Practice/Sobriety/That Moment/My First Older Woman

"He knew women early, and since they spoiled him he became contemptuous of them, of young virgins because they were ignorant, of the others because they were hysterical about things which in his overwhelming self-absorbtion he took for granted...Each night he added to the pattern of his fancies until drowsiness closed down upon some vivid scene with an oblivious embrace."

I'm sipping my coffee and a young, fresh-faced girl with what will turn out to be a middle eastern name keeps tossing her jet black hair and looking my way as her eyes rove over me.
She comments on my jeans.
Good eye, I tell her.
I tell her I was going to compliment her scarf. She smiles.
She is young and fresh. Shy but not quite a coquette, but simmering underneath is that sexual curiosity you can just smell on them sometimes. Untarnished, unjaded, curious, and fair skinned.

Fast forward 20 minutes, I'm heading to a meeting, my first in something like a week, my 2nd in something like 2 weeks.
I hand her my number on a napkin and tell her to give me a shout if she wants to discuss fashion again.
She smiles and says thanks, chirping like a spring bird, but I don't actually expect her to call.
It's all practice these days. She didn't have to act cool. She didn't have to assuage her girl power mantra and rebuff it publicly. She took it as what it was: a good looking dude displaying interest overtly and making an effort to pursue her in some capacity.
It can be that simple, like all the best things in life can be if we allow them to be.
I don't actually want to cheat on my girl but part of me is becoming needy and insecure due to the sheer number of dudes that are hawking her day and night and I have to do something or I'll lose my grip and frame so I buoy myself with this act.

I have to give myself options at least lest I crumble in the face of this women who is really, really keeping me on my toes. It's a high wire act on a near daily basis.
She's worth it and it's good practice for frame maintenance. I know that this difficulty will be formative and it will harden my skills and core beliefs so I go forth with gusto.

-----
I go to a meeting but part of me hangs back inside. I look for differences rather than acceptance and commonalities. I share because I know that I need to share what's going on no matter how little I want to.
I've had subtle thoughts of using and drinking and I know that for me to stay sober I have to do things I don't want to do rather than just what I want to do or what's easy or what's comfortable.
I struggle with AA as of late: 1) it worked for me, it helped get me sober but 2) some of it is cult-like and just because it overall worked for me that doesn't mean I have to swallow it wholesale.

----

I hit the gym and grind it out and I am completely spent and unlike my life of old...it is enough. I am sated enough that I can go home and be unassailed by thoughts of drinking and oblivion. God, that life was brutal and dehumanizing.
I used to try and keep the wolf at bay by exhausting myself but the grip of addiction was immensely powerful and would still bid me take flight and head downtown.
Now, I know I have earned my reprieve from the attrition of the grind and actually look forward to my brief sojourn away from the grind and training and the rest I have earned.
I get to sort of be a normal person for a day or two, see a movie, relax at night and in the morning....let go of that endless, wordless drive to always be better than I was before.

----

Somewhere between offering to come see my girl, then realizing I should give her space, and by the time she gets back to me it's late and of course she says she'll see me another time plus the fact that she disappeared from communication for hours earlier that day during work which is totally understandable....my expectations begin to crumble and finally and simply....evaporate.

Instead of fearing that I'll lose her, I accept that this has an expiration date, and I own and acknowledge this reality. All the fucking red flags are there. All the warning signs are flashing. The engine is smoking. Two people who inexorably seem to know this cannot possibly last but can't tear themselves from the cockpit as the ship heads toward the ground.

A blank feeling fills my chest and though it is peaceful in its acceptance; it is devoid of what I had become intoxicated by previously.
"But he didn’t despise himself and it didn’t turn out as he had imagined. He had intended, probably, to take what he could and go — but now he found that he had committed himself to the following of a grail. He knew that Daisy was extraordinary, but he didn’t realize just how extraordinary a “nice” girl could be. ...He felt married to her, that was all.
When they met again, two days later, it was Gatsby who was breathless, who was, somehow, betrayed."
---

I'm making dinner after a tough night training. My phone lights up and it's a girl I've known since high school. She's going through a divorce so we have that in common. But I sense this interaction is different in that way a man schooled in the ways of women picks up ever so slightly like the faintest touch of an insect on a web.

She's insistent we meet up to catch up.
I'm transported back in time to a get together when I was 1*.
She was 2*.

I had my most formative experience of my entire life with women.
I saw her and she was the prettiest girl I had ever seen. Your humble narrator was straight gobsmacked, captivated, mesmerized....
She was so pretty I told myself, well, I don't even care if she embarrasses me, I have to try and take a swing at this.
I did and she ended up taking me home that night.
Even though it's a lesson I've forgotten from time to time, it was a core example of my thoughts on approach as it's happened over the years and I saw women whom I was incredibly attracted to.
No hesitation. Go for it no matter how poorly she might respond...and more often than not...they respond well and have done so.
I was naïve as fuck and wholly unprepared for her world.....but it will always be one of most formative events in young manhood and with my interactions with women.

"And all the time something within her was crying for a decision. She wanted her life shaped now, immediately — and the decision must be made by some force — of love, of money, of unquestionable practicality — that was close at hand."