Depression is a hell of a drug...

I’m getting old.

Boys within my dating age group are single for bad reasons - the most common, and most depressing, is the confirmed bachelor reason. The "I have given up on having a girlfriend because it’s not worth it" reason.

There’s very little hope of swaying these men once they’ve decided this about themselves. I suppose romance tells us that these men will eventually "find someone" that makes their hearts flip over and then they’ll know that the rest of their life will be with this perfect girl. Romance is wrong. And those perfect girls usually just sort of fade away.

I’d also like the point out that many of these bachelors are the exact people that SHOULD be having families, whereas most people that end up having kids should have been sterilized at birth.

But the worst part of it all is when you know a very small handful of these confirmed bachelors that are pretty much everything you want in a man. It sucks to have everything in common with someone you will never have a chance with. It sucks even more to be in a relationship with someone that you have everything in common with, and start suspecting a little too late that you have no chance with them.

I’m getting old and I’ve suddenly become this adult with a career and no other life. That’s pretty much exactly what I DIDN’T want my life to become. It’s not fair. It’s really not. This is not what I wished for when I wished on stars as a kid. This is more like a monkey’s paw wish.

I hate having crushes. Really, can’t I be past the old pain of unreturned fancy? Can’t I have a little reciprocal affection at this point in my life? I feel like I’ve slipped back to fourteen again, only this time there’s not anything to look forward to "once I’m older."

I search for things I don’t like in people that I fancy these days, just so I won’t have to feel that badness anymore. I usually fail, and in the process of searching, I find yet more things that I like. It makes me feel pretty blue; like the more perfect I find someone to be, the bigger the loss that I know I can’t have them.

But does it feel worse to know that you can never have someone you know is just right, or does it feel worse to have someone who you know is just right and then realize that you can’t have them *anymore*? Lord... I have no idea what to do with myself these days.


(Originally posted on March 18th, 2008)