MENtal, A Preposterous Pursuit of Love – Introduction and Chapter 1

To be alone inside one’s head can be both enlightening and demoralizing. It depends upon the path you choose. For me, it’s unfortunately been mostly the latter. And yet, it was also the journey that brought me here to these pages.

Introduction

I sat on my bed in front of my computer, alone with my thoughts. The image of the pits flashed through my mind like a silent lightning bolt, and I was taken back to five years ago.

I stood there gazing at mysterious wide openings in the earth, full of calm water. These weren’t the kind of pools in which one would go for a swim. The water was dark and dirty – not because of mud, but because of the tar lurking beneath. I had never heard of the La Brea Tar Pits until Elena had asked if I wanted to go while on a short trip through California. As I walked through Hancock Park – where the tar pits are located – I learned about what makes them so unique. They are a rare window into the world of the life that once roamed the earth tens of thousands of years ago during the last ice age. Located just a short distance away from the heart of urban, modern, plastic L.A., these unseemly tar pits hold the skeletons of ancient animals, including mammoths, saber-toothed cats, and dire wolves. The tempting water keeps secret what lies beneath. The animals had walked unknowingly into the pits to drink water and got stuck in the tar, solidifying their fate to death. The End. The tar seeped into their bones, keeping them well preserved, allowing us modern-day observers to see what those ancient animals looked like. Elena and I walked through the Page Museum viewing the fossils and skeletons on display. We watched scientists in a windowed room patiently brushing through piles of dirt and rubble trying to uncover the remains.

I thought about the mammoths I had seen. They, with their towering height and commanding tusks, have an air of grandeur about them. As I rounded the display of a saber-toothed cat’s skeleton, I reached the right angle where the predator came to life in the form of a holograph. Its muscular build emanated strength. Its intense eyes and its wide-open mouth, displaying those unforgettable teeth, demonstrated its dominance. And yet all of that power wasn’t enough to save them.

The tar pits seemed like an enjoyable pastime on a typical, sunny afternoon, but there was something more extraordinary about that visit. I had not been looking into calm water, but into a mirror that reflected my own fate down this path. Like those once-great predators, I too had walked unassumingly into tar pits. And there seemed to be no escape.

Chapter 1: It Was All Wrong

My eyes shot open from the penetrating rhythm of salsa music. I was in bed in my hotel room passed out from the last few days of lying in the sun all week, going on an all-day trip to see Vieques’ Bioluminescent Bay, and walking through El Yunque rainforest. It was a last-minute trip to Puerto Rico with my friend Elena before I transferred to my new position at work in July 2008. Elena had flown back home, and I was now in San Juan for the weekend. I laid there thinking, Are you really going to sleep away your vacation? So I dragged myself out of bed, dressed in a cute top and skirt, and put on some makeup. I took the elevator down.

The doors opened to the louder sounds of the live salsa band that awoke me filling the lobby. I walked to the bar in front of the dance floor. I looked at the bartender and asked, “May I get a Strawberry Daiquiri, please?” I needed something to do since I was by myself. I sat down at a high-top table to relax and enjoy the music. Sipping on my drink, my eyes scanned the room to see who was there. They landed on the back of the head of a man sitting next to another man at a nearby high-top table. They focused in on him for a moment and then widened as my mouth fell open. It was Manish.

Manish was an attractive, North Indian I’d met online a few weeks prior. I had a few nice dates with him, and he seemed like a nice guy. I really thought he liked me. He had told me we would get together, and he would call, but I never heard from him. It seemed he was just interested in playing around.

And now the asshole was in my hotel on my vacation. I didn’t even have anyone to freak out to as the Daiquiri was my only companion. I could only email my mom and my older sister, Katherine. It was close to midnight, so I didn’t want to wake them by calling or texting.

I could have slithered out of the bar without Manish seeing me, but I felt like the situation was so unbelievable that he should know I was there. Maybe then he would know what he was missing. I walked to the information desk pretending to look at some brochures directly across from where Manish was sitting. I turned around nonchalantly, and our eyes met. Even though I already knew it was him, I was stunned when I saw his face, and the air left my lungs. He too was surprised.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey,” I said.

“I came to San Juan at the last minute since my friend had extra hotel points for me to join him on his work trip,” he said.

“I was with my friend at a resort for a few days and just came here for the weekend.” After our brief, awkward exchange, I went on my way.

The next morning, I woke up very early and called my mother. She answered saying “Are you kidding me!?”

“I know! I can’t even believe it! I was going to stay in a different hotel, but the agent I called to book it convinced me to choose this one because it was better rated and cheaper. How is it possible that he’s here?”

“That’s crazy!”

Manish texted me while I was out sightseeing. I ignored him.

That same day, I walked to the information desk at the hotel and asked for a recommendation for a nightclub for Saturday night. The concierge recommended Club Brava. When I walked into the club, I saw Manish again. Apparently, this world, and now this island wasn’t big enough for the both of us. I ignored him.

The techno music continued to bring more people in. I’d walked around the club and even struck up a conversation with another Indian guy from the U.S. I’m the only person I know who could go to Puerto Rico and find two Indians. You’ll understand what I mean by this later.

Manish found me at the bar. He apologized for what had happened between us. Then he asked me to dance. I reluctantly agreed, but the romantic in me thought, This must be a sign. Why else would I keep running into him this way? He seemed sincere. We hit the dance floor and then the casino and then headed back to my room. We began kissing, and I became swept away by the destiny of it all. By morning, he needed to “get going.” My need for validation had hoped to hear from him, but my insecurity feared otherwise. I never heard from him again. But I was smart enough not to have slept with him.

That actually happened.

“Help me. God, help me.” I said this under my breath whenever things in my life were a mess. I grabbed for them when the frequency of the “I didn’t see that coming” moments became too much. Especially in the end of 2012 when I had also been laid off for months and regularly rejected by the employment world. The ironic thing was I had wanted to leave my job for quite some time. I had woken up one day and saw my life as “Groundhog Day.” The details of each day may have been slightly different, but the outcomes were the same. At least that’s how it felt. Time seemed to pass for others, but for me, time both stood still and sped by. How had things come to this? I had dragged myself out of my warm, cozy, enticing bed to a stance that resembled Cro-Magnon man. The struggle was one in which I had always felt powerless, but finally prevailing, I had driven unwillingly to my job. I had portrayed the role of passionate employee, an act for which I probably wouldn’t earn an Academy Award. March 22, 2012, a date that would be permanently burned into my brain, disrupted that cycle. Although the seeming never-ending monotony of my work life was over, the rest remained the same. In fact, my unemployment gave me more time to waste on men.

I sat on my bed with the blinds closed, day after day, making the same mental loops over and over again. They’d become a loud, thick fog that hung all around, suffocating, chastising, and blinding me from seeing anything else. I could only escape in the depths of sleep.

I saw a constant in my life: the endless men, appearing and then disappearing as if through a revolving door. In my vulnerable state, the long days led me to think of that door too often. Most of the time, I had seen a new face enter. Sometimes a ghost of the past had returned to haunt me. Other times, I stared at that door only to see and hear it brush the floor as it swung around to reveal no one at all.

Too many times I was told by everyone who knew me well, “Only You, Deanna.” At times this was funny to me; other times, it was demoralizing. There was something different about my life that made them say that.

And yet, these events never ceased to amaze me. Alone with my memories of my ridiculous experiences, I could only put my head in my hands, shaking it while laughing. Though, there were those who I couldn’t laugh about even through the insanity of it all. They were the men who, once memories of them popped into my mind, left me stunned with welled-up eyes as if they’d exited through that revolving door moments ago.

There I was, still moonlighting as a semi-professional dater for nine years beyond when I thought I would be happily married. It seemed I was cursed to live Carrie Bradshaw’s life. I held on tightly to Charlotte York’s hopeless desire for the fairy tale, but my grip loosened when things went wrong. I grabbed for Miranda Hobbe’s caustic cynicism and held onto it more tightly. I only wish I could say that I was always as confident as Samantha Jones. For all the countless men who had said hello, most had never said goodbye. And those who didn’t stole a piece of me. Once the woman showered with red roses for no special reason, I was now the woman easily tossed aside. I didn’t know why. And now my career had done the same. My life felt like a surreal dream from which I never awoke, but I knew nothing different. I tried to get out of D.C. many times and run away from its single scene, but there seemed to be an invisible force field that locked me in. Trapped in a mode of hurt and neglect, everyday felt like a replay of the day before. This wasn’t part of the fairy tale I’d envisioned for myself, and I wondered how I’d become that woman. It was laughable and brought despair all at once, and heaviness weighed down on me like never before.

I felt like I was going in circles, and I got nowhere. Meanwhile, I went crazy. I called my life Ridiculum. This is not a word in the English vocabulary; I thought I had made it up, but I googled it once and found it in the Urban Dictionary. Nevertheless, my definition of Ridiculum is a life that is out of control, irrational, and surreal which led to misery. A core theme of Ridiculum was my single status or, more so, my losing battle to forever leave it behind.

To have the desire to become un-single implies that being single is an undesirable status. One would think so based on the way society views it. It’s as if it is a rejection stamp. The label single, when applied to women, is not on the whole viewed in a positive light. No one says, “Wow! Isn’t it great that she’s single?” It’s more like “Why isn’t she dating anyone?” or, better yet, “Why isn’t she married?” “There must be something wrong with her.” It’s not just an American cultural stigma.  In some Indian cultures, it’s actually a curse to be single. Or worse yet, is it a sin to be single? There’s no celebration for a single woman, but instead we throw women bridal showers to celebrate their ascent into marital bliss and, of course, baby showers to celebrate the joy of becoming new mothers.

Once, I went shopping with my young niece, Kiryn, and my nephew, Rajay. I instructed Rajay to stand outside the dressing room and stay there, while Kiryn and I walked into a handicapped dressing room so that I could try on some clothes. In the mirror’s reflection, I saw Kiryn goofing around like any kid around six years old. She bent her arms at ninety-degree angles, stiffening her body in a robotic way, and asking in a robotic voice, “Why. Don’t. You. Have. A. Boyfriend?” Although I laughed at the time, thinking back, I didn’t know what was worse – the judgment from the world, the judgment from an innocent six-year-old, or the judgment from myself.

Why didn’t I have a boyfriend?

To further add insult to injury, I had to claim a statuson many of life’s forms. These included tax returns, medical paperwork, and benefits registration. The list went on and on, and as I checked the box “single,” again and again, it began to feel like a diagnosis for a medical condition. I certainly had symptoms of loneliness and boredom. When the condition persisted, I suffered from self-analysis, insecurity, uncontrollable bouts of crying, binge ice cream eating in my pjs in bed watching TV, and periods of depression. Although there was a cure – also known as true love – it was difficult to find and must be administered under the right conditions. These conditions entailed the right man at the right place at the right time. When administered correctly, the result was a reaction known as chemistry, which led to walks on cloud nine and the sudden ability to see life in a completely different light. When the cure was not administered correctly – the wrong guy at the wrong place at the wrong time – the result was something quite different.

I, like many women in their late thirties, was raised to follow a certain path. I grew up playing with dolls and Barbie and Ken, with the expectation I would eventually meet a great man who would woo me, and after we had gotten to know each other and fallen in love, he would get down on one knee and ask to marry me. We would vow to spend the rest of our lives together, eventually having children and dedicating our lives to our family. That was happily ever after.

Any deviation from this plan was just out of norm.  At least it was from society’s general perspective. The problem was that I found myself in a changing paradigm. Most women dreamt of getting married, even if it was later than their mother’s generation did.  However, many men seemed to be working off a different plan. They were putting their careers first and enjoying the independence and thrill of being single; as a result, they wanted “the old ball and chain” to wait. The power of technology has given them access to the world, and therefore the power to connect with more women than the previous generation could have ever dreamed. Hell! They didn’t even have to leave their house. Skype and Facetime allowed us to cyber date. Unlike women, they didn’t have a biological clock to face. The result? Men had the ability to drift carelessly from flower to flower, sowing their wild oats more easily than before, therefore postponing the desire, if any, at all to settle down. The internet provided an endless menu of all flavors of women and has promoted the spread of ADDD – Attention Deficit Dating Disorder. They couldn’t focus on one woman for too long because there was another alluring woman grabbing their attention in the adjacent profile. More specifically, men in D.C. had an even greater selection due to the higher ratio of single females to single males. Although we tended to think we appreciated having a lot of choices, Barry Schwartz’s TED talk on the “The Paradox of Choice” contended that too many options can be overwhelming. Therefore, men walked away from choosing.

Additionally, women were earning more money and threatening a man’s view of being the breadwinner. According to Steve Harvey, men liked to provide. The dilemma? Women were becoming more independent and focusing on their career. They were more empowered and therefore equalizing the playing field while emasculating men. Unfortunately, the evolution of women hadn’t been met by the revolution of basic science. We were still restricted by our biological clock. Many of us still dream of having children, but while the clock is ticking away, many men are still seizing the day.

At 39, I was a single, never married, professional woman with no children living in D.C. My friend, Malena, fondly referred to us as freaks because she too fit this description until age 38. Luckily for her, she left the stigma of freakdom and married a wonderful man. I had thought I was a rarity, but apparently many women in D.C. were in the same boat. In lieu of a wonderful man, dating had given me the following: free meals, drinks, coffee, weight gain, and most significantly, years of therapy. Meanwhile, I remained single and continued on that path – one that didn’t seem to diverge into something different.

I think I’m like most other girls. I grew up with fairy tales like Cinderella and Snow White, dreaming of the day that my prince or knight in shining armor would come and save me. I wanted to be every female character in every romantic comedy. I gasped in excitement when I heard the strumming of the guitar’s first notes of Bebel Gilberto’s Samba du Bencao while sitting in the theater watching Eat, Pray, Love. I wanted to crash into the love of my life to that song as Jose did into Elizabeth. Instead, I heard Barbra Streisand’s The Man That Got Away followed by Gloria Estefan’s Good Morning Heartache on replay. Finding true love was my greatest passion in life and the thing I had worked the hardest to find, yet it was the thing that had eluded me to date.

Even though I knew the D.C. market had its challenges, I still didn’t understand why I couldn’t find love.

It was all about timing. Before I open the Pandora’s Box of my story, let me tell you about how it all began. After patiently persevering through a grueling process of twenty trips to Richmond over a two-year period to receive fertility intervention, my mother finally became pregnant with me at age thirty. My mother, a tall, red-headed, green-eyed American woman was of Irish, English, and other European heritage, and my father, black-haired and dark-eyed was from Colombia. I was born early in Norfolk, VA, on October 12, 1976, which was the only time early and I were in the same sentence. I’m always running late, and you’ll often see me sprinting out the door in heels with wet hair, speeding to get to where I need to go — and often getting pulled over for doing so. I don’t know anyone who got more tickets than me. My older sister, Katherine, liked to tell me that it was all of the drugs my mother took during her fertility treatment that made me this way. I liked to remind her that it took my parents seven years after having her to figure out whether they really wanted another child.

