Got Off The Phone
…I just got off the phone with someone that I attribute to starting my A.I. Journey. Its a girl, of course. But not just any girl. This is a girl who taught me something that I have carried with me deep, deep inside. She gave me the experience of “significance.” Until I met her, I never knew what it felt like to be “the prize.”
Now…a pause. The prize? Really? Now let me clear the possible interpretations of this because I can only imagine what that might sound like.
- She did not serve me on hand and foot, though she could serve up some mean eggo waffles.
- She was not always on call for me and in fact often would be unavailable.
- She did not look at me longingly with doughy eyes and claim her undying love for me.
- She did not change her life for me and in fact continued to live it as she seemed fit, how she wanted.
- She did not see me as a solution to any of her life’s feelings of loneliness, though she would share a bed with me only to escape being alone.
- She did not offer sex on demand…
ETC…
This is not what I mean by to be the “prize” or to feel significant.
I was the prize because she had options. She had lots and lots of options on who she could be with at any moment and at anytime. She never HAD to be with me. But, yet, for a short time, she did choose me. And there was something about her choosing to spend time with me that made me feel her choice as a CHOICE: A REAL CHOICE.
What she taught me was how powerful and connected you can feel when someone who is living a life that is full of adventure, full of meaning, stops…looks at you and invites you into that world.
At the time, I had no idea what I wanted. I had no dreams. I was not able to give myself what I wanted. I was sad inside and felt incomplete. I would look out on the world and be like: “what’s the point of all this?” This means nothing if I’m not with someone. I felt incomplete and I had no idea how to give myself this completeness, much less how to feel significant through my own projects and actions.
Today, almost a year since I began my A.I. journey, I simply don’t feel that emptiness. I’m living a budding adventure every fucking day. I know how to give myself what I want. While I’m not a total master of this yet, I’m no where near the same person I was back then.
My hope now is to give some beautiful girl the feeling this lovely girl gave me: The feeling of being unique in all the world. I told her I was thankful to her for giving me that experience.
To Be The Prize…To Feel Significant…
I have been watching the Zan Perrion talk at the Real Man Conference (I believe it was shared on the A.I. Facebook Page). I want to paraphrase something he said. His observation that women and men have forgotten to bask in the joys of being women and men, and how women often have little opportunity to feel what it is like to “be the prize” because men don’t have all their shit together. Fair enough.
I know, for instance, that some men are “projects,” fixer-upers. Not knowing how to give themselves the kinds of lives they desire, the kinds of feelings they want, the kinds of relationships they desire, they muddle through and some bighearted, lonely, woman may just fall in love and work to help that guy realize his potential. This is the stuff of dramatic-comedies, sit-coms, and other movies.
I guess one way for a woman to feel significance today is to take on a guy as a “project.”
I’ve been that guy. And I’ve also been the person trying to “fix” someone. What I did not know then, that I know now, is that my attempt to “fix them” was really just an attempt to make them responsible for the life I wanted. I hoped that if I could only fix this bit or that bit of her, then it would be the “ideal” relationship. It never worked. There was ALWAYS more to fix because its not about them…it was about me. I’m the one who needed fixing.
The great Lee Thayer once said something like: often it is those who have no idea how to take on responsibility for their own life who are all too willing to take on the responsibility for the life of someone else. That was me.
It was much easier to try to fix someone else to match what I wanted, then to fix why it was that I wanted to be with someone who was so obviously wrong for me in the first place. Maybe it was because, as Thayer also said, “we often prefer to live with problems than enact solutions we do not like.” Wise man. Being alone was worse than not being with someone…
Well, today, I want something more…something extraordinary. I want to know that the woman I am with has many options, but chooses to be with me. And I want to have my own life filled with so much excitement and meaning that I do not need to rely on her to fix me. Instead, she can be free to be her and be deeply beautiful, to be the prize, to feel significant because she feels my deep desire for her, my deep appreciation of who she is, and all of this rooted in my free choice to be with her because I TOO have many options.
I Want Her To Feel Beautiful…
One of my favorite books is The Little Prince. So I like to quote it when I can…
“That which is essential is invisible to the eye…the beauty of the desert that somewhere it hides a well.” Her beauty requires my witness, a witness that no other set of eyes can provide. I want every women I find attractive to feel that they are beautiful in a way that is well beyond the superficial and common. But for this to happen, I have to do what I have been doing for the last year…living my own life and creating the life I want, living out my dreams, living out my desires. It’s been an incredible year…mind blowing!
I shared all of these sentiments with this girl as we spoke on the phone. (I’m not quite sure how she took the meaning of all that, but, hey, its what I wanted to say :P)
When I started Get Real last January, one of my biggest hopes was that I could one day reconnect with her without feeling that I NEED to have her in my life. After talking to her today, I can honestly say that I do not NEED her in my life in order to feel complete, whole. I guess only those closest to me at the time I was losing her will understand just how important this is for me.
But this does not mean I do not WANT her in my life. It does not mean I do not DESIRE her in my life. In fact, for the first time ever I can honestly say I do WANT her in my life. And that I do DESIRE her in my life, sincerely. But Do I NEED this to happen? Nope. Don’t get me wrong….it’s preferred…but either way my life will be great…besides, she’s already left her mark on that life.
She is a powerful, deep, and beautiful girl and according to my truth: I DESIRE connecting with just such a girl.
She’s a well in the desert…