I know, I never post them in their entirety when I post them. But this one seemed like a particularly good idea. Moslty because the girl I talked about here promised me---promised me!--that she would stop the public courting of the other girl for a while, just until I was emotionally safe. I asked for a month. I would have taken a week. Instead, she lasted barely a weekend.
"Dodging a bullet" doesn't quite describe how very, very lucky I am to have gotten out this early.
Yesterday, my feet were so light that I was Eliza Doolittle, flying down the street, literally feeling like I could fly, I mean, with my heart a helium balloon in my chest lifting me up, up.
I spent all of yesterday in that haze of lightness and sunshine, that miasma where everything and everyone seems golden and precious, even the guy on the subway who squeezed into a non-existent seat beside me, and so squashed my space to something smaller than a rat cage.
I wasn't in love, but I was on the verge of it. I could feel it opening carefully inside me like an origami box, fold upon intricate fold creasing open, straightening to attention.
I sped through that workday as if I were seeing her afterwards, even though I wasn't, because I had come from her warm bed that morning. But I wanted to be home to think about her, to imagine, to dream, to remember. I like her so much, that's what I told my friends yesterday. She seems like a caretaker. We have a good time together. I really like her.
Then last night, I was tooling around on the Internet. I read her blog, as I always do. And something about one of her posts, some vagueness, some insinuation, made me stop. I looked at the comments, written by one particular poster. I jumped to the commenter's blog.
And then I started shaking. Because it was very, very clear that the girl I was dating and the commenter were having an intense emotional (at least) romantic relationship.
I read the posts and comments to a friend over the phone. "Am I being paranoid?" I asked.
"Uh, no," she said. "It sounds like the cop all over again."
Her comment slapped me. Not in a bad way. In a "Wake up, Girlfriend!" kind of way.
Yes. She was a lot like the cop that I had dated, my one really disastrous relationship that had no sense, no reason, and no security from beginning to end. That girl—like this one, perhaps, though I don't really know her well enough to be sure—was a girl without boundaries, who bled into one relationship after another, not finding what she was seeking because she was so lost.
Indeed, when yesterday I confronted this girl I had been dating about the romantic, commitment-oriented words on her website, and the commenter's website, she seemed exactly like the cop---not sorry that she had been conducting this public courting, but only apologizing that she had not been brave enough to tell me about it when I had stayed over the night before. And not really ending things, exactly. And insisting that she and I have something special, even so.
"We're done," I said.
This morning, I felt great. Fierce. Sympathy and worry was rolling in from my friends, but I strode down the street like a warrior. I realized, as I headed toward work, that I had just relived three bad years of my life in 24 hours. Except this time I did the right thing. I walked away. Quickly.
I dodged a bullet, as my friend Mary would say. I used to let bullets hit me. I would stand there and take them, and then cry in astonishment when I slumped to the ground, bleeding.
But there is no wound here. I am as whole as I ever was. This time, I ducked.
I smiled to myself and made an imaginary line on an imaginary wall, charting my emotional growth the way my grandmother used to mark my height. It is times like this when we can see the ways we've changed for the better. "I have grown this much," we say to ourselves. We were small before, but now we are taller, healthier. Older and wiser is a cliché, but it is still true.
I am angry today, and that makes me feel strong. And hopeful. And happy. The world is still precious. The light is sharper, laser-like, but still golden, and still light. My feet are heavier, but they are still my feet, and they are still solid under me, and they still carry me forward toward where I need to go.
Jennifer Vanasco is an award-winning, syndicated columnist based in New York. Email her at Jennifer.vanasco@gmail.com or read her occasional blog at jennifervanasco.com.
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