When you have a blog, you might not know who reads or how they even find you. I’ve been writing here for about a year now and still know so little. For example, you! Are you a friend from high school? Someone I went out on a date with? A family member? A stranger?

Unless you tell me you’ve read this, I might never know that you did.

The feedback has all been good so far. The autism posts, for example. They’re informative. Also my voice that took years to build. You’re responding to the things I worked so hard on. It gives me hope to keep going.

The thing about feedback is you’re not always ready to listen when it comes to you. People will tell you things and you dismiss them because your ego gets in the way.

When I met the 🦄, he told me he wasn’t that special. The second time I visited him, topped with a head of blue hair, he told me he would never fall in love.

But there were other signals that said different. Signals I couldn’t make up. So I was confused.

Now I know better. His job here on earth isn’t some great romance. He’s on a different mission. But boy did I resent him for not loving me the moment I was beyond the sliding doors of his apartment building.

He was right and I was wrong. But I was right and he was wrong.

He was probably never going to love me, but he was special. He was special enough that I flew here…four times over the course of two years.

There are tiny things that bring his memory back. Pumice soap at the Man or Astroman? show I went to at Market Hotel the other night. He kept it in the shower to wash the grease off from when he would work on race cars.

I know now that I was romanticizing a narrative arc of a relationship when all he ever wanted were little single servings of intimacy. Hand holding, sleeping skin to skin through the night, ordering Hungarian food delivered to his apartment while we were in the back of a car after a Broadway play, drinking milkshakes and playing Mario Kart, making out in vestibules, in the back seat of taxis…

But it was never a relationship. I see that now.

This weekend, I was working on my website when I came across this feedback I’d gotten last May:

“Just wanted to come in and say that you are a strong woman and that you deserve a love that is pure and lasting. I too spent a lot on time on who you call 🦄, and they were a waste of my time and energy. I’m sorry you had to go through it as well, but I feel in the process I found more about myself, who is of value in my life, and how to conserve my energy from people who try to take it away from me. Thank you for your blog posts as it has helped me through the process of finding my life partner. xx”

I’d never seen it up until this weekend. Or maybe I did and read it wrong and dismissed it. But my head started to reel. For real.

I went back through old posts looking to see what this person was referring to. I didn’t have a clue who this person was because the comment was made from an anonymous email address. I haven’t a clue how this person found me. I hadn’t named him in any post. Just the 🦄. How did this person find me? Why did she need to reach out to me?

Don’t worry, I didn’t spiral. I was just curious. I’ve come to the conclusion that it was one of two things: either she was one of his girls and she knew my name and Googled me; or it’s someone who just knew me and thought they were doing me a favor by telling me to let go, for my own sake.

Either way, I am ok. In January, I had some time to walk through the West Village before a storytelling open mic at Duplex. I stopped in at Greenwich Letterpress and bought a card. On the front it had a vintage map and the words, “Hello From New York!”

I bought the card and a felt tipped pen and wrote. I said all the things in my particular way. I’m sorry. Forgive me. Thank you. I love you. I didn’t ask for him to love me. Only that I was grateful for everything and that my life was going well. I apologized if I asked too much and resented too hard. And then I said goodbye.

I addressed the envelope, walked west towards the Hudson and walked through the sliding doors. I gave the letter to his doorman. I looked around the lobby and remembered the diaspora of feelings I’d experienced in that room. And I felt filled with gratitude. This building was the home of my NYC infancy. I learned so much in that building.

It doesn’t matter who wrote that comment. I’ve learned the lesson and grown. The funny thing is that I think I could handle a nice little compartmentalized relationship with a nice, interesting guy with ambition and money. I wouldn’t romanticize it. I would just enjoy it. But I also like to think that I am capable of a full on relationship. It’s just that I can’t be polyamorous, and the person I’ve got to just be head over heels in love with right now is me.

Also, going to talk to Pat McAnany tomorrow. Here is what he told me the first time I called him. It was all true. I just wasn’t ready to hear:
Aura 2015

1st band:
Tiny line of green: readjustment, growth, change, aftermath of stress. Your body is processing out the stress.
Pilot light blue: normal shielding, helps to move away fast moving energy from shock. Only important if it’s not there.

2nd band: Emotional
Deep green to lighter green: readjustment, shuffling around emotions; been going on for a while. New growth on top of old growth.

3rd band: Power
Red: little line. Garden variety stress line.
Peach: healing energy. Helps to counterbalance your own stress.  More peach than red. That’s good. Nice comfortable warm fuzzy energy.
Silver: interesting juxtaposed to peach. Plain old power. Professional warrior energy more than healer. Next to peach makes you hard and soft at the same time.

4th band: Heart
Peach: big band. More than average able to project reassurance or well-being to others. Good coach or mentor or kitchen table counselor.
Green: little bit. Healing around family issues.
Yellow: analyzing or caution. You analyze when people tell you they love you. You want to define terms.

5th band: Communication
Lighter blue: almost everyone’s communication band is blue. You’re between the extremes. Communication skills are very good. Fairly broad band: communication skills are always in use. You’d make a good teacher.
Silver: power. In communication band it is the element of charisma, the ability to draw and hold attention and deliver a message. You won’t seek spotlight but when the spotlight is shined on you, you can rise to the occasion.

6th band: Perception
Another contradiction in terms.
Yellow: analysis. You have a tendency to second guess your own perceptions. Perfectionistic and overthink things.
Turquoise: unusual. Form of detachment.
You have the ability to remove yourself from events and view them from a distance. Neutrality. Objectivity that is outside the norm. Starts as defense mechanism or dissociation. As an adult it allows you to step back and view things without as much an immediate connection. Side effects: makes you a difficult person to shock. Unusual or bizarre people won’t phase you. You won’t go into culture shock in other countries. It will thrust you into a counselor’s role because you can see patterns (cultural or family) because you’re not caught up with them. It takes you a couple of steps out of the mainstream. You’ll observe the whole nation being afraid of something or thrilled by it or amused by it and you will say, “What’s the big deal?” It will give you a rather odd sense of humor. You can manage some degree of amusement in situations and circumstances that others won’t be able to find amusing. If I walk into a crowded theater and only one person is laughing, it’s probably you.

7th band: Spiritual
Violet: Spiritually, you’re a work in progress. You’re taking what you’ve been taught and sorting what you want to keep and creating your own version of spirituality.
Lighter orange or gold: healing energy. It has a freeing effect. Allows you to let go and move forward. It helps you flow from one thing to another. Forgiveness. It will help you keep from getting caught in the overanalysis.