A long December

So I'm talking with a friend, a guy who I haven't known long but is always some kind of depressed about something. So much so that I feel like the lighthearted, carefree, and confident person in the relationship and I'm not usually that person. It kind of annoys me because he reminds me of me in a way(s) I'm not yet able to articulate. I also think he might be gay, not that there's anything wrong with that. I've just been the lady confidant for enough gay men warming up to accepting their sexuality and telling people. I'm kind of over it. Either way, something else is going on here and I'm a big enough person (and apparently a modest enough one too) to admit it might just be with me.

He asked me today when my last serious relationship was. His question kind of came out of nowhere and exercising the gay hypothesis, maybe he was trying to determine if my general obliviousness as it concerned men was evidence of my lack of interest in them. Answering the question surfaced 2 things; one, I tell the story of this guy like a guilty person describes a murder, very little emotion or inflection, kind of clinical. I'm not even sure it should count as a serious relationship but I don't know the governing body who validates the scale of relationships so until I get a letter or phone call telling me I can't count him, he's the story I'm going to trot out. The second thing that came out of answering that question is that it has been a LONG, LONG, time since Ava has participated in anything resembling a relationship. If it were an alumni group, we would be ramping up for our first reunion. Reunions usually don't start before 10 years. It's pretty bad.

I'm not sure how much of this is my own rain to make and how much of it you can't possibly contrive. I'd like to think that God's ability to connect me to someone I'm meant to spend my life with isn't limited by my choices but perhaps He's not really consumed with my relationship status. It's possible He's got bigger things going on. Before I moved here, a dear friend of mine told me she had a dream that I would meet my husband here and that she saw him in her dream wearing a brown sweater. When I first arrived here, I would literally consider men like a quality assurance inspector and if they weren't wearing a brown sweater, I just stopped looking at them. I did this reflexively, revealing I might be more susceptible to suggestion than I previously considered. Separately, her mother told her she had a very strong feeling that I would meet my husband that fall or in the fall. So I spent my first fall here scanning for brown sweaters and annoyed every single time I caught myself sorting guys into brown sweater-no brown sweater bins. By the way, brown sweaters aren't really that popular with guys and I'm honestly okay with that. I told my friend her suggestive psychic manipulation was really messing up my head. She insisted that in Spanish, "brown sweater" means pulse, personality, and penis. That widened the field considerably but so far only Batman and one initially promising lead that weirded me out quickly with his authorship of chick lit. Seeing the other side of dating through the girlfriends I have here (stories that truly deserve their own post) though leaves me content to remain receptive but not aggressive.