My mother named me Deanna Danielle Reina. Not anna pronounced like banana, but anna pronounced like “ah,” as in when the doctor asks you to open your mouth, stick out your tongue, and say “ah.” I get annoyed when my name is mispronounced, and I have to correct most multiple times. I’m the second of four siblings. Being a middle child and middle sister, I guess that designates me the lost and confused one, a role I fill most brilliantly.

Our family would take trips together many summers to a new destination, but always end the summer with a trip to Kiawah Island, South Carolina. One summer, Katherine led my brother, Michael, my sister, Karen, and me on a long bike ride on the bike path from East Beach to West Beach. She’d occasionally look back, ensuring we were behind her. She rode over a palm frond in the path with both wheels which made a “tap” sound as each wheel ran over. She listened for two taps from each of us indicating that we were behind.

“Tap, tap,” she heard as Michael had crossed. “Tap, tap,” she heard as Karen had crossed. And then a longer-than-expected lack of sound followed. Finally, “Tap. Prolonged pause. Tap” was the way my sister told the story, I had crossed. Okay. So I was a little slow on the bike, but in fairness, I rode my grandmother’s old brown Huffy. The only thing great about that bike was the wide flat seat to fit my curvy end. The handlebars would often get loose and turn so that I’d have to ride with my arms at a ninety-degree angle to the direction of the wheel to keep it straight. And that’s pretty much how my life was – a little off and behind.

It was embarrassing as well. Like the time my mother was yelling up to the second floor, “DEANNA! MICHAEL! KAREN!” to scare us into coming downstairs quickly to be ready for the bus. Both of my parents were strict. My father was the typical Latin father who ruled with a quick temper and an iron fist. It’s what kept us on the straight and narrow. As I ran to catch the bus, my backpack opened, and my pad fell on the driveway for all on the bus to see. Not a notepad, a maxi pad. Although only one had fallen out it felt like a mountain of pads had spilled. I was so embarrassed. Karen, my sister, told me years later as we recollected that incident that her heart broke a little for me that day.

Then there was the time I went on an interview with a telecommunications company. As for any interview, I was appropriately dressed in a suit, pantyhose, and heels. The pantyhose I put on were old and the elasticity in the waist was shot from age. I had figured they were good enough for me to wear for an hour or so. After the interview, the interviewer escorted me to leave the building. The building was large and resembled an airport terminal. It had a never-ending hallway that connected several buildings. That day, there were a fair number of people walking in both directions. I had not anticipated that I would have to be escorted a great portion of this hallway before exiting the building. During our walk, my pantyhose began to inch down my legs, and before I knew it, they were sagging around my knees below the hemline of my skirt. Luckily, because of my height, the interviewer was walking right next to me and was not at an angle where she could see what was happening below, so I continued our conversation, trying everything to keep her attention from my legs. I thought, If I could just keep her eyes on mine, disaster will be averted. I thought I was in the clear until I felt a tap on my shoulder from behind.

“Excuse me ma’am. Your hose are down.”

I stood there like a deer in headlights, thinking Like I didn’t freaking know that my pantyhose were around my knees!

I honestly don’t remember what happened after that. I may have just pretended that I had no idea they were down, but then again, how could I not know that! I wonder how many people saw me unraveling that day. Needless to say, I didn’t end up getting the job. I’m sure the interviewer thought, “The girl can’t even keep her clothes on.” Ironically, a few years later I got a job with another company that merged with the one I had interviewed for. I ended up working in that same building. I didn’t, however, wear those pantyhose again.

I’m an analyst by nature and an analyst by trade, which is both a blessing and a curse. I’m detail-oriented and good at what I do; I put the anal in analysis. Sometimes to the point where I end up at the bottom of the rabbit hole, with no idea how I got there, and no idea how to get out. For me, there was always a question behind a question’s answer. I could be like that spinning circle on your computer screen that gets stuck. If you took a scan of my brain activity at any given moment, I’m sure it would be lit up like a Christmas tree. Ironically, my life was also like that spinning circle, and I would just spin wondering what happened.