Ooh, I Lost My Sense Of Passion And Direction, To Protect Myself From Hurting And Despair, Listen To My Heart, My Soul Is Aching

--"Heart of Stone", Erasure

There comes that moment where your heart is all aflutter and you convince yourself that the person you're sitting next to could be the one. At least that's the way it is with me. I exchange words, trade meaningful glances, and hope that my best is good enough to convince the person looking back at me that I'm worth keeping in their life. And when the night ends I'm left with the idea that I've done the impossible, that I've managed to secure a foothold in their life.

I'm a romantic idealist. It's in my nature to believe that a universal truth like love does exist, that it is attainable. That's why whenever the spark of hope is seen I almost always immediately try fanning it into the flames of passion. I'm complicit in my own bid for failure. I raise the stakes when the game at hand, at first, is friendly. I invest meaning into every moment, lacing every word and every gesture with hidden depths and subtle nuances that probably were never there in the first place. Every time her arm brushes against mine, every couple of seconds her eyes spend looking into mine, I take as a sign that the road I'm taking is headed in the right direction. I believe because I want to believe and not because there's actually something there to believe in. I take solace in her smile because I can imagine myself seeing that smile every morning for the rest of my life.

Yet eventually I know what comes next. I expect the cold wind that blows the clouds over my sunshine. I start analyzing all the same telltale signs of true love's embrace. But now I start to divest the meaning from the motion. I willingly remove the veil of magic and mystery from the situation. I don't want to get my hopes up. I don't want to set myself up for that fall. The touches suddenly become accidental. The words suddenly are just words without an inch of subtext. The looks aren't aimed at me, but through me or around me. I'm just the person she's standing next to and not the person she's there with.

About the only quality that doesn't change is my view of her. I know she's worth all the extra analysis. I know she's worth it. The way she can fill me with such hope and such dread allows me such certainty. With most I'm used to not making an impression. That's pretty much standard fare for me. But with her I want to say some part of her will remember me. I want to say that five years from now, ten years from now introductions I won't have to be made again. She'll know my face, the way my eyes will still gently lay upon her, and my name will instantly spring to her lips. We may not end up tethered in this life or the next, but I'm confident there was a connection made that wasn't just ephemeral. More importantly, I know she made an impression on me, which, these days, is even more rare of occurrence. For a small part of my life I allowed some new light in through the shutters.

That's what I was thinking on my drive. I think I even set a record on how fast I went from the first part to the second part. I don't know if that's a sign of maturity or a sign of surrender.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers