Crushed

This must be one of the most bipolar blogs on the Internet.

Since I've gotten things going, most of the posts have either been about A) one of the best times of my entire life, or B) one of the most miserable times of my entire life.

What's the deal, you ask? Well, I think it's just the nature of the beast. I'm on a quest to turn my life around, and attain all of the things I've been missing out on. Undeniably, friends and love - the ultimate human connection - are at the top of that list.

It's no surprise, then, that when I come close to finding such things after over a decade of yearning, I become as elated as one can be.

And when I lose those great possibilities.......I am crushed.

Today is another one of those days. I've been through it before, but this time is the worst. I thought the fourth-date I talked about in the last post was great. In fact, I edited my match.com profile to say that I was only interested in friends, because I thought that, for once, I didn't have to wonder whether I would see my companion again.

Well, it looks like I was wrong. I called her a couple times this week - no response. Unlike before, she didn't text or call me back. I've jumped to conclusions before, but this one looks really bad. It's a major disappointment (an understatement), because this time was different: for the first time, I'd been going out with someone I was mostly myself with. I was confident and relaxed, and everything seemed virtually flawless. My luck had finally changed! And I felt like she was lucky to have me as well.

It's hard to describe the feeling. I know almost everyone experiences some sort of romantic loss. I thought I could handle it better than most, but somehow, it just seems harder for me. Harder, because I've waited so long for something like this. Harder, because I can't stand the thought of starting over after it took over 2 months to get to this point with one person. Harder, because I put so much time, money, and energy into what I hoped to one day call my first relationship.

And so, here I am again. I still have the one friend I've made since I started in July, but other than that, I've only gained new experiences: nothing else has lasted very long.

I like to use the blog to vent. Right now, my goal is to somehow cease all of my rumination, where I try hopelessly to figure out what went wrong and what I could have done differently; where I think about how much I liked the girl, and yet do the opposite as well, trying to convince myself that the ending was for the best.

Of course, I'll look like a fool for writing this if it turns out I just jumped to conclusions again. But regardless of what happens, I will carry on, putting my heart and soul into completing the mission by July 9.

Mind Over Matter

Disclaimer:
This isn't just a blog about my dating life, but until I figure out how to try to make some more friends....

How worthwhile is this grand mission on which I have embarked? Consider this: I started out with practically nothing seven months ago. Since then, I've written blog entries entitled "The Best Night of My Life" and "The Greatest Night of My Life." This one could be given a similar name, but I won't bother. The way things are going, I would soon run out of adjectives to describe these nights.

Now, as anyone who's read this blog knows, it hasn't been easy for me to achieve any of the improvement I've made. This week was no exception. On Monday, I started to feel ill; I was coming down with one of the colds that was going around the office. Within hours, I started pumping myself full of Zicam and Airborne. I had a Starbucks first-date set for Tuesday, and I wasn't about to cancel it.

Those products help reduce the severity of cold symptoms, so I pulled myself together well enough for the Starbucks date. Somehow, though, things took a turn for the worse. It was a blind date, with a girl I'd met on eHarmony. I've done so many of these things that I thought there was no way I'd ever again fail to make it to a second-date: I had this down, right?

Nope. This time, I was nervous. Not very anxious....but nervous. I wasn't myself at all! I stumbled trying to answer questions as basic as, "Do you like movies?" I don't know what it was. Possibly some combination of the slight cold, the waiting I'd done since my date was a little late, and...the girl herself. It was a surprise - I was expecting an average girl, but I'd ended up on a date with one who was incredible. Incredible to the extent that I had the perhaps-fatal thought that I could marry her. Yikes.

She was another carless city girl, so I offered to take her home like the last girl. She accepted - a good sign. She had to finish a grad school paper before midnight, and close to 8:00, she kept chatting with me even after I told her I'd let her go. As I drove her home, I attempted to stay in keeping with my usual - making humorous comments, kidding around. But somehow, I was too nervous! A few minutes before we got to her house, I failed miserably trying to get out a very basic sentence. At that point, I knew it was over.

She said "Well thanks for hanging out with me tonight, and maybe I'll see you later.....?"

Yeah. She actually put the emphasis on the word "maybe" like that! And that was the end of that.

And so, I trudged on, relatively unphased. After all - I'd had an apparently wildly successful first-date two days prior, so this was just an anomaly. I continued to pump myself full of Zicam and Airborne. I needed to be healthy by the weekend! The fact of the matter was that I was dating two girls who were only available on weekends. If I didn't see them this weekend, it would be at least a whopping five weeks between dates with one of them, and three weeks with the other.

I broke my own rule and used a text message to set one of the dates for Saturday. My new acquaintance responded immediately. She had something else to do, but she seemed determined to go out with me anyway. She had to let me know the time later, but she followed her own text and reassured me that she was going. In turn, I told her that I'd leave Saturday open.

