Operation Love Me Tender

Attention troops! This is your Captain and I have an announcement to make.

I don't think it will come as a surpise to anyone when I say that my relationship with TLMS was a really positive experience for me. Start to finish it was really the most mature and respectful relationship I have ever experienced during my lifetime.

The greatest gift to come out of that relationship is that for the first time ever I feel really optimistic and hopeful about the idea of being in a relationship with someone.

I have learned that I have a lot to offer and I am no longer afraid to receive care and affection from another person. I don't feel burdened with baggage or bad feelings. I have learned to expect the best not the worst.

Have you ever gotten to the end of a relationship feeling wounded, hurt, angry, broken, rejected or betrayed? I have and in the past those feelings made it difficult if not impossible for me to consider looking for another relationship. They left me feeling bitter and wondering why in the hell I should ever bother with finding love ever again.

I now know why I should bother.

I'm not bitter, angry or wounded. I am optimistic about my ability to be in a successful relationship and I believe I can evolve this newly discovered piece of myself into something amazing. The possibilities excite me. My life is great and how great it would be to share it with somebody someday. How great it would be to be a part of someone else's great life.

Many of my longtime readers are probably reading this and wondering if an alien has zapped my brain into mush.

Who are you and what did you do with the real Kathy Howe!?!?

I am in love with the idea of being in love, dear friends.

Kathy Howe doesn't talk like that!

She does now.

All the fears I had about relationships before are gone. I'm not saying they are gone forever, that I am somehow eternally cured, but right now I feel confident that I can make good choices about men. I have finally abandoned all my baggage from relationships gone by. It is a very free feeling.

All the fear has left me now
I'm not frightened anymore.
It's my heart that pounds beneath my flesh.
it's my mouth that pushes out this breath.
~Sarah McLachlan

In short my announcement is this:

I will not be returning to my dating hiatus.

The sun keeps shining, the birds are still singing, kegs of beer continue to flow, life is good and I'm going on a date in one month.

Operation Love Me Tender is scheduled for mid-November.

Over time I suspect that I will carefully reveal more information about Operation Love Me Tender while obviously being respectful of his privacy and mine.

I will also have to come up with a good moniker for him.

As I have said a thousand times before, protecting the privacy of the people that I write about here, the people that I share my life with, is incredibly important to me. I share people here because they play important roles in my life. I would never hope to bring hurt or harm to anyone that I choose to share with all of you.

I will tell you this much:

While he is someone I have known for awhile, he is not someone I have ever directly written about here on Kazoofus. He has many wonderful qualities and from what I can tell he meets my initial set of requirements for a man. He comes with no red flags, critical flaws or questionable characteristics whatsoever.

It seems that the idiot magnet that was once affixed to my ass has gone missing.

It is nice to be free of dead weight.

Life is whatever you decide you want it to be, friends and I declare my life to be very, very good.

In my head: Love Me Tender by Elvis Presley