Meeting Tholie (& A Quick Sketch of Dragon, My Second Love)
Tuesday, June 21st 2016, I met Tholie in person. She was a cute, red-headed girl who'd contacted me on OKCupid. Her opening letter took quotes from my profile and explained how she related to them. She expressed interest in yoga and board games, and concluded her letter with, "I really appreciate your statement about authenticity and honesty. I think it is super important to be honest with others and yourself. I have found that the subconscious mind tends to try and sneakily deny things, but through meditation and mindfulness one can keep it in check."
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Yeah. I dug her.
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I wrote back and we compared notes on photography and digital painting. We mutually gushed about Lindsey Stirling. I wrote to her, "The only question is, can you handle my full truths? I want so very much to know people fully and to let myself be known fully, but I'm repeatedly disappointed that others are (1) unwilling to fully share themselves - even with themselves!, (2) not comfortable with really knowing the truth of someone else - partly because they're not comfortable knowing the darker, less pretty aspects of themselves, (3) easily freaked out by experiences that are different from their own. And if you're an exception to these three things, then I . . . (fumbles for what I'm trying to say here for a while) . . . I want to know you."
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Tholie replied, "That is just so awesome that you prefer the same openness/honesty! I want to know you too! I'm . . . pretty intensely certain I could handle whatever truths are thrown at me."
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Tholie also wrote about how she was still recovering from the abusive relationship in her teens, which had lasted from the time she was thirteen until she was nineteen. I related. I wrote her about my relationship with Dragon: "For a year and a half I dated a very charismatic sociopath. He was my second love. He moved in with me and lived with me for a year. He was six-feet-and-two-inches tall, a very fit material artist, and he was half Jamaican and half Venezuelan. He had dreadlocks down to his thighs and abs you could wash your clothes on.
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"He lost his virginity to me and attached himself to me very strongly. After about a month I discovered his split-personality disorder. He would switch to this other self that was distant, random, didn't respond to his given name, and had no memories of his other self. I met his other self as a new self. His less-dominant personality claimed he knew me from another life and that I was yet to 'come into my own' in this life. I ended up falling harder for his less-dominant personality than his main one, and kept trying to get him to switch before having sex with him, which pissed off his dominant personality a lot.
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"He was a chronic liar and a kleptomaniac. He stole from himself. He smoked insane amounts of pot which he supposedly acquired through his family. After eight months together I discovered his gun, and then he told me he was in a gang. He also carried nunchucks which he was highly proficient with. And throwing stars to boot!
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"Dangerous, beautiful, charming, well-spoken, and romantic. But he was also a liar, a thief, and he admitted to having killed people. And he was a drug dealer.
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"My relationship with him was straight out of a movie. Particularly the part where I point his gun at him in the heat of an argument and he kicked it out of my hand and into his own. This was ten years ago now, so it feels to me like looking back on a different life and a different person, but my point here is that I don't regret it.
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"I'm glad I loved him. I knew him deeply. If I can love a murdering liar, then what can't I love? He was controlling and sometimes abusive, and yet I cherished the good parts of him. When I left him, I wasn't afraid anymore. I'd gotten to know him so well that I stopped fearing him. He collapsed and bawled like a baby. My second love genuinely loved me, and he was very changed by our relationship.
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"He went on to college. He found good work. He married. He had children. I never regret what I shared with him. He's still arrogant and still a sociopath for the most part, but I honestly believe the love we shared was very good for both of us."
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From there, Tholie and I discussed where and when to meet.
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Tuesday I made my preparations - washing apples bring with me, rereading her letters and making a list of questions to ask her, finding some artwork prints of mine to give to her as a gift - and with Paladin's phone in my purse and Hibiscus's electric car keys in my pocket, I drove Hibiscus's car fifteen minutes north to meet her. The waterfall we had come to see was fenced off at the entrance due to construction on the bridge and surrounding area. A big sign said "trail closed" beside Tholie. Her red hair shined in the sun and stirred a little in the breeze as I walked toward her.
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Not as beautiful as I hoped, I thought. Clearer skin and a little weight loss could bring her from cute to beautiful. I hoped I would know her long enough to impact her positively and see this transition happen in her. I was confident I could bring about those changes in her given a few months of friendship.
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She exclaimed about the construction and the trail being closed. I agreed that it was super lame.
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"There is a trail over near where I parked that isn't closed off though," I said. "Want to check it out?"
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"Okay," she said.
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We walked back across the street, through the parking area I'd parked in, and into the shade of the tree line. The path was steep, and probably not an intentional trail by those who managed the park. Still, it was clearly traversed often. We climbed for a ways and found ourselves in a mix of nature of urban wasteland. Crumbled rock, concrete ruins, graffiti and wild raspberries dominated the scene. I found a rocky place to sit and crouched down with my canteen of vegetable juice, glass jar of water and mini backpack containing my notebook and necessities.
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She sat down with her one tiny satchel holding her phone, coconut water and keys. She wore black wire-framed glasses and no hat. I wore a purple visor that matched my purple shoes, purple canteen, purple jar, and purple bamboo utensil holder that hung from my belt loop. She complimented my purple accents saying, "You're so good," meaning I was so good at color coordinating.
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I smiled. She wasn't bad herself. Her baby blue shirt went with her tiny baby blue satchel.
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She told me about nursing, her abusive relationship, her most recent ex, and her love of dance-dance-revolution. I told her about traveling, meeting Paladin, meeting and falling in love with Hibiscus, my mixed feelings about nutrition, and some of my experiences with western medicine.
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During the time we spent together we went to the local co-op market and I visited the hot bar. I helped myself to rice and an array of seeds and salad toppings. I added this to a large bag of spring mix. Afterward I was still hungry, and my cough started to come back again. I felt embarrassed coughing in front of her. She won't believe I know anything about health if I'm coughing like this, and damn it, I want her to believe I know something so that I can help her with her skin, her weight and the digestive discomforts she's mentioned.
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I tried to repress the coughing. I looked at the time. We'd spent five hours together! I told her I'd had a good time but should head back.
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