The exchange

You message me. 

"Is it ok if I pick him up at 12:30?" 

You come on your motorbike and leave your hemet on. I can say no more than hello. I have no pleasantries to give you. My news no longer has any purpose in your pressence. 

I have a mild form of distaste that lingers like bad breath on my tongue. I can only feel yesturdays jelousy and anger. It rains and I stand there getting wet as your motorbike runs. I say nothing and barely look your way. Everything is grey.

If I love you it is only in concept. I hate you for choosing her even if I am the one who let you go. I want you to keep wanting me. You don't. No one does. 

We trade this human that we love. We share this love in seperate rooms in seperate houses. You snuggling him and then I in turn. Never at the same time never again in the same bed like before. Never all wrapped up together with a movie and popcorn all the love that he has under one roof. 

He is the only proof of love we have left. Even last month there was shouting at least and the ocassional hug. But now there is no more trying. 

You get him and then I. We swap. Tomorrow you will bring him back to me. You will stand there in the rain with the engine running and let him come to me. He will kiss me and I will only nod in your direction befor you drive off. The proof of love being traded in the rain with the motor running. 

My father used to pick me up at the A&w rootbeer shop. My mom would get out of the car and shake his hand. I would go to him and she would drive off as he bought me a root beer float and curly fries. Root beer wiith icecream tastes like divorce. 

You said you didn't want a root beer float divorce. That you wanted us to keep something of us. We can't. 

Just leave the motor running. Leave your helmet on. Give me back the only proof of love that we share and go about your life. Bitterness is the only thing left. The rain can't wash it away. 

One way love

Morning and evening 

someone waits at monsushema.

One way love

- matsu basho

"I never was that into her" he said. "She was always more into me" he said. They stay like this locked in acceptance of this imbalance. Thirty years pass. Him wanting more, her not getting enough. She gets fat, her a judge, him a lawyer. They both work too much, they both drink too much. One way love. 

He was buying me dinner yet again. For years he did this. Show up in Bali and buy me dinner. My sugar-daddy, he joked. He would call her later to say he loved her. That he missed her. I would sometimes listen to this conversation as he sat in my house. I would not sleep with him, no sex. I liked his company but was not that into him. I wished I wanted him. He owns a vinyard, he likes to travel. One way love. 

I sat over coffee with the father of my child. "I never looked at anyone but you." He said. We stayed coupled for 17 years. I know this fact to be true. I was the center of his universe as he honestly described it. He ate up all my offerings. Like thanksgiving dinner he always wanted what I gave him. I accepted him everyday and appreciated that he loved me. I loved him in return for being my unconditional safe haven. For 17 years I longed for someone I wanted beyond reason. Wanted like cookies and ice cream in summer. One way love?

The man who for six weeks was never my boyfriend returned after a month in Australia. I had forgotten what he looked like I said. His daily white t-shirt, yummy  curly chocolate hair and warm skin. And mostly his eyes, brown and deep. Now I remember. His Australian accent willing me to aknowlede we are not from the same place. 

I sat with him on a plastic wicker couch by the pool in the villa that had been the scenes of our six weeks of sex and friendship. His black newly purchaded samsonite suitcase on the floor holding his only possessions. We talked about everything but the subject at hand. I abandoned my visiting friend in a coffee shop so that I could sit with him on this couch and pretend not to want him. I wondered if anything had changed since a month ago when we had declared ourselves friends. When he said goodbye not wanting me enough.

He grabbed me and pulled me on to him. I burrowed my face in his beard. He kissed me long and hard. There was emotion there. There was longing. It felt good. I wanted him. In that moment he wanted me. I wanted not to think about the consequences, the future aching heart. I wanted not to ask or at least to ignore who he had been sleeping with this past month. I missed this man. I wanted him inside me, naked. Like a moth to the flame. One way love? 

 

Dinner and a kid

Dear potential suitor:

Yes, I am a mother. My son is 11. He is gorgeous, smart and lovely. He has a mother, a father, and many grandparents all who love him. He is mine. He is not yours and never will be.

Don't be afraid. I know that you never settled down enough to have a child and don't imagine that you will. I did, I was married for 17 years. I no longer am. I have a child. So what? Now I want just good company and fun. Don't give me a scarlet letter. It doesn't belong to me. 

To the curly haired belgian who I see every day in salsa. You don't have to stop giving me those long sideways glances of admiration just because I devulged this fact to you as part of casual conversation. 

To the tall swiss with the Seattle area code who I ran into and then liked me on tinder. My whatsap picture is just a photo, and shouldn't make you cancel our date. 

To the overly tan french guy who flirted with me daily until you ran into me and my son in a cafe and your tan instantly faded. You wouldn't get the privledge of spending time with my son unless we were dating for six months anyway. Don't think about it. Enjoy my company. Be my friend even. He is mine not yours. 

