From the MBTA to Driving All Day

I've been reading a lot of Pioneer Woman, including her ongoing saga of meeting her man, Black Heels to Tractor Wheels. Now I can't draw out a story the way she can, but the fact that her impending anniversary with Marlboro Man led her to start her saga in the first place has inspired me. I'm staring down the barrel of my own anniversary -- seven years. seven! -- so I think I'll be a copycat.

It'll be a good incentive to keep posting every day, anyway.

The first I ever heard of Cowboy, he was a screen name. I didn't think much of him. Not that I thought little of him; there just wasn't much to think. His screen name was also an amalgam of his and a woman's name, so I had even less of a reason to consider him. I was mending a broken heart.

That fact alone was a bit silly. I'd met this Boy the previous summer; it was now late winter. Instead of falling hard and fast for him as had been my custom, I'd been pulled in gradually. The night I met him, I wasn't even sure that I liked him until 30 seconds before he kissed me. I didn't see him again for a month. Once or twice I tried to back off, but just as I was giving up, there he'd be again, pulling me in. We were electric together. But he was gunshy. He'd been hurt before, badly, and he didn't want to get into anything too deeply. I both respected this and found it maddening. I wasn't used to doing things halfway. I needed to be, in the immortal words of Luke Danes, "all in." Or if not, all out. In a fit of impatience that I mistook for maturity, in late November I decided to end it, citing my fear that he couldn't -- not wouldn't, couldn't -- meet me where I was at. I was going to bow out.

But me, the idiot, I wrote him a letter. Not an email. Not a note. A full-on, snail-mailed letter.

I don't know what I thought he'd do. Deep down, did I want him to chase me down and fight for me? Maybe. But at the time I truly believed I'd done the right thing. I was trying to keep myself from getting hurt. November turned into December which gave way to January, and late that month I saw him at a party. When I finally saw him it was with a mixture of relief and surprise. I'd thought he might be there, but by the time he showed up it was so late that I'd given up expecting him.

Nothing happened that night but conversation ... and longing. A few weeks later, after a couple phone calls and an email or three, his refusal to pick up where we left off was steadfast, and he was calling me "needy" and "desperate."

I hated him. He was an asshole. And he was right.

Of all the many ways a man will break his heart, there ain't none meaner than he pulls his own apart.

It was in this state of mind that I joined an email group for my favorite band -- ironically, a band that had been recommended by the Boy, but that I'd not listened to until our demise. And I fell in love. Real love. Not I-wanna-like-you-cause-this-cute-guy-does playful flirtation, but genuine, deep-seated, where-have-you-been-all-my-life unquestionable devotion.

On the email group, we members talked about the band -- upcoming shows and unreleased songs and such -- but we delved into off-topic chatter far more often. One day in June, another girl complained to the group about some guy that was messing up her life. I read her post, nodded, and typed back an agreeable phrase or two, then went on about my guy and my mistakes and my questions -- namely, since I never even got to the point where I was calling him my boyfriend, this question:

"will SOMEONE tell me just when i will finally get over this???"

It was rhetorical. Sort of. But I got a response. I got an email, not a public post for the entire world to see. It was an email of empathy and explanation and advice, and it was thoughtful. It was also written by the guy who shared his screen name with a woman.

tbc ...