My boyfriend's doing reserves
He's not sarcastic or dark, he's honest, calm, patient, has self-respect and ideals. Amazing. So what's wrong? He's in reserves for a month
Well what do we have here? For one second you guys aren't standing guard over the nation – and I get a boyfriend. Yes, yes. A real boyfriend, monogamy, with all the trappings, including the voluntary constipation of the first three months.
I thought I was growing, but it seems that it's difficult to grow theoretically. Things look totally different when you're actually doing them. It's not easy, especially since he deviates from my usual norm in terms of guys – self-obsessed women-hating jerks.
He and his strange friends do 50 days of reserves duty a year, go to public sing-alongs, pick chrysanthemums from the hiking trails of Israel and look at wild ducks the rest of the time. He has a tool box, he works, calls, and functions sexually. He's not sarcastic or dark, he's honest, calm and patient, has self-respect and ideals, and when he looks at me, he really sees me. Amazing. So what's wrong? He's in reserves for a month.
Dealing with alone time
At first I thought it would be cool, but do I look like someone experienced at dating someone with values? No problem, I told myself, it won't hurt to have some alone time, to return to myself.And besides, it's a good opportunity to examine how we really feel and to take a break from the intensity, because the truth is, that while it's fun, during the war I found myself opening my ID in order to remind myself who I am and what my name is.
Basically, I was very nonchalant and though that, with all of my new-found wisdom, I'd probably succeed in surviving this month just fine. But hi, who am I kidding? It's me, and as you've probably guessed, my condition is deteriorating by the day. Wouldn't you think that, after years alone, a month would be easy? Yet it appears we were all wrong. Big time. It's amazing how quickly someone's absence can create a void.
My coping process reminds me of the bumper stickers on the war. Week one – "we will triumph", after two weeks – "We be fine with a tie", after three, exhausted and a lot less arrogant, it became "hey, at least we participated".
A second before apathy set in, he announced he was coming for a visit. I panicked. I really wanted to see him, but, on the other hand, if the moment would be the death toll of my relationship, I wanted to postpone it as long as possible. I arrived at the designated location a minute before the date, scared, trying to figure out the requisite behavior.
Stupid jokes for the first hour in order to delay the chaos of instant intimacy seemed to be a good option for a coping mechanism. But surprise: when I saw him, without thinking what the hell I was doing, I jumped on him like a four year old girl, attached myself to his earlobe like an earring, and stayed there for an hour.
The spell doesn't wear off
No weirdness and no nothing. Everything disappeared: the doubts, the fears, the mountain of witty theories on love and its existence in this world. In the meantime, the only thing I discovered as a result of this reserves duty is that I miss him to death.
Truth be told, I was kind of hoping that, once I was without him, the spell would wear off and I'd stop being a disgusting, infatuated sap. Primarily, I hoped that the needy girl who had taken over me would leave.
There's something comforting in staying with the familiar and so I constantly catch myself trying to trip us up, trying to use rationale to subdue emotion. And that's not a problem, because I have no problem assuming that I'll fail.
But, as with everything, it takes two to tango and, maybe I'm a little bipolar, but no matter how much I racked my brains, other than the sandals that he wore one day (which I dealt with using my customary gentleness: "If you wear them one more time, we're through, I swear to God"), I haven't found any flaws. And believe me, it's not because I didn't try.
The author
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