House of Cards

Last night, I cried my eyes out. Finn, as you know, has been completely AWOL since coming to the city 2 weeks ago. I finally emailed him yesterday, due to a book I read. The book said that if you are REALLY brave, and you really want to change your patterns and find love, when someone refuses to go out with you again, you should call them up and say, "Hey, no pressure, I know things didn't work out, but would you be willing to tell me what I did or how I came across so that I can correct it for future dating situations that come into my life?" I did that. I appealed to him as a brother in Christ, too, cuz I figured, you should be able to ask someone who you share that commonality with what you are doing to alienate people.

He gave me a couple of things I did, which I really appreciated, even though they were hard to hear.

1.) I didn't really say goodbye to him when he walked me to the door of my store on that Saturday morning after he spent the night on my sofa. He thought that was really rude.

(It is true that I did that. I also apologized via text that very day. I said that I was really glad he had come to visit, and that I was sorry for the awkward departure because my [new] boss was standing right there with us and I felt super awkward having to tell him goodbye in front of her. Also, I thought Finn was going to go have a cup of coffee or something and then come INSIDE the store when we opened, so he could see where I worked! So I didn't know he was leaving.)

2.) Calling him an idiot via email.

(I did that too. He had said, "I don't really feel like sending my son to a babysitter and driving 100 miles to see someone who references the fun dates she's going on with other dudes." And I said, "I was talking about you, you idiot!" Admittedly, that was really not a nice thing to say. I apologized profusely for it, but I guess he couldn't get over that.)

3.) Telling him he overused the word "antecedents."

(I don't know what to say about that. I did do that. I said, "You should learn some new words. Here are the ones I like right now: hyperbole, superfluous, juxtaposition, and janjaweed. I just learned that last one!" I thought I was being funny, but he was super offended. I guess I can understand that. Apparently people really don't like to be corrected on their words, because this is the 2nd time someone has quit talking to me after I corrected them. I don't know why I didn't learn from the first time! What's weird is, I almost NEVER correct anyone, even my students! Because I do think it's annoying. I've corrected people 3 times that I can remember. And 2 of them quit talking to me afterward.)

Well, that's it. I finally met a nice guy that I actually liked. Allison tried to tell me last night that I will find love, and it'll come in the form that I least expect it. I wailed, "He WAS the form I least expected! He was short and balding and graduated from crazy-conservative ORU and never drank and had a six-year-old!" I mean, if that's not what I least expected, I don't know what is! And yet for all that, for some reason, I really liked him. And I messed it up because I'm a porcupine and I drive people away.

Who can understand the human heart? Not me. If I could understand it and if I could tell myself who to like and not like, I would make myself like the slightly older Asian man who "gets" all the same things that I do and goes to my church. And dries a cool BMW convertible. But I can't change how I feel, so I guess I'll have to just cry it out over Finn and be sorry that I didn't watch my words and actions closer so I wouldn't be so prickly.

For all that, when I was thoroughly cried out last night and my nose was all stopped up, I felt kind of a big sense of relief. Like, "Oh man, now I don't have to WONDER anymore what I did or what I didn't do or why he quit talking to me or if he was ever going to talk to me again! Now I can just be free from the rollercoaster of caring about whether this person loves me or hates me today."

The thing is, I'm a mess. I know I'm a mess, but I prefer to think of myself as a beautiful mess. Or, as Francis Schaeffer once said, "a glorious ruin." I am a work in progress. Even though I bawled my eyes out last night over the realization that I'm still a porcupine and that I'm still difficult to get close to, I hope that I'm a lot less prickly now than I was 6 years ago when Webel first called me that. I hope I'm not quite as difficult to love now as I was then, that I'm just a little bit softer. I guess I hope that someday someone will come along who sees that I'm a mess, but loves me anyway. Or not even loves, at first... just who has enough grace to genuinely forgive me when I say, "I'm sorry for the awkward goodbye, I really was glad that you came to visit." I hope that I find someone who I am attracted to, and who also will be gracious and patient with me as I am trying to grow.

But the truth is, I don't really think there's someone out there for me. I think I'm just finished.