My heart is a moth
with wings that beat -- a little clumsily, perhaps
looking for warmth and life
She
navigates by light
of the moon
but sometimes gets distracted
by the artificial
light bulb packed with filament -- conductive materials which energize when illuminated

Please don't blame me if I mistook that hollow electric orb for the moon
and buzzed around it, bounced off, with burning wings
.... or that time I braved death by flying so near the flame
at least my heart
is still flying
My wings may be singed, but they aren't afraid to beat wildly-- the way a child runs
I'm just after a true source of light
like the moon
Next time I'll lean in
for something steadier
my true compass

You & I were a fairy tale and those come to the end

I've getting over him.

For the last couple of months, I've been lamenting the idea that things could never get better than they were with him. Being with the last guy was out-of-this world, junior-high crush, I-can't-stop-thinking-about-him magical.

He held me at my father's grave and listened to my stories. We sang to each other, danced in his living room for hours. We read Walk Whitman; swam in a creek. I slathered my leg with mud and he drew a picture in it. We talked for hours, leaning against each other like two cottonwood trees. We camped under the stars and I sang to him. We hiked into the mountains and kissed in a forgotten grove of aspen as two beautiful birds landed in the tree above our heads and seemed to be there just for us.

He told me, something like: "Do you ever wonder if in a former life you helped plan some of the best moments of your life,  as if you were a set designer." I thought he meant that this moment in the aspen grove had been one of the best he'd had-- at least in a long time.

A month later, when he had stopped calling and I was terrified of losing him, I drove up to Idaho, sick in my heart-- and walked with him along the Snake River, the same river I played in as a kid. The same river, apparently he was baptized in, close to the creek where I was baptized.

We walked through an forest of green in a place that was like a scene from a fairy tale. Two white pelicans landed on the glassy river. We stopped and he asked me what my favorite memory of us had been.

And I said, "Now; because we're still here, together." It was after nights of tears and confusion because he was acting indifferent. And all the good feelings and the potential was slipping from my fingers like water. I know it sounds dramatic, but how else is the heroine supposed to feel who believes she may have met man of her dreams only to have to say goodbye.

I told him, "If things end, all those good memories wouldn't mean much anymore."

"That's not how I feel," He said.

As though just  memories were enough for him, this man who lived with a real woman for 19 years, whose memories or imagination, perhaps, became something that gave him comfort in the aloof and difficult "realness" of his marriage.

But my life is all about intangibles; a string of memories that end. I've never been married. My longest relationship was three years. And lately, little seems to stick. I didn't want to lose him. The flesh and blood him that put his arms around me as we stared at the river. The real man that was going to call me and want to see me again and again and again. Something of permanence.

It was only a brief relationship but for weeks I've been regretting meeting him. Wondering what good could come of it.

That is until today when I made the discovery, partially, because I stood and talked with his father in the church building where I had spent countless days learning about God when I was a kid and watched the Idaho light pass through the windows of the exposed timber A-frame chapel. For some reason, I could see something clearly for the first time since his son and I stopped dating.

I saw that what we had wasn't real. It was a fairy tale. Too perfect. The way we met, the way I felt so connected to his family-- how he brought me to the brilliant home he designed for his family (he's an architect.) The way he looked at me like I was a strange, lovely creature who fell from some beautiful planet-- at least that's how is gaze made me feel. And the fluidity with which love songs spilled out of my head and my heart through my guitar and how he encouraged me to sing them to him. And when I did, he cried. The way love felt so new in the summer and how I made the stupid assumption that my search might be finally over, after looking for so long.

I wanted things to grow slowly, but steadily. But he just couldn't keep my pace, although he actually set the pace. He couldn't stay steady. Went into hiding. I scared him, although I thought I had given him plenty of space.

So now, the reason why I can let go is this:

I know now that it was fantasy, down to every detail. And fairy tales don't last. It's like my mom said recently:

"Maybe it was like a lollipop, when the sweetness was all gone, there was nothing left but a stick."

For weeks I've been blaming the universe, my bad luck at meeting a wonderful guy and everything seemed to be so good and then it was all snatched away. I've wondered: Can I ever trust my heart again? Can I ever trust God?

It was as if God let me create my idea of the perfect relationship and let me live it for awhile. It seemed so perfect, but, guess what? It didn't work. It was just fiction. It never lasted and probably never would.

I think God gives you what you want, although it may not- and likely is not-- what is best for you.

So I've been praying different now. Saying, "Thanks a lot for indulging me. But it did crumble too easily. It was one-sided. As the heroine, I was ready to lay down too much for it, while he couldn't even call me back. That's lame."

And lately I've been asking to see something different than I had planned.

And now I know more about who God is. He's the one there telling me to THROW IT ALL AWAY. To watch for sweet imperfection-- that one I never expected. To watch, to wait and stop pretending that it has to look and act a certain way.

So I'll wait for the new narrative to begin-- the one that God's fingerprints are on.

