So says Rosalind in As You Like It, and I have to say that I agree.
Here follows what is (now) a rather amusing story about me and love. And how, at times, it is like a MADNESS. A FEVER on the BRAIN. It’s wonderful when you can acquire a sense of humor about your wee love affairs … especially when it doesn’t take YEARS to do so.
This was quite a recent event – and yet I look back on my own behavior with a bit of wonder, and bafflement, like: “Good GOD, how quickly I descended into MADNESS. Where the hell did that come from??”
During my last trip to Ireland, I met someone. (And no, it wasn’t Rory, the bruiser/accountant/air traffic controller wannabe. Just want to make that clear.) I met him at a little local pub in Glendalough, on a windy pagan night. The conversation flew, the sparks flew … in the way that it can in Irish pubs. He struck up a conversation, and from that point on, we were inseparable for the night. Except when we had a fight about American foreign policy and I stalked out of the pub in protest. hahaha It was that kind of night. He followed me out onto the street, with wind whipping through the mountains, the roar of the leaves in the trees, and apologized. We actually had a great and vigorous argument about everything – he was really smart, really well-read – and he knew how to argue. In a fun way. I love to argue, too. But then he suddenly got mean and told me to “get a map”. I became extremely still, and calm, and cold. Anyone who reads this blog knows that I KNOW MY GEOGRAPHY. If you scroll down in this post, you will see how that exchange went. It was a RINGING triumph for me!!
He and I talked for … 4 hours? Five? It made no difference. It was EASY. The dude made me laugh. He was the epitome of the Irish Alpha. I need to write an essay about that phenomenon.
He said to me at one point, with deadly seriousness, “I am dangerously bright.”
hahahaha I have to agree with that. But he liked me because I was “dangerously bright”, too. He kept reiterating that. “Your MIND! Your feckin’ MIND!” he shouted over the wind.
I mean, the drama, mkay? It was hilariously fun. We exchanged email information – I was leaving the next day to drive around the country – he said good night – and then I wandered through the 4th century ruins by myself, communing with the black, and the spirit of St. Kevin. A night to remember.
The trip rambled on. A blast. When we hit Kinsale, I found an internet cafe, signed on, and he had emailed. His email sounded just like he talked. I could hear the brogue in the printed words. “Oh, but you’re a pretty lass … with such a brain! And you walk into my local pub? Chance in a mil, Sheil, chance in a mil.” hahaha He called me “Sheil”!!
I emailed him back and told him I would be back in Dublin in about 5 days time – for 2 nights only. It was my birthday. Maybe we could hook up on my birthday?
I was ragingly on the road for the next 3 or 4 days, so it was a toss-up whether this date would happen or not. My phone didn’t work, and I was tramping through the Cliffs of Moher, driving through the Burren, wandering through Galway, and following the signs of the murals in Belfast to get to Carrie’s … I had other priorities. I took the position: if it’s meant to be, it’s meant to be. Whatever. Not going to obsess. And I didn’t.
Meanwhile, while I was out of touch, the dude was emailing me almost twice a day. Keeping me up to date on his life. Because, you know, we were now best friends. hahaha
I finally arranged the date, nailed it down, from Belfast. (In between sniffling into my Kleenex as we all watched Extreme Makeover: Home Edition). We would meet up in Ranelagh on the night of my birthday. Irish dude’s daughter went to UCD, I think … so he had some suggestions for pubs in Ranelagh.
Cool! I had a date! On my birthday! In Ireland! Life was awesome.
We met up in Ranelagh and had a hilarious marathon of a date. We blabbed at each other like maniacs, we started out at one pub, we moved to another pub, then we went to the LAMEST DISCO in the world. We stood on the side, and watched the lame disco crowd … nobody dancing … and just laughed. We danced. Like banshees on the empty dance floor, laughing hysterically at how stupid we must have looked.
A magic date. Magic for so many reasons. Surely because of the company … he was an intensely fascinating and amusing individual … we “clicked”. You know? I don’t click with too many people, and he and I clicked. He got me. He was highly complimentary, of course … so that didn’t hurt either. He walked me back to my B&B, which was on this block of Georgian-era houses, black wrought-iron fences … He said, “God, look at this gorgeous-ness.” I said, “It’s like The Dead, isn’t it?” He stopped dead in his tracks and exclaimed, very moved, “Oh, see? See? You know, you know.” hahaha The openness of this man … so rare. This goes back to the specificity of Irish Alpha males. Not to belabor the point. They are unashamed of their manliness, their gender … but then there’s this openness too. All adds up to: Alpha. With an Irish twist.
While we stood outside my B&B talking, saying goodbye (and it was surprisingly hard – for both of us) – we talked about him coming to visit me. Maybe on St. Patrick’s Day. He loved the idea. He was encyclopedic on the history of the Irish people in New York City, especially politically. We talked about it for hours. He’d put Gangs of New York to shame.
Beautiful. “Good night, new friend. So nice to meet you. I can’t even tell you how much.”
Full bright moon beaming down on the Georgian scene. Life was SWEET.
