Change Of Heart

This time last year, I wasn't exactly alone. I was enjoying the fact that I was dating a few women and my ish was kind of trump tight. There were 3 beautiful, intelligent and spiritual sisters that made time for me as I made time for them. There was room for activity and time for seriousness in the conversations we had and the discussion of possibilities. But there was one sister that came in and broke all of that up. Her method of first contact was unusual.

She IMed me.

Now I must say that there was another sister that I vibed with on the regular and we were working the IM and phone thang but she was a few hundred miles away and she had her own funk going on out there. But I was damn attracted to her spirit. Still am. Eff the other stuff, I was impressed with how she did her thing. She astounded me on how the abnormal was handled and how she made sense out of the un-ordinary. I never met anyone like this. Just standing in the face of adversity, corporate America and family disfunction and keeping that bullshit at bay with her chair and whip like a lion tamer center ring at the circus is a grand thing to see. I wanted to marry her right then and there. We could have worked out everything else as time went on.

But the sister who IMed out of the blue took a chance. To my knowledge, she read my blog and peeped the few pix I had on my flickr joint at the time, so she had visual confirmation on things. She knew what my thoughts were an a lot of issues and believed we had something in common. She reached out to me and made the first move, and that was the first time something like that happened to me, so I responded. She did research, and that impressed me initially.

Months of IMing, phone calls and infoshare went on. We dated. I had forsaken the bowling nighs, movie dates and neglected hanging out at the poetry spots with my serial daters to vibe with this sister. I had nine years on her but when telling my homeskillet, mental doppleganger, ace boom coon and equally fabulous vodka drinking best friend of 17 years Buddha (who introduced me to a woman I spent over a decade with) she said what Nsane Lee Sane said:

Slide. (remember that in Fight Club?)
But don't forget who was there for you before.

So I slid, ended up meeting the family. Shared my emotional breakdown with the sister on Thanksgiving day and was even an eyewitness to her crossing an educational threshold that only a few of us actually see or are capable of ourselves. But things weren't well. I felt her confidence and faith slide in me, but she didn't initially tell a brother that I had fallen out of favor. I was going thru the transition of being independent of family due to conflict and general growth and I had shed a ton of hangers on as friends in the past few years to the point that I functioned mostly alone, and that wasn't cool with her. Some of y'all was reading my blog back then and I was miserable in trying to find where I needed to be and that affected her somewhat.

But one person stuck with me during all the turmoil. I shed my casual dating situations with those other sisters and were no longer in contact with em. Easy come, easy go - BUT, I poured my emotions into IM and phone conversations with the one sister I should not have ignored. She guided me thru breaking free of all of the bullshit that came with this new sister's attempts to cut me loose when she found out that I was not what she expected. She knew that my attempt at a relationship with this new sister was a decision of convenience because she was closer geographically and my choice was also made clearer when I found that the situation she was having over there was a little more cloudy that I originally thought.

Follow me?
Good.

So I started 2006 jaded and with no one to come see me do my thing at the poetry spots. I was kind of ended up seeing someone that got thrusted upon me and we ended up sharing space quicker than I thought because her ex...
Never mind. Longer story there.

Homegirl was still there. But I still couldn't get at her. Still can't, so I decided to get on the road and do my thing in the trucking industry to get my mind off of the obvious. It's working, somewhat. Becoming an independent contractor in trucking is a very lucrative thing. I thought that maybe I could get away from the norm and detatch from corporate America by getting on the road and working for self. And plus, I managed to do a few open mic nights and book a show or two for myself while I was out there. Things went well, I leased a truck and sold a handful of CDs and then I realized...

I'm doing this all of this alone.
I'm almost 40 and have no kids.
This trucking thing is very solitary.
The average cat with a truck has a home to go to.
And a family.
That's something that I don't have.

I figured with me being in Chicago for a minute that I should consider buying a home, but maybe not here. With the new opportunities emerging as well as me getting back on the road after I finish the album and book of poetry I'm working on, I know that I must share all of this chocolatey goodness with someone.

SEXUAL CHOCOLATE!!! SEXUAL CHOCOLATE!!! (drops mic, exits stage left)


The climb ain't nothin without a partner... And a rope.


So it's time for me to admit something:
I am ready to be in a committed, monogamous relationship.
I want to have children.
I want that sister to be there as I build my new career.
That's important.
I want to put my queen on a pedestal and build for her and my future family.

It's time to settle down, y'all.

I did the unthinkable yesterday. I joined an online dating service. I'm not kidding. I uploaded a few pix, hooked my bio and even took a personality profile to help filter thru so-called 'bad match-ups'. I plan on actually fielding a few responses and going out on a few dates using this service. I even plan on blogging about a few experiences and hitting y'all up about some of the things going on with that whole jumpoff. I even got a few hits already...

I'm humbled and impressed.

I'm not thinking that this is the end all - be all as far as putting myself in a situation that might get me hitched. I just know that I've closed myself from the concept of marriage and having a family since about 2000 when I broke off the longest relationship I've been in. I didn't think that I could trust anyone and I did get in a relationship with a woman I thought would want to have my children, until she cheated on me and got pregnant with another man's child, then aborted it.

I was pretty much done right there.

The sister that came thru and IMed her way into my heart, even though we didn't make it 6 months showed me something. She was definitely worthy to be loved unconditionally. Straight up marriage material. The sister I befriended and that stuck with me thru all the bullshit deserves that much more and then some. We used to trade battle scars and flaws in conversation and even though there has been some devastating things that has happened to the both of us, we both came to a realization that thru bullshit and battles, scars and emotional issues that there is still a vast abundance of worth in a person.

For a moment, I thought I was too flawed to be loved.
Too old to be 'broken in' if you will.
Not worthy of being loved unconditionally.

I see now that in order for me to make this thing called life that much better I need to share my life experiences. I also need someone take over my junk empire here at the Sanford Arms.

I've been hanging out with my 2 and a half year old nephew for the past couple of days and I realized something about me as a possible candidate for the title of father...
But that's another post.I gotta concentrate on me being out on the market.

Dating and such...
I'm so scared.