Last week I was sitting in bed, wrapping my brain around a programming problem presented by my newest project. With no warning, someone started pounding on the wall of my RV. No identification, no verbal communication. Just banging on the wall. Within a few seconds someone else started banging on the other side.
Would you open the door? I didn't. I shut my laptop and stayed as quiet as I could. I have light blocking curtains, but I could see that flashlight beams were reaching for the edges of them.
Then I heard someone try to open my driver's side door. It's locked. Then the passenger side. Also locked. I wondered if I remembered to lock the RV door. It gets tried, too, and the intruder can't get in.
One of the things that's missing from my writing is emotion, and I know it. I'm always trying to correct that by looking for ways to add emotion to my writing, but I rarely find them. The truth is that ninety nine percent of the time the only emotions I feel are some variation on joy, gratitude, and excitement. I don't have bad days, even when "bad" things happen to me.
I remember when I broke up with my last girlfriend. I was standing in the airport, about to leave for Tokyo, and she called. We talked for about ten minutes, agreed there was no way forward, and I boarded my plane. I loved her, had thought that she might be the one, and had no bad feelings towards her at all. But I wasn't really sad, because I felt as though we'd given it an honest shot and that we were doing what was best for both of us.
Two days ago Lucia and I broke up. Broke up is an overstatement, actually, since we weren't really ever dating. But there were a few weeks where we envisioned some sort of future together, and I was intoxicated by it.
As someone who rarely allows reality to get in his way, the distance and divergent and chaotic schedules didn't phase me. I'd found someone I really liked, and despite having little basis to believe that it would last, I poured myself into it emotionally. I do that, sometimes. I count on myself to be able to rebound from anything, so I put myself into situations where I may get hurt, physically, emotionally, or financially.
