You know, you just can't promise to stay in touch with every nice person you meet.
I've often thought about this. I meet exceptionally nice people all the time, and always feel guilty when pressed into pledging to talk or meet again sometime in the near future. I wonder how many are sincere and how many others are hoping I won't bother. Keeping that oft-repeated pledge isn't going to happen unless I feel a real connection, a compulsion to savor this person while I can. I deal with this a lot online, especially on the dating sites I putter around with when I'm really fecklessly bored. Sometimes I'll have a really good, hours-long conversation with someone and he'll assume it means something. It doesn't. I think that generally any random pair of people, properly acquainted, has at least one good conversation to share. The real chemistry test is whether the conversation fodder renews itself constantly, or if the speakers run out of things to say.
If I'm in the right mood, I can fill up an hours-long conversation all by myself, mind, but I've got to be in the mood. And no matter how keyed up and exuberant I feel about whatever my latest obsession might be, eventually having a conversation partner that rarely says anything more complex than "ok" or "cool" will really start to blacken my crazy happiness. And I resent that. I can tell just by chatting with someone whether or not he's someone I should continue to know...or rather, sometimes it takes me a while to know that, but often I know right off and I am never wrong about that, even when I try to persuade myself that's so. I've tried to be straightforward with some of these chat partners and all I get is an argument when I try to politely say "thanks, but we're just not compatible," so now I say whatever I have to and then disappear.
Some of these people really are SO nice. But while I do want nice, there are some other qualities I require to feel an affinity, and I can't always put those into understandable terms. Basically, I need someone to "get" me...if a prospective lover or friend truly, deeply understands me, he or she will also automatically have a least some of the indescribable characteristics that draw me like a magnet. I crave that; I need it. Even meeting a new girlfriend that totally clicks with me is like falling in love in a way. It's been a while since even that happened, and she's recently changed so much that only part of the time do we connect like we used to, and instead of calling each other enthusiastically every day and hanging out once a week, it's more like talking once every two to four weeks and going to a movie or a concert once every other month. I need a fresh, new, eager connection. Enthusiasm that is too infectious to deny.
I know I'm flawed, sometimes very ungracious. Nice people, friends of the the family or what-have-you will visit or try to help with something and in the little corner of evil in my mind I curse their obvious-seeming blunders and convoluted logic. I know so many nice, simple people. I have to fight to keep the glaze from settling over my eyes, though many of them don't seem to recognize the expression. I don't think I'm better, but I'm different. It's more difficult to make me happy, to keep me satisfied. I always want more...new experiences, new knowledge, quirky, new skills. The people around me that don't, they feel...stagnant.
I'm sure the flaw is mine.
Anyway, where was I going with this? I sure sound like a horrible, haughty bitch!
Basically, I chatted with some dude in Texas and disappeared on him after he said we should keep in touch. Nothing in common, buddy, sorry. Better I fade away...
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