Bye Traci

[Eric note: The second part of this post has been periodically and significantly amended since its original posting on September 15, 2007. Last substantive change: February 12, 2013.]

I unexpectedly found out something that ends a dream from my youth: she is married.

At my age, these things are no longer surprises: when Cyd was married, another dream of my youth was laid to rest. Traci is 28 now, after all, which is a more-than-reasonable age to be married.

Traci was my unrequited love from my last radiant days as a soldier, and thinking about my failure to win her love still hurts. I opened my heart for Traci and offered her the best of me, and the only thing my love accomplished was to push her to stress-induced smoking. Before I left Korea, I did my best to finish my "court" (her word) of Traci, for my own sake, so I would know conclusively there was no hope for her and me to become us. I wanted closure with Traci, not a repeat of my Judy obsession. After Korea, even when I found out she was at the University of Maryland at College Park, which is a reasonable commute from New York, a relationship of any kind was not something I would have sought short of an accidental encounter. I did consider contacting her in Maryland, and there are guys who can pull that off; me? I would have come off as a stalker and I'm not a stalker. I achieved closure in Korea and that was the end of it.

Life can be mystical. At the same time I was digesting the news about Traci, my co-worker in the next cubicle complained to her girl friend about a suitor in the same way Traci criticized me. For my co-worker, her suitor's behavior on their outings was friendly, not suggestive of romantic intentions; however, afterwards he texted her with a frequency, volume, and message that was much more intense. She was "annoyed" at them, especially his text messages at work. I believe she didn't respond to them and when she expressed to him her annoyance about them, he responded by asking her to tell him what not to do. My co-worker was made more upset by his request. After a heated discussion, he asked her if they "were cool" and if she still "liked him". (There may have been an accusation from him of mixed signals from her as well, but that just could be me projecting.) Clearly, he was convinced they had connected when in reality, she thought he was too demanding and inappropriate and felt smothered by something that wasn't even, in her mind, a relationship. My co-worker was confused by the "disconnect" between her suitor's cooler in-person behavior and the intensity of his virtual behavior, and between his serious expectations and what she considers a non-serious acquaintance. When I asked her about it, she believed he was being manipulative by "acting sweet", which she thinks he may have learned from other girls. She just didn't understand him, and combined with the unwelcome pressure she felt from him, the whole affair upset her.

I understood him - too well. Listening to my co-worker's conversation was like watching a Shakespearean play within a play. (I watched a stage performance of Hamlet on Thursday night.) Replace my co-worker's suitor's text messages with my voluminous, painfully sincere e-mails to Traci, and this guy could have been me. I didn't learn anything new from eavesdropping on my co-worker, given that Traci described her reaction to me the same way. But that's the lesson. Hamlet's uncle didn't learn anything new about his "murder most foul" from Hamlet's play, either, but it did confront him later on with the truth of himself in a stark manner.

I was sure Traci and I shared a mutual attraction when I gambled by revealing (e-mailing - ugh) my desire to her, so I can easily imagine his hurt and confusion when my co-worker pushed him away. I can see the two of them going out a few more times "as friends", his struggle to keep her in his life while suppressing his desire, her continued growing discomfort, and then her eventual toxic avoidance of him altogether. Oh, and get this, she still hangs out with her ex live-in boyfriend. Familiar, no?

Still, my experience with Traci made for rich food for thought. Traci remains the only girl to whom I've seriously connected the ideas of wife, mother of my children, and a relationship of decades. As long as I could think of Traci as single, I could use my memories of her - if no longer the actual Traci - as a reference point for reflection:

When I say I did my best with Traci, that means I tried to learn from my past mistakes with girls.