Its not complicated. Don't overthink it. I am a mother. Its one of the things I am. Its not something I am asking of you. This description of me allthough possibly my most important title doesn't even show up on my resume. Even employers don't have the priviledge of knowing this about me.

I am the same person you liked before you knew this. Forget it really. Be my friend first. 

Sincerly,

A newly single mom trying to date

the end and mashed potatoes

Today is thanksgiving. It is hard to tell. it is tropical and warm and no one is discussing stuffing. Today I am going to spend thanksgiving with my broken family. Pretend for one day like we are not broken. Like we still exist. Eat mashed potatoes. A chicken instead of a turkey, the real thing is far from possible.

I didn't really know it was over till now. The end of something sounds clear and precise but in fact is a nebulous blur of possibility. Only now do I feel like it is over. The day I asked him to move out I didn't even believe it myself. When I left for Paris and he stayed in my house with our son possibility still existed. When he started seeing her and we spent that sad week floating down the river in Borneo looking at proboscis monkeys it felt over but in fact there would be months of what if's, more tears, a lot of anger.  More pulling than if we had been using a proper rope. 

The back and forth. The I want you, I miss you, go jump off a cliff is constant untill its not.

Now it is clear, real, I know it as well as I know how to make the stuffing. I know we are done. I feel nothing anymore. the sadness is gone and even the anger seems to be drying up like a creekbed in the summer. Mashed potatoes, gravy and divorce. 

He told our son about his new girlfriend and plans to introduce them this weekend were only halted by a stick to the eye, the obvious outcome of sordfighting at eleven. 

I no longer rile in a ball on the floor. I no longer spew tears like leaky faucets. I am hollow and empty like the balinese fire truck which recently showed up to a five alarm blaze totally empty of all liquid. Ironic or just tragic, I am not sure which. 

He seems like a stranger to me, someone I don't quite recognize. His choices that of a foreigner. I look at her and understand nothing. His friend on facebook inviting him to an evening of rainbow shots. His smoking. He has been released to the world. I am no longer there forming him. He is what he chooses to let other people make of him. Rainbow shots. 

I let him keep the leftovers. I had no desire to eat mashed potatoes and stuffing the next day. It was over we are done. Polite conversation and our son is all we exchange. No Turkey. All the searching doesn't produce on on an Island with no Turkeys. Just another day. 

Practice

I drove to salsa feeling light. I felt like the world around me was mine again, not a strange empty place. I felt like I needed no one and plenty would want me if they only knew me. I felt glad, secure and confident. I felt like everything was possible and I needed no one in particular. My only focus simple gratitude for having remembered to drive my motor bike in flip flops instead of salsa heals, making stopping more reasonable. No complications. The night was hot and sweaty. I was happy. I was alone.

I sat on the big backed sofa changing into my salsa heels. Before the band started I ordered my first glass of red wine in awhile. I enjoyed the sips. Each one careful and delicious. I was alone. I was ok. Really ok.

In indonesian there is a word people use to describe not good when asked how you are doing in polite conversation. Lumian. It means just more than enough. For a long time when people asked me how I was this is all I could get out. Lumian, just slightly more enough, just barely alive, just slightly more than ready to jump in front of traffic. I was so much more than that this evening. A lot more than enough. 

Everything requires practice. I believe this as gospel. In order to become excellent or even just ok at something you have to embrace being terrible at it. Keep doing it. Let go. Be terrible. Love being terrible. 

My salsa dancing has progressed from terrible to mediocre to borderline passable. I practice a lot. I look dumb. I step on people 's feet, miss the beat and generally suck. It is less than sexy. I keep trying. 

Being alone or at least not partnered in the world and managing happiness is the same. I am practicing, getting better. I am starting to feel ok, like I can walk thru the world with no one holding my hand. Like I can do it and feel good even. 

I danced all night with different people including a very nice older gentleman who was incredibly generous with dance instruction despite my begining salsa. I had long moments when the dance was fluent. I had other moments when I totally lost the steps or missed a lead and didn't turn when I should have.

I am sure being alone will be the same again. I will faulter, slip up, get scared, feel lonely again. Loose my moments of happiness. 

I woke up this morning under my blue mosquito net, startled to be alone in bed. No child, no partner, no lover. After my eyes focused enough to remember where I was, I regained my emotional footing. The bed is empty and I am still startlingly ok. I am really astonishingly ok. I am no longer looking back with regret. I have let go. He can go on his way, I will go on mine. I am good. I am alone. I am happy. 

She is his girlfriend. You are my friend.

You are my friend. 

You coached me befor I met her. Before I faced the woman over a cappucino who now casually refers to herself as his girlfriend. You sweetly talked me thru it, you told me to hug her, to be nice. You looked at me as you said this with your large sweet brown eyes measuring me, willing me forward. Your wild curly hair defying your seriousness and ensuring that despite the topic at hand you still appeared playful. 

