Help Wanted: No Experience Preferred

My frustration level is in the high 80's. I have effectively turned back time to when I was 17 years old wanting desperately to talk to someone, but can't get through. I wish I could run there. I wish I could jump in a cab to get there. But I can't. I have to wait it out. [Deep breath in... hold... deep breath out]

For a year now I have had a regular menstrual cycle. When I say regular, I suppose it comes every 28 days or so; I'm not a calendar circler. What I mean is the preamble to the floodgate event; the pre in premenstrual. For one full year each time-of-the-month has been normal. There have been no upsets. No registered changes in emotionality levels. No real caustic or irrational behaviour of mine has been explefied. None that anyone's pointed out, anyway. I had been single for a year now. There has been no one in my life who would be prone to any of my quirks. Up until this last cycle, any outburst I'd have during that fateful week out of four, I honestly thought A) I was correct in diagnosing and directing an issue and B) I was being completely sane. I'd honestly believed that through every cycle I'd ever shared with another person, those shrilly voiced upsets came entirely from a rational part of my brain.

This is what happened: I love a boy. Then I watch a movie. Some of the the circumstances and certainly the main theme within this movie resonated fiercely within me. Then I liberally coated it all over me.

In my little life I have been ostracised. Repeatedly. This was a theme contained in the movie. I couldn't understand how gleeful behaviour of mine could be met with distain by others. I didn't understand how people couldn't embrace truth. Truth, as beautiful as it is, can also be the most terrifying thing in the world, especially if one finds it is the ugliest thing about themselves.

I discovered something rather unattractive about myself.

The best thing about starting a new relationship, having had others to learn from, is one has the opportunity to take the lessons learned from prior relationships and liberally apply them on this new thing. We have the opportunity to either repeat the past or change it as we see fit and right. But to do so is to curb natural behaviour. Natural, in this case as it is in all other cases, is learned. So, allow me to take that last statement back, correcting it to say: Curbing learned behaviour. In my case, something that I had learned, false accusation was my warped self-protectant. Armor-All.

I wasn't aware that I played this game. This comes as a rather crushing blow as I have this idea of myself that I'm a big righteous girl and big righteous girls don't mess with other people's heads.

I am prone to whims. Whimsical as a word looks rather endearing. Sweet. Carefree. But the ugly root of my whimsicality, something I didn't realise, was how prone to suggestion I was.

I look for direct personal meaning under every rock I unearth. Interesting. How does this apply to me? This must have bearing on my life somehow. The soil that makes me up is rather loose at times, therefore a seed of doubt can easily be planted. Because one of my Top 5 Fears is that of playing the fool, I quash the potential of foolery by finding or supplanting reasons why I can't be with that someone. By doing it this way, my personal honour remains intact. I no longer play The Fool.

A movie suggested to me that this person whom I love, though I was given no reason to believe it, could be someone who betrays me one day. Betrayal shares the roster on my list of Top 5 Fears.

Accusations flew. I was convinced he wasn't right for me because we didn't share the same manner in which we dealt with the world. He wasn't right for me because he looked at the world as a colder, more unforgiving dire place than I did. If he was these things, I reasoned, he couldn't be right for me. I didn't leave all of my other relationships to find myself being a 36 year old woman having to start all over again with a new mound of clay. A tabula rasa. I wanted a finished piece that only needed a slight dusting every now and then. I narcissistically wanted perfection, in my own warped sense of what I understood that to be. I wrongfully accused him. And in the end, I betrayed.

Nothing he did or said could be ratified with any proof or examples of behavioural machinations. He hadn't done anything wrong. He just did things differently than I would have. He does things differently because he's had a different history than I have. He has a different sex than I have. He is not me, but I wanted him to make the same choices as me. It was arrogant, narcissistic and completely irrational.

He was insulted by my unfounded accusations. He had every right to be angry. The funny thing about his reaction was it left me absolutely delighted by him. He fought for his own honour. I was being ridiculous. In truth, I was scared. I wanted zero doubt, absolute certainty and a money back guarantee that I was making the best choice I could. I was scared of loving someone because in time I may have been the fool again.

But we're different.

Yes we are. Very different. But isn't that wonderful? We disagree in many areas. But the thing is, I don't mind arguing. Actually, I quite love it. When I was married the last time, I wasn't really encouraged to argue. It was looked at as too confrontational, too distruptive. Why can't we just come together in peace? Oh, please let me quote Tibald! Peace? I hate the word, as I hate hell and all Montagues. Well, there are things worthy of discussion. I think. There are things worth gaining a deeper understanding of. And if it is of the stuff we've harboured for the whole of our existence, these soft, tender spots where we don't feel too sure footed even on level ground, I say, "Let us air it."

What was remarkable, and what made me gain so much trust and respect in this young man was how he handled my vat of doubt. He wondered if I was looking for reasons to be rid of him. I had. I had doubted my choice in him. But throughout the entire process he maintained his own dignity while sustaining his love for me. He countered my irrational fears with equally irrational tolerance and irascible love. He was everything I had ever looked for in another human soul. In that hard moment of willed self-inspection, every doubt I had about him was replaced tenfold by the most intense feelings of pure love.

I wanted to tell him this last night, but I couldn't get ahold of him. He'd fallen asleep. His legs had carried a dull, exhausting pain all day. Strangely, so had mine. I finally got through today. I wanted desperately to tell him how much I loved him. How much I missed him. How sorry I was that I'd created this doubt. That it was unfounded and felt confounding within me.

You'd think that things get easier with age and experience. But it doesn't. Not with love. Love is one fucked up thing that we keep pounding the pavement for. Though it's not anything like employment. The more experience one has, it seems, the less qualified we are. Well, for me, anyway.