Years ago a friend told me about her grandmother. She had just died in a nursing home that week. But the family knew something. A month before her death she had fallen in love with a newcomer to the home. She exhibited all the signs: the mooning-over and extended glances, the "laugh just a little too hard, stare just a little too long" that Bonnie told us about.

So basically her grandmother died in a state of being in love.

Now, I can think of a lot of things that I would do for comfort, but I can only think of a few things that I would do for discomfort. But that would be a thing that I would do. I would volunteer to be in a state of in-loveness when I died. I think that would be cool as shit.

**---- Bling! -----** decided he didn't love me enough to hang out and let something develop. He already had something developing. Great. Why didn't he tell me that up front?

Oh wait, he did. We lay naked next to each other for many nights in pillow talk about his developing relationship with a chick in another town. How unbelievable is that? The only way I can justify it now is this: it helps me understand there must have been a time when I wasn't in love with him. At some point I must have actually felt--well--superior to him. Like a counselor to her needy patient. Like I was dispensing some philanthropical intimacy, balm for the soul.

And when he broke it off, the bottom fell out. This solid foundation of self-validation, this philanthropic bridge, rotted and collapsed. Maybe he decided to be with someone who is economically better for him. Maybe she's a fucking blueblood. Maybe the sex was better (He told me that! Can you believe). But I am pretty sure he loved to make love to me, also. He's a guy; bad sex is a rarity.

How can I feel so strongly that I am in a relationship with him, when I'm not? How can I still believe, after all this time, that I am in a relationship with him? I haven't spoken to him for months, he hasn't called me of his own accord for a year. I haven't made love to his body, nor he to mine, for a year. Why do I feel as though the dance will resume? Why do I mill about on the dance floor, waiting for my partner who has left the ball with someone else?

Does that mean I am going to spend another ten years in love with someone who doesn't love me? That would put me between 1 and 2 in the SOL. I guess the human psyche decides for itself how long it will spend in these purgatories between numbers. Then, it purges itself and goes on to a new dimension. If that new dimension is death, well... it's like she who dies with the most toys.

So I should introduce you to **---- bling! -----**, someone I met a while ago who really blew my mind. He blew me floated conceptual bubbles of relationship and magnetic sexual allure across a rough sea of potential scattered with intimidating scarecrows. I could just say he fucking turned me on when I met him, but I'm not sure that is true. He is not gorgeous. He doesn't stand out in a crowd. In fact, I didn't remember his face the day I met him.

Let me quickly put this in context. At the close of the ten-year He-Loved-Me fantasy, I encountered this entity. He literally landed in my car. A buddy tucked him into the passenger seat on the way to a wine-tasting. A ten-year romantic wasteland was suddenly exposed by this entity landing in my car. A light shone on my lonely existence, at long last, eclipsing my sacred cows; I cried out against the light--No! No! Leave me to my misery! But it was not to be. I was catapulted to a new experience, sexually full, perplexing, exquisite, confounding, ethereal, and short.

I call him**---- bling! -----** because, even though he still lights up my life, he was actually here only about a month—one year ago. Meaning he ain't here, but the memory of the bling can actually still spawn the bling. A self-perpetuating machine that does—I pray—run down, with time...

Is he a messenger? Is he a savior? A savior from what? Boredom? Is boredom fatal for some? For me? Does boredom recall the isolation of a small girl with big anxiety and skewed attention? (I was ADD when ADD wasn't cool.) I wasn't screwed up because of a disease. I was screwed up by isolation. Only a distraction of great joy and big engagement could place it right again. The whole ten-year wasteland was not about He-Loved-Me, it was about losing the opportunity, the ability and the desire to be trenchantly, romantically involved with someone.

If anything I know my luck; it has always been paradoxical. To be presented with a streaming desire for someone I wouldn't normally have looked twice at so that I might finally learn how desperately I need intense engagement in order to thrive, only to have it wrenched from me in a short month—well, that shakes the boredom out and underscores that I've been way, way too wrapped up in my domestic ritual. When one starts noticing one's own routine (morning dump, lunch hunger, how many times to pee) it's time to get a life.

Why is he the messenger? It is not for me to ask WHY-- why the messenger is HIM. It is for me to ask what the MESSAGE is, what the lesson is. The hell with the messenger-- shoot the fucking messenger! The question is: WHAT IS THE LESSON HE BRINGS?

I work as a web designer/developer and aspire as a musician. I get major benefit from my friends who are mostly web operatives, musicians, artists and actors at various levels. The one thing we have in common is a creative cord–a wellspring. Our cords seem to all arc in the same direction and dive to the same point. Anything can be a stage, from an elevated platform to a wall—a canvas—a desktop.

I am falling away from ten-plus years of glorifying the love object. I experienced the deepest despair, yet architected verily the complete fantasy that ushered it in. I call him He-Loved-Me. In him I believed, afraid to breathe in case I blew the fragile walls of my delicate structure to the ground. Well, I did, eventually. Or he did, actually. I lay in tatters for ten years. Then, like a waking tiger, I scan the horizon of a new existence. New chapter. Real Life. The starting gate and beyond. Things could be awesome, eternal, mutual love could lie just over the horizon.

Maybe creative expression of some sort will be more important to me. And maybe I will actually make a living at it. How to make money expressing one's self? A. By typing code and web shit, B. By writing and singing and marketing awesome songs THAT I WROTE, (after all the shit that I been through!) or C. By typing feelings in cyberspace in a blog. I think I would rather start a blog.

I reckon the major romantic relationships of my life can be organized into levels of commitment, easy for me because I fall in love so much. A systematic classification of the stages of love and commitment is no problem. All that is left is for me to record the system. So here is my system en vitro:

Whether it's a fulfilled, requited love, or the other end of the spectrum, it's still about the state of being, the phenomenon of identifying oneself by who-loves-me. Liken it to a homing beacon, like turning toward Mecca. If we stray, we will find the scent. We MUST love and be loved.

The Stages of Love

1. Total freedom with disinterest (hormonal drivers at rest)
2. Freedom outside a relationship, but willing (waxing hormonal drivers are kicking in)
3. Trading freedom willingly for awesome hormonal drivers ( i.e. falling in love)
4. Freedom from within a relationship, independence agreed and accepted
5. No freedom from within a relationship, commitment agreed and accepted
6. Insistence, and the will to fight for, freedom from within a relationship (honeymoon is waning)
7. Freedom outside a relationship (waning hormonal drivers are kicking in) i.e., honeymoon is over
8. No relationship, but interest in one (interrupted hormonal drivers at rest or waning)
9. Total freedom with disinterest (hormonal drivers at rest)

Anywhere in between the numbers, couples can decide to hang out. Most likely they hang out between 4, 5 and 6. Also, the order can be reversed.

Okay so if you can, imagine having fallen in love with someone who is just not that into you. You feel at once like a fetus in situ and a high jumper who realizes he has lost the span. The essence of falling becomes the psychic reality. Falling is not the same as injuring. Sometimes, falls put you in very nice places. Some fallers know when to let go of the need to control the fall. Some fallers actually get used to the fall, and come to realize there is no bottom.

Witnessing this continuum is a little disturbing. I don't want to admit that in the back of my fragile sanity I probably believe I can conjure his love if I power on in faith and belief. I really ought to spend more time making a living. It's either spend it here--don't eat! Or spend it there--check off one of Maslow's four essential needs.

So why not start a blog. Hey, if somebody wants to float a Google ad or suck a keyword off my creation, you know? what's the difference?