discovery

I made a deal with the universe: if I got the job this new job, I would stop seeing BT.

I tried to be casual girl, spur-of-the-moment girl, no-strings-attached girl, but that's not really me, not as far as relationships go. I knew that ultimately it wasn't good for me. I drank more around BT, my sleep schedule got thrown off, and I spent the beginning of every week dusting off emotional cobwebs, trying not to be attached, trying to distance myself. Even when I went out without him, I had my phone at the ready, waiting for his text messages, not being fully in the moment. Part of me hoped he'd come around and start asking me out on real dates, even while a bigger part of me understood that we would not be compatible in a relationship.

I was concerned that I had the wrong kind of energy around me, a careless and possibly destructive energy that could interfere with these bright new beginnings. It was time to be honest with myself and stop sectioning off my heart, stop forcing myself to stop feeling and reassess my attitude towards intimacy.

Anyway, I got the job, and I knew I had to make good on my end of the deal. This was a couple of weeks ago. I decided to wipe the slate clean: no more online dating, no more crushes on bartenders, no more drunken hook-ups. BT went out of town for a few days, which made letting him go in my head easier. Here I was with this great life as well as this new body and now new job. There wasn't any room to think about dating, to obsess about relationships. Why focus on the one aspect of my life that was lacking when I had so much else going for me?

I made peace with the fact that there were no romantic prospects on the horizon and probably wouldn't be for some time.

Then I went to that club the weekend before last, where J, a friend of a friend, started chatting with me. J and I talked for hours and hours. There was an instant rapport. We had our first date a week ago. We had our second date on Friday, and it was easily the best date of my life. We had our third date on Monday and I'm seeing him again later today. We talk on the phone every day, we exchange countless emails and texts, and have become pretty much inseparable since we met.

J and I have a connection that is so special, so electric, it is downright telepathic. I can't describe it any other way but to call it magic. I feel like I have fairy dust sprinkled over my life.

I've been struggling with what to write about J. Words can't do him justice and I'm still figuring it out what to chronicle and what to keep private, what to keep ours.

As much as I have resisted and fought and raged against the idea, it all comes back to that Buddhist koan: to find something stop looking for it.

I stopped looking, put blinders on even, and one night I glanced up and found the man of my dreams sitting next to me.

Magic.