I now find you irresistible, like ice cream. Is this the oxytocin? I try not to appear overzealous as I wait for you to let me into your cracks, like sunlight thru leaves.  

Will you touch my leg as we ride the motorbike? Will you grab my hand as we are walking. When we lay in bed naked for hours as you ply me with music will you reach for me from across the otherside of the bed, grab me and pull you towards you? Maybe sometimes, for a moment. I am mostly left wanting. 

You are my friend.

She told me her life story, sprinkling in details that compelled me to envision this new reality of her and him. The story of her hair being left in his hair brush that she thoughtfully removed to spare its view from my son. Her vision of meeting his parents as the new woman in his life. She doesn't yet realise that she will be eating his mothers chicken divan and complimenting its blandness. I would always be his family she said, as she smoked another cigarette. 

She is just his girlfriend. You are just my friend. 

You called me after I met her and genuinly wanted to know how I was. We got on a motorbike and I rode with you to the dentist. We spent the night withought sex, just naked snuggles, music and conversation.

You are my friend.

The next day over a final cappucino befor you left for two weeks home to Australia you asked me how I felt. Two days earlier we shed real tears at the thought. What would we be missing if we stopped having sex, if we kept our friendship and left the rest behind? We took the question and turned it over and over in our hands. Applying all the logic and reason that you and I could throw at these otherwise fragile human emotions. 

In the end you don't like me quite enough, your want is outweighed by logistical hurdles or subtle inadequacies.

I of course have the same, but some how this doesn't stop me from wanting you.  At least today and tomorrow and the next I really want you. 

You hugged me and I walked away. It hurt. My heart. Enough that I could feel it. 

You are my friend. 

Find another shell, keep sorting.

"You are on a beach sorting thru the same bucket of shells" my friend said. If these are the shells in front of you these are the shells you will sort for. But there are so many, why keep sorting thru the same pile. Go ahead, drop them back in the water. Let them float away. Find new ones. Another beach. 

I will keep looking, keep walking, keep dancing, keep doing. 

I won't think about that one's curly hair or running my fingers thru his beard or wanting his music or his sweet brown eyes. I still want him, I do.

I won't think about my life partner and his new girlfriend or the loss of eating mashed potatoes at thanksgiving as a family. We are done. 

I won't think about the one who would tell me what to do, and buy me unsolicited cake while flashing his smile. He was never a possibility. 

Drop them in the ocean, release them to the waves. 

Today is a new day. Let go of expectations, let go of attachments. In this new reality attachments are not the way. Don't attach, just be. Let people flow thru you and around you. Grab a bit of them hold on tight just for that moment and then release, let go. 

Be budda, he didn't attach. He walked away from his wife and sat under a tree. Find the tree, let go. Don't attach, let go. I like you, you are lovely, goodbye. 

The portugese man with the shaved head and the slight grey stubble, smiles and takes a strong lead, spinning me one extra time out of turn. I can't talk to him. He has nothing to say. Just spin me. I will ablige. 

The French man is very tan and hansom enough that the dance instructer imagines or wishes he was gay. "Do you ever dance in the evening" he says. I help him with his dance steps and he is open and grateful. He is too young, too tan, too short. But sweet and of course French. 

The Belgian won't speak to me in class but keeps asking me to go out in the evening. He is sweet and very young, I might need to lead. 

The older vinyard owner is coming back. I will enjoy his company for a time. A nice dinner, some wine. We can talk about food and building things. I don't desire him. He will always leave. He has a wife. 

Keep sorting. Keep looking. Keep throwing them back to the sea. 

The mute swan, the malagassy giant rat, the prarie vole and the black vulture are all monogomous. choosing partners, attatching, not letting go. They fall and then stay. They find someone and keep them. They do life's work together. 

I spent my life being these creatures. I spent my life monogomous to one mate. So what does the dating process of these creatures look like. How do they keep from latching on to the first potential mate and instead sort thru the options to find the best possible mate or just enjoy a connection for a moment. How do you resist the urge to get stuck with someone if you are a vulture, a rat, a prarie vole?

I am a prarie vole. I am trying to date. I have the urge to latch, to attach, to give up the search.  or a rat in this world. I must resist. Keep sorting. Be buda, drop the shell in the water.  Drop it. Let go. Be buda, find the tree.

Maybe the prarie vole has it all wrong. Maybe this is not what I even want. Maybe an intense emotional connection with another human being is nice in the moment. When the moment passes I should let go. Move on. Find the next one. Appreciate that moment for what it is, a moment. A shell. Enjoy that moment. Drop the shell in the water. Be buda, dont be a black vulture. Move on, fly away. Drop the shell in the water. Let go. Don't attatch. Drop the shell.