Alone
Sure those are some lyrics from a decades-old cheesy love song by Celine Dion…but that first line has been swimming around in my head all day. I haven’t blogged in a long, long time and I know it. It started out that I stopped blogging because I was never home to do so. It doesn’t take very long to punch one of these out because—as I recently learned—I can type 77 words per minute with only 2% error. So it wasn’t really a time issue. It was mostly because I wouldn’t get home until really late at night…bedtime really…and by that time I was just too tired to look within myself and convey my thoughts in to words and then add what little wit I had left so that it was online post-able.
There was a time not so long ago that being home was almost torture for me as it has been so many times in the past. You see…after all these years I’m starting to understand that it’s me. I’m the one at fault. I am better off—and most likely destined to be—alone. I have had more roommate situations go bad than I care to look back and reminisce on. Seriously…it’s bad. It always starts out as a good idea. Some really great friend of mine or some great friend of a friend…a really really cute apartment made more affordable by splitting rent…and a lease is signed. The rest is history.
Except that my fabulous situations quickly end up not so fabulous. When I was in college it wasn’t any big deal because I was always living with a gaggle of single girls. We all went out, hung out, ate together, drank together, lived…together. Sometimes boys would come and go and it would be okay, but nothing serious really. I had what you might call a relationship in college as well so I wasn’t home perhaps as often as I am these days. I did spend a lot of time at his house…but that was because I was obsessed. He always made it pretty clear to me that I wasn’t welcome to live there by any means so I would always come home at some point. Rarely did I spend more than one day there without at least going home to shower, work, go to class, etc. I never once showered at his place and I usually left in morning. Either way though…things in school were much easier because we were all on the same playing field.
Then everyone started to get older and the relationships became more serious. Things started to change. My roommates may have started out single, but they didn’t stay that way. Some of my best memories were of me and my friend/roommate going out on the town and living it up and then coming home and ordering pizza and dishing about our night. Or better yet…meeting up in the morning after our shared nights in random beds. But I never did bring a boy…sorry, GUY (I’ve been chastised for using boy as I am now pushing 30 and “boy” sounds a bit pedo if you know what I mean)…never did I bring a guy home to stay. Oh they stayed the night, but they were sure to leave first thing in the morning. A second or third night was a rare occasion...usually it was just one. And usually I didn't have them come to my place...I went to theirs instead.
But my roommates…oh those wonderful ladies were much luckier in love than I have ever been. They’d bring men home to stay. And stay they did. Over night…every night…every day…every weekend…even holidays. It was an end to the “let’s buy a bag and get high while watching scary movies”…or “let’s buy a box of wine and get drunk watching Sex and the City” nights. Going out to bars to meet men was out of the question. Girl’s night, dishing about random sex-capades, asking dating advice, bitching about school, bitching about work, bitching about life! All over. The thing about women who have men over is that they seldom want to sit and spend time with you in the living room catching up on old Friend’s episodes.
I can’t say that I blame them. I really can’t blame a person for wanting to spend every waking moment with a new love/lust/flame/fling. It’s exciting. Not that I really remember…but I try to. The thing is, well…the thing is that this new love interest pushes the roommate—namely me—aside. And I am alone. I am living with someone, but living alone at the same time. Or worse, really, living with a happy couple who has no interest in including me in their romance.
Bitter though it sounds…I hate it. I’m the jealous type and I’m not going to sit here and try to convince you otherwise; but it wasn’t so much a jealousy for the relationship I wasn’t in as I was angry that I was forced in to this third wheel position. I need someone in my life at all times who is there for me no matter what. Someone I can count on to drop everything and be there for me should I need them. Someone who will spend time with me when I’m feeling alone. The jealousy came from the fact that my roommates were now with men and weren’t going to be my go-to person anymore. They now had someone they’d rather eat dinner with…someone they’d rather spend time with…someone else to listen to them, hang out with them, drink with them, be with them. I have no problem being single until every I know isn’t.
I think most of my roommates just figured I was a bitter jealous single girl who hated all people in happy relationships. I really don’t. If I live with someone, though…I don’t want to be on the outside looking in. I don’t want to feel like a third wheel in my own house. I don’t want to have to change my lifestyle for someone else’s man. I don’t want to be put out of my bathroom because he’s showering. I don’t want to be forced to eat dinner later because he’s cooking in my kitchen. I don’t want to have to park farther away from my apartment because his car is always there. And frankly…if I’m not fucking the guy I don’t want him wandering around my apartment shirtless or in his skivvies on a regular basis!
