Thirty in Thirty: Six

Some people come into our lives and quickly go. Some stay for awhile and leave footprints on our hearts. And we are never, ever the same.

This is the story of one that came into my life and left very quickly.

 

I knew this person for about a year and a half before I ever noticed him. Granted, during that time I was in a relationship, I had just gotten engaged and I was the good girl that certainly did not look at other guys. Well then the wedding got called off and I had to reevaluate everything. During the engagement I had avoided, at all costs, making new friends. At $30 a head for the plated dinner new friends were expensive. I could have new friends AFTER the wedding. After the wedding was called off I opened myself up again, and that meant making lots and lots of new friends.

 

This guy was one of them. I added him on facebook (along with a bunch of other people). I had never noticed that he was pretty darn cute and had really pretty eyes until one day that he commented on a picture I had posted some time before (thus proving that he was looking at my profile) and asked the story behind it. I facebook chatted him (oh the things we use as verbs these days) and we talked for a few hours. There was flirting, though at the time and how totally out of practice I was I didn't notice it. This rocked along for a month or so and all of a sudden (really came out of nowhere) I had a crush. A crush? What did that look like in my post engagement world? Well I wasn't really sure.

 

Here are some observations I made, both good and bad. 

• When I like a guy I have a tendency to take on their interests: this one liked obscure music, I wanted to go to South by Southwest (This is a quality I need to work on, being interested in things a guy likes is fine, changing how I feel about things because they like something is not fine. In this case it was okay, I've always liked obscure music, I just got a little mainstream for awhile, however there was a moment with a guy when I started watching the news everyday because he was more "worldly" than myself and frankly that's just not me! I got over that fairly quickly :) )
• I am painfully shy: I got embarrassed at the little things that in the past of our relationship I would have felt totally normal doing  
• I went to Austin (see Day Ten for the implications of this trip)
• I learned about BOLD: I got the courage to take the bull by the horns and actually invite him to do something
• When I get a crush on someone they, within a short amount of time, find the love of their lives and run away to be with them or get married (that is a blog post for another day because this has happened, seriously at least ten times)

And the most important thing I learned from this crush (drumroll please):

• I could really, truly like someone that was not my ex fiance.

That was an eye opener. I got my feelings hurt with this crush (they don't call them crushes for nothing), as he ended up in a relationship, moved away and (as I realized a few days ago) unfriended me on facebook. I think he came into my life at the right time though. In him I realized that I could still have feelings about someone else. The ex was not the only guy in the world: he was an important part of my life, but I was far from dead and there is plenty of time and opportunity to meet someone else.

 

In the end he was only in my life for about two years, grand total, and a significant part of my life for only about six months. It doesn't take a lifetime for someone to have an impact on your life. Sometimes they, in no way, shape or form mean to have an impact and yet, they do. I am grateful to this particular fellow for being in my life at the right time to teach me some important lessons: it is okay to open my heart up again, opening my heart is worth the risk of getting hurt, and there are more fish in the sea!