Well, I kept it open for nothing. She never got back to me. It made no sense at all, so I wondered if something had happened to her. She also has a blog (this could have been a match made in Heaven!), so I checked it. Sure enough, she had a new entry - something about rejection from men. That means either A) she's a total flake and tied up my Saturday when she could have just declined or B) there was some type of breakdown, with her sending a text that never reached my phone. It's almost surely case A, but just to be sure, I sent her another message a couple hours ago. I really want to blast her for wasting my time like that, so I'll e-mail her or post on her blog if she ignores me.

:-)

Now, it's really only the principle that bothers me about that last girl. The truth of the matter is that there was something much bigger in store for Sunday, and Saturday's broken date was probably for the best.

I was fighting the cold with all my might. I didn't know if there was anything to the saying "mind over matter," but I was certainly going to give it a try on Sunday. I'd somewhat lost my voice, but I was good enough to go.

Finally, it was time for my fourth date with the one girl with whom I've been almost completely comfortable. I told her we'd celebrate a late Valentine's Day, and we did. It was amazing for me. Back in college, when I'd never even been on a date, I'd have big hopes every February of having a date for Valentine's Day. Big hopes every year, but they went nowhere. I never even managed to have a brief conversation with a girl I was interested in back then, let alone go out on a date with her.

I took a hint from an eHarmony commercial, and had two dozen roses waiting for my date in the front seat. Sweet. She went to put them in water, and then we were off to a fondue restaurant, with a plan for bowling afterwards.

We'd only spoken for a few minutes in the last month, but things were just like before. I was myself with her, and she seemed the same - a completely different person than on our first date, when she was much shyer than even me.

I was as confident as ever. I effortlessly handled things like stopping a waiter to correct my date's order. We were having a lot of fun, trying to cook our own food and getting burned by hot oil. It was a great idea on my part; the activity-based dinner was great conversation fodder. As always, I found myself asking a lot of questions...a whole lot. It would have helped if she'd asked me more. She probably only asked me a few of her own, plus some reciprocal questions based on mine. It's an odd thing. Most of the dates I've been out with have been like that. Asking me questions is one thing the two girls that inspired thoughts of the "m" (marry) word had in common....but enough about that. I like this girl anyway.

And she likes me. Dinner and the commute took over 3 hours, so it was too late to go bowling afterwards. She openly referenced doing it another time, and she'd been laughing at my barrage (slight exaggeration) of jokes all night, so I knew everything was good. She said she'd had fun again, and thanked me for everything. She repeated that while we stood outside her home. When she finally stopped talking, I took a step forward, put my right hand on her waist, and we kissed goodnight.

Still Alive: 21st Date = Wow!

Yep, it's been a whopping 18 days since I've posted. When you see this blog go silent like that, fear not, my friends, for I will never give up on this great mission of mine.

Why the silence? I haven't been doing much of anything. The girl I've been seeing (the one I went on three dates with) actually caught pneumonia the day before the would-be fourth date I set up with her. Amazingly, next Sunday will mark 2 full months since our first date. It looks like we're still seeing each other, but we've only been able to manage 3 dates in that time.

So I said something in my last post about not going on anymore blind dates from eHarmony/match.com. I take it all back....

With the lull in the action, I figured, why not? I need all the practice I can possibly get, so why give that up? Sure, I'll try to move on to other ways of meeting people...but I can do both. I have a goal of completing this mission, from start to finish, in a single year. That means I have until July 9, 2008 to have gone from Zero to Hero. There's a long way to go, perhaps, so I knew there was no time to waste passing up opportunities just on principle.

And boy, did an opportunity come my way last Monday. There was a girl on eHarmony, who in her profile pictures looked like a model. We'd both written something meaningful and deep in our guided communication responses on eHarmony - she'd told me that mine were beautiful and heartfelt, and she loved reading them. We exchanged e-mail one time after that, and then she disappeared completely.

And then, I checked my e-mail on Monday. . She wanted to know if I was still single, and if so, if I was interested in getting to know each other. Ahhh! Yep, it was three days before Valentine's Day. This girl was single, and I was an opportunity she'd passed up over three months ago.

I jokingly gave her a bit of a hard time about the 3 month gap in my response, and that set the tone for what was to come. We e-mailed back and forth for a couple days, and I made jokes or made light fun of her whenever I had the chance. We were having a good time (over e-mail and texts, mind you) . On Valentine's Day I was at the gym, and she texted me "You'd better get those muscles big, because I like strong men!" And my response was "You'd better get your beauty sleep, because I like beautiful women!" It was a funny comeback, and it allowed me to continue preventing anyone from feeling like we were somehow on different levels, even though I thought she looked like a model online.

