There’s a man who works at my local coffee shop as a roaster, not a barista. And for no good reason at all, I’m in love with him. We’ve had one conversation: about how often succulents need to be watered. Not that I own any succulents. I just plant-sat for a woman’s succulent once in the office where I used to intern.
But anyway I fell in love with him before the succulent conversation. I fell for him from a far.
Which I know is delusional. And I know isn’t love.
It’s infatuation with the qualities that I projected onto him when I first heard him speaking Spanish to a customer.
He doesn’t know I speak Spanish yet. I don’t know why but for some reason I am afraid to—oh shit he just walked by. What was I saying? I think he went out to take a phonecall. Or maybe he just wanted to pass me. I don’t know.
At first I projected onto him a sort of attitude about women. I decided that he is a man who is happy with his life and doesn’t need a woman in it. He is the kind of man who makes love but doesn’t fuck. Doesn’t prowl. Doesn’t ask for numbers. He’s dark on social media, as in, not on it. The universe is his social media. He prefers to pour the sangria rather than take pictures of it. Would rather thumb the ridges of a tree trunk than swipe right on any online dating site. Wherever he lives is wifi-free bungalow with handmade blankets on the couch and leather cups of yerba mate in the sink. He smokes weed but he doesn’t need it. He doesn’t need anything. And that’s why my brain is bombarded with the chemicals of desire when he looks at me or walks by. My soul is reaching out for what she thinks he has.
But I know myself well enough now to know that being loved by him will not bring me what I think he has. If anything, it will bring disappointment or worse, insecurity. Even if my impression of him is right, and he really is free as a bird, free from desire, free from fear and insecurity, then how could I be ready for that? Isn’t the state of wanting him proof that I am not ready for him? See if I was truly ready for him, then I wouldn’t want him at all.