With Dora, I had a crush on her literally from the first day of high school and then proceeded to waste four years of opportunities to date her. We sat next to each other in homeroom and one memorable English class, and we were friendly, but as badly as I wanted to, I was just too insecure to take the risk of asking her out. Instead, I wrote her letters and cards as a secret admirer. Years after graduation when I confessed, Dora told me I should have asked her out, that she had a "nice" impression of me in high school. Lesson learned: I burned up all my chances with Dora. Given I only had a year left in Korea by the time Traci and I started seeing each other, I wasn't going to wait too long to tell her how I felt.

Judy was, and I imagine still is, a quintessential prize - talented, cultivated and sophisticated, intelligent, beautiful. But we weren't compatible. I say a lot about Judy when I talk about Traci because Judy was my background when Traci and I met. I was cautious and wounded by my Judy experience but still hesitantly hopeful that she represented an episode only and not a theme. The tantalizing promise of Traci was a compatibility-based relationship that would dispel my cynicism, so I fought against the protective counsel of my experience and fears in order to empower my hope for us.

With Judy, my fundamental error was self-editing. Self-editing didn't matter when I was merely a concerned friend, but it became destructive when my desire grew and I needed more from her. I believed Judy would reject the 'true' me and I was afraid to lose this girl who was way beyond my league, so I gave unconditionally and hid anything I thought Judy would find unattractive. Every conversation, visit, and outing with Judy became a struggle to please her. I was constantly anxious and on guard with her, never relaxed, and the sustained apprehension became exhausting. I learned with Judy that some selfishness is healthy in a relationship. When I visited her at Bryn Mawr and admitted my feelings, and she accepted them, our relationship had to change. At that point, Judy and I didn't have a mutual, reciprocal relationship. I understood we each would have to reach deep to hold onto each other. She and I needed to become equals and I needed her to earn my trust, which meant I could no longer be selfless and reserved. To be together, I needed to know she was committed to me and I could rely on her.

She couldn't do it. Judy couldn't commit to me. When I opened myself to her and asked Judy whether she would be there for me in kind, she answered, "you can't expect people to suffer with you". My fears proved accurate: for all my straining efforts to be there for her whenever she had wanted me, Judy had only valued me for the function I served her as a supporter and therapist. I fought for her and she didn't fight for me. The speed and lack of remorse with which Judy gave up on me came as a painful shock. The moment of revelation, when I knew there was no reciprocity between us, should have been the end. But with the commitment I made to her, the addictive intimacy we shared, and the intense emotion and energy I invested into her, I had built a temple for Judy in my heart and fueled an obsession for a relationship that didn't exist. I knew she was bad for me, yet my obsession with her persisted after our falling out. When I found myself back in Korea as a stunned West Point drop-out at the end of 1999 and still hung up on Judy despite all that had happened, I finally had had enough. I was angry at her hold on me, and I used my anger to act enough like a jerk in an e-mail to elicit a cutting response from her. It worked; I was freed from my obsession.

The first time I saw Traci was the first day of David Norris's English 101 class in January 2000. She walked in late and took the seat in the back of the first row. I was immediately struck by her fresh, youthful beauty, and I spent the rest of the class trying to steal glances of Traci from my seat in the front of the second row. After that class, we spoke for the first time, briefly, while waiting to cross the street from Yongsan's South Post to Main Post. I asked her something about being from Guam, which she had mentioned during class introductions. I drank in her searching eyes, sweet voice and natural demeanor. My first impression of Traci was 'She's exactly what I want in a girlfriend', followed by the self-pitying 'but I'd never get her'. So, while I continued to steal glances of her in class, I didn't try to speak with Traci again for the rest of the semester. But wonder of wonders, she stopped me to talk one day as I was striding through Yongsan Lanes. I helped her bowl a game, she bragged about it to her dad, and then we spent our first long night together walking and talking in Seoul.

