We see what we want to see, especially when we’re seeing things we don’t want to see. Or should I say, I see what I want to see, especially when I don’t want to see it, especially when it’s something (a man) I want badly and this thing (the man) is showing me it’s (he’s) not what I want it (him) to be? Ya know?
He found me on Instagram on Halloween. After I awoke to find that this stranger, let’s call him Jack, was liking posts of mine from 252 weeks ago, I looked at his page to find that he’s a handsome Brooklyn Jew who lives in LA. I liked what I saw, so I let him know. We started talking and didn’t stop; I’m talking, messaging back and forth all day, five-hours-on-the-phone-at-night type of talking. The first time we FaceTimed, I knew I’d see him at my doorstep soon. What’s a six hour flight? Have you heard of Sleepless in Seattle, sweetie? These things happen!
A month and half and hundreds of hours of talking later, he flies through the sky to me. After what felt like a 96 hour day of what ifs– what if he’s different than I imagined, what if I don’t like the way he smells, what if he doesn’t like me, what if this that and the other thing, you get it—he buzzed. When I opened the door to greet this man, my head fell off. I was utterly dazzled by him, head to toe, inside and out.
We spent four days together. When I looked into Jack’s eyes—I thought I saw the rock I was to stand on. When we first kissed, I said the Shehecheyanu1. Hours and hours wherein my bed turned into the entire Universe, walking to dinner with our hoods up and our arms locked, sitting side by side, holding hands under the table, faces inches away from each other, smiles as wide as Texas. Introducing him to my best friends on Shabbos, watching him smile at Jenny and Becca, felt like getting into a hot, candle lit bath after years of ten degree weather.
I learned about his brothers and sisters, his childhood, his daughter, his friends—I heard it all as a preview of a world I was to become a part of. I asked him if I could meet his mother and he said yes. He felt like the most familiar stranger I’d ever met.
On his last night in New York, standing in my bathroom with wet hair and tears coming out of our eyes, I said, “I feel like I finally found someone I want and I can’t have you. What if you fall in love with someone in LA?” He put his hands on my face and said, “Do you think there is anyone in LA who could possibly be better for me than you? It’s going to be okay. If two people want to be together, we’ll be together.”
I’ve dated a lot this year—well, for me. For me to invest in a new romance, I need to feel lit up by a man mentally, emotionally, physically, spiritually, digitally, electrically, North, South, East, West, Mars, Venus, Saturn, Pluto, Neptune, Baruch Atah Adonai Eloheinu Melech HaOlam, aaaAAAmein. So I’ve never been attracted to a lot of people but when I am… hold the phone, pedal to the metal, all gas, no brakes.
There was Raj, a divorced dad who worked in A.I. and told me that to quit smoking he smoked two packs of cigarettes over the course of two hours and thus had to be hospitalized; there was the psychiatrist who desperately needed a psychiatrist and perhaps a lobotomy, there was the underwater photographer who should stay underwater as it seemed he had a more exciting time with aquatic mammals than women. There was the bartender who I hopped a fence with into a private park where we drank beers and talked until the sun came up. There was the German guy in London who, after dancing with me for six hours, touching my body like it was an electric guitar and he was Jimmy Page, subjected me to the horror of watching him eat a kebab that he washed down with a yogurt drink at 4am. To kiss a man who looks like Leonardo DiCaprio but tastes like onions, lamb, and yogurt? A shonde! And then there was Jack.
On my birthday my clairvoyant healer Michael told me that my new boyfriend Jack was not my beshert. It pissed me off because beneath my all encompassing white hot desire for him, I feared Michael was right and when someone says something true that I really don’t want to be true, it’s…so annoying. He told me that Jack didn’t have the capacity to be a partner to me, that he has a lot of stories, that there is a darkness he doesn’t share with me, that he can’t be emotionally available to me as long as he isn’t for himself. He told me that Jack doesn’t know who he is yet, and that it’s not in my power to show him. He told me that I deserve someone who is secure in who he is so that he can love me in the way I deserve. What I held onto most was the glimmer of hope when Michael said, “I’m not saying he could never be your person—but he would have a lot of work to do before he could be.” So you’re saying there’s a chance!!!!
