Search and Repair

The chain reaction started with an innocent pinkie pact. After the dust around the schoolyard settled and I determined Jace was the only person I could trust at work, I launched into an actual friendship with him. As a token of our newfound fidelity, we exchanged confidences; he confessed his secret ambition to run his own graphics business, and I admitted mine is – I still cannot write this without deeply cringing – to become a published writer. We’re both hiding behind any number of inane excuses to avoid actually having to chase our dreams, so we did what any responsible, practical, forward-thinking grownups would do: we double-dog dared each other to do it.

With the end-of-year deadline looming, I began sorting through the jumble of journals, floppy disks, folders and Word files that represent the raggedy relics of my literary posturing. I considered and rejected dozens of poems, essays, stories, theses and jokey observational bits long past their prime. I was left, at the end, with The Boyfriend Chronicles, a retrospective of my past romantic encounters started years ago for my amusement and abandoned when I got bored with it. Paging through the first five chapters, the timeliness of its rediscovery dawned on me.

For the past two years I have been mystified by my utter aversion to anything dating or relationship related. I turn down most dates and those I do accept, I usually chicken out of at the last minute. I delete any emails from strangers to my Friendster account, no matter how slick or clever their subject line. I am horrified whenever someone suggests fixing me up, and even warm compliments from the opposite sex leave me jumpy and suspicious. I am emotionally spent, exhausted from the effort of digging through my last three encounters, each of which was in its own way a spectacularly mortifying train wreck. Since February 2004, I have been romantically impotent. My heart just can’t get it up anymore. Add to this my already well-documented condition of emotional retardation and it appears an examination of my history of loving and losing is long overdue. So I resurrected The Chronicles. They’re really not fit for printing, but on some level they’re not serving a purpose unless I publicly claim them. I’m aware of the hypocrisy inherent in “publishing” an anonymous diary, but hell, half a step forward is better than none.

I don’t know if I’ll reveal any insight more profound than “don’t be an ass,” but even if that’s all I gain from this, I suppose I’m still a few steps ahead. I hope, though, for much more. We all get a little damaged in shipping, but it’s how we handle past injury that defines our future relationships. If I can just get past my own defenses to see where the worst of it occurred, perhaps I can figure out how to stop compartmentalizing the hurts and pretending they don’t exist.

Search and repair, that’s my mission.