The worst part is that I lose my partner in crime. I have to go hang out at other people’s apartments to have someone to hang out with. I’ve always looked at roommate situations as always having someone to hang out with. It’s never been all business with me which is why I take it so personal. I’ve never just moved in with someone for the pure fact that it’s cheap and for us to live our separate lives. I like being an important part in my roommate’s lives and I can’t help it that I’m that type of person. Anyone who gets in the way just becomes a thorn in the side of my life and I try desperately to pull it out and toss it in the trash!
So, long story short, it’s just easier to live alone. I expect entirely too much of people and in the end they always end up disappointing me, because…well…they’re human. It’s unfair to expect that a person will just always be there for me when I need them, especially when they have their own life to live. It’s doomed from the beginning in that respect. I can’t expect my friend’s to stay single because it’s easier for me. On the flip side…if any of my friends are ridiculously single, apparently all they need to do is move in with me…
This brings me to my next point and title of this blog... Alone. I’m alone. Ideally this situation wouldn’t even occur because I’d have my own man to spend my days with. I know I’m difficult to live with because I project unattainable qualities on to the other person…but I don’t know if the same can be said of the men in my life. Really even saying “the men in my life” seems a bit ridiculous considering there aren’t any. But of the few men who have passed through my meager 28 years…none have stayed. Sometimes it was my choice—like when I was a confused and prudish teenager—but mostly not. Mostly it’s been because I’m just not the one for them.
I’m not the girl I once was…as stupid and obvious as that sounds. When I was a teenager I was ridiculously self-conscious. I thought I was hideous and that there was no way any boy (I think I can use boy when speaking of this age) would ever want me. All my friends were skinny and cute. All the boys liked them. They were the ones with all the boyfriends. They were the ones making out and having sex. I was afraid of boys back then. I was afraid they’d never want someone like me. I was…dare I even say it…shy. I dated one guy for, like, 2 months. He was way more experienced than me in every way and I was never convinced he actually liked me. When he pressed for more than just kissing I’d clam up because I was soooo unbelievably self-conscious. Taking off clothes was NOT an option for me in any way, shape, or form. So I dumped him. And he went on to have quite the steamy affair with my best friend.
The next guy was much older than me, but still inexperienced in the bed room so I felt safe. He was incredibly in to me and that made me even more uncomfortable. How could anyone like me that much? I couldn’t understand why he was so in to me. It was just me. I’m no catch…or so I thought. I thought I was just another dull and boring-looking girl who wouldn’t put out. In the end I broke his heart because I wasn’t ready for what it was he was offering me. I believed every compliment was false. I never thought he could truly feel about me the way he did because I didn’t feel that way about me. He’d call me beautiful and wonderful and everything he ever wanted…and I’d shrink back in to my safe place. Both of these boys are happily married…or so I hear.
The last one was a bit trickier. The summer between high school and college was an eye-opener. While I still remained virginal…I was much more open with the guys I’d met. Summer meant a job in the Dells which meant guys from all over southern Wisconsin …and really, the world! I met guys who didn’t know me in high school. Guys who had no idea who I was in the eighth grade. Guys who never saw me in gym class. It was amazing! It was a completely different playing field. I was able to see that, yeah…I was pretty hot. And I was…I certainly was. I see that now.
If I can reminisce here for a moment…I had a day where I was lifeguarding at Family Land and a bachelor party was there. One very very cute guy seemed actually interested in me. He even took a permanent marker and wrote our names in a heart onto his arm. Then whenever that group of guys would pass me by they’d all chant my name. It was a day I will never, ever forget because a hot guy was interested in me after meeting me in my bathing suit—of all things to be wearing at the time! And it was little moments like that where I slowly began to realize I was worth something too. Guys weren’t just interested in my friends for their looks…they were interested because my friends actually had confidence. The second I started showing some confidence and there I was in the back seat of my car with an incredibly hot guy getting naked and not letting him take my virginity. Haha…what a memory. But the tables had turned. I had the power now. I could choose a cute guy and make out with him if I wanted to. It was incredibly empowering.
