So who wants to hear about my first date in more than 20 years??? My first BLIND date ever.

Brace yourselves.

There was bonding.
There were tears.
There was laughter.
Things got really real, really fast.
Hell – there was actual BITING.

And I’m about to give you a blow by blow account.

Go get a cuppa. You’ll need one.

Back?

Okay, so I MAY have slightly oversold things…

Because my first blind date wasn’t a result of the Great Online Dating Experiment. It was with a woman I met through this blog.

Lots of people PM me. These are mostly people going through similar stuff, who’ve read a post and identified with it, but can’t really comment in front of family and friends. Those messages mean a lot to me. But I’ve always shied away from meeting anyone – possibly because I’m afraid I’d be a massive disappointment in real life, where I’m much less amusing, witty or deep.

However, now I am a YES woman. I say YES to stuff. I explore. I put myself out there.

And I go on blind dates, apparently.

*Mae* had had a similar break up to mine. Two kids, of similar ages, also struggling to varying degrees with their new split life; the new woman, the new routine.

What we recognised in each other was loneliness, I think. And not single parent loneliness – but the loneliness of being emotionally isolated for a really long time, in the company of the one person who used to think we were sunshine, but came to dim us.

What’s most upsetting, possibly about any break-up, is that it tends to be the very things that someone fell in love with that they come to hate the most. That your best bits are suddenly the worst to the one person you fully entrusted them to. That the beautiful parts – the very brightness that drew them in – are the parts that turn dark and ugly in their eyes first.

Kind of like moths coming down with a gradual but severe attack of photodermatitis. 😉

The word that came up most with Mae was CONNECTION.

Connections, for both of us, were lifelines.

Connection is why all those PMs mean so much to me. Why I started this blog in the first place.

And the lack of connection in our marriages had started to erode and rot other connections and relationships in our lives too – feeding tubes cut off through isolation, confusion, death, mental ill-health, and just plain old circumstance. And it has left both of us reeling, gasping for air, for meaning, reaching out in the dark – trying to remember our sunshine.

Trying to connect with ourselves again. And needing those connections to do so – to feel real again.

This wasn’t a man-hating session. It was about sadness, and loss, and growth, and solidarity. A lot of it focussed on our kids and how to help them – again relationships we both base on connection, and we talked about how hard a line that is to walk and hold alone.

I like to think what we found in the park was a connection. And that it was important to both of us – two lost fireflies passing each other and glowing brighter, just for a bit. And maybe stronger as a result.

I don’t know if I’ll see Mae again. We were both raw. Both busy. Both preoccupied. And obviously I don’t want to look too much like a massive weirdo stalker by insisting she become my friend (although if she reads this, yes please!)

I do know I learnt a lot from her in just a short amount of time.

She’s further down the break-up line than me. And more sorted and more wise than she thinks she is.

When the poor Small Small got bitten by another feral toddler vying for the slide (I promised we’d get to the biting bit!) Mae had an emergency lollipop in her handbag that fixed everything in super-quick time.

I have always wanted to be the kind of woman that has emergency lollipops in her bag, but it has always felt like a sea-change of personal development, organisation and adulting that I’m simply not ready for.

Mae made me believe that perhaps I could just pick a couple up the next time I pop into the corner shop.

And THAT’S what connection can do for you.

BLOW BY BLOW.
As promised.

It may not have been salacious, but I hope it’ll do anyway.

Happy Sunday.

Mumonthenetheredge
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