Schumbody Schtop Me!

I always loved that line in "The Mask". This post won't be nearly as cute and endearing as that movie was. 

This is not going to be pretty. I strongly suggest that anyone who doesn't want a reason to smack me right up the side of my head may not want to read any further. I'm about to share something that, if I had a brain in my head - or an ounce of self respect - I would lock in a vault and pray nobody ever found it.

I need to understand what is happening inside my head right now, and it seems like I can't always do that without laying it all out in the air and letting the sun dry all the damp, moldy bits ... you know, so I can take it all in. See it as a whole. Not all intertwined inside the folds of my grey matter.

I am standing in a room coated in a thick layer of insidious gas ... like say, ether ... and a couple of flint rocks rolling around together in my hands. It's like I can't be happy unless I have something to obsess about. Something that is dangerous. Something that can't help but ignite... leaving a trail of mass destruction in its wake.

What is the matter with me? I'd say that I have 'bored housewife' syndrome ... but it isn't that. I have done things almost as stupid as this before. The one saving grace there was that I knew I would never actually meet the other participant in that little tragedy. Not flying this trapeze with the safety net of relative anonymity.

Nope. 

So ... I met with the ex-boyfriend I mentioned in a previous post. It was a good meeting. I didn't over share - you would have been so proud of me ... I was. I looked good that day. Not over done, just right. Hubs was actually having a ball teasing me about my 'date' ... which I found to be absolutely adorable. 

We met at a cafe and spent about an hour talking. It was ... restrained and awkward, but oddly it fed something inside of me that, until I got away from the situation, I didn't realize was so ravenously hungry. He told me that time had been very good to me... and there was a weight added to the very that said a great deal more than any of the other words. 

Yummy, yummy sustenance for the awakening beast within.

So ... I walked away with an ego boost that sent my spirits through the roof and the possibility of a contract within his firm. All good, right?

Sure ... if I was a normal person. 

I think I speak for everyone when I point out that 'normal' doesn't really enter into my thought process in any way other than as a tool of measurement and comparison.

We met last Monday and I left it with him to contact me if the job aspect was to come to fruition. Tuesday came and went ... and Wednesday - no contact. (Have I mentioned my lack of patience?) By Thursday, my obsessive compulsive mind was in a frenzy. The beast was starving for attention and my fingers just started tickling keys ... of their own volition, of course.

I wrote a lovely, non-damning (but just leading enough) email, which I saved in my drafts. Then, I contacted him and asked for a private email address - to which I could send my 'harmless' (though admittedly personal) note.

...and then I got just exactly what I thought I had wanted... his reaction ... and it was a gooder. There was a line in it that resonates inside my mind: "Jesus, woman ... you look and sound just the same as when we were together ... hence the reason you've been on my mind". 

Can you hear the alarm bells ringing? Woot ... Woot ... Danger Will Robinson ... 

Here's the thing: I am vain ... and I seem to require an inordinate amount of attention. I mean, I am likely the 'most paid attention to' wife on the planet. My husband tells me daily how beautiful and sexy he thinks I am. He listens to me and talks to me and everything I say, think or contrive is important to him. The problem is that I am also housing a seventeen year old version of myself who was hurt so badly by this ex of mine, that she is crying out to hear what he has to say. She is jumping up and down and throwing a massive temper tantrum ... begging to get her few minutes of restitution for all the years of feeling thrown away.

She's doing it in a very VERY dangerous way, though.

He wants to meet with me again ... so he can 'better explain himself', in person. I know that I shouldn't ... and I told him as much in my answering email. I told him how happy I am in my life and that although seventeen year old me is bordering on mania just to see him again, forty year old me has much to lose by that action. Not to mention him ... but he isn't my problem anymore, so I'll stay focused on me.

You know what is really funny? Back about 15 years ago ... when the Swiss Air disaster occurred, he showed up at the bank where I worked. When I got off that evening, he met me at my place and we chatted for hours. I was single then. He was married to the woman he had passed me over for and they had a child together. He made a very tacit pass at me and I stopped him ...because it was inappropriate. He then made some comment about my 'goodness' and left ... never to be heard from again.

Why didn't the beast show her nasty self then? Is it because I am aging? Is this some sort of mid-life crisis-y bullshit that I am going through? Is it because I have worked so effing hard at losing all that weight and now I am wielding the power I have suddenly found in that? Is it because now I have something to lose?  

I.Do.Not.Understand.

...and I want to so desperately it hurts.

I know I need to stop pulling at this thread. For all our sake. I just know me well enough to be able to lay odds on how long it will be before I can talk myself into seeing him again. I won't do it behind Hub's back ... THAT I won't do. He'll know - so that I am accountable.

I don't understand this compulsion... and compulsion, it is. I am fully engaged in head-on obsession here.

Why is it that what we think we want is so often the worst possible scenario of the bunch?

Save me from the beast. Help me find the right balance here between satisfying the young, broken hearted girl and preserving the beautiful life that she has managed to build in spite of her past.

As always, I remain

Dramatically Yours,

Dani