Over the past few months, I have had a less than stellar experience with a certain gentleman, who, it turns out, is neither gentle (by which I mean, classy and reputable) nor a man (possible emotional age: 7). This situation has now been over for a few weeks. I am very happy that this situation is over. I’m happy because I hadn’t realized how miserable it had been making me until I got out and took a step back from the situation. I do not want to go into details because this is not the space for details (if you want details, pull up a chair, pour me an extra-dry gin martini with two olives and settle in for a long night), but suffice it to say that the details involved me making a lot of allowances for stupid behaviour and, in return, being generally ignored. And the whole time I felt very trapped because I felt like I could somehow make it work but was scared of getting stuck in something that wasn’t working, and more and more I felt like I was getting stuck because every time something stupid would happen, something marginally charming would follow, making me think that I was overreacting and should give things another chance.
But anyhow. I’m really glad that this is over. I live in a giant city that is full of boys. I do not need to settle for being treated like I don’t matter. Also, I have shit to do. I do not have time to be worrying that some dude is taking me for a ride. And I have made some wonderful, amazing friends since I moved here, and now I can cultivate those relationships in my free time rather than something that was clearly non-functional.
Having said all of this, for some reason tonight has been hard and lonely. I think it’s because I have been masochistically looking back to my first date with dude and thinking about how much I liked him then and how excited I was because he seemed so wonderful and amazing and perfect and everything that I wanted right then. And I remember that first time he came over for dinner and how it was so fun. And that time we went looking at street art on Melrose and how it was so fun. And then I get sad because that fun was so promising! What happened to that fun? I mean, that’s all I want. Fun.
Anyhow, nights like this I busy myself with learning about France and when things seem dire, I turn to my Quirkyalone book because my Quirkyalone book understands me really well. And here, here is what it has to say about how I have been feeling tonight:
“In the wake of meeting someone who fulfills all our desired soul-mate qualities and yet does not deliver on his or her soul-mate potential, the quirkyalone goes through a crisis. A great gulf opens up between the contentedly single quirkyalone and the fixated one, who keeps replaying the same cinematic image from the beginning of the relationship over and over again . . . But if ‘the relationship’ is thwarted by awkward logistics, the initial image becomes fixed, like a record repeating. We all see the potential of that relationship held in one moment, and we can’t forget it.”
Yes yes yes. I feel like there is potential to go deeper with this and throw a little Kristeva in for good measure if you’re feeling cocky, but right now, just having that feeling articulated for me makes me feel significantly less like a loser for feeling it.
But anyhow. I know that tomorrow will be much better because tomorrow I am going adventuring and I will maybe do some baking and I will learn some more about France (learning about France is actually the bane of my existence right now, but I feel like if I just learn to embrace it as part of my current state of being for the next few weeks, I will somehow manage to muddle through)