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You can have the perfect picture in your head of what the person you want should look like. Your ideal match. Your soul mate. The eyes. The smile. The hair. The height. The face. You can hear their voice in your head that you’ve never heard before. Because it doesn’t exist yet. You can even hear the way they laugh. That person is accompanied by a “must have” and a “must not have” list. Has to be a certain age. Must like movies. Can’t have kids. Must like to travel. Doesn’t smoke. You take all that and now you compare it to the people in your life. The ones you’re dating. The ones you’ve dated. The ones you want to date. You do this checklist in your head when you see them or think about them. Trying to sell yourself. Check. Check. Check. Yes. No. Maybe. Yes. Yes. No. No. No. Then you get……feelings. And all that gets thrown out the window.
“The heart wants what the heart wants.” How many times have we all heard that? I’ve heard it more times than I can remember. I’ve even said it to myself a few times. More than a few times actually. I no longer count the dates I’ve been on. How many women I’ve dated. How long or how short the relationships were. I’m getting older. Keeping track of numbers is a young man’s game. Bragging about stats with your boys stops in your early 30s because the rest of them are now married with kids. Some are even on their second marriage. The numbers, the stats, the sex, the dates, the relationships…I stopped counting. The ideal picture of her is still in my head. The checklist still automatically pops up. I can be sitting across from her talking over sushi and hear my voice “She has it all. She has what I want.” Then she does something that isn’t on my checklist and I find her even more attractive. How? Why? Feelings. Feelings supersede the logic, the list, the ideal picture. They come at you like a speeding train. Like an anvil being dropped on you in an old Bugs Bunny cartoon. Unexpected. Unwanted. Unappreciated. Why can’t I just stick to the list? Why can’t I just keep picturing that ideal woman in my head and keep on chasing after the unattainable? Because of feelings. I get them. You get them. And I’m thankful that I do get them now. Because feelings have become my moral compass. It’s no longer the logic. No longer my brain. No longer the numbers and past experiences that guide me. I have these feelings for a reason. You do too. They’re pointing north in an ocean that you’ve never sailed in before and somehow you have to get home.
Why am I writing about feelings? Because how much longer can I go in denial? Why block them out? If I’m going to get hurt then it might as well be for a reason. I’ll recover. I always do. I can just get a tattoo to cover up another scar right? I thought about lowering my walls. Instead I’m just going to blow them up. I don’t have the time or energy to keep those walls up anymore. Let the picture of her stay. Let the mental checklist stay. But if my moral compass tells me that this woman is giving me feelings, then I’m following it. Whether or not I get home or end up lost at sea forever has yet to be determined. I can admit as man secure in his spot in life that I get feelings and I don’t mind them. It’s good to feel something for someone when it’s unexpected. Feels even better when those feelings are reciprocated. I know this much now. It’s going to come down to this. Either two people lost at sea using their moral compasses are going to find each other or they’re just going to be two more ships passing in the night.
Until next time. Always take it there.
T
T-blawg 