I went to college with that same attitude. I was feeling hot and might I be so bold as to say…looking hot. Confidence is probably the sexiest thing a woman can have if you ask me. Of course I got a little drunk, figuratively and literally, on all this confidence. I started going after outrageously unattainable men. They were older than me…WAY more experienced sexually…and fraternity men to boot. Fraternity men do not linger on 18 year old girls all that often. We are more of a passing fancy I suppose. But all that ended with the last boyfriend I had. All these many years ago it was…but I remember as if it was yesterday.
A decade ago I met my last boyfriend. And in the end, it was ugly. I don’t have the time or the energy to describe that failed relationship. Any one of my friends from college reading this knows exactly what I’m talking about. It was a whirlwind of emotions that only a person leaving their teenage years and entering their 20’s can really experience. It was shy and coy when it started. Then it was hot and passionate in the middle. And the end was something so hugely horrible that doctors prescribing meds was the only way to end it for me.
I had started college as a girl ready to take on the world and ended college as a girl who thought her life was over. I had no self-esteem left. None. All that confidence I got after I graduated high school…gone. Every piece of happiness I had built in the years to follow was shattered on to the ground. There was nothing left of the girl I once was. My hopes and dreams and zest for life ended the day I heard him tell me he had met someone else. In all honesty it needed to happen. Whatever it was that we had needed to end. I am not sorry that he met her because she was what we needed to walk away. As long as he was with me, I was going to be with him. The second he met her he found his way to get out of the disastrous horror of a relationship we had ended up in.
It’s been over 5 years since he met her and we ended. They’re getting married…or so I hear. And here I am…sitting in my no bedroom efficiency…alone. I have no man. I have no roommate. I have no one to be here with me at night besides my wonderful feline companion who has been with me for 8 fabulous years now. Through thick and thin this furry little girl has been my only constant companion. Sad as that is. She’s seen me through every man I’ve ever brought home and kept my bed warm for me when I was gone. And that, to me, is one of the most pathetic stories ever.
There has been no other relationship in my life since that last one. I have met men…many, many men. I began trying to build myself back up the second that last one ended. I’m not so sure I did a good job of it because really what happened is I started sleeping with every single guy I met who showed even a little bit of interest in me. Unfortunately my ex had a deep-fried tooth that packed the pounds on to the both of us in the 5 years we were a part of each other’s lives. Fortunately for him, he shed the pounds of our relationship quickly. Instead, I just ate more. I was already 4 sizes bigger than when I got to college so what did it matter?
I am not sure what it was that I mustered up in myself to find these guys. I had lost my virginity to the ex guy so I think the possibility of adding another notch to my bedpost is what made things with guy number 2 so hot and heavy. It lasted a few times over a few months but was never meant to be anything more. When I showed up to his place and couldn’t find a clear path to his dingy bedroom with a bare mattress and brown sheets…it was over with him. He was really more of a therapeutic tool anyway. An encounter I was able to bring up with the ex when he asked me how I was doing one day on the phone. He and I continued to sleep together until he decided he didn’t want to ruin what it was he had started with the new girl.
I, on the other hand, continued to sleep around. Guy number 3 came quickly, er…I mean soon after guy 2. Guy number 4 I actually, legitimately liked. He had, unfortunately, dated one of my sorority sisters and was still really hung up on her. I think he only slept with me because one night at the bar I convinced him that the only way to get over her was to sleep around. Meaning, with me. Luck would have it that we were drunk at the same wedding. Once he found out I actually liked him…he bolted.
Guys number 5, 6, and 7 could be anyone really. Sure one or two of them were that rare booty call that I hooked up with on a few occasions…but I never liked them past the fact that one was a well-endowed, extremely hot, high school quarterback…ahhh memories… Pretty sure I was just a sad joke to him, but I’ll let memory remain positive because there’s really no reason to go back to hear the truth.
