Here’s the thing, dating is filled with uncertainty. Gaps in your knowledge if you will. And we, as humans, love to fill gaps in our knowledge with fear. You send some one a note and don’t hear back for a day. Then two. Not knowing the reason why you start to assume the worst, they hate me and I’m never going to hear from them again. Once the gap is filled with your fear (which is really an expression of insecurity) you move on to bashing yourself for the insecurity. It’s a downward spiral that’s no fun to ride.
Following my lunch on Sunday, I send a note saying I had a good time. She replied in the same vein. I used her reply as a springboard into suggesting that we might go ride roller coasters some time, did a fairly cute job of working in a bench that played a role in our initial meeting. Haven’t heard a word since Sunday evening.
(cue Robbie the Robot: “Danger Will Robinson!”)
My fear is that I over did it at lunch, or under did it, or didn’t did it. What ever needed “diding” didn’t. And while that’s the point of meeting, I want to go back and “did” it right. I want to pass the implied test. Only the point isn’t passing or failing the test, the point is the test itself. Some people click and some don’t. That’s just the truth. Not good or bad, just truth.
Reality is that not everyone utilizes their computer as much as I do. I can easily spend several hours in the evening in front of my computers (Yes, plural. It’s a disease.) So rationally I can understand that some one might not see a cutely written message for a day or three or even more, but I don’t understand it. And I don’t like it. But I am learning patience. One excruciating minute after another.
Finally, I’m making a great big old mountain out of a non-existant mole hill. It isn’t as if this is the last person in the world I’ve attempted a relationship with, she only the first. So I need to just chill and wait for more first meetings to happen. One day there’ll be a lunch or dinner and something inside will go, “hubba.” And her insides will go, “hubba” too.
And that’ll be good.
As I move from acknowledging Michele’s death to accepting the new reality of life without her, I have become aware of the segmentation occurring within my personality. No, I’m not developing split personalities, although one could argue it would be hard to differentiate from my behavior prior to her death, but I am starting to set aside parts of me in order to complete the transition from shell-shocked suicide survivor to grieving widower to widower to a fully functional member of society.
I don’t think the transition is ever complete, just like I don’t think grief ever truly ends. There are times when I still have powerful grief emotions about my sister’s death more than thirty years ago. However, I do think that one can actively participate in the discovery of the new personality resulting from a trauma. My venture into eHarmony and seeking out new friends and potential relationships involves a great deal of sifting and setting aside; and not just through the detritus of a shared life, but mentally and emotionally too.
The outward indication of this process has been several emotional outbursts. I think as I dredge up and deal with pieces of me that I am leaving behind I go through a small grief process again and again. Certainly I don’t cry at every single change, but over time the pent up emotion needs to be released. This week has been filled with release. It’s exhausting and difficult, but I feel essential to my getting back to “normal.”
Or at least what passes for normal.
In almost every group activity there is an individual or two that makes the rest of us uncomfortable. While I’ve only been to the gyn a handful of times I’ve already discovered the sub-species that inhabits that territory.
As the circuit was explained to me, the machines are laid out in a specific order: working the large muscle groups first and the smaller ones last. The smaller muscles are used to stabilize the large ones, and they also play a major role in your ability to grip, for example. If you tire these muscles out too soon, you won’t be able to work the larger ones. The second point that was made clear to me is the idea of maintaining a rapid pace through the circuit twice. This elevates your heart rate and keeps it elevated for close to thirty minutes. Not a pure aerobic exercise but better than nothing.
So, every time I’ve gone to lift weights there’s been one guy (not the same one each time) who has to use the machines either out of order, or worse, who wants to lounge on them for several minutes rest before another Herculean attempt to move the entire stack using the wrong form or muscle group. I realize that being new to this I am being a bit of a zealot, and that other people can do it however they want.
Just not in my thirty minutes, okay?
