Safety in Yearning

Yearning, for me, goes way back to junior high with one of my best friend’s brother.  Of course, he was taken, but it seemed such a good idea to my friend and I that I hung on for years.  Always wanting, always waiting in the wings, and being the perfect “what if” girl.  It never occurred to me that he was leading me on and using my desperate longing for him against me.  It never occurred to me that he was just a cheater.  Simultaneously, I harbored a huge crush on the town’s bad boy and chased after him as if he were the last boy that could break my heart into a million pieces.  If he wouldn’t have kept me at arm’s length, I’m sure we could have drank and beaten ourselves silly for life.

Next high on the list of yearning is someone I met in Superior, my second day here in 1994.  I was looking for a job and couldn’t find the address so I stopped at a gas station.  There, in a police officer’s uniform, was #3 standing so tall that even I had to look up.  I asked him where Broadway Street was (since he was a cop, I thought he MUST know the town) but he fumbled and fucked around so much with his words that I was more confused than ever.  I noted his name-tag and left.  Later, I called the police station’s non-emergency number, got him on the phone, explained who I was, and asked him out.  His first words were, “Who ARE you!?”  Like WHO does this!?

Well, he picked me up the following Monday in true muscle car fashion.  It was so loud that I couldn’t hear him at all.  What I did hear is, “I just want to be friends,” which started my year-long stint of yearning.  We did things together here and there but only as friends.  Once, after I had a few drinks, I put my hand on his leg and he jumped so far and away from me that I NEVER did that again.

The biggest, longest, and probably the most compelling session of yearning came while I was in the Army Reserves, at AIT, in San Antonio, Texas.  I had just completed basic training and you couldn’t knock the confidence off me with a padded hand-to-hand combat stick!  So when I met #4, he was in trouble!  We had ourselves quite a short-lived time of hilarity, dares, partying, probably the most fun I’d ever had with a guy.  We stayed in touch until I was pregnant with my daughter, who was born in 1996.  When things didn’t work out with her dad, I looked up #4.  He’d given me is social security number so I could n him up within the service any time.  He’d discharged and was nowhere to be found.  After 15 years or so, Troy the Locater’s people finally found him, happily married in Illinois.  He never knew I was looking for him.  Fifteen years of WHAT IF!?  The feeling I got with him, is what I used to measure anyone else.  Let’s get real, no one had a chance.

After that, and a few vision boards on exactly what I want in a relationship, in a man, and in my life, more years of yearning continued.  This bout of yearning didn’t have a name or a face, just an idea.   I looked at everyone coupled up and wondered what they had that I didn’t.  Why could they all figure it out and I was out in the solitude pasture?  Credit to me, I have solitude down!  I am so comfortable now by myself that it makes me wonder what I would do if the chance came along to be with someone? I have all the relationship theories down, had been handing out advice for decades – but for how to be in a healthy relationship or to be happily single, not to actually BE in one.

Why is there such safety in yearning?  I wanted and wanted and wanted so much and so hard that I let anyone else slip right by.  Why deal with a relationship when you can just sit back and want one?  I’ve spent exactly 30 years wanting my life away and now it’s time to put my money where my mouth is and now’s my chance.  I have met someone and we’ve decided to be mutually exclusive.  An actual boyfriend, folks!!

Here, I’d been teaching, preaching, and pushing everyone to take risks and I was the biggest relationship chicken of all.  Hey, in business, I have no problem taking many huge risks, but with my heart, I am the most hardened actuary.  Guess it never translated over until now and I couldn’t be more grateful and genuinely surprised.

It is fresh, only a couple of months in...so you can imagine, how I would write that he is perfect and everything I’ve ever wanted.  Better yet, he is real, he is here and has been in the same boat as me.  To have someone understand you, is better than buttered bread.  Real butter!  I guess you’d have to ask him how my relationship skills are being put to the test, but so far, so good.

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