I'm ready. I've broken the fairy tale..God is tricky. He makes things a mystery that you have to flex your brain to discover the meaning of. But he knows exactly what he's doing.

So if you every come back, hero of my fairy tale. I'll tell you this: It was fun and exciting but I'm a sucker for reality-- a sucker for imperfection. So unless you're offering something that won't blow away like pages torn from a book, then it's okay if you stay away. I'll be just fine.

Expendable Love

"Forward, I pray, since we have come so far"

Dear Petruchio,

My friend sent me a picture of a kitten today. He's cute. His name is Melvis and he is purebred and he costs something like $450.

"He was born on August 3rd, my birthday!" she texted me today.

I know she's thinking it must be fate. She needs this cat.

"I need something to love and care for," she texted me, somewhat desperately, after her boyfriend, broke up with her. Broke up with her the week of her birthday and a day or so after her cousin shot himself in the head. BAD TIMING? Ya think?

Of course, he hadn't intended on breaking up with her, while in the throes of passion, a week before that, nor while she was bringing him lunch or doing sweet, "girl-friendly" things that women just love to do. Nor, for that matter, had he even intended on breaking up with her that very day.... it just kinda spilled out.

So, this morning my friend calls me and tells me she went to the ER last night, with chest pains. She says the Doc told her she had Broken Heart Syndrome. Which by the way, is a real condition called takotsubo cardiomyopathy, which is a temporary heart condition when stress or grief causes pain and paralysis of part of the heart (something like that.) She's on beta blockers for it.

So, you ask, what's wrong with her?

Really? I ask: what's wrong with him?  And what's wrong with anyone of you who asked "what's wrong with her?" What's wrong with a woman who loves so much her heart feels like it's literally breaking when her love tells her it's over? The real question is: what's wrong with our society that we characterize people as CRAZY when they go through heart break. Crazy if they hang on, act erratic or can't let go of someone they've learned to love. We wonder, "what's wrong with them?"

There's nothing wrong with them. It's because there's something right with them -- with their hearts. Because a heart is meant to love. To be open. To feel wounded and to love anyway. Lemme make it clear: there's something wrong with the world. We're no longer tethered to a real world, we live in an artificial one, most of us. We turn more and more to machines to tell us things about our bodies, our souls: like when to wake up, when to sleep, how far to walk, or when to stop snacking- like this bra that tells you when to stop eating. We even fall in love online, or through texting. Sheesh. We're becoming machines. It's the next phase of evolution and it has awful consequences for the human heart.

We've forgotten about our instincts. We "power through" things, like machines. We "suck it up," like plumbing hoses. We "start over," as though we were washing machines that didn't get the first load right or clean. If we can't do a relationship neatly and nicely, there must be something particularly WRONG with us.

So, people tell us, there's something wrong, and maybe we should take a pill for it. So some of us do. We take a pill to be happy. To forget. We lose ourselves in something or someone else. We don't grieve. We don't cry. We curse and we die a little inside, yes, from the heartbreak, but also from the fact that the whole world seems to be telling us it's not right to hurt that much.

Or, we move on, find someone else to "be with", as quickly as possible. We forget what our heart feels. We buy the books and believe the lies that dating is a game and love is like a pair of shoes, something you can take off and on when you feel like it. And that it's okay when you fall in love and it doesn't last because there's always another pair of shoes around the corner.

I don't buy it. Because, like my friend, who was diagnosed with a broken heart, I really liked that last pair of shoes too. They seemed to fit so perfectly when I wore them. But sure, I'll throw 'em away, because everyone is telling me that love is, after all, expendable.

The mechanic

"Fie fie.... dart not scornful glanced from those eyes." 

Dear Petruchio,

My mechanic called me while I was on a break at school last week. Here's how it went:

"So, this is Joe from...blank blank Auto Repair,"
"Hi," I said.
"Hey, how are your brakes?"
"Fine,"
"Have you gotten your wheel bearings fixed yet?"
"No," I said, grumpily, thinking about what the brake job cost me.
"I'm kinda broke right now," I said.
Then came the deep pause in the convo. A long pause. I was thinking I needed to get back to what I was doing, I had things to do.
"Well, I was wondering if you wanted to go out,"
I started to laugh.
"Really, you want to go out with me?" I said, thinking about the day we met, how destitute I must have looked rolling up in my demolition derby car, going on 340,000 miles, with the front bumped Gorilla taped on and a dent on the trunk where I kicked it when I found out my ex boyfriend got married three months after we broke up. (The Scottish guy who I moved to Idaho for, who secretly had another girlfriend on the side... oh for the love!)
I also tried to paint my car an unmatching gold color in the place where I turned too sharply backing out of my much too narrow apartment garage.
So, back to Joe.
"Why would you want to go out with me after you've seen my car," I said a bit puzzled. Did he feel sorry for me? Did he have a hero complex? Thought he could save me, or at least my car?
"I do," he said. "I want to go out with you."
I was thinking of the guy, the way he followed me outside and waved goodbye, sort of longingly as I pulled my busted car onto the highway. He wasn't bad looking, about my age and I remembered the way he laughed. The memory was good. And I would be lying if I didn't also wonder if he'd give me a better deal on new wheel bearings after the date.
"Sure, I'll go out with you." I said. "I'll call you after work."

