secret sickness

They say that you're only as sick as your secrets.  I have a few in my closet - but there is just one making me really unwell right now.

And it is this:

I've never been anybody's girlfriend.

30 years on this Earth, and romantically, on my own that whole time.

I have literally been waiting my whole life to find someone to break through.

Try to imagine how much shame I feel just admitting that, and know I only do this, because here I am StrangeBird. And here I'm free to admit that I'm a mess, that I'm insecure and completely mortified. I get to leave this computer and this persona behind, but I always carry this secret with me - down the street, at work, around the dinner table, as I lay in the dark trying to get to sleep, and nobody knows how much it's stripping me, of self worth, hope, humor. It's a bit of a joke, except there's no punchline.

And this, this is why online dating is so completely mind-fucking to me. It was such a big decision to sign up - to think about chatting with people, talking about myself, 'selling' me, meeting up with someone in real life? Not liking them? Or worse, liking them? I have had to confront almost every fear about myself that I possess with this ridiculous ritual.

Some days, I can approach it with curiosity, and sometimes with humor.  But lately it just leaves me with an overwhelming sense of shit-ness.

I must be the problem... The almost-meet-up guy is now ignoring me, even after I wrote a vulnerable explanation and apology for being confusing.  At first it made me sad and bitter, but now it just kind of shits me off.  That even behind the protection of a computer screen, he hasn't got the balls to say the real reason why he lied about being "busy", or the guts to simply say "I don't want to talk to you anymore".

Seriously dude - WHAT. THE. FUCK?

Of course, he would have no idea that I angst-ed over troubling him for almost an entire weekend.  That I kicked myself for thinking too much, for panicking and knee-jerking.

Depending upon my level of confidence and ignited-wog-passion - I bounce from feeling violently rejected, angry, all the way to sunny indifference.  His loss, right?

I don't know what's so wrong with me?  I know I'm not perfect.  I'm not terribly pretty, I have curves in the wrong places, a mind-field of internal dialogue and edges.  Rough, obtrusive bumps on the exterior of my complicated package.  But I know, I know, inside there are parts that are pure gold. But nobody seems to want to scratch beneath the surface to see that.

Is it just a waiting game?  Is it timing? Do I just need for the right species of butterfly to flap its wings in the town of Shitsville, at a certain point of planetary alignment? Can I really be such an unusual case, that my time, place, person have to match up just so?

I don't know.  I prayed not to be lonely forever, and the next morning on the music lottery of my iPod, Bon Jovi told me it was my life, that it was now or never and then Shania Twain immediately followed by telling me that the thing about love is that there ain't no particular way. (Yes, I have these songs on my iPod... seems to be the post for hideous secrets).

You can listen to a song dozens of times, and never really 'hear' it. Maybe people are the same that way.