Something So Very Special

I found myself angry and upset, not sure why I wanted to cry and yet, hoping I didn’t let a single drop out while riding the uptown train on Saturday night to the home that doesn’t feel like one on the Upper West Side. I wasn’t drunk — or I suppose, I’m not drunk, is a better use of words considering I’m writing this at 1: 25 a.m., with every intent of publishing it on Monday.

On my blog, this blog, this very public, yet insanely personal blog that I happen to share with everyone I do and don’t know. This blog that is supposed to be about learning to love myself with or without a man. That’s supposed to be about being totally fine with being totally single, totally fine on my own, not letting men affect me, letting them come and go with their douchebagery-ways, their terribly disappointing manners, their shortcomings that aren’t supposed to matter to me. No matter how many times some man gives me five minutes or two weeks of hope, only to take it away in a second, or by falling off the face of my iPhone.

I was actually supposed to have a date tonight — a second one, which if you’ve read earlier posts you would know are my favorites. Merely because they are often so rare, with so many first dates that bore or well, traumatize you. So when some random guy that happened to be intriguing enough to agree to see again proved to be uncompromising and pretty much only in it for sex, I made plans with K, then met up with J and her guy, and the night went on. I went on – unaffected, perfectly content, not upset that some man couldn’t meet me in the middle, couldn’t get enough energy to make an effort to impress or even see me.

But I was frustrated. I was upset.

Maybe not by this specific man or this specific situation, but that these types of things happen so often that I find myself incredibly exhausted of talking about them. Much less writing about another failed date to share with the world. If I was honest, as I am here on these pages, I’d admit that I don’t want to date. I don’t want to go out on a Saturday night. I don’t want to spend unnecessary money on unnecessary vodka tonics in the hope that my next one will be free. I don’t want to stay out so late and be so tired the next day I can’t go for a run because I held onto the possibility that I’d stumble across someone worth talking to over loud music in a busy, sweaty bar. I don’t really want to do any of it at all.

But I do it anyway.

Because I refuse to give up, because I refuse to become completely bitter or to stop going after what I want. Because I don’t want to listen to everyone who says the best things come when you’re not looking because when are you ever not looking? Because the best dating advice can’t simply be to have fun and let it come, because that feels utterly impossible, month after month, year after year, date after date, date, date.

That can’t be the answer. If there’s any answer at all.

I started writing this blog to not feel just like I feel right now, writing this blog. Hopeless. Annoyed. Angry. Frustrated. Sad. Unworthy. Disappointed. Impatient. I never wanted a lack of a someone to change who I was or to let anyone be so important that they mattered. But maybe that was a pipe dream, something that can’t be ignored because everyone feels that way sometimes, at least anyone who is single post-college in a city.

As I walked myself west while all my friends went east, I did everything I could to hold in the tears. I looked up at the full moon in disgust, cursing it for not bringing the change to my life I so desperately need. I noticed all the tall, thin, gorgeous girls in heels, laughing into the night, so different from me, the not-carefree, unhappy woman struggling down Houston. And as I walked, not making eye contact or slowing down, I saw a store called Something Special.

And I thought of all the fairytales that have undoubtedly made me rather naive. The love stories my mom would tell me, the romance I’ve craved since I knew you could crave such impossible things. I was always promised something special, something fascinating. Something that was unexpected and life-altering. Something intoxicating and breathless. Something so different from the rest.

Something worth all of this waiting.

But when that day comes, or as the cynic in me phrases it, if that day comes, who do I want to be? Do I want to be this desperate, defeated girl? Do I want to be scared and disappointed in every man and frankly, in myself? Do I want this pitiful self-confidence or this pouty attitude around my friends, my family and on this train, angrily typing this blog?

Or do I want to be someone special?

Someone who admitted her failures and yes, handled her emotions as they came, even when they came stupidly and sometimes far too soon. Someone who stood up for herself without letting herself give up in the process? Someone who lived her life instead of waiting on some man to come to build it with? Someone who wanted to cry on a Saturday night it someone who wanted to dance?

If I want something so very special, don’t I need to start believing in and acting like I’m someone special?