Hopeful 8 Hopeless 2
After my date with Amin at the Biodome and Botanical Gardens (which I like to refer to as "the Gardens date"), we began to chat online for the first time. I had added him on facebook and one of the very first things I did was check to see if he was online. Most everyone I know that chats uses facebook chat, so I was sure I would see him there. I didn't, though. I chatted with Stella instead and thought, given how overwhelmed I felt, that it was probably good I wasn't chatting with Amin right at that time.
He e-mailed me when he received the friend request to say thank you for spending the day with him. When I replied the next day, I asked him in the postscript if he used facebook chat. He said he hadn't in awhile, but that he would be willing to give it another try. I had just wanted to ask a simple question, not change his habits and convert him to chatting when it was not his thing. It would seem, though, that he was determined to chat with me from that point on, no matter what I said on the subject.
So as of Sunday, September 30th, we began to chat on facebook. Our conversations flowed with just as much ease as in our e-mails and in the Botanical Gardens. Little did I know that we were beginning a pattern of chatting every day. We didn't run out of things to say that week and that trend continued. A week later, he was already talking about being "addicted" to chatting with me. It was clear to me given how much he liked to chat that he definitely liked me. I, on the other hand, still felt the same: that he was someone that I was highly compatible with and that I could have pleasant conversations with. So talking to him was pleasant and I was always happy to find him online.
It turns out that conversations with Amin were so comfortable, he not only was opening up to me so that I could get to know him better, he actually trusted me enough to confide things in me that he had never told anyone before. That closeness I felt in the Gardens was definitely still present. It just kept growing. Though I continued to feel closer to Amin, I did still maintain certain distance and privacy, as I would with anyone I had known for such little time. For example, the day that I met Thomas, I neglected to mention it when Amin asked me about my day. I never liked to discuss dating with any of the Plenty of Fish guys and he was no exception.
An important revelation did, however, take place that week. That weekend, I was going to the lake with my family. I stayed up late on Friday night chatting. I had stayed up late chatting with some of the Plenty of Fish guys. I had a tendency to do this with Amin. I stayed up extra late that night, though. He was very open with me that day and began talking about our history, which was rather short at that point. I felt like I was talking to myself a few years back. I liked to go over the details of pivotal events or conversations I had with Frédéric. He was not so interested in talking about it; he preferred being in the present moment. So it is a habit I lost. My experience had made me think that only girls have such conversations and that guys have no interest in them. But here Amin was, wanting to talk to me about how much of a fluke it was that he stumbled on my profile. He told me that he was about to close his Plenty of Fish account. He had not had any good exchanges and in fact, the process had been pretty jarring for him. He was about to give up entirely. It would seem that I was in his "matches". The other girls he had sent a message to he located using very specific search criteria, criteria that my profile did not match. I was a year younger than his lower age limit and I had also marked that I "drink socially", so that excluded me from all of his searches. Those gave him pause when he saw my profile. What made him stop was my description, which professed that I was open to people from different cultural and religious backgrounds. That is what made him write me, that and the feeling that he got from my profile. There was a feeling, a vibe. He went on to tell me that there was a vibe on our first date. He began by recalling our first meeting, how it was, what we said, etc. Then he admitted to the vibes and said that I must think he was crazy. He told me that he felt a touch on his arms on two different occasions. One was when we were sitting down on the cinder blocks on the bridge watching the fireworks. I could not believe what I was reading! We had felt a very similar, if not identical, sensation on the bridge.
I told him that he had to read his entry. He knew of the existence of my blog, but had not been curious to read it. He was particularly resistant to reading anything about himself. So I linked him directly to the post and insisted that he read it. He liked having the feedback; after all, our conversation had been along the lines of comparing notes and recalling the evening. When he got to the last paragraph and read about the energy I had felt, he asked me if it was real. I told him to read the post so that he would believe me, that he would believe it was true. I told him I didn't make it up for my readers and I had him look at the date of the post, which was obviously before he and I had talked about it that evening. I could not have known what he experienced unless I had felt it too. My head was spinning. Staying up late chatting in that case was totally normal and understandable!
It really goes to show that we could talk about anything at all online. We were comfortable and we were becoming more and more comfortable. I was more and more convinced of how I had felt in the Gardens, that Amin was guaranteed to be a very good friend at the very least. We chatted every day. On days where we could not chat, like when I was at the lake, we would still exchange messages. When I was at the lake, he sent me an e-mail every day. Some people might find that excessive or creepy. I was a bit concerned myself about the amount we chatted sometimes or that it seemed a day couldn't go by without exchanging messages of some sort. I kept in mind that this had the potential to become unhealthy and that I would have to be cautious about it. Yet, at the same time, I found that I was glad to have someone to correspond with and it had been such a long time since I'd had a good friend to do that with. He answered my e-mails, something that had been in very short supply in recent years. He wrote long e-mails sometimes, but I related to that. He allowed me be things like long-winded, things I had tried to suppress around other people not to seem out of place.
So we chatted and chatted and our conversations with each other became a very pleasant addition to our days...
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