This is a little piece I put together to try and get some things off my chest. I hope you like it. I call it "400 First Dates".
400 First Dates
Once, you left me in a parking lot, around the corner from Fry’s Electronics. I told you I cared about you, and you hung up the phone.
Once, you left me in an airport, clutching two tickets to Disney World. I watched you recede through the doors of the terminal.
Once, you got up from dinner in the middle of the second course and told me you couldn’t do this anymore, that you were seeing someone else. You left the restaurant without saying another word, and I paid the check and went home.
Sometimes, you actually seemed to care, and those were the worst times. We’d start to get to know each other, I’d open up a bit. We’d watch Hercule Poirot until 2am and talk about how hard it was to find somebody and how nobody understood us. Then, the next day you would tell me what a little shit I was and give me the middle finger in the center of Haight street, outside the grocery store. I never saw you again.
5 times you were Kimberly. 3 times, Lauren. You were Julia and Jessica and Amanda and Jill, but you were also Olga, and Tatiana. Once, I celebrated Chinese New Years with you at a party with some of your friends, but I can’t remember your name. Once you took me to a festival for the Hindu gods. Then the next week you drove me up to Tahoe and dumped me at a cabin and told me to take the train home.
Most of the time, we met online, on services with ridiculous names like OKCupid and Match and Coffee Meets Bagel, cutesy names that try to take the sting out of what may be the world’s most dehumanizing process. Often all I knew about you was words on a glowing screen, and I would have to try to pretend you were real to me. Most of the time, you didn’t even try to pretend I was real to you.
But we also met at bars, at yoga, through friends, at a party. Sometimes, we’d go dancing, or go see a movie. Once I took you to dinner 5 times, just to see if you would ever kiss me. You never did.
You mocked me openly, you lied to me, you hit me, you screamed at me, called me names and worse. I took you to the hospital bleeding from your head. I picked you up in the middle of the night when you were so drunk you left your wallet in a cab. I followed you around like a puppy and listened when you told me what to do. Sometimes, you would treat me to a lecture about what miserable awful people men were, right before you swept through my life like a tornado. You were a fashion model, an accountant, a lawyer, a seamstress.
Last night, you were a nurse - and you hated your job. You always, always seemed to hate your job, which is odd because you worked so hard. Last night you were so tired you could barely even look at me. You spent the whole time complaining about work and never asked me a single thing about myself. At least you paid for your own drink.
Sometimes you were tall, sometimes short. Far too often blonde, but sometimes redhead, brunette, black, purple. Most of the time you were on the thin side, but certainly sometimes you put on some weight.
Once you started making beer with me and left me right before we were supposed to bottle it together. I named it after you and cried a little bit when I drank the last bottle, alone.
Every single time I cared about you. Every. Single. Damn. Time. Every time I said I liked you I meant it. Every time I kept the faith. I never cheated, I never lashed out, I never played games with you. I never lied.
Except, maybe, lately, when I told you that I was excited to see you.
Because, you see, the fact is - I ‘m not sure I am excited to see you. I’m not honestly sure I like you very much anymore. I’m not sure that I really respect you. I tried - good god, I tried. But I can’t look at you anymore without seeing the ghosts of all the rest of you. It’s too much to take. I want so badly to believe that this next time, you’ll be nice - that this time will be different. But over 400 times, it never was. And it’s so easy to see myself as the victim, and honestly I think I deserve a little bit of that. But...nothing good lies down that path. And besides - I know, I know quite well that sometimes, I was to blame. Sometimes I said the wrong thing, did the wrong thing. I remember, and regret, every single one. I can picture every look on your face when I disappointed you, and they all weigh a bit too heavy.
All I ever wanted was to care for you. To understand you. To wake up next to you and stroke your hair. I never wanted you to change, never wanted you to be different. I just wanted you to like me.
And you never, ever did.