music, books, love and kindness

 

 

 

 

Whenever I change my mind and decide to try and start dating again, I am always always sorry. Not because the other person is a bad date, but because my experiences end up reminding me that I’m the one who is and Friday nights at home are really better than any night out.

That look (on polite women's faces it’s more a flicker) of disappointment as soon as we meet is disheartening, but the false promises of “I’ll call you” or patronizing declarations of "you're so sweet" are more cruel than actual cruelness would be.

“You don’t look like you sound on the phone” is the most brutal and direct it’s ever gotten and even that’s still mild. Better to be slapped with a hard truth than caressed with a soft lie, the saying goes...or somewhere along those lines.

I’m done. I say this to myself a lot when I get home from a bad date, especially a bad blind date. But this time I mean it. I had only tried again anyway because I am so desperate to forget someone I really do like, who besides being a totally inappropriate and unattainable person to feel this way about is so far outside my league she might as well live at the edge of the universe.

It’s funny. I’ve had one-sided crushes before and been just fine. And I’ve had many bad dates before and been fine afterwards, too. In the past, I could rationalize away the pain because we didn’t have much in common (important things like values and philosophies regarding love and fidelity) anyway.

For the first time in my life, though, books and music just aren’t enough to fill those little holes inside that insist on getting bigger and won't be plugged up with my favorite novels and songs.
 

That visage of someone vague but eventual I used to hope I’d meet someday, the one I’d cook and be there for and snuggle with on the couch watching movies after a long day, is fading more and more each year. The hope you can have in your 20s of falling in love and growing old with someone shines a lot brighter than it does in your 40s.

It's not the bad dates or even this gut instinct that I'm meant to be alone that sadden me. In fact, I'm sure I'm eventually going to be fine and at peace with all of this and books and music will once again put everything back where it belongs.

It's just sometimes in life you meet someone so amazing they somehow leave you longing for something you can never, will never and should never have. The dream becomes a nightmare and only when the dream is over, when you realize you never should have had it all, does true happy ever after begin.