Pick Up Lines and Taking Control: Around the Bonfire

Around the Bonfire is coming to you on a Monday this week, and I couldn’t be more excited to share today’s guest poster with you.

I had the delight to meet Angela from Tread Softly at Blissdom this year. Her writing is so staggeringly beautiful, so delicate and introspective, that I expected her to be quiet and withdrawn. But in fact, she’s warm, bubbling over with personality and quick-witted. She’s got it all.

When I read this post – about taking control of our lives instead of letting life happen to us – my only real response to her was: “Oh, how I wish I could write like you.”

I hope you enjoy this post as much as I did. And please, be sure to visit Angela’s blog and follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

The night after St. Patrick’s Day in a college town means empty streets and bars that don’t bother to dim the lights. I can’t remember why I decided to venture out with two of my friends. I’m sure I didn’t bother to worry too much about what I wore, and I don’t remember ordering a drink from the haggard bartender just biding time until closing.

An unremarkable evening, except it was the night I picked up my husband.

He wasn’t a stranger leaning against the stained and sticky bar; our pasts were twisted together, from our shared hometown to a few months of dating before sophomore year of college. Yet we veered apart. A campus of over 40,000 students lets you tango away from your past, at least until you encounter it in an eerily quiet bar on a night your head hurts too much to turn away from unintentional eye contact.

I could feel the gossamer veil of almost-awkwardness hanging between us, but I approached him anyway.

The steps to the exit loomed steeply just a few feet away, steps I’d climbed countless times. But neither of us moved towards our only escape route, perhaps because he wasn’t familiar with it; he had never been to the bar frequented by the Greek community. Asking him to grab dinner sometime, taking his number, and calling him a few days later didn’t seem particularly fated, though we haven’t been apart since our paths crossed that night.

This summer, after a long day at the beach, we laughed about the running joke of how I picked him up at a bar until one of our friends challenged my motivation that night, claiming I must have been thinking about getting back together during the years we lived separate lives.

I hadn’t.

Truthfully, I remember being tired … not the tired born from the green beer still seeping through my pores or the hour that should have found me cradled in my bed. I was tired of searching through a sea of purposely stained white hats for someone whose eyes didn’t glaze over when I laughed too much about nothing; I was tired of the wrong guys who didn’t call and tired of answering when they did.

That night, the only night I ever asked for a guy’s phone number, was about tentatively sitting on the other side of the table – the side where I could be in control instead of waiting for someone else to write the next line in my future.

Our friend is unconvinced.

His doubt stings, not because I care so much about something that happened over ten years ago, but because I wonder if it seems so out-of-character for me to wrench my life in the direction I’d like it to go. My stomach twists in protest; I think about the last several years, the parenting research and school visits and scheduling meals and play dates, juggling dinner clean-up and bath time and bedtime by myself on nights my husband worked late.

I blink.

Maybe I’ve been so busy worrying about the direction of my kids’ lives and my husband’s life that I’ve let my own dreams slide a little. Even identifying them and writing about them won’t push me closer to my goals. I don’t want them to drift anymore; it’s time to walk back around to the other side of the table and make something happen.

Tagged as: around the bonfire