Our Starbucks date was set for this afternoon. The plan? 45 minutes, as always. I didn't want to sit down at blogger afterwards and write the usual "it was more of the same" description of the date. I knew I was still probably going to get to see the other girl again (I've called and sent her texts to check on her, and she's responded positively), so in a way, it didn't matter how well things worked out with this new girl. So I was going to try something different. Instead of going through the usual conversation topics, I kept in mind things we could talk about based on our fun little text communications before. I was going to try to continue to be confident and funny. I was even planning to give her a palm reading - no risk, no reward.

I tried to figure out how to think about this upcoming date in a way that would minimize or eliminate my anxiety. I started coming up with theories. I may be making progress, but I don't have a clear strategy to present yet.

At some point though, I started thinking....I said I was on the brink before that last third-date. I'd gotten further than ever before. Nothing had changed: I was in the best shape of my life with this social stuff. So maybe today was a test to see if I really had turned the corner. I didn't even call the last three girls I went on first dates with. For all I know, those dates could have gone just as well as any.

Back to today. We met up at Starbucks in the Chinatown of her city. The place was absolutely jam packed. Not a single place to sit. I was prepared this time (unlike in one of the first date entries you'll find in this blog), and had a decisive plan. I told her we would talk a walk, and find someplace else.

The second Starbucks we walked to was just as full, so we ended up in a tapas restaurant. This was good, except for the fact that I make the first-dates Starbucks dates for a reason. I figure the longer the date, the better the chances of me screwing something up! I'd done restaurants twice before, and neither worked out.

But this was different. I've made a ton of progress since I started this gig. A light dinner and drinks on a blind date - not a problem.

I wasn't doing perfectly. My voice was a little off, as usual. I inexplicably failed to pronounce the word "environmentalist," precisely like I blew the word "hospitality" on my first succesful date in August. I didn't feel anxious at all (I almost never do once I've met the person), but there must have been some kind of subconscious nervousness or something to cause that. Nonetheless, I was able to continue some of my confidence and humor. We did end up talking about some of the usual stuff - school, siblings, where she's from , and what not - but I got plenty of the other stuff in as well.

The best part of the date came when I asked her about politics. I know what people say, but things like politics are amazingly great topics for me. The couple times when I've been 100% relaxed and engaged, conversing fluently, it's been when I was debating something, or at least when I've had plenty to say about the matter.

I'd been gradually beginning to feel more comfortable (the clock might have run out on me if we had just been at Starbucks!), so I went for it. I'd been asking her about keeping skeletons out of her closet for future presidential ambitions, and I turned the topic to Obama's drug usage. We were both on the edge of our seats, discussing...cocaine :) It was fun, and interesting, and we were physically closer together making good eye contact.

I let the arrival of the receipt determine the time the date would end. She'd taken public transportation to get there, so I offered to drive her home. She said said it wasn't necessary, but I asked her if she was sure.....lo and behold, she accepted! I'd met another public transportation girl in the city back in August, and she'd declined the ride home. After that, she (date #2) ignored my phone call and e-mail - so I figured accepting the ride was a good sign.

She wanted to stop at a store before we went to my car, so she was in no hurry to get away from me.

With my social driving anxiety completely annihilated by previous efforts, it went off without a hitch. I kept asking questions, beckoning her to sing for me, and generally being fun. When we reached her place, I insisted on walking her to her door. Finally: mastery of the basics!

She was going to invite me in to see her dog (probably another good sign!), but the dog was upstairs and her roommate was sitting in the living room. She hugged me. The final word? "Thanks for driving. I'll see you later dear."

Yep, that was a new one. But on the way I home, I figured it doesn't mean much of anything - you can never tell. I thought about how the other girl I'm (hopefully) still seeing had sent me a text less than an hour after our date. Would this girl even send me a follow-up at all? If not, I was going to probably ask her out again anyway, because it had ended up going pretty well. As for the slight voice thing, the blown word, and other little problems - I told myself, "Nobody's perfect." It was a good date.

A couple minutes after I got home.....beep beep beep! An incoming text message.

Could it be? Could this girl like me enough to text me like the other girl? Something that I thought was rare and amazing?

"Thank you for dinner & the ride home James... you are clearly a great guy."

WOW! That made my day, and more. What more could I possibly ask for?

And so, I've given myself something like 4 more months and 3 more weeks to finish this thing off. Complete the mission. Become consistently comfortable and able to be myself in across-the-board social situations.

There was a minor setback in that the last friend I thought I'd made didn't respond to my texts or contact me after our first meeting. But I'm fine with that, because I was able to be myself with her, and that's all I care about.

I've come a long, long way, but the mission is a challenge. An enormous challenge.

It's how we manage challenges that determines the quality of our lives.