Insecurity in spades (a.k.a. gut feeling)

So I'm not writing the CFO this week. Not because I don't want to, but because he hasn't written me since Wednesday last. Not to plan a date. Not to say he was thinking of me. Not to say hello.

I wrote him Thursday, briefly. He had started a banter about Sarah Palin; in reply, I sent him a link for a parody website of the new Veep candidate, among a few other things. Still waiting for a return. And we're heading into next Wednesday.

Hmmmm. I dislike myself this way....in modified panic mode. Think back to our handshake that first date in which we agreed to always be frank. And here I sit, scared shitless to write and find out if he isn't planning to go out with me again. Pretty new at this casual relationship stuff.....is a week a normal time frame without communication? Maybe yes, although this follows two months of saying hello every other day.

Am taking the advice of three separate lady-friends.......do not write until he writes you back. Be chill. Be cool. It's casual, remember? But I am doing it again. Thinking through our date from two weeks ago and parsing the conversation, the kissing, the hand-holding, the door-opening, for signs of what caused his abrupt goodbye.

For what? I don't even know what I'd be looking for.

Ah. Silly female.

Some months ago (you may remember Another Man) I was in similar territory, just wearing winter clothes. Instant chemistry, instant pursuit....I met him in person and he tracked me down online. The next four weeks were heady. We wrote, we texted, we coffeed, we ran, we walked through a snowstorm at 2 a.m. on a Monday night. We spoke in loaded language and made plans for the weekend on Wednesday, then talked on Thursday, Friday and Saturday of how we couldn't wait for our date.

Then we had that date and everything changed. While it was going, it felt perfect. For me, nothing was wrong. But at 6:30 the next morning, something was. We woke up, and we were tired, but he was weird. Even though he kissed me goodbye and said he would write me, I was already afraid. And for three days I vibrated in a bubble of stress....one girlfriend might remember a mid-day anxiety attack she helped me through.....wanting him to go back to sweet-talk, giddiness, walking through the snow.

He eventually wrote, and we eventually went out several times, but that date, indeed, had been the last hurrah. It never, and still has not, returned from awkwardness. As he later admitted, some of it had to do with me; much of it had to do with him and things I had no way of controlling. Until I got over it, that did not stop me from dissecting that date at least 768 times in my head or with friends, trying to figure out where I had screwed up. How one person could be so involved in wanting to be with someone else.....and the next minute be so dis-involved.

How shitty of a date could I have been?

The CFO is another story altogether, that is wickedly clear. We made few promises other than to be frank and to not take things too seriously. For all I know he is over his head in work. Or his mother is sick. Or he is sick. Or Cambridge is under 4 feet of water and his power is out.

But, I feel the same way I felt that week in winter....I've already dissected two weeks ago Wednesday 25 times. The minute I stepped out of his car I felt different. Like I was going to start feeling like this. Unsure. Awkward. Too afraid to keep the vow of frankness and just the hell ask him how he is.

Yuck.