Disappointment

The road to love is often paved with disappointment. And the route you take when you make a commitment to date is too.

It's not as if disappointment is a foreign feeling for me. I have attempted to "settle down" three times. The first man with whom I thought I might spend the rest of my life had no intention of getting married. Not to me anyway... He ended up marrying a friend of ours. The second was a man with whom I had a relationship on and off for six years. He knew my heart. And he also knew that he was most likely to break my heart so he bowed out after we had the big talk. Last winter, I thought the third time must be the charm but the third time was just a man who charmed me into believing he was something that he wasn't. I know disappointment.

Remembering that your past does not dictate your future is not always as easy as it sounds. So the familiarity of disappointment lingers in the back of my mind at every turn. And when a potential date begins to materialize, I prepare myself to be disappointed. I initiate all my failure gear. And I'm careful not to get my hopes up, thanks to my disenchanted past.

Now I'm worried that I am projecting something so negative into the atmosphere that I won't get the chance to take a chance on finding something real. And I think I may be jinxing myself. So when the opportunity presented itself to try another way, I did.

For a moment or five over the last week, I pulled up the gear and checked my disappointment at the door and I allowed myself to get my hopes up. I saw a very real possibility that caused my spirit to leap. I anticipated new and exciting and rewarding.

And then it came anyway. Disappointment.