As Michael was elucidating these very specific reasons why this man wasn’t my one, I was thinking, “I wish we could add my therapist to the chat…because I don’t think he’d agree with you. Dr. Ali seemed on board with Jack?!” Viktor Frankl said that the meaning of life is to give life meaning. I agree with him completely. Doll? I can make meaning out of a tissue. The rub is, sometimes the meaning we make is…wrong. I spent nearly the entirety of my self-produced ($3,000) birthday party at Brooklyn Bowl that evening utterly miserable. I couldn’t bowl for shit, I could barely eat, I couldn’t get comfortable, I couldn’t celebrate. It’s my ($3,000 USD) party and I’ll cry if I want to, so to speak.
The day I met this boyfriend/potential love of my life, I had started writing an essay titled Five Seven. I was writing about an experience I had a few years ago with this guy, let’s call him Steven. Before meeting, he asked how tall I was, which is a question only a short man asks. I told him I’m 5’7 and he said he was the same. When Steven got out of his car to greet me it was clear that he was closer to 5’3. WTF?
When he hugged me hello, I felt as if I was hugging my young son. My head spun as I realized I had to go to dinner with this schmendrick. The turn off wasn’t that he was significantly shorter than me. I have zero issues being with a short King. Height means nothing and personality means everything. There are tall personalities—people whose energy lifts up; and short personalities—people whose energy shrinks down. Steven lying to me about something that was so blatantly obvious—major short personality energy. I made it through our very boring dinner, told him I didn’t feel any chemistry, and sent my son on his way.
There are facts you can see and feel, facts that you can’t see or feel, and facts that you see and feel but choose to ignore because you want to be wrong. Even when they make themselves known, over and over.
A month after Jack visited me in New York, three days after my 37th birthday, I touched down in LA. Aside from the fact that he was three hours late to pick me up from my hotel, we had a beautiful week. We sat next to each other at a big wooden table lit by candles, our thighs, hands, and lips like magnets. Smiling with every part of him, hands on my face, he kept saying, “I can’t believe I’m looking at you right now.”
We kissed in front of a synagogue on the beach. We kissed in his car, on a bench on Abbot Kinney, against a tree, under the stars. He took me to a cabin in Topanga Canyon. Holding me on a wooden porch at dusk with the backdrop of the Santa Monica Mountains, he told me I was his neshama sheli. “You’re the soulmate I never got to have.” I kissed him from the depths of me.
We kissed under neon lights between racks of vintage clothing, in a treehouse, in an elevator, in an empty restaurant, on that porch, in a bathroom beside a claw foot tub, at every red light. He joined me and Jenny for dinner and made us laugh. Hard. We had coffee with the owner of the cabin we stayed in—Saskia, a Norwegian Kundalini teacher with blonde hair and a turquoise turban. As she gnawed on a stick of lavender as if it was a toothpick, she said, “You two are lucky to have each other.”
We drove back to my hotel because I forgot to bring a toothbrush to the cabin. While he was downstairs parking, I layed on the crisp white hotel bed, looking out at the Pacific ocean. Beaming, I scrolled through photos of us from the week and posted one of them to my Instagram story. The photo was a sweet little selfie of us, featuring a smile of mine I hadn’t ever seen. My heart swelled. I felt lucky.
When he got back to the hotel room, he looked like he’d seen a ghost. “Hey. Can you take that picture down?” Instantly, I felt as if a massive tidal wave was approaching my shore. My body set on fire. “Why? What’s up?” I asked, although as soon as he said it I knew it was because he didn’t want another woman to see it—specifically, a woman who I noticed had been sleuthing me for the past three months. I had asked him about her weeks ago. He said she was just a friend. How could I be so stupid?
Hands shaking I say, “What is she? Your other girlfriend? Is she in love with you?” He says, “No! I don’t think so.” You don’t think so?
