Friend #16 & #17 - Brian & Lou

My friend, Katie, was getting married.  At the end of March, she sent me at text that read:  “What is the name of your plus one?  We are doing the place cards and need to know.”

I read the text like a deer in headlights.  Six months ago when I RSVP’d, I had a debate on whether or not to mark the plus one box.  I had decided to air on the side of optimism and I marked the box.  Six months later, and still single, I had no idea who I was going to bring. 

“Well…” I stammered over text.  “I thought I still had some time.”

“Well…”  Katie texted back.  “We are less than a month out now.  Soooo…we probably need to know…”

I looked up at the sky and wiped both my palms all the way down my face….as if that was going to make me feel any better.  “I have an idea,” I texted back.  “You are the bride so tell me if this is going to ruin your wedding…but what if we put on the place card ‘Mystery Date’?  And then I’m not locked into anyone.”

Katie texted back, “I love it!”  And the hunt was on.

At first I looked for guy friends who might be available.  That came to screeching halt pretty quickly.  So since I was out of options, I decided to throw up a dating profile with my specific request of needing a wedding date, that way I could quickly weed out anyone who wouldn’t want to go.  I got a slew of messages but these were my top two:

Brian spent most of his life in St. Louis.  He has a grown daughter, a couple of grand children and six months ago, decided to re-start his life here in Phoenix where it is warm all year long.  He thought it would be easier to find an IT job out here than it was.  He had to eat through a lot of his savings to make the transition. But when I met him, he’d just started a new job that he seemed to really like.  He was excited to be in Phoenix where he could ride his Harley more often and meet other Harley enthusiasts.  He was also just as handsome in person as he was in his photos online.

Lou was an admitted wanderer.  After a record-setting income year for him in tech sales, Lou decided to quit his job and travel around the world.  He literally took a year to travel wherever his heart took him and now he’s back in the United States to restart his career…because, you know, we all need money to survive.  He’s intelligent, a deep-thinker with a big heart and huge, contagious smile.  He married once when he was in the Navy, which was more a marriage of convenience than for love.  He never had children but is content to take things as they come.

They were both lovely.  I ended up choosing Lou because we seemed to have more in common but the truth was that neither were really a love match.  I wanted it to be there but it was just a chemistry thing.  It kind of pissed me off. 

There’s the old breakup line that everyone knows:  It isn’t you, it’s me.  But I really think it IS me.  I’ve always been the biggest advocate that no matter how much someone hurts you, you should keep your heart open because you never when someone else who is wonderful will step in and fill your heart with all the love and kindness you’ve always wanted.  That advice has served others well.  It’s done crap for me. 

I know I’ve consciously kept the door to my heart open but my heart has also been through a lot of damage.

There was the one who spent all my money and left me penniless.

There was the one who was so selfish and complacent that it cost me my fertility.

There was the one that cared more about being drunk and high than any little problem I had.

And there was the one that in a fit of supreme emotional abuse and manipulation, threw me out of that house in the middle of the night with no place to go.

I want to be happy so I choose to no longer dwell in those hurtful memories.  Over the past two and a half years, I’ve been more single than I’ve ever been in my entire adult life.  I have invited a few into my heart only to be brutally rejected.  Maybe the door to my heart is now covered with an impenetrable scar tissue that is keeping everyone out, not allowing me to feel…well…anything.

Maybe every girl doesn’t get her Prince Charming.  That doesn’t mean I’m going to live my life with anything less than being full.  It will come when it comes.  Or it won’t.  And either way I will move forward with a happiness of my own making.