Ghosted for the last time!

 So yes, it's been 48 hours officially and Dapple did not contact me. It stings just a bit, but I don't feel any wild desires to double check or check-in with him. An article I read last night just stuck with me - he knows the rules.

I know the movie He's Not That Into You clarified that for us however many years go, but part of me always thought I could change the guy's mind or maybe I was the exception. Or that it was different for nice guys.

But I don't know... something about the way the woman whose blog I read last night said it just stuck with me. He's been socialized the same way I have. Society taught him the same rules. He pursues and I wait to be pursued.

Part of my head-banging frustration was how much I hate the rules. But to hate the rules tacitly acknowledges the rules exist. So, yes, MERJ the rules exist. After 48 hours of no-contact, he's not coming to rescue you.

No one is. Care Free Kate wins again.

I don't think I was my best self on the date, but the rules don't change. I had a 2-month buffer to counter exactly this situation. Generally, when a guy makes up his mind about me, I can't change his mind.

I like rules. So I think this woman was just speaking my language.

I'd wondered if wanting to do something spontaneous like living in Seattle for a month would change after he rejected me, and yes, it did change. The move to Seattle was the Big Gesture Mean Brain always tries to convince me to do when I feel a rejection coming on. Like do something in the 11th hour so you don't have to feel this Big Thing that's coming.

But I don't know how it's protective. I don't know how the Wishful thinking is protective. The other thing Mean Brain does in situations like these is automatically move the last person that Rejected me to the Top Hits List. Luckily Dapple has now surpassed the last few Terribles as The One. How ridiculous! I think this is where I know my brain is flawed. This is not protective. This is where I have to activate Rational Brain. Unfortunately, it's very much a conscious effort. I have to actively try to rationalize with Mean Brain. And boy are there plenty of articles about that. 

The latest one I read is give up the idea that you had this great relationship or potential for one, I think. The great relationship never existed or else you'd be in it. It was a myth.

But here's the thing, I still believe in fairy tales.

The latest dating show I was watching had considerably older people...like people my age. It was honestly hard to watch. There's nothing exciting about people in their 40s still fumbling around in the dating pool. I just want to be like Get a life! It shouldn't be this stupid. 

I hate all the conversations and self-checking and conversations. Dating and romance and love is for the youthful. I was always an old soul. 

I like the way it plays out in fairy tales. I'm cute, you're cute. Let's talk, hold hands, and make out.

No one needs to game-play or ghost or be unkind. No one needs to be hurt or have to go to counseling to do this thing we were literally made to do.

I don't think love in its purest form should be this hard. 

I think I've been resistant to the rules because I don't think they should exist. Love is art. Love is natural and should be all consuming. Love should be easy and not like work. Love should never be like work. Why did we pollute it this way. You like a person and eventually love them. You forgive them all their indiscretions because if they love you, there's no pain in love. You know that they are not trying to hurt you. Love is all the things the Bible says it is - patient and kind and good and pure and ever lasting. But these days it's weaponized. We withhold it and use it to control or coerce each other. We fake it to use other people. Even the term love-bombing is a tactic used to manipulate people. There's bomb right in the name. We've weaponized love. 

It was the thing I wanted most but as it exists today, it's soiled. How can God not hate us. When you soil love like that, we soil all He stands for.

It is the thing I've always wanted. It's why I've lived this long. But I want it in its purest form. In its easiest form. Without fights or strong words or manipulation or even mental gymnastics. I shouldn't have to convince anyone to love me. Ever. This is literally the thing I was made for. 

But I knew and realized and acknowledge a long time ago that it didn't exist on earth anymore. I hadn't seen it. It always goes back to slavery for me. How much they must have hoped and prayed for freedom. But that just wasn't their reality.  That pure love just isn't my reality. Nothing I can do can change that just like nothing they could do could change that for them.

So you just endure.

This is state-funded hospice housing that I live in. With all its myriad imperfections. This is my reality. Hospice is where you go to receive supportive care for your pain before you die. You and your caretakers know that you won't get better. I'm both the caretaker and the patient in my case. It's where you go to wait to die. 

It's not where you go to start a new career or be an entrepreneur or fall in love or change the world or right old wrongs. It's where you go to wait to die. You eat the Jello and hope to get a few more nights sleep in without pain. Sometimes you might get to eat the Jello flavor you like the most. Sometimes you might have to eat gruel through a feeding tube. 

I'm on the Jello floor.