The current car I own (euphemism for the bank owns but lets me insure, maintain, and fill with gas, all for a low, low monthly price) is a high end Lexus. We lucked into the car used one Saturday afternoon and were able to put together a two-for-one trade getting us out of a usury lease on the Audi TT, and upgrading our ES 300 to an LS 430. It’s a beautiful car with lots of power and comfort. Quite frankly it’s hard to even think about other cars after driving this one for a few years.
The only fly in this ointment has been the “Lexus Link System”, which is the Lexus equivalent of the OnStar system many GM cars have as an option. If you need roadside assistance or get lost you can poke the button in the headliner and talk to a human elsewhere for help. There was a hefty subscription fee (I think $250 a year) so we never signed up. Still, every time you turned the key a recorded female voice would announce, “The Lexus Link System is Active.” At first it was annoying, then it became a game to try and mimic her voice and intonation in time with the recording, eventually I stopped really noticing it at all.
Until a few weeks ago when a second recorded voice, this time male, was heard after the first message stating, “A Lexus Link System error has been detected. Please contact your Lexus dealer.” At first I only randomly got the male voice. There didn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to when it played, other than it’s frequency increasing. For the past week it has played virtually every time I started the car.
“The Lexus Link System is Active.” “The Lexus Link System has detected an error. Please contact your Lexus dealer.”
As it was due for the 95,000 mile check up I made sure to tell the service coordinator that I wanted that stupid voice gone. Turns out I got my wish; Lexus has a recall to replace the old Link system with…. a sunglasses holder! No. Really. The “link system” is really just a dedicated cell phone. My car was built in 2000 and sold in 2001. Cell phone technology has changed once or twice since then. The now six year old phone embedded in the head liner was no longer able to get a good connection to the cell towers in my area, hence the error message. So the whole thing got yanked today (no charge!) and replaced with a sunglasses holder.
Oh, and as for Lexus service – second to none. The car had maybe a quarter of a tank of gas when I dropped it off yesterday. Lexus filled it for me at no charge. With high octane running right at $3.30 today that was no small gift. Free loaner car, excellent customer care, car detailing (free), and a free tank of gas? I’ll be back.
Since my marriage, and until her death, my whole life, was centered around my relationship with Michele. I defined who I was, and measured how I was doing, by that relationship. To have it wrested from me suddenly and without warning has left me adrift, I have no grounding upon which to stand.
Now that I am attempting to reconstruct my life several things are happening all at once. Tonight I am feeling overwhelmed by all the change swirling around me. I can’t stop crying. I know that the release is needed but it is so hard to get through.
I am trying to discover who Mark is today. The Mark who was single in his twenties and early thirties no longer exists. He was largely unhappy and isolated, and, no matter what appearances were, not handling life very well. The Mark who was married grew into a good man, a man who respected himself, and a man who grew to like and appreciate himself. Losing his wife, losing that which he had centered himself on, ripped this new Mark into pieces. Some of those pieces are lost forever in the swirling maelstrom of events that have transpired. There are parts of me that existed only in the reflected emotions from Michele; those are gone forever.
Other parts of me remain, good parts, strong parts. But there isn’t a cohesive whole yet. I haven’t discovered who this adult man is, or who he can become. It’s like living with a stranger. Old habits no longer satisfy and new ones sometimes surprise me. I actually ate a sandwich I’d never tried before, in front of a stranger, that had tomatoes on it. I’ve never had a sandwich with tomatoes on it before in my life. Not only did I not have a throat incident, I actually liked the food.
What used to be down is now sideways, and yellow is green. Nothing makes sense and yet everything has a new clarity. You don’t have to look hard at my eye surgery to find symbolism. Since I’m now a new person, I need new eyes with which to see the world.
Climbing up from the bottom isn’t hard. You just keep looking up and moving forward. The hard part is the exposure to hurt and the risk of getting knocked back down. Taking on the search for new relationships through eHarmony is hugely risky. I could find myself in a position where my feelings are battered once again. Or I could find myself in a place of happiness and joy once again.
