70 Days

The permanent breakup happened just before Christmas of 2014.  Here and there I would go onto my Fetlife account without doing much actively.  Without going into details because it doesn't go along with the moral of this story is that the home I felt I made for myself in that community was not what I wanted due to being shadowed constantly and I was made to believe that if my partner didn't want it, I couldn't have it and there was no compromise.  I had unfriended this man over a year before at the request of my former partner, but of course I would sneak a peak at his account just to see what he was up to.  He had changed his relationship status to "dating" and there was a picture of him with another really hot chick, which being who I am and what that means to me I didn't message him.  I was trying to be respectful.

Side note:  I am starting to think that I am the last person on the planet that thinks that loyalty is a thing to be proud of.

**Fuck you instrumental Lionel Richie being piped into my ears at work**

With much coaxing from my sister (coaxing to the point where she was threatening to set up an account for me) I set up an account on Plenty of Fish around April after being on Tinder for a couple of months.  After some failed dating attempts I deleted all of my accounts in July feeling that I needed to regain my grounding.  Something pulled me back and at the beginning of October I had finally had enough of what was going on in my life enough to feel the need to branch out again.

I didn't even have my account up for a whole week before I got a message from him.  To be totally honest, I had seen his profile when I had it up before but I just couldn't bring myself to be the one to message him first.  I felt really bad about our last contact.  He asked if I was who he thought that I was (my hair is very different), I said yes.  He asked if I was single (You mean for real this time?).  I responded that I was and the next message after that was his phone #.  It took me two weeks to have the nerve to write back.  I also had some family things going on that were very hard.  Along with the fact that in order to have good things in our life, we have to first accept the fact that we deserve them.

November 9, 2015 is the day that changed everything.

I sent him a text.  I also wrote him on Plenty of Fish to verify that I was not being a asshole, even though I was being an asshole - be it a scared shitless one, but still an asshole nonetheless, by not writing back.

Never have I ever thought that I would see the day that actually speaking to someone on the phone and having a normal conversation in real time would constitute a major act of trust and a landmark moment in a relationship.  Yet here it was.