Okay, so my dating sabbatical started on 28 February 2009.
10 months in, around Christmas, I tried to cheat by cutting it short. Bad idea. Or a good one, depending on how you look at it.
The short version of the story goes like this:
I get set up on a blind date. I go on a blind date. It was okay. Two days after the blind date, I go on another “date” with an old friend who was in town from grad school. Because of the blind date I went on two days before, I come to the realization that I have romantic feelings for this friend. I tell him that. Things don’t go well. We don’t talk anymore.
I wrote about this event around New Year’s while I was still grieving the loss of that friendship. At first I was depressed, thinking it was all my fault. Then I got angry because I felt used (I had been rather unfairly toyed with). Then I got over it.
It felt kind of like karmic justice for all the times I’ve used someone else for my own personal satisfaction. Yes, I know karmic justice isn’t Biblical, but you know what I mean.
My point is that I understood for the first time what it felt like to be used. Now I know more than ever to never do that to anyone again. Or at least I hope I know better now.
So in the long run, what happened–and the sadness, anger, and grief that came with it–was for the better. It was another lesson for me in what it means to love my neighbor and I ended up not cutting my dating sabbatical short. And now I get to write about it.