One of the pieces that survived the cataclysm of my wife dying is the need to talk, to share my thoughts, to explore me. Often times we would sit and dump all the pent up fears, doubts, worries, and concerns to the other. We called this “twenty minutes.” Meaning, I just need you to listen, not to judge, condone, or solve. Just listen. For anyone who reads this ramble and thinks, “My God, he’s off his nut!”, please know that this was just my twenty minutes. Thank you for letting me spew randomly, I feel better now.
In addition to all the physical things I’ve started doing to take better care of me, I’ve also started to look towards the future. And that future is not one spent alone. For all my introversion and comfort being with myself, I am a social creature who craves contact with other people. My circle of friends isn’t large, but I have long standing and deep relationships with each of them.
Not wanting to be alone, and living a solitary life presented a bit of a challenge. How to meet new people? How to find someone with which to explore a potential relationship? Laura had told me about her experience with eHarmony and one night about two weeks ago I decided to check it out. Seeing as how there is a seven-day free trial I went ahead and filled out the intake survey. Reading over the personality profile they produced of me, I found myself nodding in agreement again and again. Their interview had done a very good job of capturing and quantifying me.
Almost immediately I started getting matches. The initial geographical boundary set was the entire US, and so I dialed that down to 300 miles almost immediately, as I was getting matched to women in Montana and Georgia. The process is structured to move from closed-ended questions to more open questions, and finally open communication through the eHarmony site. Thus far I have found the process easy and enjoyable - I look forward to getting new answers or communications from the people I’m interested in knowing.
One match has progressed to the initial meeting stage, which is a story unto itself, but one I’m not going to share publicly. Suffice to say that I had a very good time, and learned quite a bit about myself as a result.
It feels both good and scary to be taking this step. Picking up the pieces of my life and examining them, leaving some behind and taking others with me, is difficult, necessary but difficult.
Rating: Iconic. If you don’t have Casablanca in your collection, then it’s not really a collection.
Through my martial arts background I learned the axiom, “Practice does not make perfect. Practice only makes permanent. Perfect practice makes perfect.”
In dating, however, I think that practice of any sort is better than none at all. Never having been a big dater, and only having dated a few times in my life, I feel awkward and out-of-sorts in a date situation. I’m sure that my jitters come across in one form or another. Going out several times with different people will begin to ease my fears of the event, and I’ll start to feel more comfortable. Which will be a good thing.
Besides, as was pointed out to me today, I can give my co-workers a hard time by dangling bits about all the women I’m going out with. Ha!
Thursday evening during my “personalized workout” session with the trainer at the gym I’ve joined, he talked about the “volume of weight” being the key. In my case I want to lose weight (and size) and tone up my muscles. The way to assist that process with resistance training is to lift less weight more times. If you want to get bigger you lift more weight fewer times.
It is the accumulation of weight over time, the volume, that makes this work. The math is pretty simple, and the numbers get big fast. I’m setup to use between 25 and 125 pounds of weight across eleven machines. On each machine the goal is to complete 12 - 15 repetitions at that weight. Once you complete the circuit once, you turn around and run through it again.
I did it for the first time this morning and just for grins I put together a simple spreadsheet to see how much total weight I moved in the course of a thirty minute workout. Would you believe just over 16,500 pounds? Four and a quarter tons. If I manage to complete the workout three times a week as I hope, that will be roughly 50,000 pounds a week moved. By me.
Twenty-five tons.
Hubba.
My father introduced me to author John McPhee years ago with a volume entitled, The Deltoid Pumpkin Seed. The unlikely title referred to a new lifting vehicle, or rigid lighter-than-air balloon. McPhee’s essays are about people and things, and are told with rare grace and deft use of language. They are a joy to read.
Uncommon Carriers is about coal trains, and barge traffic on the Illinois River. It’s about over-the-road trucking, and the package sort at UPS in Memphis. It’s mostly about the people who inhabit these uncommon modes of moving goods.
Rating: Uncommonly good.