A Bad Dating Year is Not the Worst Thing

I’ve been studying awe lately. This is one of my favorite brain books of all time, and I haven’t even finished it yet!

So maybe that’s why the titular epiphany was easy to recognize when it came along. I’m sorry to be a Spotify commercial, but I love the Wrapped time of year so much. When I saw that I started listening to Frank Ocean’s cover of Moon River on February 6 and remembered that that’s the day The Shy One broke up with me, I was overwhelmed with giddy joy. With love. The beautiful absurdity of this year. It felt like my heart was laughing. It felt like a being-set-free.

After week-before-last’s bad review situation, I settled into it: There were highlights, but this was a bad year of dating. The past ten months especially have been full of grief, false starts, acting-outs, minor deceptions, and not-quite-right connections. Too many hookups in relationship-potential clothing. Deleted email drafts. More than one art project about grief. Setting a timer for ten minutes so I could moon safely over the Hidden Folder. It’s beautiful and ridiculous and I love it.

I rang in the New Year overjoyed, in a balloon-bopping collective effervescence with Rainbow Pal, singing to a sassy and sparkly cover of Dancing on My Own. When I left the club, WhatsApping across the ocean to the beautiful Shy Ones, a single golden firework popped over the parking lot. I felt like it was just for me. I kind of still do.

This year gave me so many gifts, not just the beautiful string of coconut-shell beads that well never look right on me. The wallpaper on my desktop is the lush pink and purple flowers I got from my Birthday Good Boy/Hookup. I’ve been building my collection of frilly things. My Duolingo has five languages going. I’m obsessed with Afrobeats, even though the genre gives me all the feelings. BECAUSE it does.

December is a relief, too full of crafts and gifts and next-year’s-goal-setting to worry too much about dating. There are three cute guys at work but I love myself and my job too much to hit on them. I’ll bring the car in before Christmas trips and flirt with the car place guy. I’ll visit the museum I was supposed to see last February. I’ll spend New Years with BFF or on my own or who knows where. Maybe I’ll just be starting a new puzzle.

Dear Shy One, dear Rainbow Pal, dear EVERYONE, I’m overflowing with love for you as if it were the first time and the last. You shine out of me permanently and I hope I can glimmer out of you sometimes too. We’re doing the thing, I’m so proud of us. We’re exquisitely and exhaustingly and delightfully alive.

Dearest, DEAREST 2023, thank you for all you’ve given me. Let’s type in some Rumi for the road:

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and
rightdoing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase “each
other”
doesn’t make any sense.
The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell
you.
Don’t go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don’t go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across
the doorsill
where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don’t go back to sleep.”

Single Life, Week Six: Antsy But Enjoying the New Goals

Last weekend, I told my therapist that sessions might be boring for a while, and that’s how it might be with the blog, too. (Though adventures must not have been particularly unboring when I was hitting the same patterns again and again…) Anyway, I’m supposed to be mostly taking a three month break from sexytimes. In a way, it’s liberating, not having to worry about making plans or scheduling dates, and maybe letting the (already pretty lax) shaving routine lapse a little bit.

But since even in this hard transition I am still my horny, half-extroverted self, I feel antsy. The adrenaline of the past couple of years, though not always healthy, kept me fueled and inspired most of the time, and now I have to look for quieter, more sustainable forms of inspiration. I’m a little afraid that if I let myself rest for these few months I’ll suddenly wake up 60 with no one but cats. It’s the stupidest of tropes, but there it is anyway.

I know where the next adventure’s coming from: there’s a big poly conference coming up soon. And I don’t think I’ll be away from the dungeon forever—I’d thought I was probably graduated from there, but this morning when I saw the invite in my Fet inbox I felt a little surge of joy—right before I RSVPed no. In pursuit of this break-taking goal, I now even have a friend who’ll text me a gold star any time I RSVP no or just stay home in my PJs for any reason. It’s nice how the right influences tend to come along.

The story now is about self-care and about slow, safe progress. One big obstacle-removal is that Sweetie got a promotion and now works closer to home, allowing her to fully take over the car payments so that I can save up for a car of my own. Yay my future little red car! Trading the car back and forth has been a too-often chance to see each other, and that’s getting dicey. Plus, pretty soon I will never again have to drive the car that I jumped out of.

In some ways, it’s getting harder to let Sweetie go. Now that she’s free from her terrible commute and the job she hated, she’s getting frustratingly appealing. I’ve had to stop having her over for TV because the other night I got the biggest urge to hold her hands during some Community reruns. As the pain of the bad parts starts to heal, all I can see it the love and it’s hard to move on, even though it’s paradoxically the moving on that brings the appeal. It makes me both reluctant to and impatient to get further and further apart. Sometimes we still do groceries together but it ends up feeling like a date, so I guess we’ll have to knock that off too.

The big excitements of the past week or so have been little acts of self-care: staying late on Friday to give my Monday-morning self a break by getting the homework packets ready. Remembering to buy batteries, adding DVDs to my Netflix account so that I can have better movie nights. The big social adventures have been after-church brunches that have made my heart so happy and full. (Resolution with the Cute Church couple: “Waffles in ‘014!”)

Slowing down has given me the chance to do what I always wanted to do: feel all the feelings. I feel sadness at letting go of Cute Master and Pretty Slave, but a happy hope that I’ve left a pattern behind. I feel nervous excitement at making new neighborhood friends and navigating social situations at which I have pants on. I feel frustration, of course, at being away from sex adventures, but pleasure in knowing that I’m the only one I have to please.

I vacillate between shyness at the year’s goals and wanting to show them off, but I like the way you guys help me keep myself accountable. The theme of the year is kindness to myself, which I know will make some friends and readers (and also, me) sigh with relief. It’s fun thinking of new ways to care for myself, to reach out to people closer to home, to look for magic in the world, to try (though I’ve always had a nice time keeping it at arm’s length) to embrace my faith.

I’m still smarting from everything I’ve let go, but sometimes when I’m washing the dishes or making the bed or cooking myself breakfast for dinner, I feel the odd sensation of liking myself. It’s a real thing and I think I can learn it.