Hope dies last

I want to say, “I knew it”. I want to hang my head in despondence and tell myself, “See I told you.” I want to look in the mirror–as I usually do–and search for answers as if they could be written on my face. I want to throw my mobile phone against it. I want to watch the cracks it makes on the mirror until my reflection is as distorted as his intentions, until my face appears as shattered as my insides.

Real never called.

Which I guess, that in itself, is the only answer I should need.

On Friday night, in the early hours of Saturday morning actually, I met my daughter.

I was on roller skates speeding through a corridor when I felt a presence following not far behind. As I came to a halt, a breathless twelve year old girl approached me.

“Why are you going so fast?” she asked, clearly distraught. “I can’t keep up with you.”

“We have to do it my way.” I said firmly but ever so kindly.

“But why do we have to do it your way?” she whined.

“Because it’s the right way.” I said.

“And why is YOUR way ALWAYS the right way?”

***

As I recited this dream to my mother the next morning, I felt uncomfortable.  “I saw my daughter in my dre-” I started to say but the second the words came out of my mouth, in the moment they were spilling out for another to hear, for me to hear, I realized that the 12 year old girl? That girl with the straight hair and the fear in her eyes? The girl out of breath doing her best to persuade me to slow down?

That wasn’t my daughter at all.

That was me.

***

“Three weeks ago you sat where you are sitting now and you know what you told me?”

“What?”

“You said, ‘But why do we have to grow up?”

“No? Really?  I said that? Are you sure?”

“Yes! You were laughing as you said it but doesn’t that strike you as something significant?”

Silence.

“It’s the same voice, I think. The voice in my head that used my lips to tell you ‘But why do we have to grow up?’ and the girl in my dream.”

“So who do you think is right?”

“I see the girl’s point of view. Why DO WE HAVE TO DO EVERYTHING MY WAY?”

“Why do you think?”

“Because we have to. We have no other choice.”

“Hope, who did you identify with more in the dream? The adult you or the girl that couldn’t keep up?”

“The adult me. But, I felt truly sorry for the girl.”

“Why?”

“Because she was afraid. She was so very afraid.”

“Well, if you could tell her something right now. What would it be?”

The room filled with silence. Flashes of the little girl careened into my mind. Her smile. Her tiny frame. The slight tremor in her voice as she tried to reason with me. My eyes welled up with tears. I wrapped my hands across my body in an almost self-hug and I whispered,

“I guess, well, I think. Yes. I think I’d just tell her. Don’t worry. Everything is going to be fine.”

Over drinks with the girls the other night we spent  time mocking my ex-boyfriend until I had tears in my eyes and I was slamming the table with my hand from laughter.

This was instigated because of an email he sent me recently which was so bizarre [A disconnected paragraph at the end of the email went something like this: The wind. The walk from here to there. A lone dog. Barks. I am happy.] that I sat staring at my screen for quite some time wondering why on earth I was so completely enamored by this boy.

“Guys, please tell me he wasn’t like this when we were dating?”

“Oh yes he was!”

“He was?”

“Yes!”

“Why didn’t I see it?”

“Because you were in love.”

***

There are things about people that I don’t see. Or perhaps, I choose not to see them. Or even, I see them yet in those early days of all consuming passion and shimmery beginnings, I convince myself that I would like it (it being a habit, or a hobby, or an interest, or a type of temperament) if only I was more like that person myself.

I do not mean this in a Runaway Bride kind of way. I know the way I like my eggs.

But if the ex, for example, had enjoyed his eggs with dollops of ketchup (a dish I happen to find repulsive) I would not let it affect me. I would not even notice it. And if I did? I would convince myself that it is not really such a gross combination and maybe I have been wrong all these years. That maybe, I am the weirdo because I do not like ketchup on my eggs.

See what I did right there?  Doesn’t my commitment to always demean my own likes and dislikes–my own self–impress you?

***

I first noticed the spelling mistakes while we were chatting on Facebook in real time.I winced. And then internally scolded myself while defending him.

“Hope, YOU are a spelling snob. He is obviously preoccupied and not paying attention.”

Now, they have become a consistent part of our exchanges via text, Facebook message or email.

Spelling mistakes. Grammar mistakes. I try to ignore them but they stand out glaringly, the way my white skin would look on a beach full of tanned women who must have been sunbathing since April to have achieved their colour.

I shake my head for the these thoughts to slip out. When that does not work I try to convince myself that IT IS OK, I ALSO MAKE SPELLING MISTAKES. Then, a little voice sneaks up on me.

“Yes, you might have trouble spelling a complicated word but you know the difference between where and were. And can I remind you that you once declared that you would never date anyone who DID NOT?”

***

I search for the answer to this phenomenon. That in the hypothetical boyfriends I sometimes create while bored at work on rainy days, I list such specifics as if I believe that he could exist–this ideal I have created. When I finally meet a guy I actually like? He isn’t at all like the one I had designed for myself.

So when I go over all the failed romances of my life, I wonder if perhaps that is the problem.

What do you think? Does that elusive chemistry blind us to the extent that we spend time with a person that we aren’t really compatible with? Should we follow our hypothetical boyfriend lists more strictly?

Or it is possible that I am just nitpicking now? That my negative reaction to his lack of perfect spelling (despite my ever increasing like for him)  is just me trying to find reasons NOT to like him? To protect myself?

And if that is true?

Is therapy finally paying off?

I used to be a huge fan of Susan Miller.

