No More GeekBoy

For those of you who know me personally, this will come as no surprise. GeekBoy is still GeekBoy, but he is my GeekBoy no more. There is some element of surprise to it, but not it did not come as a total shock. I had not seen him since the beginning of December, and hadn't spoken to him or had any communication from him in two weeks.

Of course, that's not to say that it hasn't been a massive emotional blow to me. I've had very little to eat this week, and sleeping has been difficult. I know that none of it was my fault and that there was nothing I could do to change what happened. I don't even feel like I've been dumped, but rather that we've split up.

I miss him mightily, and perhaps I always will. I wish him love and happiness. I would have liked to be the person he found that with, but I have no control over that.

I was watching Bones last night and one of the characters said something that hit home for me. He said that he was suffering from grief and that the only cure for grief is time. That rings very true for me. The first half of the week was very difficult for me. The second half has gotten easier. It's a relief. I still struggle to find any interest in eating. Food tastes like ashes and my stomach rebels at the thought of eating. Sleep has been difficult as well. My mind is so obsessed with thoughts of GeekBoy that I have to exhaust myself before I can go to sleep. Watching TV doesn't use enough brain power, so nearly the only thing I've been able to do is read.

My knitting group has been a godsend. I don't know what I would do without them. They offered to break his kneecaps for me. They were righteously indignant on my behalf. They let me know that I am well-loved, well cared for, and have an amazing support system. I don't know what I have done to merit such support and love, but I count myself truly blessed.

In the meantime, I move on. I work. I read. I inch toward happiness again. I work on finding my single heart, my pleasure in my own company. I grieve. I wait for time to pass, for the heartsickness to fade. I am strong, and I will make it through this.

Cougar Town

Have I mentioned that my boyfriend is about 10 years younger than me? At first, it weirded me out. It's a significant age difference, and could potentially cause a lot of problems in a relationship. Plus, if I had gone into teaching right after I graduated college, I could have potentially been his teacher in middle school. Makes me think sometimes.

I quickly got over the age difference, and now it just amuses me. I don't think that anyone seeing us out together would guess that there is such an age difference. My boy's been able to grow a full beard since he was 14, so he looks older than he is. Plus(not that I would ever mention this to him), he has a little bit of a receding hairline. On the other hand, I get mistaken for being 4-5 years younger than I actually am. When I moved out to Los Angeles at 22, I got asked more than once if I had recently graduated from high school. I generally don't mind that, because I look old enough to be taken seriously, but still young enough to be young.

When my parents found out how young he was, I got called a cougar. Talk about embarrassing. My cousin and I had a serious debate about this topic and I maintain that there is not enough of an age gap or enough intention on my part to be called a cougar. A cougar should be 20 years or more older than her significant other, and have a pencheant for dating younger men. I am neither.

There are some things that have cropped up due to our age difference. Not issues, per se, but things that have made me think.

GeekBoy likes to drink. I have absolutely no problem with this. I've done my share of drinking. I honestly miss my Boozer Boys from the apartment building where I lived in California. We used to sit in the pool and drink. GeekBoy still likes to drink until he's stupid. It mostly gives me the impulse to join in. I am wound quite a bit more tightly than I should be most of the time, and drinking helps unwind me a bit. I do draw the line before I get stupid, generally!

I am ready to settle down. I want to get married, have a house, a yard, the whole nine yards. I am up in the air where kids are concerned. GeekBoy, on the other hand, not so much. He doesn't feel the urgency, doesn't feel like his time is limited for having children. If he decides that I'm the one he wants to spend the rest of his life with, our time is limited for having children.

Last night, he was talking about something, and I realized how young he is. Not in an age way, but in a way that things are still new, exciting, and inspiring to him. I feel jaded and it takes a lot to excite me. In that moment when he was talking about whatever subject that caught him, I envied him that ability to be excited and to feel the freshness of things that happen in his life still. At the same time, I find inspiration in that! If I can regain my own enthusiasm and inspiration through being with him, how amazing!

I thought I knew about relationships and what to expect. I thought I knew how to behave in a relationship. On a regular basis, GeekBoy challenges those expectations and teaches me something new. I thought I would be the teacher in the relationship, but I have learned so much from him in only 3 months. I look forward to all the things he has to teach me in the future.

Do opposites attract?

Oddly enough (or maybe not. I am a writer after all, and it doesn't take much to inspire me.), I found myself inspired by the journal prompt in the Language Arts class I was working with this morning. The prompt asked the students if opposites attract and what the students' future spouses would be like if opposites did attract(or vice versa). I used to think that opposites did attract. A couple of disastrous attempts at dating guys that were different than me taught me otherwise. There was the engineer who I had nothing to talk to about. There was a guy who wasn't as smart as I am. Call me a snob, but that's a struggle for me. I don't want to have to explain myself all the time.

The prompt made me start thinking about GeekBoy and the ways that we are similar and different. I think we are both caring people. I work with kids, and he works with animals. I find that I want to take care of him by feeding him, making sure he has clean clothes, and things like that. He does the same thing, but he wants to support me monetarily. We have different ways of showing the same impulse.

We are both somewhat bohemian. He knows who he is and is content with that. I know who I am, and am mostly content with that. There are definitely things that I would like to change about myself. He's mentioned some things that he would like to change about himself as well. Relatively minor things on both our parts, I think. We're both vegetarian, which is something that makes me really happy.

Of course, we are both wildly geeky. I went to Dragon*Con with my parents! And GeekBoy was jealous of me getting to go. I would have been jealous of him, had our situations been reversed. We both enjoy sci-fi and fantasy type things. His tastes tend toward being a bit darker than mine. He plays World of Warcraft and plays role playing games similar to Dungeons & Dragons, and I would probably play both. My geek tends toward reading and TV shows more than games. I am always happy to listen to him talk about his games, and he listens to me talk about my TV shows and books. We share watching The Venture Brothers, probably one of the geekiest cartoons ever made. One of the side effects of geekiness is that we're both kind of socially awkward. He uses manners to mitigate the effect on others. I think I use humor. I am always willing and ready to laugh at myself.

At the same time, we have characteristics that are vastly different. His life has been quite a bit more difficult than mine. He's got a lot of determination that I don't have because things have been easy for me. I know that I have a lot to learn from him in that area. I just wonder sometimes what he has to learn from me. I'm not saying that I don't have good qualities. I just wonder which of my characteristics he might choose to learn from me.