music, books, love and kindness

Love is not a competition. Honestly, it's not. Even, when I started middle school and began realizing a little more as each year went on that I was as bad at pairing off as I was at being picked for teams in gym class, I didn't think of love (or the kids' version of it anyway) as something some people were better at than others. 

By high school I had begun to understand why it didn't bother me so much that boys didn't seek me out for dates. I even began to think of my non-popularity, my ability to both stand out as a geek and disappear into thin air as a non-datable, as the perfect cover.

No one would wonder why I didn't go out with boys because it was so perfectly obvious...the shy bookworm with big hair and out-of-fashion clothes would of course be home on Friday and Saturday nights reading her brains out while Chopin played on the stereo. Even my own parents wouldn't think to question why I wasn't interested in a social life. My sister had one big enough for the both of us.

As I grew older and college became so much more socially comfortable and likable than any previous levels of my education, there were different reasons for my not dating. I wanted to, for the first time in my life, but I had to pretend to myself I didn't.

Coming out where I went to college was most certainly not an option, especially not a safe one and most definitely not in the late 80s, and the only girl I really liked, a wildly eccentric and kind girl who had a thing for Gabriel Garcia Marquez, juggling and setting Walt Whitman to music, mostly just patted me on the head and called me "sweet." She would go on, as a straight woman, to champion gay causes years down the road, but at that time I had no clue if I would lose her friendship or not by confiding I had a crush on her.

I cherished our discussions after English class two days a week and then spent the rest of my time trying my best to like boys anyway. I met a guy who liked Roger Whittaker albums and bow ties. He was nice enough and I found his steps out of time charming, but my heart wasn't in it. When he started going out with my friend the next month, it didn't hurt at all. I went back to being the girl with the big hair and crazy clothes and read in my dorm all weekend long.

For all of my twenties I would try and make myself like the men who occasionally asked me out on dates. I did it to please my parents and to put forth one last ditch effort (again and again) to be as normal as possible. I wanted normalcy and my parents' love more than what my heart really wanted: a deep and meaningful relationship with someone kind and smart and passionate about books and music, who just happened to also be a girl.

Sometimes it feels like things come full circle...in my late 30s I couldn't stand faking my way through my personal life so I went to a singles group for gay women and when that didn't work tried the personals. It was like middle school again, only this time I did care I was un-datable and that things like "the third date rule" were deal-breakers and statements like "What do you mean you're old-fashioned? Lesbian can't be conservative and religious" abounded right and left. I would rather be alone than give in to some skewed dating 101 philosophy I didn't believe in.

Once again, minus the big hair and crazy clothes, I find myself home on weekend nights reading books and listening to music. And as before I don't really mind at all...because they might not be everyone's definition of love, but for me, right now at least, books and music are...because love isn't a competition, it's about finding what makes you happy, even if it isn't always a person.