crushing bore

You know that magical moment in the movies when the two protagonists catch sight of each other for the first time across a crowded room, sparks fly, and though their journey will have its ups and downs (and someone-else-will-inevitably-get-in-the-way TMJane Austen) you know everything will end perfectly?

It's rubbish.

I mean, fun, and I love it, of course. But it's rubbish.

Well - to be fair, it's rubbish if you are me. Because if you are me, there's a problem: I just seize up.

Whenever I'm on the verge of opening up emotionally at a really crucial moment, something in me simply stops working. Some of us are made that way.

Confession time: I met someone. Ah there's nice. Of course, yes. Quite right. And it was pretty much a glance across a room & a bolt from the blue thing. I'm not usually that person either, but that's what happened. And we actually got talking, which is pretty amazing. My heart did a thing. No, really. There were smiles.

So far so good.

And then I blew it.

All my fear stuff (I keep it for special occasions you see) just kicked in. So I turned & started talking to other people. Dancing with other people. Hoping we'd reconnect. It didn't really happen. It was probably never there in the first place. It was just a boring crush; to push myself forward would be to be a crushing bore. One sided. You know.

Hopeless. I deflated. Not breathing well, but wanting to speak, I froze. Cold, and on the wrong side of the room, I walked away.

Classic me.

Classic.

Except, though I spent days convincing myself it was pure folly & entirely in my head, and the result of the wrong kind of wine, that spark moment -

The movies do it for a reason. And when it hits, it hits. If it was one way (I'm sure it was one way; of course it was;) it was glorious. So the spark refused to die quite as fast as it should. The eye, the heart, the quickening, the momentary loss of the senses...

I did have a phone number. I left it a couple of days. I risked it.

I called.

Are you excited? Don't be.

There was still a problem. This script still involves me.

And I need some strong kind of magic to get me over the misery of the mess I made of those six awful telephonal minutes. Perhaps that's a knock at my door right now -

Perhaps not.

Though it was nice to discover there's life in the old dog yet, some of us end up single for a reason. It's safer for everyone else that way. And I can laugh at myself even as I torment myself. I've had plenty of practice. And don't doubt I'll get more.

After all, there's always hope. Now there's a thought to make a man despair.