Love and Consequences

The fabulous DS wrote a lovely post yesterday about, well, love. Bone-jarring, soul-encompassing, all-electrifying (really, just go read her post, she says it much better than I do) love. The kind of love she desires, the kind she won't settle for less than...

The kind that absolutely, beyond a shadow of a doubt, scares me to death.

Bone-jarring, soul-crushing, cowering-under-the-bed-in-abject-terror FEAR.

I don't want to care for someone that deeply, because then he could hurt me doubly so. I have never had love without suffering.

I'm afraid to be the first thing a man thinks of in the morning, and the last thing he thinks of at night... because the last (and truthfully only) man who ever loved me like that later ended up showing up under my porch at 2:00 in the morning and scaring me shitless. I do not know love without suffocation.

In my injured psyche, the two are inseparable--love and obsession, want and need. I'm terrified of being the object of someone else's insurmountable desire.

Me? I'm in search of a Sunday kind of love. A comfortable love. A love that means quiet evenings on the couch and bottles of wine. Long, lazy drives and naps in the sun. But can I have one without the other? Can I have that love without the all-consuming passion?

I worry that I can't. That one grows from the other.

That I must pass Go before I can collect my $200.

So here I sit, lounging in Jail, waiting to roll doubles instead of simply paying the jailer and going on my way.

As my last, admittedly-enigmatic post suggested, I have met a man. He's a friend of a friend and we quickly hit it off. Live music and mojitos followed their natural course to the Horizontal Mambo and a slightly hungover breakfast. He's nice. He appears to like me. If he calls within the week--and doesn't give me some schtick about "not being able to do this," whatever this is--I would consider it a home run.

And for once, I'm not running scared.

No, not because I think he's "The One" or any poetic nonsense like that--you should know me well enough by now to understand that, closet romantic though I might be, I think the concept of love at first sight is bullshit, and phrases like "The One" make me cringe.

No, I'm actually okay with this for one very simple reason: In less than a month I leave the country for 8 weeks, and I have absolutely NO plans to jump into anything serious before my departure.

No hassle. No expectations. No fear of impending emotional annihilation.

True, love is not exactly around the corner, but perhaps I've found a way to dip my toes back in those waters... check out the temperature and see if maybe I feel like going for a swim... you know, sometime after lunch, after I've had reasonable time to digest.

Perhaps. (See: "If He Calls" clause, above.)

Who knows? Maybe my Get Out of Jail Free card has finally arrived.

And it's Russian.