Tossing in My Chip

I've met someone. It happened, the way it always seems to, when I was looking the other way. Innocently minding my own business, getting ready (or so I thought), to summit the highest mountain outside of Asia. I was planning to start dating again when I returned, to maybe try some dating websites, a prospect that I find only slightly more thrilling than getting my teeth cleaned by a dental hygienist hopped on speed and mescal. But this man, who I met briefly a few years ago - I'm not sure we were even properly introduced - and know from Facebook, where we've followed each other's doings since that time, started messaging me a week or two before I left for Argentina. 

I've long liked M - I was attracted to him immediately upon seeing him - but I wasn't sure why he was messaging me. I answered him happily back while asking my friends, "Why is he messaging me? Do you think he likes me? Like, likes likes me?"

"Well, YEAH," my friend Amber said. "Dudes don't generally start messaging gals unless that's the case."

But it's been a long, lonely year, and M wasn't exactly flirting. He was just being friendly. Which was really different than just about every guy I've been with, casually or not, almost my entire life. I have been called variously, "a handful" and "trouble" and "dangerous" and all sorts of other terms which tend to euphemistically mean something along the lines of "sexy, crazy bitch." And I think...I think that aura, that gleam, that thing I've had - honestly, probably the result of being a somewhat crazy bitch - attracted more sketchy characters than not. But I've always liked bad boys anyway. 

So, aside from my ex-husband, who loved me in a way I doubt anyone ever will again, although (being a crazy bitch) I left him for a drug addict, I haven't been wooed by too many nice men. My last love, who was supposed to be nice - oh, I used to tell myself, he's just broken, he's been hurt, he needs patience and understanding - was the worst of all. Worse than the addict, who was responsible for the night a crack dealer put a gun to my temple. Worse than the rageaholic, who screamed in fury at me when I fell down the stairs on Christmas Day and hurt myself. That stuff didn't break me, or even come close. 

But that last guy, he just about did. It was all so subtle, the manipulation, the gaslighting, the way he withheld things from me - from sex to emotional intimacy to affection - when I'd displeased him, which was often. He would get "irritated" by me doing anything from accepting a press trip (although I'm a travel journalist, so it's really, seriously my job to travel), to wearing clothes he found too revealing. The near-constant, steady subtext was that I was a bad person, wrong, not worthy of him.

It's pretty easy to make a woman who's long struggled with mental health issues believe she's a bad person. Especially when she's done things she'll regret to the day she dies - like leaving the husband who loves her for a drug addict. It's like shooting fish in a barrel. It can't be much fun. Although that's not fair, because I don't believe he ever meant to hurt me. I really don't. But he was very good at it anyway. And when he finally left me in the most dehumanizing way possible - without a forwarding address, never to be seen or heard from again - it was nearly the coup de grâce.

It's only right now, this minute, that I can admit it. I spent years being emotionally abused by a man I loved more than anyone I've ever loved. It's not that I fear a reaction from him that makes this admission so difficult (though somehow I think I still do, a little), it's that I find it humiliating. I've spent so long wanting to be strong, pretending to be strong, that it is nearly impossible for me to acknowledge that I let myself be treated this way. I can't remember in what context, but M recently said to me, "It's obvious that someone really hurt you." And I responded with something dismissive, along the lines of "I'm fine, after all, everyone's been hurt."

I will not be a fucking victim. I won't. 

So. Not a lot of experience with nice men. I still can't quite believe how often M messages me - whenever he feels like it, which is all the time, no games here - and that he actually wants to spend hours on the phone with me. And when he started talking about visiting me in State College - he lives a couple hours out of town - I wondered if he really meant it. I kept thinking, "He's going to go out of his way to see me?" He's been talking about taking me out to dinner and teasing me about how the hotel he booked is a surprise and telling me over and over that he's so excited to see me - and nervous, too - will I like the way he kisses me? And it's taken me 'til just about now to finally accept that this man really is this kind and this open. He doesn't have an agenda. He simply likes me the way I like him.

That doesn't mean I won't backslide, of course, that there won't be times, should we continue to see each other, when I'll wonder and worry if he's for real. I think it might be a long time before I'll be able to easily trust anyone again. Maybe it will be a fight I'll always wage with myself - trust or don't, open up, or not.

But there's other good stuff, too, about M. He's handsome, funny, intelligent and really tall, too. He's younger than me - and young enough to be my ex's son. (I find this gratifying, I admit.) He's sweet. And he's really, really kinky. We're going to push each other's boundaries in wonderful ways, ways that I have been wanting to push and be pushed for years. At the very least, this will be a helluva way to trade in my 12-month celibacy chip. 

Kidding - I'm not a sex addict. At least, probably not. I don't have a chip, in any case. But it's been that long since I've been with anyone because I needed to not only heal, but to get my head on straight. Never again. That's what I promised myself. Never, ever again am I going to be with someone who isn't good enough for me, who mistreats me, who hinders instead of helps, hurts instead of loves. Never, ever again. I've spent the past 18 months - barring that brief, wonderful fling with CC - learning that I can survive being alone, that I'm mostly just fine. I've spent that time getting over my ex and working on fixing the bent and bruised places inside me that let me believe it was okay for me to be with men like him. That I didn't deserve better.

M and I may meet and find the chemistry off. Or maybe the chemistry will be incredible, but there won't be anything beyond it. Whether we see each other again or not, I'll always be grateful he reached out to me. Because he's shown me that good men do exist - and that they can be so much more thrilling than  bad boys.