“You know why? Takes too much to touch her . . .”
“The Lord looked down from his window in the sky, Said: ‘I created man, but I can't remember why.’”
You ever have one of those days where you think it simply takes more than you can give to have a particular thing? That’s where I am at today. I had a conversation with a friend last week in which she asked me about my love life. Because every person who’s single just loves that question. I mentioned that I didn’t really think there was a soulmate for me in my current geographical location. This is not to say I don’t think a good man exists; I just don’t much think there is one in my immediate vicinity. Her response was, “Don't give up... You don't want to be one of those old, miserable hags...” I sat there and thought, “Just watch me. And by the way: I will never be a miserable hag regardless of how old I may live to be.”
I had a surreal experience today in which I discovered that someone who I thought was a morally upright, decent person has managed to gain a drinking problem, a drug problem, and a rap sheet of infidelities on his wife. I sat there as a single person thinking, “This is why I struggle. There seems to be no one left who doesn’t require illegal drugs, drinking to excess, and/or infidelity in order to be happy. Fuck this.” I don’t want to be any part of that. I just don’t. Maybe that makes me weird, boring, strange, relegated to life as a spinster, unrealistic, naïve, etc. To be in a relationship with someone who wants to do drugs, get drunk a lot, and/or cheat on me requires more of me than I am willing to give. It’s a sacrifice of my dignity and my morals to take part in something like that. I feel like I don’t ask for much but apparently my dealbreakers are above and beyond these days. My idea of fun is not: puking, blacking out, sleeping with a stranger, taking pills that I have no clue what they even are. I can remember times in my 20s when I went out with people I didn’t even like and who probably didn’t even like me just so I could have drinking buddies. I can remember going out on class breaks with classmates in college and taking shots of whiskey in the parking lot. I can remember ass-dragging to class at 8am hungover and still smelling like vodka. I can remember going to workout on Sunday after a Saturday night bender and sweating out booze. I can remember a time where I woke up with aquarium supplies in bed with me and no clue why they were there or what had happened. I’m no teetotaler or Puritan. But I think it takes too much out of my life, time, and health to recover from a bender. A hangover in your 30s is not like it was in your early 20s. In the short time I dated Darcy, I drank more than I had in probably the last four or five years. He was a bad influence on me and I was a bad influence on myself. I felt like I needed to go with him to bars and consume alcohol in order to keep his approval. In the end, it simply wasn’t worth it. It compromised who I was and it wasn’t even enjoyable to me. He was . . . really boring. It was dull to do nothing but hang out in bars all the time. Or sit at his house while he had beer and watched TV. I shit you not, one night he asked me out and his idea of “date night” was for me to sit at his house for several hours watching back-to-back episodes of Rocky & Bullwinkle. I don’t even like Rocky & Bullwinkle! People who want to party are one trick ponies. It’s like they don’t have any imagination or desire to do anything else but that.
Sorry. I’d rather go live than blow my mind out.