Although I was attracted to Traci from the moment I first saw her, I didn't fall in love right away. When we started hanging out, I told myself her friendship would be a boon to my time in Korea and resolved not to screw it up. But the more time we spent together and the more I knew her, the harder it became to restrain myself. My heart made my choice for me. When Traci softly responded that if I hadn't dropped out of West Point, then she and I wouldn't have met, I believed fate was with us. More, I learned she arrived in Korea from New York City at almost the same time I did. I hardly dared to hope that, just maybe, Traci was meant to be my love story. She was 20 and perfect. I was 23 and falling in love. When I told Traci about my romantic history the 2nd or 3rd time we went out, I was really warning her I was about to gamble for her love. (It didn't make a difference, because either she would commit to me or she wouldn't. My gamble could only end in reward or punishment, like a fall-and-catch trust-building exercise.)

Because of my mistakes with Judy, I committed to be conscientiously communicative and genuine with Traci from the start. I tried to be more assertive in order to find out early in the relationship whether she would be there for me as reliably as I would be there for her. I theorized that if I revealed my soul and Traci still wanted to be with the 'true' me, and vice versa, then we would have the cornerstone for a strong partnership. Honesty and openness, with the good and the ugly, and the confident and the vulnerable, was the best I could give of myself. I was wary of long-distance relationships after Judy and my tendency to narrate with e-mail, so I worked to bring Traci and me physically together as much as possible. As I fell in love, the most important thing in my life was to be with her; when she was with me, I didn't want our time to end. It didn't matter to me what Traci and I did; whatever we were doing was an excuse to be with her. Traci and I saw sunrises together and spent 18 and more hours at a time with each other, just talking, and I thought it was enough. I thought I was careful enough. With Judy, I was desperate when I made my gamble for her at Bryn Mawr because I could no longer limit myself to be a selfless, unconditional giver. With Traci, constrictive self-editing wasn't a problem - I wouldn't have gambled with her, at least not when I did, if I didn't believe she felt the same way. Using my Judy experience as the comparison, the feedback and other indicators from Traci encouraged me. I thought we clicked. We were good together - when we were together - and good for each other.

So I was very confident Traci reciprocated my romantic interest. For a preciously few Spring days, I was brightly in love with the wondrous belief that Traci felt the same way. When I proposed raising the intimacy of our relationship, I was simply happy, eager to get on with our love story -- and wrong.

The problem is that by avoiding past mistakes and breaking new ground, I didn't recognize my new mistakes. I badly misread Traci's interest in me. Even before it turned bad, I was already rationalizing how hard it was becoming to see her. Rather, I downplayed any drawback on Traci's part as shyness or maybe girlish decorum. I naively thought, perhaps, she was even waiting for me as the man to make the next move. When Traci rejected my e-mailed proposal (the disastrous Tim & Deborah), the switch from illuminating, glorious promise to hurt, confused rejection was as shocking as it had been with Judy.

I've wondered at times, despite everything, whether I competely misread Traci. Empathy and sensitivity are two of my relative strengths, so it's hard to believe I was entirely wrong about her. I accept I was optimistic and too selective reading the signs, such as glossing over her determined refusal to allow me to pay for her, but even with the harsh scrutiny of hindsight, I recall moments with Traci from which I derive the same encouraging conclusions I did then. Rod gave the compelling explanation that I misinterpreted Traci's interest in me as an oppa. If I assume, however, she didn't view me as an oppa exclusively and was romantically interested at some point, the dilemma then becomes I won't sustain the self-editing that has worked to hold a girl's interest, but the times I opened my heart vulnerable for the sake of a soul commitment, Judy and Traci rejected me.

It's sad how little time I was allowed to be only happy with pristine hope for us. After her rejection, the rest of my history with Traci became a grim struggle as I forced my way to closure with the "court", more for a rear-guard defense of my precious love than from any realistic expectation Traci would change her mind. Traci told me during one of my later heartfelt entreaties that romantic love shouldn't be as hard as I made it. What she meant was that true love isn't one-sided, like my love for her. I still believe romantic love properly to be hard work, but I do agree genuine romantic love is forgiving and shared. A healthy “court” should be natural effort that returns great reward, and it wasn't like that with Traci. I knew it was a lost cause when I realized I was competing with Traci, not some other guy, for her love. I suppressed my pride to try to keep her in my life as just-friends, but that couldn't work and didn't last long. In the end, I resorted to sending her long e-mails pouring out my heart, in spite of my original resolve not to, in an attempt to preserve a link, however tenuous, between us. I did a few other stupid things, too - I even begged her once. I know I upset her - I know what her eyes look like when she's furious with me.

