It's Been A Minute...

It's been a minute since I posted any content on here.  Which doesn't actually matter since I'm the only one who reads it.

I am, thereby, effectively talking to myself here.

I'm OK with that. 

Nothing much has changed, though, so even had I kept religiously to my blogging here...I'd still be right where I left off a year ago only YOU the non-existent reader would be really, really bored.  So I did you a favor by not posting, truth be told.

YOU'RE WELCOME.

I started online dating again--after a year long hiatus.  It's only been a few weeks but I'm committed to really, REALLY trying.

This time.

Maybe.

We'll see.

A good friend recently got married.  I met her just a few months before she met her husband.  She was really, really eager to be in love...to be married.  She'd had her wedding partly planned out with each relationship and felt heartbreak after heartbreak.

She and I had made plans to join some kind of group dating service, but then, lo and behold, she met "the one" (via online dating), and she knew almost immediately...as in, within a month.

I was SUPER skeptical.

First of all, how does one "know" in ONE month that one is "meant to be" FOREVER...?????  That's the REST OF YOUR LIFE!!!  I was flabbergasted...but my friend was SO sure.

Secondly, he didn't seem to be acting/behaving like a man who was similarly "into" HER.  For example, he flaked on dates (frequently) & sometimes took hours to respond to text messages.  She and I had many, many conversations about what this meant, exactly.  Did he like her?  Was he "into" her?  We sometimes couldn't tell--or, at least, I couldn't.  She was SURE the whole time that it was "true love".  When she would recount the latest drama of him not texting or cancelling a date etc. etc.  I remember deliberately trying to keep my facial expressions neutral so as not to reveal my true feelings (one of my eyebrows tends to reflexively & TOTALLY involuntarily raise-entirely of it's own volition-when faced with things that appear/present as bullshit...It's not my fault & totally out of my control.  It's a ROGUE eyebrow).  It just felt like he was at least sending "mixed signals", if not telling her that he was "just not that into her" by his lack of responsiveness or his flaki-ness, and in my world that was someone to be DUMPED...promptly.  Why waste your time??  It just seemed so clear to me that if he were REALLY "into" her, that he would "make time" and that she would SO OBVIOUSLY become the priority.

But, as it turned out, the whole time he was SURE that she was also "the one", only he was terrified of messing it up. 

After four months of dating they moved in together.  Two months later he proposed, she accepted & they married less than two years after their first date in a lovely, intimate ceremony wherein their self-written vows brought the entire audience to tears. 

So sweet.

Simultaneous to this happy event, I had another friend who, in the decade I have known her, had dated jerk after jerk, married man after married man (often without her realizing they were married) only to suddenly reconnect with an old flame-a MARRIED old flame.  She declared it to be fate (his marriage was "falling apart", after all), and he declared that he'd never stopped loving her...8 months later he left his wife, filed divorce papers & they are planning their life together. 

All this has shown me that you just never know.

Life can change on a dime.

I am sincerely, fervently hoping that this holds true for me as well...

Where Am I & What Happened To My Youth?

Do you ever sometimes notice something about yourself, and you're all like...

WHY IS THIS HAPPENING TO ME!!!????

And then you do the math in your head and realize you are approaching OLD?

I do.

About once a week these days.

This week I noticed the two horizontal lines on my forehead that don't go away despite my best efforts to relax my face.

I also noticed 37 gray hairs. 

I plucked 17 of them before my ADD got the better of me and I lost focus.

Some things about aging I like. 

SOME.

Most I do not.

I do not like:

-gray hair
-achy joints
-that I have to stop and wait for my hips to adjust when rising from an extended sitting period
-wrinkles
-age spots
-decreased brain plasticity
-mammograms
-worrying about retirement plans
-fucking EVERYTHING

Which brings me to what I DO like about aging....

I'm sorry, what was I talking about?

I'm so old I can't remember.

Relationships

Relationships are hard. 

I think that the closer you are to someone, the more intertwined your emotional well being is, and thus, the harder the relationship.

This is why I don't do relationships.  Because I am emotionally stunted and consistently disappointed by the efforts of others.

I am consistently heartbroken.

This is nothing new.  I've been working through this shit since I was old enough to understand that I had an....interesting childhood. 

My mother grew up in a very abusive home.  And I don't mean that her mother didn't let her stay up late or  eat candy or watch PG-13 movies...No.  I mean that her mother was a cruel, emotionally manipulative, vindictive, abuser.  My grandmother was a horrible person. 