Most of the time, she would be eerily accurate (in a fun way) that for almost two years the first thing I would do on the first of the month is check out her predictions. This amused me until last January when I read something along the following lines.

‘On January 20th’, she wrote, ‘you will meet the love of your life.’

I usually do not pay attention to such grandiose statements, but her specificity impressed me so much that the date was etched into my mind. So when The Man asked to see me on that Sunday, ON THAT EXACT DATE, I was convinced that he was ‘the love’ that Susan had been alluding to in her January forecast.

The 20th came bright and blistery. And by the end of it, I was in his flat fawning over declarations of desire and thinking, “That Susan Miller is a bloody genius.”

But February arrived and The Man left. March followed quickly, just as bright but not quite as blistery, and before I knew it it was the 30th and I had not heard from him in far too long. Far too long for him to be the love of January let alone my life.

Susan Miller began to lose her balance on the soaring pedestal I had placed her–and ironically him–on.

***

“I haven’t seen you in ages.” Real had said.

“Yea, it has been a long time.” I had answered.

“It must be about a month.”

“Something like that.”

As I thought about it later, I knew exactly–even to the precise minute if I were actually neurotic enough to do the calculations–how long it had been.

On the day that Susan had predicted I would meet the love of my life? On that exact day while I was waiting for The Man to join me? It was on that day that I met Real.

January 20th.

The love of my life.

Excuse me while I scoff.

***

Susan Miller might be a genius but I am definitely not her groupie any longer. For when I discovered the apparent ‘love of my life’ turned out to have a girlfriend? Well then, she toppled over head first off that pedestal. Or maybe she was pushed. Whose to say? I honestly wasn’t there.

But old habits die hard. Especially when it comes to romantic forecasts and crushes that keep pestering you in your dreams AND who also ask to go out for drinks with you ‘midweek’.

Thus, after a much needed astrological hiatus I went back to Susan and this is what she had to say:

“Watch Wednesday, June 25, when there will be a lovely cooperation between the Sun and Saturn in the heavens. The Sun rules your solar fifth house of true love, and Saturn’s job is to stabilize and actualize what it touches. Saturn will teach you to be practical too, and by that I mean to keep your feet well planted on the floor, which is helpful for starting or keeping a long-term relationship.”

Which–much to my surprise–is quite similar to what my therapist had recommended earlier that day when I barged into her office, all jittery, and very nearly screeched, “Real is going to call me this week for us to go for drinks and you need to tell me what to do!”

After discussing it for quite some time, a plan was formulated. Not an evil plan of how I will get him to dump the British Chippie and DATE ME DATE ME DATE ME, but how to protect myself from a man who could potentially, probably, most likely kick me when I am already down.

In actuality, the plan we devised protects me from the person who consistently hurts me the most.

Myself.

***

All that remains is for him to follow through and then when he is sitting across of me I get to ask the following question as casually as I can muster,

“Are you still with your girlfriend?”

And then? If he replies ‘Yes’ or gives me a ‘Yes, but…’ answer yet asks to see me again I get to say the following,

“I really like you. But you have a girlfriend. If you’re ever single I’d love to go out with you again.”

THEN I HAVE TO FOLLOW THROUGH WITH THAT.

And since both Susan and my therapist are in perfect accordance, I think I will take heed and keep both feet on the ground.

So on Wednesday, on the day where there is lovely cooperation in my house of true love AND on the day that Real may call, I have already made plans to spend the evening with my girlfriends.

Because as much as I want the stars to be right? That on January 20th I may have met the love of my life?

I think the love of my life? My house of true love? I think that I would be much better off believing that that is me.

A couple of weeks ago, smack bang in the throes of utter hopelessness, I stood outside work having a cigarette. Our landlord, a tall man in his sixties who I have never really liked–something to do with his disheveled clothes, the way he huffs and puffs when he’s breathing and the fact that he insists on talking to me while I am on the telephone–started chatting to me.

He asked me if I had met a man and when I answered in the negative he looked surprised. “But you’ve been getting all dressed up and you’re looking so pretty and so happy” he said.

I would have started laughing but laughter was a concept so foreign to me at that moment that I merely shook my head.

“No, I’ve met no man. But thank you.”

“Why haven’t you met anyone?” he continued.

“I DON’T KNOW” I answered a little too forcefully.

“Do you think that maybe you’re looking too hard?”

His question caught me completely off guard.

“What do you mean?”

“Do you think that you’re looking too hard for the perfect guy that you’re missing out on all the real guys?”

I made a great show of considering this then said, “No”. Emphatically no.

“Mr Landlord, I’m not looking too hard. I’m not looking for the perfect guy. I’m just looking for A GOOD GUY. And sadly, all the good ones are taken.”

Then, he puffed a little and his shirt–his 50 year old grubby shirt–shifted as his chest did. He smiled crookedly right at me–me with my snobby straight hair and in my judgmental ‘I’m too cool to be talking to the likes of you’ black dress–and he said:

“Most men need a woman to be good. A woman changes a man. Usually, she only needs to change him up to 60%. If she changes him more than that? Well? Then he’s just a great, big dufus.”

And that foreign concept that was laughter? It exploded from the pit of my stomach in the way it only does when I hear something that is all at once funny and wise.

I found a note tucked into a book called The Lady Who Was Beautiful Inside by Edward Monkton. It was a note written in pencil from an ex-boyfriend. This is what was on it:

Essentials for Life

-someone to love

-something to do

-something to hope for

I’ve got hope back. And I’m on the path to finding something to do.

How are you fairing?