So. Now we come into the new phase. The “madness” phase of love. I returned home to New York, and had a HELLUVA time with jetlag. It took me about 5 days to get over it. Weird.
In the meantime: I emailed my new friend, saying: “My God, it was so nice to meet you. Thank you so much for taking me out on my birthday. It was so cool. Best to you … red.”
And … 4 days went by with NO RESPONSE. And … I promptly LOST. MY. MIND.
Now I realize that this is “madness”, but just because it’s “madness” doesn’t mean that it felt any less real to me.
I couldn’t believe he wasn’t emailing me back. I couldn’t believe it. And I started just eating my poor heart out … I lay in bed, sobbing. Yes. Literally. Like a 16 year old girl. Sobbing up into the empty night.
Why was I sobbing?
Uhm … because I was insane?
Honestly, it was so recently … but I still look back on it as though it was eons ago, and I was a whole different person … I still can’t believe how quickly I tipped off the deep end into utter existential despair. It had nothing to do with him, of course … even though I was CONVINCED that the ONLY thing I was REALLY upset about was that he hadn’t emailed me back.
Now again, I realize the lunacy: 4 days is (uhm) SO not a long time. hahaha But … my trip to Ireland had been such an escape, such a glorious escape … and I had come alive in ways that had been long dormant in my life back here. That’s what travel can do, if you’re open to it. It can jolt you out of your routine. Well, this trip to Ireland sure was a jolt.
I suddenly was inconsolable. INCONSOLABLE about my life. My loneliness. It was like I was a snake – outgrowing my old skin – and I needed to shed.
That’s how I see those 4 days of inconsolable sobbing: as shedding an old skin. It’s not an easy thing. “Shedding” sounds like an almost passive activity, something that can happen while you are focusing on other things. Uhm – no. It don’t quite work like that. This “shedding” was agony.
I had to take a day off of work!!! I couldn’t get out of bed. I was, without a doubt, Diane Keaton in Something’s Gotta Give. I would fall asleep, with my eyes puffed out of my head … would crash into oblivion … Then … I would open my eyes 6 hours later … lie there for half a second … and then start weeping again.
hahaha I mean, I look back on it with wonder. LIke: woah. I must have just needed to cry or something. I didn’t even KNOW this guy, and I truly believed – while I was in it – that I was weeping about him. Once the 4-day crying jag passed, it became so obvious that he was just a catalyst … but while I was in it, it was real.
Everything became very GLOBAL. (This is always a bad sign with me). I was using words like “never” and “always”. (Also a bad sign.) He became a symbol of all my disappointments, all my heartache … I could. not. stop. crying. for. 4. days.
I realize – in the clear-headed light of day – that 4 days is SO not a long time between emails. But you could not have told that to me during the crying-jag. I was inconsolable. It was an ETERNITY.
Finally, I wrote him what has to be the CRAZIEST email. It makes me laugh to think of. And his immediate response also makes me laugh. My email said something like: “Holy crap. Are you never going to email me again????”
Now before you judge me for this … and before you lump me in with some stereotype … let me say that this is so out of character for me that I was frightened by it. I am the epitome of letting-go. I am the epitome (to a fault) of never making demands. I’m a big believer in space – giving it, and having some myself. But at this particular time in my life … what really happened was … (and again, it had nothing to do with him, really) I suddenly became aware, in an acute way, of my loneliness. And how NICE it was to meet someone I liked. To kiss someone. To laugh, and argue, and dance on a dance floor. It was so GREAT! And … my old life, the one here … didn’t fit me anymore. Suddenly. This realization bit me on the ass.
I am pretty much always the last one to know stuff about my own personality.
So … I decided: “Okay. I am losing my mind. I need to just email him and get this out of my system.”
So I did.
He emailed me back almost immediately. The subject line made me laugh OUT LOUD. “Hello. Dear Miss Insecure.”
hahahaha Even now, when I receive emails from him, he will occasionally call me, “Miss Insecure”. “So, what are your plans for this weekend, Miss Insecure?”
It was such a humorous and NICE way to deal with someone who obviously was having some kind of chemical reaction. He knew it wasn’t about him. Somehow. How?? He just knew. And so he didn’t judge me for it. It was the biggest gift. I was expecting judgment, I was expecting: “Jeez, chill out.” I was ready for the heart-killing moment that that would entail … but still … I had to speak my truth anyway. But I got none of that. I got calm humor. (Another quality of the Irish Alpha. Or maybe Alphas in general. They’re calm, rational, and expect women to go a little crazy every once in a while – but they don’t judge. You feel safe with them. They never EVER try to make you feel small. They’re too confident for that. They love women too much for that. And this, my friends, is the difference between the alpha and the bad boy.)
He said something like, “I am notoriously erratic with emails. No need to be insecure.”
I was – of course – MORTIFIED. Because I never lose control. Ever. I’ve let men walk out of my life without them knowing how much it hurt me. You know? I’m not the type to cling, or beg, or say, “Please!! Stay!” I submit, I accept the inevitable. And then write one-woman shows about the experience.
This was the first time I let the cat out of the bag. And let myself freak out – and not just in my journal, or to my friends – but directly to the object of my affection.
The beauty of it was: he didn’t judge. He treated it with humor – but he also didn’t get defensive or wrapped up in my little psychodrama. He joked me out of it.
It was highly strange, though: to go from a person weeping in public on the subway and having to take a day off of work, to being FINE.
Like: Sheila. WHAT IS GOING ON??? Also: you only saw this guy TWICE. What is UP in the state of Denmark?
Rosalind was spot-on, man. “Love is merely a madness.” Don’t obsess about it, don’t over-intellectulaize the situation, don’t think you’re over-reacting. Just know that you are INSANE.
He didn’t end up visiting for St. Patrick’s Day and the whole thing devolved into a nice pen-pal thing. Which is FINE. But it SO WAS NOT FINE for me during the 4-day jag. So so weird.
It was a huge catharsis for me. Huge. I am glad it happened. I haven’t “lost it” in years. Not since the doppelganger. I haven’t allowed myself to get hurt, to lose it. And … the price you pay when you protect yourself … is kind of not worth it. Even though I humiliated myself by writing him a panicky email AFTER ONLY 4 DAYS OF NOT HEARING FROM HIM … I don’t regret it. Another gift that I got from this experience was that … my own state of mind was revealed to me. I’m bright about some things, but dumb as a box of rocks about other things. After those awful 4 days, I realized: “Huh. Okay. I guess I’m not as impervious as I had hoped. I am still capable of being hurt and disappointed. Good to know.”
Good to know, too, that the potential for being hurt has not been killed.
The whole thing told me, actually, that I was, finally, coming out to play. Not with him, in particular … but in general. I was stepping out. I was coming out to play. Greeting life again, with all its mess, disappointments.
Like the beautiful end of Desiderata:
I am a child of the universe
I have a right to be here
With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams
It is still a beautiful world.
Your writing is marvelous. Thank the gods for this mode of communication…
Oh Sheila, sweetie, I know that sensation–whoa, I have strong feckin’ feelings, don’t I? Where’d they come from?
Red – A lovely story, beautifully told. I have to tell you, when I had my triple by-pass last summer and moved from NYC to Wichita, KS, (where most of my family lives), I had three major “blogger” regrets … I never met you, I never met Michele and I never met Stevie. Maybe someday. Keep up the writing, your prose is poetry. Thank you for sharing. Terry Reynolds
whiskypants: Thank you, thank you. :)
Anne – the weirdest thing was that once the storm passed, I was pretty much totally blase about the entire thing. Not indifferent, but blase. My memory of meeting him remained untouched … no feeling of weirdness or regret … but I completely detached from need. It was strange – literally like a storm had been going on in my brain.
He and I laughed about it later. I said something like: “Well. You must be rightly confused!!” And of course he was like: “Oh no no. Perfectly understandable, Miss Insecure, perfectly understandable.”
hahaha
Terry – You’ve always been such a kind and generous reader. I had no idea you had a triple bypass. I hope that you are happy and well in your new home and I certainly hope that if you ever come back this way you look me up.
Good for you Sheila. Good for you.
Dan – ohhh. thanks. I felt insane … but I think I need to go insane more often, frankly. It’s healthy.
Uhm … what happened to your blog? I can’t get to it?
And in other news: you’ve got to come down and go to Boston 212. It FEELS like a Boston bar. It was a blast, great place to watch the Sox. Fun last night, too – cause it’s Fleet Week here, so there was a commander there, in his officer and a gentleman whites – a huge Sox fan – having a blast.
Great couple of games too, huh? Wells made me FUCKING NERVOUS the first 3 innings … but he found his stride eventually.
Checking in from bee-yoo-tee-full Smith Mountain Lake, Virginia….Sheila, Betsy and I and Mere were saying on the way home how much you have changed recently, like a weight has been lifted. No more anger, more peacefullness- an easy way about you. Funny how friends can notice these things, and never say them. I guess this all explains why! PS I am a firm believer in “The Big Cry”. Usually it comes on out of nowhere, and there is a realization about what it REALLY means after. Gets rid of all the toxins in your mind. I totally believe it is good for you. God’s prozac. Love you and Miss you.
Beth, love … that’s why I consider you guys to be some of my best friends on the earth. You know me. :) Love you!! Hope you are having a blast with the family, on vacation.
Oh, and I need your help. Scroll down, find the Diary Friday … and please help me out. Where is Dominic Savio??
I am on my way down to help you, but I believe St.Dominic Savio Youth Center is behind the YMCA and next to the Senior Center. Of course, this is all adjoining the new ball field at Broad Rock Middle School. I am on my way… just let me find my SuperCape…..
I might be down for the Belmont.
Really enjoyed that post, even if I’m just a random stranger surfing in. I don’t think it’s a gender-specific thing, either, and it’s more about connection, and the desire for connection welling up, than “simply” love affairs. I have my jags and obsessions over burgeoning (or deburgeoning) friendships. You lasted 4 days? That’s an accomplishment! (I could never have survived in the days before email…)
Anyway, for what it’s worth, keep it up.