I Got To Say It And It’s Hard For Me

No one is a bigger asshole than me. No one.

I was walking the dogs tonight and I bumped into The Bartender. It was awkward for a minute, but only because I made it awkward. We talked about things and he came back to my place and we watched Will & Grace and Sex & The City. It’s very easy to see your life and yourself in a very one sided manner. But the man never got to say his part and I do feel that I owed him that much. I just wasn’t ready for what I was going to see of myself.

I found myself genuinely feeling bad for how I ended things (on a blog – what the hell is wrong with me) and apologizing for it. He said it was fine and there were no hard feelings. He went on just talking about what happened. As I was listening to him tell it, it didn’t seem possible that the “other person” in his scenario was me. Not because he was lying – he wasn’t, but because, well, who am I and how could I behave like that to another human being? He went on to further explain that he wishes he could be like me and just turn feelings on and off, but that he can’t and that’s why his ex is still in his life.

Then I said, “No! Don’t wish that you could be like me! At least when you have feelings about something you know you’re still alive. I’m not even sure that I’m alive and breathing anymore. Very little moves me.”

It’s true. The anticipation of a first date used to make me so excited. Now, it’s just ho hum. An argument with a friend would upset me. Now, I’m unmoved. The meltdowns in my family used to charge me up, wanting to get everyone to work it out. Now, I don’t give a shit. In fact, no one in my family really talks to me anymore about, well, anything important. Fine with me. In fact, in the one conversation my oldest brother and I had last week about our aging and increasingly psychotic parents, he was so pissed at them. When he posed questions or comments that should incite that same emotion from me, all I could say was, “They’ve all made their beds and they can fucking lay in them now. I don’t care. Watching them be the martyrs for the past 20 years has drained me.” You can really only take so much. See the grandbaby, don’t see the grandbaby, be mad at older brother for calling, not calling, forgetting to call, living in Michigan instead of New York, working on Christmas Day in 1998, not wanting to work for ESPN, fuck off. Do whatever you want. Life doesn’t revolve around you anymore, and will actually go on without you. If you aren’t going to see your first and only grandchild then you may as well go get in your coffin because you are missing out on one of the biggest joys you will ever have in your lives. Assholes.

So back to my life at hand. I don’t like being like this. I really don’t. My neighbors just got engaged and they are so in sync and so in love with each other and it’s great. But I look at them and wonder if I would ever find that with someone. Not because there’s no one good enough out there, but because I just can’t wrap my brain around the idea of being “one” with another human being. I can’t imagine having that heart pounding crush on someone that lasts to the point where I could say to myself, “Yup, this is worth packing it all in for and settling down.”

Almost everyone I know is in a relationship. Even my girlfriends who were going to remain steadfastly single have paired up. Some of you have done so more for convenience than for having “found your soulmate.” No, I’ll never own up to which of you I think may be faking it and it shouldn’t matter anyway. So the business of being single is really just down to, well, me. I feel as though I should be mildly bothered that all my girlfriends (with one exception – my college roommate) are now officially living with a significant other. But I don’t care. For some reason, I honestly don’t care. I am emotionally dead. Me getting Bell’s Palsy was really just poetic justice – someone, who devoid of all emotion, loses the ability to form her face into any discernable expression.

I have a date Thursday and a date Friday and in both cases I’m either sadistically hoping it goes wrong so I can stab one of them with my fork and then come back and blog about it or I’m hoping it goes no where. Because when it all comes down to it, I am not convinced that I would make a happy, functioning “other half” in a relationship. I like sleeping in the middle of the bed. I like eating right out of the peanut butter jar. I like that I am the only one to discipline my dogs. I like that my shoes take up three closets. I don’t want to get rid of any of my clothes. I don’t want to move to a bigger place. And I don’t want to compromise. I like my life how it is, and I wonder if I like it so much that I am secretly sabotaging every new relationship on purpose?

The Bartender said he never had a chance. He’s right. I’m afraid that no one else really has either.