Today's Issue - Love, again

Two weeks ago I began talking with a woman within my area (internet dating, yay...) and we hit it off nigh immediately. We talked while at work, after, before, but not tiny, perpetual messages; rather, we spoke in paragraphs, answering all questions, and doing so naturally, with no need for prompting. We're both teachers at the beginning of our careers. I've recently (three years this Easter) converted to Catholicism, and she's in the process of doing so now. Faith is important to both of us, but we're not crazy. We're both progressively minded, and open-minded. We're both hopeless romantic types, we both recognize the importance of respectful pacing, consent, etc...

Literally the only part we don't match or at least have in common is music taste--we both understand music as an important part of life. She leans more pop and I more metal, but listen to enough overlapping genres to negate any issues.

But, of course, there's a catch, or I wouldn't be here. 

She has been out of an on-again-off-again relationship for five months. I get the impression there was a lot of manipulation, emotional abuse, etc, but she loved/loves him a great deal. It reminds me of a seven-year relationship I spent two years getting over. Lots of emotional abuse to rope you in, make you addicted, they're all you ever want, etc etc etc., and now she's in that. I think her head is telling her she needs to leave it alone, which is why it's been five months since they've broken up, but her heart isn't ready to really let him go, which is why this has happened.

What has happened, yes... On New Year's, it was the third time we'd been together, and I was spending it with her and her friends (my loneliness in this area will be the subject of another post). Things were going AMAZING right up until the moments after midnight when she called me over to smoke some weed (I'm very new to the concept, and not likely to be a repeat user). She did so out of an apple (weird idea, but it worked) and I out of a small pipe. Hers did not go so well, and I think she had been doing some earlier in the night, so she overpeaked herself. She got way too high. And then her anxiety and paranoia kicked in and she went into overthinking mode and (my interpretation begins here) her heart started telling her she was making a mistake, or not ready to love someone else, etc. So she decided she needed to get out of there and had other friends come get her and left. I made the stupid decision to leave about a half hour after her, still inebriated, which again says I shouldn't be doing both things. But I couldn't stay at her friends' place without her, thinking it was automatically over and it would just be weird being there in the morning with them. And as I learned yesterday, the kind of thinking that follows marijuana usage doesn't go away like a fog being lifted when the high goes away, not in the same way as alcohol.

So yesterday, her thoughts remained. Her anxiety has remained. Her doubts have remained. She's said over and again that it's not because of me or anything I've done or said, it's entirely because she thought she was more healed than she is. And I've been in exactly that mindset before and can't fault her for it.

So we agreed, more or less, to me needing to give her space to figure things out, which is friggin' hard to do, but I did manage it with some family help.

Then, at 6:30 tonight, she messaged me to say that she doesn't want me to wait, because her dealing with stuff might take weeks or months. She apologized for bringing me into her life when she wasn't ready. I responded that I couldn't fault her for not knowing she wasn't ready; how else do you find out but to try? I said I understand where she's at, with the mind/heart thing (empathy ftw...), that because she didn't ghost me after her meltdown (I didn't use that word), or automatically walk away from the new, potential relationship I could give her nothing but respect. I, of course, asked (practically begged, but what're you gonna do) her to keep me in mind whenever she figures stuff out. I can't wait, I have to get over her (I fell pretty fast; you'd think at 32 I'd know better just as a general rule), but we both like each other a lot (it was pretty clear on both sides, and the 180 was too sudden to have been anything I did) so it would be a terrible, horrible shame to let something that could be amazing but for her unhealed heart just disappear. If she does message me later, and I am available, I would jump at the chance to date her for real, and I told her as much. She said she appreciated, more than I could know, how understanding I've been. 
 

This is just a shitty situation. I hate being the "right person wrong time" guy. The way this tends to end is completely. The person that realizes they're not ready will entertain the person that wants to pick it up again, but that's never how it happens. That's only ever in movies. And it's that that I'm going to have to come to terms with if I'm to move on and try again. I have to come to terms with the fact that she's never coming back, no matter how perfect we were together, no matter how happy we were (or seemed, I guess would be more accurate), etc. And I guess that's why I needed to write this. I needed to put that into words, flush it through my brain, like I tell my students when they want to take pictures of notes...

*sigh* Sometimes I wonder why the hell I even try...