me? quirkyalone?

maybe this is the answer to all of my recent angst.

i think, maybe, that the reason this whole simon thing is so hard for me to get over because i am a quirkyalone-- i don't enter relationships just for the sake of being with someone. i so very rarely find people of the opposite sex palatable (i have troubled relationships with men in general-- starting with my father. i just don't often find them tolerable. they can be funny, or attractive, or smart, but rarely do those things come together to create someone i can't get enough of. those people are almost always women.) that finding simon seemed almost too good to be true.

healing is difficult because beyond all of the societal forces working against my ability to find a partner, so is my personality! how do i move on after i found someone i thought couldn't be found to begin with?

the thing about simon is that he's probably as far away from a quirkyalone as is humanly possible-- the man is always with someone. it's probably (scratch that, definitely) not as personal as i feel it to be, but to me, the quirkyalone, moving on immediately means the person before had no significance. that's the only way i can move on quickly, and i don't understand any other way of being.

stumbling across the quirkyalone.net site today was like a huge revelation for me, crazily enough. i think i'd even seen it before, but today it resonated, like oh yeah.

i've been thinking a lot about forgiveness lately. i met with a chaplain at an episcopal school uptown yesterday and she told me about a curriculum she teaches to eighth graders that is focused on the concept of "gardens of forgiveness." she talked about the reality of forgiveness, and the idea that forgiving someone isn't for the transgessor, but rather for the transgressed. that the pain of being hurt only holds the victim back.

these are things i knew. and i know. but to hear it from someone again brought it back to me. that i have to find a way to forgive him for hurting me if i ever want to stop hurting myself. not sure how to do it yet, because i feel so wronged, but i know it has to happen. i can't help but think that some force out there is trying to get my attention, trying to show me a way out of my sadness. showing me through a random meeting with a chaplain, of all things, who was supposed to be talking to me about a conference proposal, mind you, not forgiveness, that there is a way out. there is a way to let go. a way to be quirkyalone, maybe, or to at least accept my status.

one thing i know doesn't work-- going out with weird, funny-looking people from nerve because they say nice things about me. not it, joy, not it. :)