Without going in to detail and giving away just how much of a slut I’ve been these past 5 years…let’s just sum it up to say that I’ve had my fair share of fun. Of all the “fun” I’ve had…only 2 guys have been guys I actually liked and/or known outside the bedroom. One guy I met shortly after starting my new job here in Madison and boy did I fall hard for him. It’s just my luck of course that he had a girlfriend. Anyone who read my myspace blog will remember this guy. What an experience that was. Again, without writing a novel here, let’s just say that ended pretty badly. Eventually he was single and, yes, we kinda started to maybe not really hook up…but it was over as soon as it had started. For whatever reason, of which I will NEVER ask, he didn’t want to go any further than talking about it. Just my luck again…
The next guy I crushed on a lot…but only because he was…is…drop-dead gorgeous. He charmed almost every woman (of all ages) in our office and I was no exception. I wanted him naked in my bed as soon as I met him. That was one of THE most awesome catches I ever made. That first night I actually got him in to bed I felt like I had really accomplished something. I was flying high on that one for quite some time. So much time actually that we continued to sleep together for 3 years. Without a relationship, of course, because that’s…my luck. We were never emotionally or mentally compatible. We slept together when we had nothing better to do…and I mean that literally as well. We’ve only just recently ended it because lines got crossed and it wasn’t pleasant, nor worth the effort anymore.
Coming to a close would be the last guy I’ve liked. Highly inappropriate in every way possible is really the only way I can describe it and keep the innocent anonymous. As much as I’d hoped things would be different this time around…they weren’t. I have an uncanny ability to find the most emotionally unstable men to walk the Earth. I have no idea why that is. Perhaps a psychologist may play with the theory that I have had no stable man in my life since my dad walked out when I was a baby so I am continually finding men who are impossible to emotionally tie down…but that seems like such a cop out. No more of a cop out than saying “that’s my luck” but really it seems to be the truth.
I’d like to think that it’s just because these men aren’t capable of being in a healthy relationship with anyone, let alone me…but that’s not usually the case. Some of them have gone on to be in really happy relationships…some even ending in marriage. I hate to sit here and think of all the things that are wrong with me. Am I a horrible person? Am I crazy? Clingy? High-maintenance? Stupid? Un-interesting? Not funny? Careless? Disloyal? Selfish? Mean? Angry? Bitter?
Of course I don’t believe I am any of these things…but who does, right? I always figure it comes down to my looks. I get yelled at regularly by my friends for saying this. I also get told regularly by my friends that I’m beautiful, blah, blah, blech. But I just don’t know what it is about me that is so un-datable. Perhaps I don’t wear the years of hardship on me well. I’m sure my face is in a constant pinched sour-puss expression…I’m sure of it because I get told to smile a lot when I’m at work. When I was getting my hair done for a wedding not long ago the girl told me my hair looked so good on me when I smiled. I was probably sitting there scowling and didn’t even know it.
I think it’s just everything weighing down on me…and again…I mean literally. All the years of eating crap with the ex added 4 sizes to me (well 5, but I’ve managed to lose and keep off that last size some how). Unlike him, I didn’t shed the pounds of our relationship. No, I ate more. I was miserable and lonely so I ate more and didn’t exercise and every year I was shopping a size up. And if it wasn’t bad enough that I had added all this weight…but I also was an empty vessel of self-hate when he broke up with me and I never filled it back up again. I’m sure that’s what shows on me when I meet men. I’m sure I reek of desperation in the late hours of the night as I lie next to them and watch them sleep hoping that just once they’d feel about me the way I feel about them.
Any self-confidence I portrayed out at the bars with my friends was only half-real. I’ve now learned that men who are zeroed in on finding a skinny chesty blond is not a man I want to spend the rest of my life with. If looks are all that matter to him then he’s not the guy for me. If a guy is going to take one look at me and judge me then, frankly, he can piss off. I don’t care for men who think they are better than a women based solely on what they see on the outside. I don’t have time for a guy who values looks over brains. I mean…when we’re 80 we’re all going to look like wrinkly caricatures of our former selves so there’s no point in getting caught up in what we look like in our youth.
Yes I know looks play a part. I know there has to be an attraction…but I feel like I can still at least attract men. If my score card doesn’t prove that…I don’t know what does. But as of late, I’m only attracting men I’m not interested in. I come from a two-times-broken home…not many people are in the same boat as me. Honestly, I find it a waste of time and energy to date someone just purely to date them. I am 28 years friggen old. My classmates are married with multiple children and I’m single as the day is long and will remain so as long as I don’t find anyone worth spending my life with.
