Positively Scarred

As I stated in a previous post, I’ve never really been single more than a few months at any given particular time. This means I’ve always been in a serious relationship or casually dating someone every year during the holidays. I’ve always had someone to spend New Years Eve and share a New Years Kiss with… I’ve always had someone to exchange gifts with… I’ve always had someone to curl up next to on the couch and watch holiday themed movies with…

So now that I don’t have that, I’m torn between happy and depressed. Happy because, of course, I need to learn to be by myself and to spend time on my own, without a significant other. Depressed because I’ve always enjoyed the holidays. I enjoy driving around and looking at Christmas lights, curling up by the fire, sipping holiday drinks at Starbucks, snuggling under a mountain of blankets, and just sharing my holiday cheer with another person.

And for a split second, I thought maybe I’d have someone to partake in all my yuletide merriment, but then that turned out to be a false hope.

I don’t find myself feeling holly jolly and I just want to get through this season without wanting to strangle people wearing their Santa hats or reindeer sweaters.

I think the only thing I can do at this point is to try and find my Christmas spirit. I’ll partake in the festivities and I’ll play some reindeer games, but I’m probably going to end up crying into my hot cocoa.

Can we just fast forward? Let’s skip Valentine’s day, too, because if I’m this much of a crybaby at Christmas, then I’m going to be the epitome of Forever Alone at Valentine’s Day.

If you’re following me on Twitter, then you probably have seen my tweets of self-loathing and whining. My short-lived relationship ended. The details are neither here nor there, and all I’ll say is it wasn’t meant to be and was likely to end anyway.

I will say this: I was falling. Hard. It’d been just under three months since we started seeing each other. At first I was shy about my feelings, then started warming up. I fell head over heels, or so the saying goes.

I’m trying to get back into the mentality of being single, of not having someone around, and having new/going back to old routines. In the short time we were dating, I’d only seen him once a week because of distance and his work schedule. I really looked forward to our dates each week and I’m really going to miss that time with him.

But when it’s not right, it’s not right. I’m not angry at all, just sad. I deleted him from my phone contacts and from Facebook because, in all honesty, I can’t deal with seeing his posts and I certainly can’t be tempted to contact him. Maybe one day we’ll be friends again or something. I don’t know.

All I know is that now, I’m going back to my original plan of just being single. Alone. For a while. Until I can recover from rejection and get over things that have happened to me, not just recently but in all of my dating history. So, in the meantime, I will stick close to home. I won’t pursue dating. I’ll surround myself with positive people, with books, with coffee and movies, with whatever I want at that moment.

And I won’t be lonely. I will use this time to learn about myself. To expand my interests. To learn to love myself.

And when I’m ready, I’ll try again. But for now, living simple and being alone is for the best.

It’s been a while… Feels like it has been longer than it has. This goes for a lot of things. First off, last weekend was great. The concert I trekked to was awesome. The bands were good (minus Everclear, whose lead singer sounded totally loaded and mumbled most of the lyrics and generally put on a shit show for everyone to scoff about), the weather was awesome, and we (my family and I) were lookin’ HOT. It was a good time all around.

After the show, my evening continued with drinks with Snake and Princess after PC went to sleep. The next morning, we went for brunch and bottomless mimosas—this is where it gets interesting and I was totally caught off guard—where I met a cute, adorable boy who is proving to be the total package. It started off with Snake and I switching seats, because apparently T and I were going to spend the whole time talking across Snake. Which proved to be a correct assumption.Then Snake forwarded us each the others contact information.

We headed back to PC’s house to continue the drinking/football festivities. T and I, with little effort at all, ended up next to each other on the couch. I’ll admit, it was awkward at first. Sitting next to someone like that… Letting him put his arm around me… Letting him kiss me. Swoon. I napped on him during the 49ers game. Awoke to the end of the game, more wine, food, and kisses on the front stoop as I smoked.

Eventually, Snake and I had to leave and she had to return me home and head north a bit to her home.

Fast forward to Monday: T and I are texting. I’m dying because I had no sooner gotten home and was gone again and ended up drinking vodka which proved to be a bad decision. I felt so sick. But he said he wanted to come up and see me. Mind you, this is an hour away from where I am. Says he’ll be at my front door by 4:15. No lie, he was on time.