In my grandmother's defense-she had a horrible childhood.  I mean, we're talking left-alone-in-an-orphanage-at-a-young-age-and-deprived-of-human-contact kind of horrible, so it's no surprise that my grandmother didn't develop empathy properly.  Therefore its no surprise that she was a horrible mother to my mother-abusive, vindictive, and MEAN.

Therefore, it's no surprise that my own mother struggled.  By all accounts she did OK at first.  I have three older siblings who recall having a maternal figure in their formative years who was reasonably responsive and kind. 

But then I was born. 

And I was the straw that broke the proverbial camel's back.

My mother had a nervous breakdown when I was 18 months old and was totally checked out for the remainder of my childhood (until I was 15 years old when she found Jesus and became a born again..thanks-a-fucking-lot Jesus).

The prevailing emotion I recall feeling from my mother growing up was that I was a real, giant pain in her ass most of the time.  My mother was largely bedridden.  I remember the house being dark all the time-curtains drawn, mom shut up in her room.  I remember having to speak in hushed tones and tip-toe around so as not to disturb her. 

WE MUST NOT DISTURB MOTHER.

Much, much later I would learn that my mother suffered a wide variety of physical maladies during those 13 years, the most severe of which was a bought of tuberculosis.  I understand everything much more now as an adult, particularly since I obtained a graduate degree in psychology. 

I understand how difficult it must've been for her to behave in a nurturing way to her children having had no practical experience of what that would look like.  I understand now how profoundly disabling chronic, physical illness must have been for my mother and how hard that must've made it for her to meet even the most basic of care needs of her four children.  I understand, now, how debilitating chronic, major depression is and how little practical support my father offered which must've made my mother feel so, very alone.  And having spent a significant time alone with, and in charge of, young children I now understand how trying they can be.  I understand how intense the needs of small children are.  I understand, now, how that could wear on the nerves of even the most patient, loving parent.  And, thus, I understand how, for someone like my mom-who entered into parenthood ill equipped to begin with-how it just wasn't possible for her to be unconditionally loving.  To this day my mom struggles with unconditional love.  She remains horribly critical, extremely defensive and totally unavailable emotionally to those around her.

I understand now that it's not her fault and I no longer blame her-though, it's taken me years and years of therapy to say that and truly believe it.  The fact is, my mother's mother was fucked up and she, in turn, fucked my mother up who fucked me up--but not on purpose. 

And I know that I can forever cross my mother off my list of people from whom I should expect to receive unconditional love and affectionate regard. 

And I am mostly OK with that.

I don't know that this will ever stop me from wanting, from longing to be the recipient of unconditional love.

And I do long for it, even though I'm not sure I even know what it looks like to be unconditionally loved.

I don't know that I even believe that unconditional love exists.

I want to.  I really, really, want to believe.

But I wonder...how will I know it if I find it?

How can I give it if I don't even know how to receive it?

How do I know that my grandmother's damaged past, passed on to my mother and relegated to me, wont prevent me from being totally incapable of reciprocating unconditional love even if I am lucky enough to receive it?

I don't know that my childhood wont stop me from being ENTIRELY skeptical on the occasions when I do manage to recognize it or from being resistant to believing that it exists...even when I think I see it plainly in front of me.

And, most scary?

How do I know that all of the above makes me damaged goods-totally incapable of being for someone what they need of unconditional love?

Online Dating

I'm doing online dating.

This is my third, or fourth (I've blocked some of them out) attempt at online dating.

I'm doing eharmony this time around.

By "doing" I mean to say that I've created a profile, "winked" at some people who never responded and engaged in email dialogues with some really old, really unattractive, really uninteresting people.

Because, so far, that's the clientele who is interested in my milkshake.

You know that Kelis song, 'Milkshake'?

It goes like this:

My milkshake brings all the boys to the yard,
And they're like
It's better than yours,
Damn right it's better than yours,
I can teach you,
But I have to charge 

At this point, I feel like I need to pay them to come to my milkshake.

Oh, wait...I AM. 

I actually PAY eharmony to bring these men into my yard.

FUCK.  MY.  Life.

I'm Lonely.

I only really write when I’m lonely. 

Or sad. 

Or depressed. 

Happy times, happy thoughts rarely ever motivate me to write. 

I did try a gratitude journal once, though-because I’d read good things.  About how gratitude journals can change perspective, shift reality and cure depression. 

I wrote faithfully every day. 

I was grateful for ladybugs, and flowers, and warm weather and rainbows-ad nauseum.  I wrote and wrote and waiting for a gratitude epiphany.

I’m still waiting.

I don’t know why I’m lonely.  Well, that’s not true-I’m lonely because I’m alone.

