It's 9:35 PM, Saturday night. I'm seven months single, dear readers, and the thought of spending a Saturday night alone still makes me uneasy. (I say "dear readers" knowing there may not be many of you left. I've wanted to write several times since May. Each time I got as far as composing an opening sentence in my head, but then my other writing life - my playwriting life - would interfere. The play is now finished - or as "finished" as any play can be - and opens in less than two weeks. And now I am back to blogging.)

This afternoon I professed my affection for a man by telling him, "I like you." Yes, I am a blogger and a playwright; I taught college English and now earn my living writing test questions, many of which concern vocabulary, and the best I could manage for this, my first post-breakup expression of meaningful, romantic feelings towards a fellow human soul, was "I like you." "I'm struggling with this. [Long pause.] I might as well say it, I like you. [Long pause.] I have feelings for you." William Shakespeare, eat your heart out.

I can't say much about the man in question. I've done a spectacularly lousy job of preserving my anonymity as the author of this blog, to the point where former students and even my own sister are now intimately acquainted with the details of my every petty, post-breakup thought, not to mention my randy ride on the (homo)sexual merry-go-round. I also made the unfortunate choice of posting the blog URL on my OkCupid profile. I told myself I was doing this as part of a larger effort to be completely and refreshingly honest with potential dates. (After all, hadn't OkCupid encouraged me to do just this by inviting me to post on my profile "the most private thing I'm willing to admit"?) I may have been gunning for honesty, or I may have simply been looking for new readers. In either case, common sense (plus some dating advise from friends) led me to remove it.

(Said one OkCupider who read my blog prior to the take-down: "At the very least, now anyone who has read it knows how you tick and the truth is, sometimes 'very ugly honest' is better than no honesty at all." "That's all well and good," I can imagine my friends saying, "but 'very ugly honest' is still, well, ugly.")

I can't say much about the man I "like," but I can tell you what I would have said to him had my English teacher's verbosity, my dramatic flair, and my nerves not failed me.

I told you I'm struggling with my feelings for you. I'm struggling because I'm embarrassed for having these feelings and anxious about how you will perceive them, and me, after I've shared them.

I'm anxious because you've told me that certain kinds of men objectify you, deliberately ignoring your complexity, spirit, and intelligence. (These are my words - "complexity," "spirit," and "intelligence" - not yours. You sometimes refer to yourself as intelligent, but in a grim sort of way. I mean intelligence in the joyous sense; the vibrancy behind your eyes that is its own kind of dancer.) I'm anxious because, whatever else you might think, I don't want you to count me among these male objectifiers. I'm embarrassed because, I suspect, the reason you told me about them in the first place is because you felt safe with me, and now here I go having feelings that could make you feel unsafe.

I'm embarrassed for other reasons, too (let's get those out of the way). I'm embarrassed for having these feelings despite our startling external differences. I'm embarrassed that I've drawn strict no-crossing lines in certain areas of my life, and my feelings for you cross them. I'm embarrassed that you said nothing in response to my confession; you simply smiled, paused, then returned to the subject of what we had been talking about before. (Trust. How sickeningly difficult it will be for either of us to trust a new man after feeling so betrayed by the last one.)

I'm embarrassed because I'm judging my feelings through other people's eyes besides yours and knowing how ridiculous it would look.

But most of all, I'm embarrassed for saying "I like you" when I should have said... I enjoy you. I understand you. To say "I enjoy you" sounds trivial, but I enjoy everything about you. Earlier in our conversation, I remarked on my astonishment that after sleeping with a dozen-or-so men since my breakup, I still hadn't found a lover who made me want to stare into his eyes for hours. True enjoyment can come from something as simple as this - looking into another person's eyes. I could beat you at any staring contest; that's how much I enjoy looking into yours.)

My feelings for you are strange and paradoxical. (Aren't you lucky to be the object of these affections?) Strangely, I do not lust after you. When I fantasize, it's not about us having sex but falling in love. This is possibly a result of our history; sexual thoughts had no place in it. (True, I found you attractive even then, and recently, when I told you this, you were kind enough to say the same. But we were talking about aesthetic, not sexual attractiveness. "You have nice cheekbones and two eyes." "Your nose - thankfully - is positioned roughly at the center of your face.")

I'm embarrassed and yet thrilled by these feelings because their existence means I'm still alive enough in my 30s to have foolish crushes like the ones I had on my best (straight) male friends in high school. I feel a strange, groping sadness at the thought that you are every bit as unattainable as those friends, yet I'm happy to be sad about something that makes me feel hopeful at the same time. If I can have these feelings for you, surely I'll be able to have them for someone else someday. It may take years before I find him, but when I do, I will show him this love letter (this love blog?) and point to this line. ("You see?," I'll say. "I was pining for you before I even knew who you were. I've always been a believer in preparing for what's ahead.")

To you, the inspiration behind my present pining, I have these words. I don't care how jaded you feel you've become, do not allow another man - not a single man more - to take advantage of you. You are complex, spirited, and intelligent (repeat after me). "I am talented. I will work harder than I ever thought possible to fulfill my dreams. And I will be kind to myself. I will forgive myself my wariness about love and allow myself to be wary without fretting that it will become my permanent condition, because I have been hurt, by others as well as myself. And I will use this, my pain, to learn more about myself and what I want. This will make me a better partner to the next man I decide to love, and it will teach me to demand that he be a better partner to me."

If it's love you want, you shall have it. You've sunken your hopes into a few jerks in your life (who hasn't?). In fairness to those jerks, they may not have been jerks at all, just not ready for what you had to give them. (The altruist in me is trying to give the jerks of the world the benefit of the doubt, including my own special jerk.) But leaving aside the question of other people's wants, know your own and pursue them with all the desire and urgency you can muster. If you can do push-ups every day (and you do!), if you possess the discipline to tighten your body into this ridiculously slender ripple of sinew and skin, then surely you can muster the urgency and desire to dive head-first into the realization of your dreams.

I'm debating whether to show you this post. I might boldly do so after not-so-boldly urging you to disregard the business about my feelings for you. ("That's not why I'm showing this to you," I might say, and I don't think I would be lying.) Really, I want to thank you. Thank you for stirring these foolish, funny, giggly-serious feelings in me. Thank you for being an unexpected source of support as I continue to come to terms with and learn to embrace my singleness. Thank you, this Saturday night, for bringing me tenderness and peace.