When it’s over, that’s the time I’ll fall in love again

Sugar Ray

I was having dinner with kid 2 tonight, as we do every Tuesday night. X2 texts me shortly before meeting me for the exchange to tell me that her on-again, off-again, on-again, off-again, on-again off-again boyfriend is coming with her. I was unmoved. It’s a good feeling. I am neither angry nor happy about it. I feel nothing. I’m even relucting to other the phrase “I over her” people who say things like “I’m over it “or “I’m over them “are not our never actually over the thing in question.

And that’s when I heard that Sugar Ray song. At that moment, it occurred to me, as it had when I talked to Lomax yesterday, that I’m really over her. I think I actually mean it this time.

Lead singer Mark McGrath may have been singing those lyrics with irony. However, tonight I was hearing them with a sense of conviction: “when it’s over, that’s the time I fall in love again“ It’s not that I’m going to fall in love with X2 again. On the contrary, I think, at long last, I’m ready to open my heart up to another person again, and, fall in love again…

But that stupid song came on while I was in the bathroom at McDonald’s, and I had an epiphany. I’ve been in a handful of relationships over the last few years where quite frankly, the woman question has had stronger feelings for me than I have for her. Maybe I will still hung up on X2. Maybe I really was coming to borrow that overused expression “emotionally unavailable“..think I think that’s just because I wasn’t ready to open myself up again.