I see no need to string along a guy based on the sole fact that he likes me. In fact, I think it’s really sad to be with a man who likes you just because he’s the only one who likes you right now. I don’t want to settle for the first guy who falls in love with me if I don’t love him back. I’m not saying I won’t date a guy if I don’t see marriage happening. I’m totally fine with flings. Better than fine really. But I’m not going to date someone I’m not in to just because he’s in to me. Unfortunately…every guy who has been in to me (and the list ain’t long) is just not for me.
The thing is…I can’t even get a date. I can’t even find a guy semi-interesting who wants to go on a date with me. They’re either really pushy drunk men at bars…or they’re just someone I don’t really care to spend my free time with on a regular basis. Every time I feel like I really click with a guy…he ends up with some skinny blond. It’s enough to make a girl think that the only way I’m going to find a man is if I dye my hair and have some plastic shrinking surgery done. Seriously. If this weren’t a public forum I could list off men and their subsequent lady choices that are all pretty much the same outcome.
I always thought I was an interesting person. I feel like I’m funny enough because I can make people laugh. I’m not in to games but somehow seem to find myself in the middle of them. I’d rather cut out the bullshit since I’m not getting any younger. It’d be nice to meet a guy…have a nice conversation…and then have him ask me out. Being a bartender I meet lots of guys and have lots of nice talks…but have only been asked for my number once and that was only because he was drunk, just divorced, and Mexican. He thought it was awesome that I was also part Mexican. That was the end of that fascination I suppose.
Maybe I should be more forthcoming…but I think it’s a little weird to be all like, hey here’s your beer and here’s my number. I don’t know. I don’t go out anymore because I can’t afford it. I don’t remember the last time I got all dressed up and went out to a bar and talked to men. God that’s sad. That used to be every weekend for me…but then I started working weekends and making no money and it all ended. Now I meet men at work all day long…but I see them flocking to my co-workers instead.
It’s okay. I know I don’t look anything like that 18 year old girl anymore. Most days, mustering that old twinkle in my eyes I used to have regularly is just too hard to do. The take on the world with my smile, smile…well…it’s few and far between. I feel like I’ve lost whatever it was about me that was once special. That thing that attracted men to me. Whether it be my size or my attitude or both that keep me from being with who I want to be with…is not really the point I suppose. I need to get that spark back. I need to be that care-free girl I used to be. I need to find my inner innocent 18 year old who thought that she had the entire world open to her. I need to work on getting back my positive attitude. All I hear anymore is that my attitude sucks…and I know it does.
My attitude is directly related to the fact that I’ve graduated college and done nothing with my life worth writing home about. I hate to admit that losing a relationship also meant losing my identity. I guess I’ve never really recovered completely what I used to be and I hate that I let it get to that point. I hate that I let one stupid meaningless life experience ruin everything and then prevent the future I always wanted. I’ve gotten down in the dumps about everything in my life to the point where I’m no longer fun to be around.
Sure I still hang out with people. I still crack jokes. I still smile and mean it. I can still have fun. But more often than not I’m still that broken person. For a while I was back in the game. I was. I had—what was at the time—a great job, lots of friends, a regular hot boy to sleep with…then it all broke down again. And I lost her again. I had started building it up and then I got backstabbed by my fabulous friends, lost my positive attitude at work making the job miserable, quit the job, started working full time at a place that I am not proud to work at, and have yet to find a man…and so on, and so on…and there she went again. There went that woman I started building back up.
So even though this was not where I thought this blog would end up…per the usual cathartic exchange of words on paper to a possible audience…I have figured out just where I went wrong. Thank god for blog writing because it always makes me feel better when I’m done—and it’s much cheaper than a therapist! Writing is my therapy. Even if no one reads this, but me…I think I know what path I need to take. My friends have been saying these same things to me for quite some time now…but I just can’t hear it from other people. I’ve always been a person who has to learn it for myself. I have to come to this conclusion on my own and cannot be told. I’ve always been that way.
I suppose I know what I have to do now. I have to find that girl…she still lives in me somewhere, I know it because she peeks out every now and again and surprises me (and probably whoever happens to luckily be around me when she shows her face!) I have to find her, and nurture her, and make sure that she kicks out this ugly person I’ve become. I don’t want to be this way. I want to be someone people want to be around again. I want to love myself, my life, my choices, my outcomes…and hopefully one day, my job! Perhaps then…perhaps when I find all these things within myself I will be ready for a man. And then maybe he will be ready for me. And then maybe I won’t be alone anymore.
Comments
Post a Comment