How I Internalized, “People aren’t Red Flags.”

Falling in love with a Storm of a woman

Image Created by Story Luck’s Ai. And shared via Creative Commons Attribution.

I don’t believe in red flags.

Not really. If you are pretty and nice enough to me, I’ll get over anything. We can judge strangers by their warning signs, but not real people. Real people are the sum of their survival strategies, their coping mechanisms, the contradictory multitudes they contain.

A porcelain-skinned Molotov cocktail of a woman taught me this in 2017, starting with three simple words.

“I’m a dancer…”

It’s early November, Chicago cold, and this is our second date. Storm and I are outside, passing by a sports bar that’s hilariously not our scene. She drops the line with a bounce in her step, and I watch her curly, deep-burgundy-past-her-shoulder locks follow the same motion. I’m charmed as the ringlets slinky up and down. She keeps walking ahead of me without looking back. Like a hero, removing herself from an explosion.

“Ahhh, I can see it. Cool.”

There is no way she’s a dancer. She’s on the shorter side of 5'3'’ with beguiling, rosined cheeks and this deceptive, wrathy snark. A hidden hitch in her walk reminds me of the innocence of a puppy still trying to figure graceful out. I dated a dancer once. They are built differently…