I’ve been cheating on this blog you know. I don’t think it’s a bad thing at all of course heh, because clearly I’ve been writing plenty there. But every so often I want to write about the things that aren’t the dates. I want to write about the times that I am not this fun, sassy, confident woman, the times when TDI and BBot and all my history raises its head to make me question what is, definitely, the happiest I have been in a long time. I wonder if I can actually do this over there. Won’t it dispel that carefully cultivated image of who I am? And so I come slinking back here, to air my doubts and my fears and my demons and tell someone about the stuff that doesn’t go out there, so it stays PG13.

Today I am wound up like I haven’t been in a long time. While it is true that I am far more sanguine about dating than I have been ever in my life, and I am learning much about myself and the male species, and I’m meeting some really great guys, and I really am OK with being single, the old demons are not dead.

Take #11. I have never in my life had such a visceral physical reaction to someone. And it’s not like he’s not a nice guy–he’s one of the nicest. Attentive and thoughtful and engaged. Three adjectives that very rarely come together when I talk about the men I date or sleep with or run into in any sexual or romantic way. We do talk too, and he seems to hang on my words like I’m speaking in tongues. We come from such different backgrounds; we have such different understandings of life. But he works hard to bridge that, as much as I do. So yes, spending time with him is lovely. Plus there isn’t a lot of blood in my brain heh. Hot and loaded, The Bride tells me, how am I not going to be breathless with lust?

Then there’s #6. I saw a tweet somewhere that said I was clearly smitten by him and I can only think that is the most apt way to describe this. Am I smitten by the grande gesture? Probably, though I’d like to think not. I like to think I’m smitten by the gentle way he engages with me, the way he is interested in me and my life. Maybe it’s because I’m the kind of person I am, but I tend to be the person doing the asking, the exploring, and then I share what I feel like. So when someone wants to know what makes me tick, how I’m feeling, how my day was, it’s hard to resist. But more than anything else, something about him made me feel like I’d come home. It felt like here was someone who would be an equal, not the caregiver or the caretaker but happy to switch between roles as needed.  But then. He’s so present when he’s present but he’s barely here to be present, and I can’t help but have flashbacks of all the guys who have flaked on me and my interest and taken it when they wanted it and not been there when I needed it. And it scares me.

I wanted to tell him: the reason I don’t call is that when you don’t pick up or call back soon, or when I text you and you don’t reply, even though I KNOW it’s because your work is how it is, or that it doesn’t mean anything, it awakens all my demons.

One thing I have learned though is that there are way more good guys out there than I’d ever imagined. And then the demons say:

But. They are still not lining up to be with me.

Sometimes I can’t help but feel like the way this is articulated reassures them and calms their immediate panic about a 32 year old single woman–of course she wants to get married and have babies, which isn’t untrue–and then they can engage how they want without feeling pressure. And most of the time that’s how I feel too. But then it also leaves me hanging because I want more sometimes?

I know that everyone has lives, everyone is busy. For every person who I’m stressing about because they are not there, there is someone doing the same about me. Rationally, I know it isn’t personal. After all, how is someone I meet on this project going to feel about it? Here I am, meeting other guys, kissing other guys, sleeping with other guys–why should he feel reassured that he’s special? And why would I stop unless I’m asked? And why would he want to be the person who stalled the project by asking? Especially if all he can say is I want to see if I want to see if this can be serious?

Unfortunately, underneath it all I’m still the often rejected 25 year old girl who wonders why nobody wants to love her.

It doesn’t help that work is in a very bad place for me these days. Sometimes I feel like the fag end of my days at Toilet. I don’t want to go to work; I can’t wait to leave; I stare at the screen numbly.

Boy I got melancholy! Maybe I’m ovulating…