I didn’t get to meet Bond. Spending time with my family ran over, because originally they thought it was best for me to leave before getting the kids in bed, and the kids were squirrelly all evening. Bedtime was the last thing on their minds. I never should have suggested Friday night in the first place, knowing that what time I was free could have been different than I originally thought. By the time I got to the bar, she’d already left with no reply to the message I’d sent. I’d wasted her time, and for that, I was extraordinarily sorry. But the longer I sat there alone with my own drink (I still wanted to celebrate, even by myself), the more I realized that I wasn’t ready for this and perhaps it was for the best.
It wasn’t establishing a friendship that bothered me. It was thinking back over my life and realizing that perhaps an empath meeting intel wasn’t the best idea I’ve ever had. I worry about the tiniest things, much less a friend traipsing all over the Middle East trying to catch human traffickers. And, of course, it occurred to me that on loan from the British, she’d have to go back to London eventually if it became a thing down the road. Because I don’t just see what’s right in front of me, I vision years ahead… to my detriment most of the time, but it’s just the way I’m wired. I’m like the kid in MIBIII that can see every possible outcome of a situation and weigh it.
I know me. I would be a mess, and there’s no use in hiding that fact from her or anyone else. I don’t know that I would be okay living on the breadcrumbs about her life that she can actually divulge. I don’t know that she would be okay knowing that writing is my life, wondering if the secrets she shared would end up here (they wouldn’t, but still). To think about all that even in the few conversations we’ve had resulted in a future that did not happen… and it is amazing how okay I am with that.
I have to ask myself if I set myself up for failure, pushing her away before she could push me. I overpromised and underdelivered, but not on purpose. Just thinking in retrospect. Dragging her into my life would be as equally hard as just being in hers.
I did not seek Bond out. It was a Tinder match in which I didn’t know exactly who I was talking to until later in the conversation.
However, I did show up. That, at the very least, has to be something in my world. I did consider the possibility of opening up, but the things I have to open up about are heavy to the point of debilitation. I need to set off my own mother lion before I set off anyone else’s… yet another thing that encourages weariness on my part to engage. I don’t want to go from protected to closed, which I define as not recognizing safe space… and yet, even the thought of safe space has become foreign in light of thinking I had it and as it turns out, not so much.
Did I get the outcome I wanted? No. But I definitely got the outcome for which I prepared. I took the path of least resistance, which was sitting and having a drink, then getting up to go home and read.
My IQ wanted to meet another smart person. My EQ left me focusing on all the things that could happen, instead of what actually might. I need to pay more attention when I do it. Self-preservation is good. Starving myself of human interaction is not.
Stories That Are All True 