LOVE CRAZE

The Unscheduled Interview

I hung up with Makena and placed the phone face down. 

The silence that returned was deep and heavy, no longer restful, but judgmental. Stop using men as proof of your worth. Makena's words echoed louder than any gospel single Guy 3 could produce.

I needed assurance. I needed a guarantee. I needed a wall.

That wall wasn't built overnight; it was constructed, brick by bitter experience, starting nine years ago, when I was twenty years old and still painfully naive. I'd called him Guy 1 in my earlier ramblings, but his name was Leo. And he was the architect of my first defensive strategy.

Back then, I didn't conduct "interview dates." I just fell. Hard and fast, like an amateur diver who forgets to check the depth of the pool. Leo wasn't a musician or a dancer; he was a university student, smart, charmingly awkward, and he looked like the sort of guy my mother would instantly approve of. He wasn't aggressive; he was patient. He didn't demand my attention; he asked for it with a bashful, almost innocent smile.

He had everything I thought a partner should have. He respected my boundaries, he made me laugh, and he was the first man I allowed to see the vulnerable Redempta—the one who truly believed in happily-ever-afters, without the cynical analysis.

The first six months were a slow, beautiful erosion of my internal barriers. I remember the exact day the last wall came down. We were celebrating our six-month mark at a quiet Swahili restaurant. I was buzzing with relief. I thought, This is it! I analyzed him, I watched him, and he passed the test. He is the prince I saved myself for. I told him, with a slight shake in my voice, that I loved him.

He looked back at me, his eyes wide and honest, and said he loved me too. The certainty in his voice felt like the absolute guarantee I craved.

Two weeks later, he disappeared.

It wasn't a dramatic breakup. There was no final, tearful argument. There was just a sudden, inexplicable silence. My calls went unanswered. My texts were left on 'read.' I went to his apartment—Makena drove me, naturally—and his roommate told me he'd moved back home three counties away, leaving no forwarding address and no explanation.

I felt betrayed, not just by him, but by the entire concept of trust. He had been the "safe bet," the one who did everything right, the one whose stability I had finally chosen to lean on, and he still abandoned me without a word.

That was the day I made a vow to myself: I will never again be blindsided by vulnerability.

If love was going to blindside me, I would blindside it first. I decided I would filter, categorize, and relentlessly vet every man who came near me. I built the wall, brick by experience. The first brick was Leo's betrayal, and it carried a single, painful inscription: 

You can never know enough to prevent the pain.

That fear of the "unscheduled departure" is why, years later, the moment Guy 3 showed a sign of wavering, I had fled. And it's why, years after that, when he returned with a heavy promise of unwavering devotion, I had mistakenly let him in. I had traded the fear of being left for the certainty of being watched.

I looked back at the muted phone. Guy 3 was ringing again. It was time to deal with the present, but first, I needed to figure out how to dismantle the first brick.