Cogs

Cogs

(printed with permission)

--

Have you ever missed someone so much it hurt? Not just emotionally, but physically. Where there's an ache in your stomach, and you feel your chest tighten when you see other people who are with their someone. Where your heart flutters, and not in a good way, when you are struck with how much you miss yours.

What if you don't have someone? How do you miss someone you don't know and have never met? Are you truly missing the person, or simply the idea of a person?

--

I open up my chest and examine the machinery inside. Cogs and wheels with spokes, bands and levers, all spinning and whirring and churning out my existence. If you look closely, you can see that there is a gap in the line of cogs. Its absence doesn't cause my life to grind to a halt because I've rigged a couple of extra bands and loops to connect the two ends. It's not as good as having the cog in place, but once I close my chest, no one's the wiser. I look just the same as everyone else, albeit as only half of a pair.

When it's quiet, though, I hear clanking and screeching from inside. No amount of spare parts or finesse will eliminate it completely. Sure, I can ignore it from time to time, like when there's a goal to work toward or a friend to focus on. But I can't distract every minute.

Sometimes people try to help.

They say, "Well, are you looking for the cog? You won't find it if you're busy doing other things."
I want to say, "Of course I'm looking. I have to keep busy with other things or I'll go crazy thinking about that cog. I can't afford to devote all of my time to searching for the cog - I have bills to pay and a career to build and friendships to maintain. Of course I'm looking. But I have to keep the other cogs in working condition too."

They say, "You'll find that cog when you stop looking. It'll show up when you least expect it."
I want to say, "How on earth does one least expect something?! And that first sentence makes zero point zero sense. In order to find something, I have to look. And if I stop looking, how can I expect to find it? That's not finding. That's having it land in your lap. And can you honestly tell me that you didn't find your cog by looking for it? Part of you must have been looking. If you weren't, you wouldn't even have noticed that it was missing in the first place."

They say, "You don't need a cog. You're a complete person already."
I want to say, "Yes, I know I'm a complete person. I know that I don't need that cog. I've rigged the spare parts and I'm functioning. But I want that cog. I want to have that cog in my chest, making the other cogs run better. I want the screeching to stop. I know I am complete, but I want to feel complete too."

They say, "How have you not found your cog yet? You have so much going for you and any cog would be lucky to be part of your machinery."
I want to say, "NO DUH, Sherlock. I'm not the one who needs convincing. I know that I have a lot going for me. But so far, that hasn't helped me find the cog. It hasn't seemed to improve my luck in searching, and it hasn't dropped the cog in my path. Thank you for the compliment, but it doesn't make me feel better."

They say, "God's timing is perfect."
I want to say, "My head knows that. My heart has trouble understanding that. Please, just allow me to feel frustrated and upset and sad that I have to jury-rig a cog until the other one shows up. I'm not asking to be talked out of it."

--

Most people who have all their cogs forget what it was like to be missing one (if they ever were missing one). They want to convince me that I'm fine without the cog, that other people have it worse, that I need to stop missing something I don't have and be content with what I do have. That the missing cog shouldn't matter as much as it does.

But it does. It does! It does matter.

That cog is in my heart and my heart is in that cog. That's just the way I was made. I wish I could be okay without that cog; that I could feel complete without that cog. It would make this all a lot easier, that's for sure. I'm sure there's a reason I haven't got this cog in place, but I don't see that reason right now and its absence makes me sad.

It's okay if you don't know how to help or how to it better. But please...please...don't tell me that this cog isn't important. I want that cog. In a way, I do need that cog. Not to be a complete person.

But to feel like a complete person.

----

Why Online Dating Can Be So Much Harder Than It Seems

I seem to be on a bit of a streak here, writing about online dating. What can I say - I write about what I know and what I feel, and right now, online dating takes up a lot of my emotional space.

On the surface, it would seem that online dating should be easier than the traditional method of going out, meeting new people, exchanging numbers, and waiting for the other person to call. With online dating, the site (sometimes) does the work of finding people for you. You put in some information about yourself and what you're looking for in a mate, and they send you the people who meet those criteria (again, sometimes). It removes the "sitting at the bar waiting for someone to approach you" element. It allows you to shop the pool of eligible singles without even having to hear them wax poetic about their favorite sports team or how awesome they are at their job. On some sites, you can even put in a few search criteria and browse hundreds of profiles at your leisure. It's easier than traditional dating in that you don't even have to interact with the person to determine if you're interested. You just have to look at their pictures and interests. Sounds better than approaching someone at the bar and wasting time chit-chatting, trying to figure out if you have something in common, right?

I have found this feature of online dating to be wonderful. I'm not great with striking up conversation with a complete stranger and the bar scene makes me queasy. A website that does that part of the process for me? Yes please. I can click through profiles that are sent my way, and if I decide that I'm not interested, I can just click to the next match and not have to worry about making a graceful exit! The other person doesn't even have to know that I'm not interested! That aspect really appeals to me because I don't like letting people down or crushing their hopes. Online dating lets you shop without the social commitment, however brief, that traditional dating requires.

The next step is where I feel like I get on an emotional roller coaster. I've been very intentional about sending emails and notes to the guys whose profiles interest me. I've read enough magazines and Buzzfeed features to know that a lot of guys appreciate the girl making the first move. If I had to wait for the guy to email me first...let's just say that the only guy to email me was a libertarian from Illinois who was looking for a housewife who would stay at home with the 8+ children he wanted to have.

Plus, if I am putting myself out there, I can prove to myself that I am making an effort, that I want to get something out of this process, that I'm serious...that I'm making some sort of progress in this area of my life, even when it feels like I'm standing still.