We left and I played GPS and we went to Starbucks, talked a bit, I felt awkward because I picked up on his vibes of awkwardness. Lots of cute things were said like, “Well I may have to come to Merced more often” and “I may have to change that” (after saying I don’t go out as much as I used to).  I smiled a lot. We lacked things to do… and at this point it’s almost 5:30 and I’m feeling like craaaap. Movie is suggested, then plan is put into motion. Apollo 18. Lots of hand holding… lots of sweet little kisses. It was really quite adorable. Still smiling.

The plan after the movie was supposed to be dinner, but I still felt like crap after so I asked him to take me home. Apologized, said I just wasn’t feeling well. I really did feel bad… I honestly hoped he didn’t think I was bailing on him. So, he drops me off. There’s a guy at the end of the cul-de-sac who drives the same car (different year and color) and he commented on it when he picked me up, and again as he was dropping me off.

I made a comment about how both the guys who lived there are jerks and how I dated one of them for a millisecond a couple years ago. (Mostly to gauge his response to me living down the block from someone I dated.) The response? “Well, I hope this lasts more than a millisecond.” I got a kiss goodnight and a promise he would text me when he got home.

Needless to say, we’ve been texting since. Our conversations are light. I want to take things slow. Basic day to day things are discussed, and occasionally something with more substance comes up. I don’t know if he knows, but he’s telling me things about himself without me directly asking. I’m seeing him Friday. I get cute texts saying how Friday can’t come soon enough, and how this is such a long week, and how the weekend is going to be sooo long until he can see me Sunday. It’s really cute. It’s the right balance of letting me know he’s interested, and coming on too strong.

Stay tuned, because this kitten is smitten. This could be love. Slow and steady, I’ll eventually know. Not rushing into anything. Not limiting myself.

But it would be TOTALLY killer if this became the new “it” thing.

Let me just break it down from you, right here, at the beginning:

I had my first serious relationship at 17 years old (2005). We dated our senior year, and ended the relationship shortly after graduation. Later that summer, I began dating someone else. That relationship lasted a year. So now we’re at summer 2007. December I began to see someone, that turned out to be a mistake. We broke up March 2008. April 2008 I began to see someone else. That lasted until June when I began to see the LDR guy while simultaneously dating my Asian Geek, until it was decided, that fall, that I was going to be exclusive with LDR. My relationship with LDR lasted for a year, until we broke up in the summer of 2009. I floated. I was haphazard and wild and that was the Summer of Bad Choices. I casually dated, but most of the “dating” consisted of hanging out at someone’s house, drinking case after case of beer.  February 2010 I started dating The Ex and that, as you know, lasted until very recently.

After reading two different perspectives on being single, I decided, “What the fuck do I know about being single?” So, for the first time in six years, I’m saying “fuck relationships” and I’m going to play the single card for a while. A long while. Like, decades. Okay, maybe not that long. I’ve been told by different sources that, in basically the same words said a different way, I should be confident in knowing that I’m a good-looking, smart gal and that the right guy will come along and whisk me off my feet and we will ride off into the sunset in his trusty Mustang with a convertible top… (I made that last part up. No one ever said shit about a mustang.)

As a girl who has been perpetually attached over the past six years, it’s time I work on me. Give myself some time. Heed my own advice. I need to let myself flourish as a [single] person. I need to know I can be happy without a boy in my life. But, that doesn’t mean I still won’t let a boy take me out to the movies or for coffee or whatever. But I will do so with the intention of learning. Learning about myself, about the other person, about what qualities I’m seeking out in a potential husband, about what to do or not do in certain situations… More importantly, I need to JUST. BE. SINGLE. And confident. And not give up hope that someday I WILL get married and produce carbon copies of myself (and future husband). 

I know I probably won’t marry the next guy I date. I know I probably will go through moments where I’m frustrated because I just want to be with someone so bad that I obsess over it.

Frankly, I can’t find it in me to give a fuck about another person’s well-being after doing it for so long. I’m not saying that I don’t care about other people, because I do, but it’s different when you’re in a relationship and honestly I just don’t have any patience right now to put up with anyone else’s bullshit. I have enough bullshit to put up with from myself.

So I will content in being a Single Lady and when I am married with children I will look back on this time as The Time of Growth and I will smile because I experienced being single before committing to someone “til death do us part.”