Sane Man in an Insane World/I Got Played

She meets me pretty quickly after I text her but it takes me time to adjust/calibrate/whatever.

I don't pick up where we left off on our last date before because I've become so taken by this other girl I had sex with last night but who now I don't know if we'll even talk again.

I don't want to be on this follow-up date at all.
I force myself through self-will to put on the face and be funny and witty and all that shit.

I feel discongruent and disingenuous but after the girl last night freaked out, I don't even know if we'll talk again.
I have to give her space, and just let go of any expectations or hopes I might have.

It's out of my control and I have to accept that. I keep thinking of how her face feels pressed close to mine right before we kiss.
The mask slipped and she got past all my defenses. It's been something like over a year since that happened. Something like several years before that when it happened before that.

I used to do this so well, so glibly and easily: out on a date with one girl, out on a date with another, sleep with one girl, see another....but now it just feels hollow and shallow and empty and meaningless. It's practice I tell myself and it's training...for something, for a day in the future when it's with a girl I actually want the way I want this girl I slept with but now I don't know if we'll even talk again.

You can read a million red pill posts and PUA blogs, but when you really start to develop feelings for someone, and something like that happens, I'm not the soulless monstrous black hole I once was....I can't just let it go or numb it away or say "fuck it" and not care or act out and manifest the hurt in a self-destructive  bender.

This is the part where you  may think "man up" or any of those other caricatured responses to male perceived weakness and frivolity of emotion but that's all bullshit too. You'll find that or you won't but it's the truth.

I can't do that anymore. I no longer know how....and yet for the first time in sobriety....I genuinely and honestly just want to escape my feelings and be somewhere other than inside my own head and heart.

We talk and flirt and her leg touches mine and for a time I forget the girl if ever so fucking briefly....but in my heart....I wish I was at her place, listening to *********, playing a board game or just doing nothing but feeling her frame pressed against me while we talk and not talk.

This is my life now.
I spent so much time mired in excess....so much time on the other side that normal life appeals to me now. I literally shot myself through with excess and now it's all gone. I want to be at peace.

But as it is...the wolf won't let me sleep. The dark passenger won't just let go.

But...I do know what to do.
I let go of her in my mind. I let go of her in my expectations. I go through rounds of doing this but eventually the old me retains control and that part of me that can just let go takes his seat behind the wheel.
"We have done this many times," he whispers assuredly and quietly but firmly.
I know he is right.
"This is why we have rules. This is why they exist."
He takes my hand and tells me to sit this round out.
I move over to the passenger seat.
I shake my head, look out the window; irritated that I knew this would happen and furious at the depressing predictability of it all.

I know where this goes.
I've been down this path before.
I don't even have to imagine it to see the road diverge ahead of me on the horizon.
What's the point in seeing the future if it's cannot be avoided or changed?

She'll realize she wants what we can have together but in my heart, I will hang back and though it will be good I will go forward with considerable reservations.

Or the more likely scenario:
She'll disappear and I'll move on.

Or another likely scenario:
She'll disappear and I'll move on, then later, when I have actually forgotten her she'll reappear and though it will be fun it will not be what it once was and the dark passenger will watch as I look on with dejected acceptance and scant emotional attachment.

Above all I know that it doesn't matter and that I somehow knew this would happen with some wordless sense in my heart and that's why I savored the brief moments we shared and that in its fleeting nature it became permanent in my heart and mind and memory. This will stay a romantic interlude in my mind rather than a drawn out affair which eventually succumbs to boredom and hurt and letdown of the more garden variety.
It's tough hoping for happy endings but not believing in them.
I have plans with the other girl later this week and it's time to go back on the hunt.
I resign myself to the process and to restart the momentum I had before she snuck past my defenses under cover of capriciousness and as the eternal ingénue/waif.

These are the most dangerous women there are, as Roissy highlights here.