OK Cupid is Not Really Okay

"Tis Hatched and Shall be So,"  William Shakespeare, Taming of the Shrew

Dear Petruchio:

I hate modern online dating. It's so unromantic.

How do modern people find true love hunched over laptops like trolls, scrolling up and down at photos then pressing their cursor over a SEND button and waiting, like fisherman for the fish to bite.
And to be honest, I'm sick of first dates at coffee shops, where of course I look so hipstery and smooth, nevermind that I park my car ten blocks away, the one that looks like an abandoned car a homeless person lives in.

The online last guy I went out with was Jewish, nice enough guy, though he seriously had a bit of a crusty in his right eye on our first date and he was snobbish about the wine he was drinking. He went on about his bad experiences with online dating. I was fairly charming and he wanted to see me again as soon as possible. And then we had the second date. We were both grumpy from working too long that week. We went to a French restaurant. He said he broke up with his last girlfriend because she wanted to live in the suburbs and have more kids and she wanted to be a stay-at-home mom.
The shame!
He said: "I'm a feminist. I want a woman who works." And then he asked if I wanted to split the bill, though he had asked me out.

I wanted to tell him, "Dude, you know, you think you're so suave, but to tell you the truth, 80 percent of the guys I go out with pay the bill if he asks the girl out."  

The Portland guys are all waaay too interesting. They all have obscure literary and musical tastes as though they had the luxury of camping out at Powells Bookstore and not working all day.
And they dress in vintagey clothes from another epoch that smell like moth balls or maybe gunpowder and pachouli. They own about ten bikes for different weather conditions.

They also shave their facial hair in odd ways, maybe they learned that from a chapter in the Books on Beards section at Powells.

Most of the time, I actually like the guys I meet in person because I've learned how to weed out the creepos, the sexual predators or just the plain incompatible ones. Just this week I weeded out a fedora-maker who said he doesn't believe in "ANYTHING". Really? How can you not believe in anything? He also said that "humans are no different than any other animal." Then some naturopathic doc asked me why I wrote him because, duh, he wasn't looking for a long-term relationship, just casual sex. Oops, forgot to scroll down to read that. He wants a polyandrous thing. My sister, who lives near Rexburg, Idaho still thinks polyandrous is a synthetic fiber.

There's a "bang my head against a wall" element when it comes to dating people who don't share my religious values. But I've dated hundreds of Mormon guys and let's face it, in Portland, the picking are slim for eligible Mormons. The list of eligible men who aren't of my faith is expansive, like a wine list in the Willamette Valley. My religion is important to me, but it's not the only thing that defines me. I know myself enough to know I'd be happier married to a wine-drinking Unitarian who treated me like an equal, respected my faith and traveled the world with me then a devout Mormon who was a couch potato and expected me to play some fairy tale Mormon housewife role.

But dating people who don't share my faith comes with a price tag and it can feel heartbreaking.

The second date convo's usually goes something like this:

"So, you're a Mormon. Do you wear the sacred underpants?"
"Yes,"
"Are you wearing them now? Can I see them?"
"That's a little personal, isn't it?" I say.
"So, you don't live by that whole chaste thing do you, your not waiting to have sex until marriage are you?" And then, if I admit it to them, they say how impressed they are and how admirable I am and then the ones who are just looking for sex right away which feels like 80 percent, are gone. I never hear from them again. And I guess I should be glad, but sheesh. Unless it's a guy who is looking for a challenge and then I become the Mormon Girl Challenge.

Oh, gotto go, this cute Israeli just wrote me back . He said he was snowed in and living off of P and G sandwiches. He spells Jelly, Gelly. And I asked him if he knew anyone who owned a snowmobile because I was worried about how he'd survive off of PB &J. Wait, give me a minute, he just messaged me.

Oh dear, he just wrote: "I will survive the day and we will go out to dinner." Like I really thought he wouldn't survive. I grew up in the woods. Ugh, the guy who doesn't believe in anything just emailed and asked, "How many atheists have you ever sat down with and talked with?" I have nothing against Atheists, but gee, that sounds like a fun date, why don't we talk about Obamacare while we're at it.  Oh and a new one just wrote: "I like how you cook." Seriously, I've never cooked for him. But his profile says he likes shining the chrome on his fixtures, likes the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, spends a lot of time thinking about quantum physics, the perfect breakfast, or why people drive slow in the fast lane. Sounds funny. I'll message him back. Plus, he knows how to spell.

Bye,
Jen