I became pathetic for the sake of love and it has hurt ever since. But I don't blame Traci. It was my choice when I fought down the counsel of my fears and opened my heart. I didn't give myself a safety plan and she didn't catch me. The long-term damage of my lost gamble is the end of the hope that my Judy experience was an episode only. Rather than exorcise Judy, Traci wounded me, validated my Judy experience, and proved that romantic failure is my theme. The prize rejected me, then the compatible girl rejected me, too.

So, where do I go from here? I'm lost. It's hard for me right now to let go of my belief in the simple bonding of "kindred spirits" and accept that the answer I've wished for since childhood has escaped me: my soulmate to enter my life who, as I eagerly reach for her, reaches for me just as eagerly. I thought Traci was her and I was wrong. Traci told me there was no spark (there was plenty for me), I didn't know her (I was learning), I made her think (I did) when she just wanted "drink and dance", I was intimidating (I still don't understand what she meant by that), and she didn't know I was engaged in a "court" (I don't believe that). I did my best with Traci and utterly failed, so at this point, I just don't know how to find this special girl or help her find me. Since Korea, the answer that has made the most sense has been to improve myself to the degree that, when I fall in love, I can be revealing without anything unattractive to reject. The problem is I already know that's a bad answer. Self-improvement should not be for the sake of impressing others. Love isn't a product of personal perfection; love is about combining lives and life is imperfect. Other guys' flaws don't stop them from successful relationships, and I know the notion is misguided because I already tried to transform for a girl. I joined the Army in part to prove my worth as a man to Judy. When I visited Judy for the last time right before I dropped out of West Point, I realized how hollow that purpose was as I walked South Street with her in my white-over-gray cadet uniform and Army ribbons on my chest. (I'm not saying my soldiering experience was empty, only the part about joining the Army for Judy. At the time, I didn't realize the manly platonic ideal of manhood is not the same as the romantically desirable man, at least in my generation.) Nor did my life-altering attempt to impress Judy fix our essential incompatibility. The harsh pragmatic answer, if I can compromise my romantic ideals, is to learn - belatedly - how to play the game of courtship. I'm moving closer to the pragmatic answer, because with my age, desperation is giving way to resignation that pure romantic love simply is not meant for me. In the meantime, at minimum, finding a better balance of cosmetic self-editing than either my tense reserve with Judy or my dogmatic disclosure (I believe one particular revelation did mortal damage) with Traci is prudent.

I don't regret opening my heart to her, what I felt for Traci, what I wanted for us, and that I did the best I could to "court" her. I tried very hard. For me, the news of Traci's marriage is wistful, sad, and laced with regret. I was in love with Traci, and I wonder what might have been had circumstances been different. Had I been different. I like to tell myself that the outcome was inevitable, that in the end, I am who I am and she is who she is . . . blaming fate is easier than telling myself I met my wife, who was interested, and I fumbled her away.

Of course, Traci was about more than romance. Met at the crossroads, she was a life test. For a brief tantalizing moment, I believed Traci was my anchor in the light and vindication I was okay. Instead, I was left in the dark and served notice I am not relieved from the fight.

Best of luck, Traci. All was right with the world and you were a blissful beautiful dream, for the short while it lasted. Your man's a winner. I'd congratulate you properly with a belated wedding card and a present if I thought my gesture would be viewed well. Bye.

Coda.

Add May 16, 2010: REO Speedwagon's plaintive I Can't Fight This Feeling captures my Traci experience rather well. These songs, too.

Eric