M

During therapy this morning, S. asked about my 'date' with The Musician last week. I'm still puzzling over my feelings and trying to discern if it *was* a date rather than just hanging out. I really want to stay as far away as I can from the over-analysis that I am prone to in these situations (read: situations = social interactions with the opposite sex) and it was near the end of our session, so I kept my answer brief.

Then S. said, jokingly, "Please don't tell me that his name is M_______."

Um, it is.

I don't want to spoil anything before it's begun, but I don't have great luck with M_______s. First there was M_______Texas, who moved to Dallas without saying goodbye. Followed by The ARH, whose real name was M_______. And most recently M_______LawStudent.

And now there is M_______Musician. Damn. We're quite obviously doomed.

(Don't you see what a good job I'm doing of not over-analyzing????)

The flip side of this silliness about the 'curse' of a particular name is my tendency to step back from something that might hurt me in the future. For the past week, I've been tempering The Musician's positives with real and imagined concerns. But, at the same time, trying not to do that, as I believe that predicting negative outcomes will bring about the hurt feelings that you are trying to avoid.

Reaching out while holding back has never worked very well for me in the past. Isn't paying attention to something as trivial as a name just another form of making someone pay for your history?