A Date in the Life

Filling my bucket

"What if they think I'm a fraud?"

"What do you mean?" Jenna asked.

"What if all you people that think I'm so great are all lying to me and I get out there into the world of dating and find out no one thinks I'm special at all?"

I don't hold back with the over analyzing of a situation, I'm a thinker, and before getting back into dating after a 17 year marriage ended, I thought about this at least a bagillion times.

You see, my friends and readers online are extremely supportive. I have spent the last two years building a following of 16K readers, doing nothing more than writing a scope of sensual to melancholic poetry, interspersed with fiction and non-fiction short pieces. But the gods honest truth is when they tell me they love a piece, or it's touched them, I have a hard time believing it wholeheartedly.  This concern that people are just blowing smoke up my arse lingers...a lot.

So the same goes for how I see myself as a woman. Of course my friends are going to say I'm funny and cute and worthy of love. They are my friends for gods sake!! But what if they are just being nice, like my readers, and only telling me what they think I want to hear?

Getting back into dating and entering the writing world carried a lot of similarities. Both required a risk on my part. Putting myself out there, whether my words or my heart or both. My very first date after being separated I looked at it like this, "what do I have to lose?" If they think I'm a terrible person who is too frumpy and ugly who cares! They carry no weight in my world as of yet, the risk would be minimal. The same went for when I began to play with words in poetry. I opened up an account under a pseudonym on Twitter, and I could put my words out there with very little judgment. If people thought I was awful, they'd just scroll on through, worse case scenario is they would tell me I suck and I would just block their mean arses. Right? Right.

But what happens when you start to become invested?

The more I dabbled in writing the more I wanted to write, my confidence built and built to where I didn't question myself when I posted poetry or my short pieces anymore.  But then National Novel Writing Month arose and I started to think about exploring an idea I had for a longer piece.

Cue insecurities.

As words spilled out onto my page I posted them serially on Wattpad.  It meant people could read along with me as I followed my pens leading for the story.  Scary as hell.  I remember at one point messaging my friend saying, "what if I can't pull it off?"  I have readers, invested, and I'm invested in my persona and my story, but mostly in my need to write.  Not to write in a vacuum, but in a venue at least to be read by some loyal followers.  My worth is suddenly caught up in my creativity and there is a fear that looms that my work will not be found worthy.  (I'd gander I am not the only artist to ponder these things.)

Now you're asking where dating fits in, aren't you?  Let me cross mingle worlds for you.

I rarely share my writing with the men I date.  For a few reasons.  Mostly it is about protecting my anonymity, you know, not giving too much of myself away to just be told I'm a whack job who feels too much with words.  I certainly don't walk around giving men my pseudonym either; lest I gain local stalkers as opposed to online ones who live in far away places, unlikely to show up at my door.

There was something different about this guy though. I met him through an online dating app and we chatted periodically over a few weeks in text. One visit in text he laid himself out there in a brief outline. I reciprocated, then at the end of my synopsis I added... "But my passion is writing."

He asked what kind of writing.
I said poetry.

God, I know it sounds cheesy. I am no Charles Bukowski, and I will never make much as a poet, but dammit, I love to write poetry and so I told him.

Now I'm not going to pretend to know his mind here, later I do recall he told me he may have rolled his eyes at some point around my statement of being a writer. The thing is, people can say all sorts of things in text; they can say they are a size 6 and turn out to be a size 12, they can claim to be single, and yes, turn out to be in a "committed relationship," (finding this out mid-date comes with a level of awkwardness you cannot even fathom). My point being is, meeting someone online through a dating app then going on actual dates with them will eventually bring some of our truths to light. For instance, I haven't been able to squeeze my arse into a size 6 since grade 6, no way I could pull that off in real time.

With him I gambled. Instead of just telling him I was a writer, I left him with my pen name and you know what? He googled me. Yup, there I was in all my literary nakedness for a pure lovely respectable handsome stranger to judge me and who would either continue getting to know me or slink off into the background and walk away.

Suddenly, I had become invested. Maybe it was due to his work, or because of the passion he himself emanated; but innately this strangers opinion mattered.  He became more than just a 2x2 inch photo plus profile of some guy on a dating website. The fear I would be seen as ridiculous or worse, an imposter, shot up faster than a dandelion in a Manitoba summer.

After relaying my fears out loud about him reading my work, he asked for me to tell him about the pieces I was working on instead.  He let me blabber on over the phone at high octane speed about things I had been exploring in a non fiction piece I was writing; an off the cuff serial about reentering the dating world with fancy apps that didn't exist when I first met my husband 26 years prior.  You can imagine how intimidating that would be after just meeting this guy on said app.  It's a strange new world out there.

By the time our lives could align enough for an actual face to face date we decided to play it casual and pretty last minute.  He had laundry, and I had just spent an entire day sleeping post night shift.  I scrambled out of yoga pants and into jeans to go meet a guy folding his socks and underwear in his living room.

As a writer, and as a woman, both whom building confidence is a day to day conundrum amidst flops and successes, it turned out to be an evening I will never forget.  His shelves were decked out in a flood of books.  He was a reader.  He spoke with an intense energy that immediately drew me in and what I saw and experienced was a passionate man.

Eventually in our evening he organically sat down to read through some of my stories.  (Which means I didn't walk into his home saying "here, read this, I'm the bestest.") He asked to read and I was honoured.  I sat on his couch cross legged, leaning in to see where he was, hiding behind a scarf I had worn, feeling a scope of emotion from shyness to excitement to share my words with someone I was growing to respect.  He'd stop every once in awhile and read a line back to me, gifting me with words of encouragement along the way.  It was powerful, to have someone go through my work like that and talk with me about it; unlike any experience I had ever had as a writer to date and like no other date I had experienced either.

My two worlds collided. I mean I can't tell you exactly how he saw me, but I can tell you how I walked away feeling. There were no signs of an imposter, no evidence of fraud, I just put myself out there and felt heard. I was seen for myself, my passion understood and he never called me ridiculous.  Hilarious, but not ridiculous.

Score one for the woman learning to date, score another for the writer learning to write.  But for the human exploring a whole new world, I kinda feel like I already won.  I think that's what happens when you challenge the imposter syndrome, you win you.