blah blah from too many years in this ritual and decide to jump right into a face-to-face interaction. She is young (too young, according to my sister) but I don't care. After all, I am far too immature to date someone my own age.
So we decided to meet.
She explained that she has a driving phobia and would I mind picking her up...
Hmmmmmm. "Driving phobia??" What could that mean? Did driving phobia = DUI? Or maybe she was raised in NYC and never learned to drive? I was scared/interested and tried to ask her a bit about it, but she laughed it off as just something that she was "working through". But hey, I can handle phobias, right? Hell I have a few myself! So off I went.
I pulled into her driveway and saw her standing there waiting. I could tell right away she was different. Not different in that fairy-tale-outta-a-dream kind of way. But different as in, neurologically speaking. My student nurse brain quickly ran through the possibilities...cerebral palsy? Spinal cord injury? Wow. The girl had a walker. That was a lot of information to process in the moment it took to pull into her driveway...Funny she had mentioned that she had recently lost her dog, 3 computers, a gas fireplace and a yoga mat...but not a WALKER. I mean, I have dated a girl in a wheelchair before AND HAD EVEN MENTIONED THAT TO HER - so you think she would have felt OK bringing it up. Nonetheless, I scooped her up and we went out to eat.
At the restaurant I remembered why it is so very very very important to talk on the phone with someone before agreeing to meet in person. This girl talked over me, told 20 minute long stories about her cousins and neighbors and favorite episodes of Law and Order and described in detail her gun collection. She told me over and over what a good listener I was as she detailed how Jimmy (not sure who he was) once got mad at Susan (maybe Susan was her sister?) but really he should have been mad at Christine because the trouble really started back in 1997 when they moved out of that crap-hole apartment into the city for a fresh start and...well I couldn't keep up and was silently imagining how I really had broken the cardinal rule of online dating. Do NOT agree to meet someone until you have heard the sound of their voice, their cadence when telling a story and the subtle back and forth of the conversational rhythm. But I had broken the rule and so now I had to sit and listen to poor Jimmy's woes (maybe Jimmy was her ex husband?! I thought I heard the word fiance a few minutes back).
After dinner I took her home and walked her inside... into her house...don't ask me why because I don't have an answer for you. Her home was of course covered in dog fur (though her dog had been dead for 3 months). There were literally 25 empty coke cans lining every horizontal surface of the den...as if they were trophies earned over the years. Both sectional couches were piled high with (what I hope was) clean laundry and the dust bunnies across the baseboards were plentiful enough to start a union and demand better living conditions.
Oh Hope, how you make me do things that defy all reason! Hope can make me throw caution to the wind and try over and over to find a human connection. Hope allows me to dream of walking hand in hand along the beach at sunset. But the reality of the world sits across from you at dinner and says "I just don't get how fat people aren't too embarrassed to eat in public" (yes she actually said that).
And somewhere in the universe Hope is giving a high-five to Bitterness and saying "OK, she's all yours now!"
