JDaters Anonymous

In the space between spaces, the gaps that require bridges, there is an oppressive silence where loss reverberates–an echo, a ripple, a vast filling of a canyon with something unexpected and not altogether unpainful.

The canyon is a river, the river is a process that carries us through whether or not we want it to, the flow of water, blood or thought continues involuntarily until it stops, which isn’t a good thing either.

But flow is flow, and unbidden it begins or ends or continues, and the quiet restores, repairs, even as it provides additional spaces between spaces, gaps requiring bridges, and other canyons and rivers.

You find yourself wondering whose process this is, and whose space of silence.

Sometimes you care, and sometimes you don’t. But you always wonder.

[June 18, 2008-Jerusalem]

Consider the following scene:

OPEN ON A COLLEGE BAR/FRATERNITY/DORM ROOM. TWO PEOPLE, A YOUNG MAN AND A YOUNG WOMAN, SIT TOGETHER, TALKING AND LAUGHING, OCCASIONALLY DRINKING. THERE’S A FUN, CASUAL, FLIRTY VIBE IN THE AIR, PALPABLE TO ALL. ALL BODY LANGUAGE POINTS TO ROMANTIC POTENTIAL.

YOUNG MAN:
So, there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you.

YOUNG WOMAN (hopeful):
Um, sure.

YOUNG MAN:
Well, we’ve been hanging out for a while now and I really like you.

YOUNG WOMAN (putting herself out there):
I really like you, too. I’m having fun. You’re great.

YOUNG MAN:
Thanks…I’m really glad to hear you say that. Because I have a question I wanted to ask…

YOUNG WOMAN (nervously gulps from beer in preparation, wonders if this might have been a bad idea because she now has beer breath):
OK. Ask.

YOUNG MAN:
Your roommate…is she single? And since you think I’m great, could you try to get her to go out with me?

AND END SCENE….

And then repeat like ten times. That’s what college looked like for me, and probably for others.

I’d love to hear from people who successfully navigated from the disappointment of rejection through to acceptance. How were you able to be happy for your friends with a full heart, even when your heart feels broken? Is the secret time? Space? An overwhelmingly altruistic and beatific streak? Faith in the universe or God or something else?

Even if you’re not a “Sex and the City” fan, you may be aware that the quintessential single woman’s nightmare used to be “eaten by her own cats.” But today’s news eclipses that scenario and substitutes a more horrifying situation: not only dying alone in your apartment, but no one noticing you’re missing for 42 years:

Hedviga Golik made herself a cup of tea and sat down to watch some television in her hometown of Zagreb, Croatia. Sadly, she died in her chair. This was in 1966. She was just found, 42 years later, in her time capsule mausoleum where she’s been sitting ever since. She never finished her tea.

That’s some powerfully lethal tea in Croatia. But seriously, folks, this has all the marks of an urban legend, as people pointed out in the comments: no one noticed she was missing? there was no rent to pay or electric bills, or anything like that? no mail piling up? But a peripheral search of the internet revealed no listing on Snopes, and many citations of this story in the general media. So…true or false? What are your thoughts? And if this isn’t your “worst case single scenario,” then what is?