Sunday, November 20, 2011

Why I'm Still Single (Part 4)


The next morning I texted him how much I loved him (yeah... I said love - this is not me... this is ober girly me, and ober girly me needs people to know how much I love them, all the time) and couldn't wait to see him again. I created a calendar and crossed off the days until our next meeting.

A few weeks later I drove back from Texas to DC, and stopped over to visit Can-Can Boy in his new city (he moved there for an internship). I'd always wanted to visit the home of the BI-LO Dome and see where my favorite hockey player Martin Masa had played when he was younger.

Martin played on my hometown team when I was in high school, and he was good friends with my family. My current TV is actually one that he gave me - it's old, but I hate to get rid of it, because of its sentimental value.

We arrived much earlier than when my mother and I had visited him in City B, because at this point in time, no one else mattered. All I wanted to do was see him. All I wanted to do was stay there for a week to be with him, but when you have a conservative southern mother, that's not an option.

The weeks had been cruel, I felt as thought part of my soul had been ripped out, only to find it again when he held me in his arms.

I don't actually know if he ever knew this. I'm horrible at expressing my in the moment emotions.

Can-Can Boy and I had the "we're exclusive, but we're not boyfriend/girlfriend" chat, because he didn't really want to put labels on it (read he was probably seeing other people - sans sexytime - there's a lot of pictures of him with a certain girl from this time period - oh wait - he's currently engaged to this same girl... odd isn't it). As I look back on it now, his decision to "love me so much," but refusing to allow me to call him my boyfriend when we were "exclusive" makes no sense...  So of course when talking to my friends I dubbed him, 'the Manfriend.'

'Manfriend' to this day is synonymous in my group of friends as someone you're serious about but you're not 100% together - if that makes any sense. He's someone you would bring around to meet your friends, but not someone whom you would bring to meet your family if that makes sense (however Can-Can Boy had definitely already met my mother for sure and my brother's GF, Ash who is family. I had also already met his mother and played trivia with her. She was a really sweet lady, whom I seriously wanted to get to know better).  

Instead of postponing getting to see him till later like the first time around, I drove at a horribly illegal speed to get to him as soon as possible. I longed for him more than I had actually ever longed for someone.

He picked me up at the hotel, talked with my mom for a bit (like a true-southern-gentleman should), and then whisked me off for a walk through Greenville, SC, which is so cute by the way. I'd totally move there when I'm older.

We stopped to grab some pizza at this cute little bistro, because he knew how much I loved pizza (seriously it's my favorite food), and then we made our way back through down town and out onto these trails by a stream. 

After walking the length of the trail until just before it got creepy and graffitied, we cuddled up on a bench and talked about everything, (including my nauseating fear of heights, which he tried to rid me of later on a bridge overlooking the water) while watching families walk by and some poor child play baseball with himself as his parents watched. 

The day slowly began to wane while we talked about our childhood, our futures, our hopes and dreams, but we managed to make our way over to a swinging bench next to the waterfall, and we spent the rest of the evening with me lying down with my head in his lap as we watched the sunset, the moon, shooting stars, planes and satellites while rocking gently back and forth.

It was well past 10 p.m. before we left the comfort of the bench, due to the chill in the summer evening air. 

He then took me on a tour of the town and his new place, before dropping me back off at my hotel. I stayed out much later than I should have, but I didn't want to leave him. I didn't feel like returning to college to be honest with you. I would have been so content to just pause my life to be a waitress in a small town, waiting for him. 

A few weeks later after skyping nearly every day and texting constantly, we decided that he should visit me in DC.

A day after he booked his plane ticket, my best friends, N, Ro, Shay, and I along with another good friend Indy went out to the Great Frederick Fair. We thought it would be a great decision after we had all watched the movie, State Fair the 1960 something musical.

If you haven't been to the Great Frederick Fair, I highly recommend it.

As we made our way along the midway Shay kept pointing out these fortune tellers and palm readers. She desperately wanted to do it, but she didn't want to do it alone, so being a slightly superstitious person (I am SOOO not walking under a ladder), I agreed to have my palm read.

Here's where it gets interesting.

As I sat in the chair infront of this horribly ancient woman, she started at my palm for a good 5 minutes before she spoke. The first words out of her mouth, "You're in love with a man who lives far away from you."

I nearly shit my pants.

"But I can tell he is not the first man that you loved. You loved for many years a man 9 years and 10 months your senior. You had a deep love - a true love."

I actually gagged. In high school I had been horribly close friends with a man close to 10 years my senior. We talked every day - no matter what. He came to see my marching band performances, and I went to see his Christian band play.

We loved each other with such true, pure passion that we never crossed the line. Many people don't understand this. His best friend got a girl 8/9 years his junior pregnant and all of his friends thought that he would do the same with me. They shunned him. They kicked him out of the band. They pushed him aside and abandoned him like a dog on the side of the road, just because they didn't understand our friendship.

I stopped dating in my last two years of high school because of this man. I couldn't think of dating someone else when all I wanted to do was date him, which couldn't happen, because we both knew the consequences.

After I turned 18 he told me how much he loved me - my sentiments were the exact same. The night after he professed this love to me, we stood awkwardly in the Sonic parking lot our foreheads bent together. Our eyes locked. His hand on my neck, mine on his, with the tension of 3 years of built up love coursing through our veins.

And then, I walked away. You can ask him to this day, and he will tell you how much he loved me. He's married now, which is for the best because I knew at that moment in time that I wasn't meant to be in SETX and that being there was going to slowly kill my passion for creativity and life, no matter how much I loved him. He knew he couldn't tie me down either - I had a soul meant for soaring. So we slowly, slowly severed our love over months and months and months. The slow passing of our love pained me every step of the way.

One night I sat at the foot of my dorm room bed wailing, because I couldn't stand it anymore. One of my close floor-mates came to my aid, holding my head, letting me cry my thousand tears. I tried to explain the situation to her, but she didn't understand, after that I stopped telling the story. From that point on my "how many men have you dated" count constantly counted him out, because no one understood.

The next thing my palm reader said to me was, "you have already met your husband, he will be your second great love. Your last great love, and you will have 3 children with him."

"Am I currently dating him?"

"That I cannot tell, the man you date now - you love very deep, but I cannot tell if he's the one. He is very dear to you, and you are very very dear to him. But I'm also saying that you should not turn your back on him, because he needs you as much as you need him, and my dear, he loves you very, very much. It is promising though."

"Wow, I once had a tarot reader tell me I'm to be married before a certain age, do you know what age that is?"

"28."

She was spot on. A tarot reader during my freshman year in college (I was 18 at the time) had grabbed my hand most intensely during a reading on the quad, when I asked her if I'd be married before 10 years were out, she said, "you will be married before your 28th birthday to your last great love." - For this I have witnesses.

After this I needed to know. I needed to know how Can-Can Boy and I interacted for longer than 8 hours now that we were "together." 

So he booked a ticket and flew up. I picked his sexy ass up in Baltimore at BWI, and (dot) (dot) (dot) 

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