I want to be cared for.  I want to have someone to turn to, to cry to, to share my day with.

It’s not that I don’t have friends or family-some very, very good friends and some very, very good family-it’s just that all of them have that person in their life already.  For better or worse, they have that husband, wife or long-term partner.  That person that caused them to go from being a single entity you invite out for drinks to being so-and-so AND so-and-so you double date with.

I am simply of that age where everyone else in my circle has coupled up.

And I want that too.

My friends are great but, truthfully, I often feel like they don’t really have time for me-not in the way that I need, anyways.  If I have a bad day, I have a list of people I can call-all of whom will be wonderful and supportive, but all of whom may or may not have the time to listen because they have a spouse or kids or a significant other that takes precedence. 

I want to have someone to take precedence.  I want to be someone's person who takes precedence. 

I want to be one of those people who has THAT person in their life.
 

Is that wrong?

I don’t know why I don’t have somebody. 

I have been single for 12 years.  TWELVE YEARS.  In that time I have had 6…maybe 7 dates in that time.

I feel very, very embarrassed to write that out loud.

What’s wrong with me?  There must be something wrong with me, right?

I feel sure there must be.  I feel equally sure I need to figure it out and fix it or risk being alone forever...right? 

But I’ve run the gamut.  Am I ugly?  Am I too fat?  Am I too insecure?  Do I not love myself enough, thereby making love from the outside impossible to its way to me?  Am I somehow damaged inside so deep down that I’m not even aware of it?  Do I somehow unknowingly or subconsciously not want to be loved and so I’m putting that out to the world like a giant “Don’t LOVE ME!!!! STAY AWAY!” red flag waving for only potential love-matches to see?

No, no, no, no and no.

I mean, at least...I don't think so.

To the first count: I’m not drop-dead gorgeous, by any means, but I think I'm cute.  I'm at the very least not ugly though, truth be told, I take a horrible photo-EVERY single time. 

NO, really.  

I know some people say that, but in my case it's true.  It's like some kind of weird reverse photoshop magic wherein I look regular in person but like a disfigured hippo in photographs.  Everybody sees it, it's not just me.

But even if I were ugly, I see plenty of ugly people who managed to find someone to love them.  Just today, in fact, I was watching an episode of 'Stalked' wherein this really, really unattractive woman was stalked by a decent looking (albeit crazy) man and I thought to myself, 'wow...she's really unattractive', and my next thought was, 'See?!  Even unattractive people can find love'...

Ok, sorry.  That's not the best example.

But you know what I mean. 

We've all been there.  You're walking the mall or the grocery story and you see a lovey-dovey couple walk past and one of them is substantially less attractive than the other.

Amiright?

Those couples give me peace.  I think, 'ok-it's not my looks because clearly I'm better looking than the ugly half of that couple and I'm still alone...'

To my other points...I am a bit fat at the moment, but that hasn’t always been the case and even when I was super skinny I still couldn’t find love. 

I’m definitely not insecure-maybe I used to be, but not anymore.  I feel pretty good about me these days-not great, but certainly not so fraught with insecurity that I’m sure that’s what people see.  In fact, more often than not, I get the opposite feedback from people when I do confess to an insecurity or two in the form of, “really? You always struck me as so confident."

And I’m certainly not damaged goods.  I mean, I’ve got some issues here and there-nobody’s perfect.  But for the most part I feel like I’ve worked hard on myself and had some good therapy and feel like I've worked out most of my major kinks at this point in my life. 

This is where my mind takes a dramatic turn and I think, OH MY GOD. 

I’m in denial.

Clearly I have so many issues that I’M NO LONGER AWARE THAT I HAVE ISSUES.  

And, CLEARLY, those issues are so great and so profound that they are, like, sending out 'issue-vibes' to men like a beacon, warning them to RUN LIKE THE WIND...

And then I re-read this whole blog post and realize that I'm a giant narcissist and clearly that's the problem...

 

Inaugural Post

I’m not going to tell anybody about this blog. 

If you’re reading this it’s because you don’t know me and maybe you’ll stick around to read along because you’re a little bored, or a glutton for punishment, or you want to feel a little bit better about yourself by reading the blog of a really, really imperfect person. 

But if you’re reading this it can’t be because you know me personally.

Because that’s the only way I’ll be able to be really, really honest.  That’s the only way this will stay my safe place.

I’ll put all my realest (not a word but this is my safe place so SUCK IT word police) thoughts and feelings, no matter how shameful or ugly.

I plan to use this space as a journal of sorts...buuuuut, I'm not real good at follow through, so this may be the only post ever.

 

Just sayin'.