Icarus

I was giddy and hopeful when I first met Cary and spent a brief amount of time with him.

The week after that I was happily high on the idea of what could be, the possibility of getting to know someone interesting and intriguing, the wide open potential of what could be.

And I wanted to tell my friends all about him and what had, and hadn't happened, but I also wanted to keep it to myself, sealed safely in the happy bubble that was floating inside me. So I talked to some close friends about him, told them he lived in Vancouver and they, meaning well, told me quite firmly that they would not allow me to go through another long distance relationship. That I shouldn't even consider it.

My bubble had been burst.

I was completely deflated. Hurt. Let down.

I talked to C-Dawg, a sad tinge to the story now that I'd been told it could. . . should never work out.

"Vancouver?" she said, her voice somewhere between amused and incredulous. "That's not long distance! Get serious. Go for it."

And I let my bubble maybe start to re-inflate. Cautiously. Maybe just a little.

Then I talked to my friend about Cary. She said good things.

Maybe there was reason to be hopefully optimistic. Maybe it was ok to be a little girly and dreamy over what-ifs.

I went for a walk with S. We had life to catch up on.

Life including Cary and the story that still makes me smile.

She encouraged me to get his email, which I did, and then she went home and tried to find out what she could about him.

See, I'm not on Facebook. (No, really.) But S is, and in the small world way that Facebook seems to work, she found that Cary and she had a mutual friend and so she looked him up for me. (The modern background check.)

You can sometimes tell a lot about a person by what they put on their Facebook, she cautioned me. Sometimes.

How old is he?

Me: I don't know.

Is he a smoker?

Me: Um, I don't know? (God, I hope not)

Could he maybe be a little bit immature?

Me: I don't know. I suppose.

Well, he seems like a good guy. Cute. Interesting. I'd say he was my type, you know. (We laugh, we already know we share similar excellent taste in men.)

"I say go for it." She says, "just be aware that he's human. Not perfect."

I don't want to hear it.

Don't want to know the reality of him.

Find myself running away from all the what might have been's towards it'll never work what what I thinking's.

It's all or nothing. Perfect or awful. It'll work or it'll be a disaster.

And I realize that my bubble, the one that's been growing and floating inside me will burst on its own, without anyone's help if I get too far into imagining just how great Cary is, how great we'd be together, how perfectly perfect it all will be.

I'm Icarus. My friends don't want me flying too close to the sun.

But I like the feeling.

I like the soaring giddiness of how utterly fantastic this thing I've found will be.

Every single time I meet someone I like that feeling.

And I ride it higher and higher until I'm flapping my bare arms, feathers fallen into the sea and the crash is coming, the relationship splintering and I'm left staring at the brokenness wondering how on earth I could have been so wrong again.

The extremes are familiar. Addictive perhaps.

But I'm trying to learn to ride in the middle.

Safer. A shorter distance to fall.

A smaller bubble to burst.

Expectations that can be met and exceeded.

A safe, yet joyful and giddy flight. Wings intact.