Monday Mimisms ~ My Kingdom For A Safe Place To Fall

I had a heart-to-heart this week with a close friend or two. Interestingly, recent blog posts on my crazy dates laced with pencil skirt sarcasm and humor, dating, men, and my luck with them, sparked a conversation in emails, on and off blog. The challenge? What do I really want? And, Mimi, they inquired, are you being specific enough in your dating profile about what you really want and expect from a man? Good question.

And I had to ask myself .... Am I letting my need to write "prettily and profoundly" filter into my very personal life so that it sounds unattainable, fluffy, fake? And am I allowing myself to enjoy just a bit too much jade these days - it is oh.so.easy.to.do - but am I using that as a selfish excuse to expect the same thing to keep occurring in my life? Am I drawing that unto myself because my brain won't uncolor the history and my heart won't trust again? And then I wrote a long and winding blog post about men.

STOP

THE

PRESSES

I re-read it this morning and decided it was not for public consumption, more for my own unwinding, as it were.

But part of maintaining integrity in my writing is making myself stare at the truth. It shouldn't always be shared. The gist was that my pride-deflated confession remains -

I am lonely.There.

I said it.

It was a bit of scary truth to stare at.

Do you see that woman in the grass? Me - four years ago. I was wearing a hat. Reading a book on a blanket, staring at dandelions, poof poof simple fun, enjoying the day, being silly, feeling the sun on my legs, spreading my wings. I was finding my place in the single world. I was in the process of validating who I really am after a long long stretch of life in a clouded cocoon. The sun and the weeds and the precarious whims of dandelions in the wind suited my mood.

I'll spare you the mountains of epiphanies my tears found yesterday on the subject of sex, dating, exes, relationships, intimacy (I said words that would have warranted a blog warning) and the sources of my lovely shade of unwanted and destructive jade. Damn that color. Who put it in the crayola box anyway?

I know this: The man who wins my heart will have his hands full. And I will expect him to be wrapped up totally by my little pinkie. I will also expect him to take off my hat, run his fingers through my hair and see the real me.

My kingdom for a man to love the real me - and one who has the strength to call my prissy bluff.

You think I want to unnerve the gentleman? Think again. I want to be unnerved by the look that says "Oh yeah, Miss Skirt, I get it. I heard what you said, dear, but I know you well enough to know what you meant and that there's more to the story. Sit down with me. I'm listening. Drop the act." I wouldn't smack him. I'd run straight into his annoying arms and let him unnerve me some more.


My kingdom for a man who wants to take off my hat.

And won't run screaming away.

I've dated some beautiful men. It was fun. It was satisfying. It filled a need I had at the time. But in most cases - with the exception of one serious relationship - the maturity levels were a mile wide and an inch deep. Now I want to swim in deep waters, not wade in the kiddie pool.

My kingdom for the wisdom to know the difference.

I have been afraid to say that lest it scare the charming beautiful ones away. Is that what I really want? Charm and beauty?

No. It is not.

I want a man who will tell me the truth....in bed, out of bed, in the morning, late at night, at the grocery store, at the concert, in the car, when I'm ugly, when I'm blue, when I'm bitchy, when I feel like a 2-year-old instead of a never-mind-year-old, and more than anything in the whole wide world - I want a safe place to fall.

What happened to the woman in the grass? Such a short time ago it was. How did she get here....where it's lonely (oh God, I said it again) and vulnerable and sad and just plain frightening at times.. How, pray tell, did you get from dandelions to this? I stared at the photos. The uncolored me was so much more attractive. Ah, but there are mountains of complicated reasons.

Pucker, Mimi, and blow them away. Right out of your life for good. Starting now. Did you see how that worked? Today I am rewinding the calendar, putting on my hat, and going back to the days of dandelion blankets and wild wild grass.

I like her better.

She made a nice shade of hope.