I got into the shower while he laid on my bed. Ten minutes later, he joins me. “You were right. I called her. She told me she hoped I’d eventually want to be with her. I told her it’s not possible. It’s over. I’m so sorry. I was wrong to ask you to take the picture down. I am so sorry.” I held him as he (we) cried.
The unraveling continued through more tears and apologies and questions and I’m not readys and why did you say this and if it’s meant to be it will be’s. I felt like I was watching him take his costume and stage makeup off, revealing a lonely actor, so much smaller than he appeared onstage. Eventually he said he had to take a break to clear his head, and that he’d come back. He didn’t.
I flew back to NY the next morning shell-shocked. With my head down on the tray table praying for the plane to crash, or at the very least a hostage situation, I admitted to myself that all of the things he hid from me, I already knew. They were obvious; I just didn’t want them to be true, so I ignored them. I knew there were other girls. I was pretty sure he still lived with his ex. I knew he wasn’t ready to be with someone like me. As much as I hoped he would come through for me, I knew he was unable to deliver on what he sold me on. How could I have lied to myself about something so obvious?I was so angry at Jack for doing what I do, too—which is to ignore reality to get what you want, and what you want is to be accepted, loved, adored, chosen. I replayed everything he’d ever said to me. The soulmate I never had, I love you I love you I love you. Who could be better for me than you? If two people want to be together, they’ll be together; this picture would make a perfect wedding invitation. Our babies would be so beautiful. What was that all for?
I was so angry. Angry at him for hurting me, angry at myself for diving into him head first and trusting his every word; furious over my lifelong habit of seeing the potential of a man instead of what’s right in front of me. I thought of my son Steven; of how like him, I had lied about blatant things.
Slowly, my anger alchemized into compassion for myself, for Jack, for my son, as I remembered that the desire to love and be loved overrides the desire to feel safe. This pure, most human drive overrides logic, honesty, intuition, knowledge, common sense, time and space; it overrides red flags, the pain of hours spent waiting and wondering, the concerned looks and tone of voice from my girlfriends. It overrides all of this because love is the most powerful drug in the Universe, the essence of the essence, the bud of the bud, without which, we wouldn’t be here, for better or for worse.
Who’s kidding who—I was still wretchedly heartbroken, still in love. Sulking about my apartment on Sunday, I called my dear, supremely wise and understanding friend Aspen. It turned out that she was going through something similar. “What do I do with all of this anger?” I asked her.
“You can’t blame others for their wounding. We do this because we’re still blaming ourselves for ours. We bypass our own wounding instead of being there for the severity of it. We choose these men because they allow us to bypass their wounding and only see the potential.” DAMN ASPEN! BARS!
In a therapy session last month with Dr. Ali, whilst crying, naturally, I was telling him about a relationship I once had with someone that I felt a lot of shame around. He said, “Welcome to the club. You have nothing to be ashamed of. What if you two chose each other because you really needed something from one another at that point in time?”
While I wish it didn’t hurt so much, while I wish I didn’t still miss him after all of this, I know that Jack and I needed something from each other, and I think that despite the bitter ending, we were able to give each other love, and I don’t think that’s ever a waste.
So, one could say I’m healing, with the assistance of my wonder women, myself, my therapist, my clairvoyant, all my healers; Wellbutrin, Linda my massage therapist, and I would be remiss to not mention my Thai place. Next time, I know I won’t ignore what I see. Well, I’ll give it a real college try, at the very least. No matter what, I believe in love and I know that if two people are meant to be together, they’ll be together. I can’t wait to meet him.
My Goys: The Shehecheyanu is a 1500 year old Jewish prayer from the Talmud said to celebrate and express gratitude to God for new and unusual experiences or possessions.
so, so brilliant.
You’re writing a perfect blend of eloquence and brutality, class mixed with full frontal reality. Capable of dancing along the extremes in any direction, but averaging out somewhere cozy and familiar. I cannot wait to dig into this book you’re working on!