I Said No.

It wasn’t easy.

The week before, I knew that plans were made, and I didn’t want to go. The dread and the wondering if I should cancel took shape and started to grow. It grew bigger and gathered speed and by Saturday it felt like I was being marched over a cliff.

I didn’t want to meet up and I definitely did not want the sexing that surely would go along with this plan for “dinner”. Duncan wasn’t coming all the way from Marin just to split some appetizers and an entree.

I knew that for a fact.

I kept running through various scenarios in my mind where we’d eat and somehow I’d manage a quick escape. Maybe I could meet him at the restaurant and bolt after dessert? Maybe I’d get food poisoning and have to retire early? Maybe he’d be fine with us being *just* friends? Maybe I’d get covid.

Damn it.

I woke up Saturday wanting nothing more than to stay put, at home, by myself. Not one to rock the boat, it surprised even me when I told him I had changed my mind. My answer was now a no. I told him in a text because we don’t talk much. I hit send and I cancelled. Just like that.

I said that I wasn’t DTF because we weren’t ever going to be anything and my original DTFness had been due to me falling for him, acutely – and hard. But now I was over all of that. It didn’t sound good anymore and I didn’t feel like going through any motions. I am the woman who once said that sometimes it’s easier to put out than to cause a scene. Yes, I know I should take that straight to therapy. It’s on my list. But my point here is that saying no took something I didn’t know that I had in me.

My use of the F word was a little crass (I still remember Lauren Hutton saying “one F-ck” in American Gigolo and me gasping because she wanted to know how much one F-ck with Richard Gere would cost her and women didn’t talk like that back then) but still, I said no. I said I’d rather not do the F-word thing because without love, none of it was appealing. He didn’t love me and I was no longer crushing on him – so, no.

His answer was, “OK.” I found this amusing since by the time he answered I had called an emotional support friend and was preparing to get reamed or shamed or something but it turns out it was okay. A big fat nothingburger.

I said no and was surprised that I had ever said yes to this person. More than a year ago I not only had said yes, but I kept on saying yes when HELL NO would have been the better response. I said yes because inside my head there was this person who looked like Duncan and he was really awesome and we were a terrific match. I could see us together and it was a beautiful thing and I was all in – even though anything good that transpired was mostly in my head.

He had some reasons for why he hadn’t treated me well. He told me these reasons the last time we got together (which was several months ago.) One of the reasons was that he had still been hung up on his last girlfriend. That was understandable but it didn’t warm my heart or anything. He also said he had been in a bad place mentally. I understood that, too, but there are going to be plenty of bad mental places to navigate and knowing that you’re with someone who’s going to verbally abuse you when they’re down – I could live without that.

We never were a thing. It never got that far. It was just a lot of noise and me projecting my stuff onto him and him battling me back until I gave up and went home, defeated and alone. The little dream of us together was put away and that was that.

Except when I drank.

When I drink I am prone to alternating retrograde amnesia and fits of nostalgia and ennui, so occasionally he and I would drunken text. Drunken texting lead me to say yes to dinner even though we weren’t a thing and even though he had said things to me that should have triggered more outrage and a fiercer instinct for self-preservation. I decided he was “hurt” and “emotionally unavailable” and I periodically let the asshole in him off the hook.

My dream of him had been a good one.

For some reason hurt and emotionally unavailable were not the turn off they should have been…..the first time around….but after we reunited…..the second time around…it got old.

It got old enough that I wasn’t very excited to see him but I still said yes because saying no would have meant burying any future idea I might want to entertain of the two of us together. It would have meant saying no to the possibility of anything between us and the thing I had held in my head was…. heady. I didn’t want to completely let go of this thing I had envisioned.

Until……SLAP.

The dread I felt was the slap I needed to say no and to bury all of it, for good.

Here’s my advice, and the moral of this story.

Don’t let anyone get in your head who doesn’t belong there.

The person who belongs in your head will do sweet and wonderful things and what’s in your head will be warm thoughts based on their actual real-life interactions with you. If what’s in your head is things you wish you could do with the person, or something you think could happen if only – then, stop. Just stop it and free yourself already.

The person you probably want to spend time with is yourself. That’s who is actually in your head and that’s who you need to hang out with – not some place-holder who looked at you a certain way and sent you off into some lala dreamland where sucky manners are a substitute for sugary I-love-you’s.

That is what this blog is going to be about. It won’t be about looking for love or blowing off steam dating or waiting for some match so real life can begin…. you can read all about that in my Datergurl blog, may it R.I.P.

This will be about the many things you can have in your head when you dump out what doesn’t belong there.

Everyone hug your monkey, and let the rumpus begin!