The Journey Ends for Now

Over the last 19 months, I’ve spent several weeks in Portugal, Costa Rica and Columbia to escape daily life and the void left by my husband.  In a few days I will wind up my Columbia trip and return home.

After each trip, I come home changed, with a different perspective on my new world order having booked significant time in cathedrals (thank you Jon) and gain the perspective of a different culture as I work out my problems du jour and contemplate next moves.

It doesn’t hurt that the coffee is excellent in all of these places.

Over the course of these months away and at home, many people have teased me and asked if I am dating to meet someone or for material to fill this blog?

My answer is yes.

I think both have been true. 

I began this journey with apprehension and perverse curiosity about what it was ‘like out there,’ having been absent from class for more than 26 years.       

As we all now see, during my absence, the curriculum has totally changed; it’s almost unrecognizable. There is an entirely new lexicon to accompany an ever-changing syllabus with a pedagogy that often doesn’t make sense.   All big, higher education words to say, everything I ever knew about dating is obsolete.

The universal truth though, remains the same. Love is love and when people are interested in connecting, it transcends all the technical nonsense and is organic.

This is not what my personal 10-month journey manifested.  While I was a contestant on this game show supposedly offering the possibility of fabulous cash and prizes, I left with only a few, meager parting gifts.  And most of those were not worth the effort.

I will admit though that along the way it has provided me, my friends and many of you a fair amount of entertainment value even if it sometimes felt painful and unnecessary.

As I navigated my recent dating experiences, I picked up a new language, culture and norms and uncovered many relics - some of my own; some which belong to others.

The entire excursion triggered a lot of emotion and exposed my confusion, naiveté, and imbalance, often all at once.

And, for extra pleasure and enjoyment, I got a healthy dose of those old feelings of self-doubt, accompanied by, yep, Every. Single. Insecurity.

Welcome back fellas - wish you saved yourself a trip.

I have taken time to explore these insecurities, and work-through the irrational thoughts driving these feelings. Thank you, therapy.

In the end, my key takeaway is I am stronger and more resilient than I ever give myself credit for, even as my poor friends and family (and now readers) have endured more than their fair share of listening to me over-thinking situations while questioning myself and other peoples’ motivations. 

If nothing else, I have learned to bounce back and carry on. 

HRH, the Queen, would be so proud. Maybe her and Bill are out there somewhere just cracking-up.

Back here in the material world though, these experiences have also exposed me to a series of awkward encounters while I confronted my willingness and ability to connect to another man after losing someone I adored. 

To essentially ask myself the simple question, “Is it possible for me to love again?”

Intellectually, I know this is possible.

Emotionally, though, I have lingering doubts.  Not because of who is out there or whatever they are doing.  My doubts are really about me and my willingness to be vulnerable again.

With that reality in the forefront, what I have now come to believe is that when I am ready, I will attract someone or find someone attractive. 

Either way, I am going to be just fine. 

In fact, it’s already been established by third-party ‘authorities’ whom I’ve dated that, “I’m great, sweet, nice and a lot to like.” 

And through it all, what has become abundantly clear to me is my primary objective is to actually not find a man. 

Surprise!

This circus has actually been instructive and shown me that under my own big top is the true desire to reinvent myself and find me, avec or sans dudes.

This Claire 3.0 re-build is clearly an ongoing effort proving to be continuously hard, sometimes cringe worthy and regularly inelegant while also serving up insights about myself and what I want and don’t want in my life.

I have learned to go to dinner alone, have drinks alone and maybe one day, take myself dancing?  If Miley Cyrus can, then so can I.

And though I’m definitely still under significant construction, blue prints are emerging.  I see rooms, edges, corners, and even structures which are now guiding me to rebuild myself and life as a single woman.

So, yay for those stupid dates and the abhorrent apps.  It has somehow managed to serve a higher purpose as I wander through life’s labyrinth and choose my new path.

The rebuild will continue as we all know life happens while you are making other plans.

Certainly, Bill and I didn’t know where we would end, or how I would feel unmoored, because I have lost my galaxy – my husband – who provided guardrails, or a holding space for my life.

And before his death, I retired to cancer, leaving a pretty intense career and years of working.  Both anchors in my life were abruptly removed, and yep, more thrashing about at times.

All of it required me to transcend my rational fears and do irrational things like dating strangers and writing about that publicly.  It’s required courage and moxie when I really wanted to crawl into bed and turn off all the lights. And, it’s forced me to be unafraid of embarrassment and humiliation while examining my own hearts’ desires and how to navigate my life alone.

Looking back on the blog, stuff like grief cleaning helped me decide what memories and items to keep as I move forward and what to discard.  Fish dude reminded me about the primal male, only interested in his pleasure, and delivery guy, showed up as a relic of another era of men.  Golden bachelor and Better Call Saul were more traditional daters but the kryptonite was not present for me.

A wise friend who I worked with 40 years ago told me over lunch earlier this year that I would probably not write about all this stuff at some point and, in the immortal words of David Sedaris, “everything is funny in retrospect.” 

He was right and prophetic.

It happened.

I’ve lost interest in pursuing you, algorithm.  It wasn’t you dear, it was me.

You are great, sweet, nice and someone to like, truly you are.  You deserve the best and will find someone amazing.

But I’m leaving you.  You will be fine and I will cherish our memories. 

But, I’m moving on and back into my weird and unexpected life.

I am particularly grateful to the friends and family who stayed by my side as they watched me transform into someone that some days have been unrecognizable.  To a person they used to know who may no longer be here but continue to accept, not judge, cheer me on and invite me to things and parties. 

To the pool ladies, the Bocce people, the past boyfriends who reconnected, the Kaiser Gal Pals, the high school sisters, the lifelong girlfriends and my bestie couple who always make me a dirty martini and let me hang and play cards (which I totally suck at) and most of all, my children who are wiser and more mature than I am now and who have ridden the Claire wave for the last several months wondering if I’m coming back or stuck in a new orbit. 

Either way, while I know they discuss deep concerns among each other, they hang on for the ride, accepting me as is, which is something I am not only grateful to them for, but quite proud of them as well.

And to all of my kids’ friends supporting them and me making my life way more interesting and hysterical as we all clearly see this is not going to plan but are cool, because…well, just because of love.