Emailing a new match is a small rush each time. I spend several minutes crafting the perfect casual greeting that will make him want to reply (or at least I used to...by now, I've got a pretty standard cut-and-paste version) and then when I hit Send, it's out of my hands. I get my hopes up just a little bit every time I email someone new. When will he reply? Will he reply at all? How much will it suck if he doesn't reply? Because there are some guys that I email because we have a few things in common, and I figure why not, and then there are others that I find a lot in common with and I really want to hear back from them. And deep in my heart, where thoughts of the future live...what if this is the person I'm meant to marry? I want to remember every detail of how we met.

A few days go by, no response from the email I've sent into the void, but my hopes are still up. Maybe he's busy this week. Maybe he got my email, but was in a place where he couldn't respond yet. Maybe he checks this account only once a week. Maybe, maybe, maybe.
A week goes by with no reply. No news is bad news. Now I have to make a choice - I could keep hoping that he'll respond, or I could let this one go, figuring he's not interested in me. It's not a conscious choice, exactly, more like a reluctant realization. It doesn't feel good to hear that someone isn't interested in you, but that's inevitable, especially in a forum like online dating, where there are so many potential connections to be made or broken.

I work through this process just about every day, over and over. I look forward to clicking through new matches every day, especially when there aren't any new messages in my inbox. Each day brings a new set of possibilities. New guys to make contact with. New guys who might want to talk to me. Maybe even The One. As much as I get annoyed by talk of soulmates, happily ever after, and The One, I can't help getting my hopes up just a little bit.

At the same time, each day brings risk.  I risk being rejected. It might be easier to be rejected over the Internet, since I don't have to be embarrassed in front of other people, but it's also harder, because it's happening so much more often. It certainly doesn't hurt any less, at least for me. I've never been able to shake it off and move on as if I'm unaffected by it. I'm affected by everything, and sometimes quite deeply. Emotional depth is simultaneously a strength and a weakness.

Rejection just seems to be an inherent risk in online dating. I had no idea how hard it could be until I got into the thick of it. You put yourself out there, day after day, with no guarantee that someone will choose you. In the face of that scary truth, I still hold out hope that this process will yield a "success story." I don't want to stop putting myself on the line because I don't want to look back and wonder if there was something I missed, or something more I could have done. If I reach the end of my subscription with nothing to show for it, I will survive. It will be so so hard, but I've done hard before.

In the meantime, by the grace of God, we carry on. It will be worth it someday, right? :)

Valió la Pena: Parte II

What a beautiful day.

1. Rachel and I have been reunited. Her family is camping here and she scared the CRAP out of me today. I was vacuuming one of the rugs in the store, mostly bored, when all of a sudden BAM!! Rachel literally bursts into the store (the door almost came off its hinges) and screams. I scream, drop the vacuum (still running) and we hug like there's no tomorrow. Seriously, it lasted at least a minute. I was so excited to see her. I had been looking forward to this for about a week and it was just so awesome!! Anyway, we caught up for a little bit, hugged about four more times, did some more screaming, and then she left. Best part of this little story? Jana is coming out tomorrow to visit us and we are hanging out the whole day!! Spain/Paris/Rome reunion! Such a great end to an otherwise terrible and stressful week. :)

2. Two Hispanic families came into the store today for ice cream and I got to help them in Spanish! James took one family whose son spoke English, and I took the other. This is how the original conversation went:
Man: "Ice cream?"
Me: "Yes, would you all like some ice cream?"
Man: "Ice cream."
Me: "What kind would you like?"
Man:"....Ice cream."
Then some rapid-fire Spanish happened between the man and his daughter, who said, "Ice cream cones?" That's when I knew we'd get farther with Spanish. :) I helped them figure out what flavor they wanted (luckily, I didn't have to worry over describing Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough, Bear Hug, or some of our other somewhat outrageous flavors) and they decided on vanilla and strawberry. I was so excited to be able to help them and once I stopped using the vosotros (I only slipped up twice on that one), they were very happy to have a Spanish speaker helping them out. Once all the ice cream was squared away, the man asked me to teach him some of the words he needed to know about ice cream (ice cream, cone, bowl, vanilla, strawberry, 1 and 2 scoops, etc).
I was so impressed by this. I don't know how much he'll remember, but his wife wrote them down with help from the boy from the other family and he promised he'd study them. I think that a lot of Americans have the impression that Hispanic immigrants are freeloaders and are only here so that they can take advantage of the system and just live in their Spanish-speaking communities without making an effort to learn English. But I can tell you right here and now that even if some immigrants are like that, many are not. This man and his family are trying to learn English, even if it's only a few words at a time. We need to have patience with them.
Why should we have patience with them? Because I've been on the other side. I know what it's like to stumble through trying to order something in a restaurant or trying to ask for help in another language. And because those people were patient with me, I'm going to return that favor to someone else who is learning my language.

3. This one is smaller: one of the families that I've known for several years came in for ice cream tonight accompanied by a Spanish student that is living with them. I found out that she's from Madrid but then they got their ice cream and had to leave to make room for more customers. I hope that maybe I can talk to her again while they're here.

Three more reasons that made Spain worth it.

And here's a funny story: I had a dream that I didn't get any credit for my semester in Spain and that they were forcing me to go back. So actually, kind of a nightmare. Haha. Anyway, Ge (one of our Spanish profs) made an appearance in my dream, except that she was speaking English. That was totally wild, because the real-life Ge doesn't speak a WORD of English. Dream-Ge said that she was only pretending to not speak English so that our Spanish would get better. Only in a dream. :)