Reintroduce Me Into the Wild

Well, the mass emails have been sent out. The close friends have been notified. I am a single gal. For the first time, well, ever.

The past four years consisted of full-on, in-your-face coupledom. Marriage and kids were discussed. Families were introduced. There is no debate that this was a serious relationship, perhaps the most serious I'd ever been in.

This four-year relationship began two weeks after I was cast aside by this guy I was so unbelievably infatuated with that I could barely be myself around him, even though I never truly knew how he felt about me. I also never figured out what it was about him that drove me completely crazy, but I loved that nerving, buzzing, crushing, anxiety-filling torture.

Technically, crazy-crush guy overlapped with my high school boyfriend, but not in the cheating sense. HSBF and I were together for nearly a year and a half and at about the year mark, the crush cascaded down on me. I waved it off as a minor issue, until I realized that I really couldn't be in love with two people at the same time.

This puts us midway through my senior year of high school, seven years ago. Prior to this I had a three-year saga of an on-and-off relationship with an older guy (not thatttt old, thank god), which was nonetheless inappropriate, confusing, sneaky, and nerve-wracking. Now we're at about freshman year of high school. Ten years.

Thinking about what to write today, this topic seemed appropriate with the changes being made literally in my life as well as emotionally. I'm so tired recently, unable to get out of bed in the morning--not out of grief--but just general weariness. I didn't compute my coupled years until I began writing and now I see why I am so damn tired. Ten years.

I can't help but wonder about how much growing I must have done in that time--freshman year of high school until now, as I complete my third year of grad school--and moreover how much growing I did with the guys in my life instead of just on my own. I don't believe in regrets, but now that I have gotten this second chance, I know I must use it carefully. I never expected I would be single again, yet here I am. Such is life.

Of course, I'm not flailing around in a void. I am interested in someone. I can't help my own nature (or resist his), but I am learning new instincts. No rules, games, tips, tricks (not that I have any, really). No jumping into the deep-end. No plan. I'm figuring out what dating--real dating, not within the contexts of a sure-thing relationship--really means. I'll let you know what I learn along the way.