Lots of Lemonade

"When upon life's billows you are tempest tossed, 
when you are discouraged, thinking all is lost, 
count your many blessings, name them one by one, 
and it will surprise you what the Lord has done."

-"Count Your Blessings," one of my favorite hymns

Life has been handing me a shit ton of lemons lately.  My car is falling apart and needs about $750 in repairs.  One of my cats got sick last week and it's going to run me about $700 to make her better.  My love life continues to stink.  My house is a mess.  I'm behind in everything,  I feel like shit,  I'm exhausted,  depressed, feeling quite alone, and I have really been feeling like the weight of the world might crush me.

But in the last couple of weeks I've been reminded of how much support I really do have.  Without going into detail, I will just say that the generosity and compassion from various friends - some of whom I barely know or have not seen in decades - is absolutely astounding.  My family, small as it might be, is amazing.  My cup of lemonade, so to speak, do runneth over.

I'm not alone.  And in my brief periods of loneliness when I feel like no one cares or is paying attention,  it helps to remember this.  I have people who care, clothes on my back,  a roof over my head, and job(s) to go to.  I have more work coming down the pike, and potential to get ahead if I can just get my head out of my ass and remember that it WILL get better.

And it will.  Pass the lemonade, please.

Elephants and Carrots and...Vassholes? Yeah, no thanks.

**WARNING: KIND OF EXPLICIT**

As if I needed one more reason to defend my decision to remain a card-carrying member of Childfree Women:

10 Unrecognizable Post-Childbirth Body Parts

You've got to be fucking kidding me.  Yes, I know this is meant to be a lighthearted, tongue-in-cheek look at the sacrifices women make to bring children into this world, but if shriveled boobs and a vaginal pachyderm weren't enough,  I now have to feel sad that I've missed out on having one giant, gaping hole between my legs out of which all my bodily waste exits?

No.

No.

No.

And in case my answer weren't clear...no.

It's not that I'm vain.  Not at all.  I'm fat.  Obese.  Technically classified as morbidly so, in fact.  I have a host of issues with my physical shape.  From years of yo-yo dieting I've stretched out my skin and it's a mess.  I've got cellulite and a gut and a FUPA and all that.  But my boobs are fighting the good fight, and my vagina and my asshole are two separate and distinct entities and both are fully intact.  And for that, after reading this article, I am more grateful than ever.

And the next guy who wants to tell me I'm "defective" for never having had kids can go find himself an elephantine vasshole to fuck.  I'm happy with my setup just the way it is.

The Only Spinster in the Village

I've never been a serial monogamist.  I tend to take a really, REALLY long time between relationships.  Really.  Like, years. And this is why I've had a grand total of four serious relationships in my life (or five, if you count NOLA dude, but I usually don't, only because it was way more serious in my mind than it was in reality and had no honest potential).  This also accounts for why I've never been married.  See, none of these serious relationships, despite their seriousness, lasted very long.  The first one lasted four years.  The rest never made it to two years.  One didn't even make it to a year.   The most recent one was the only one that resulted in an engagement, but of course it didn't work out.

Yes, you heard correctly. I'm 41 and I've never been married.  And apparently I'm the only person on the face of the planet to boast such an achievement.

While this doesn't necessarily bother me, a great many others seem to be unable to receive this fact about me without a little fizzle, pop, and a "does not compute" error message in their brains. Suffice to say it really fucking irks me when people ask me why I've never been married, mainly because they ask it with such curiosity and incredulousness, as if I'm sporting a third eyeball and they want to know how it got there.  How should I answer this?  I have never quite figured out the one-size-fits-all answer. "Because no one ever asked" used to be my standard comeback, but that's no longer true.  My most recent ex DID ask me to marry him.  I bought the ring, but still, he did the proposing.  A few times, in fact.

I went on a date last weekend with a man who was quite possibly one of THE worst matches on record.  I feel especially bad saying this because it was a rare non-internet hookup through a co-worker/friend's father.  He thought this guy and I would make a good match simply based on the fact that we're both single, child-free, and in our 40's.  But other than those three things?  We had not a thing in common - which might not necessarily be a bad thing, except we had GLARING fundamental differences in spirituality, philosophy, politics, and life goals.  Nice guy, very polite - my friend's dad wasn't wrong on that count - but not my type AT ALL.  And he basically blew it fifteen minutes into the date when he turned to me and said, "so...how come you never got married?"

My bristling cringe must have been obvious, because he immediately said, "I'm sorry - that's a really personal question.  I shouldn't have asked."  I said, "no, it's okay," but inside I was seething.  Why did it fucking MATTER?  So I'm 41 and I've never married.  SO WHAT?! Am I somehow a better person if I'd gotten married and then divorced?  Does having spent tens of thousands of dollars on a wedding and then again on a divorce lawyer somehow make me a more valid individual for having had the experience?  Is making a life-altering mistake for the sake of sporting a diamond ring and walking down an aisle in a fluffy white dress and feeding 100 people chicken in bearnaise sauce before doing the Hokey Pokey and Electric Slide something I have to do to prove my worth to the rest of the world?  To make me "normal" in the eyes of potential mates?

FUCK. THAT.

I'm not opposed to marriage.  Quite the contrary.  Because I am a hopeless romantic underneath all this piss and vinegar, I view marriage not in the economical or political aspect, but as a spiritual bond representative of the deepest love one can share with another individual.  When two people pledge their lives to each other, it's kind of a big deal.  It allows for a deeper development in intimacy (not just sex, mind you - intimacy is way more than that), and the stakes are higher - not because the threat of divorce looms overhead, but because they have made a serious and binding commitment.  Yes, yes, I know..."why do you need a piece of paper to validate your commitment?"  Well...maybe you don't.  But my point is that I wouldn't enter into such a commitment unless I truly, deeply, honestly believed I would honor my vows to this person, and once I'd made those vows I would do everything in my power to uphold them.

And so far, in all my nearly 42 years, I've yet to find someone who feels the same way.

So I guess that's my answer.

Eternal Sunshine Obscured by Dark Clouds

I am in a funk.  And not in that good James Brown kind of way, either.  I'm in a full-on miserable, dark-cloud-over-my-head, pouty, irritated, stinking funk.

There are several factors in play here, but some of the most recent gloom has to do with the fact that I have been in brief touch with my ex.  I had something of his that he needed, and I reached out to him to give it back.  I didn't have to, but I was feeling charitable and thought that by doing so I'd be rising above the resentment I still feel toward him.  I even threw in a little "peace offering" of a local treat that he can't get where he is now.

I shouldn't have done it.  It kicked off a series of terse (on my end) exchanges that left me feeling...well, less than great. Look. No matter how much you think you're over something, no matter how much better off you know you are without someone, when the day comes when you've been replaced and have become completely irrelevant in someone's life, it's never an easy thing to swallow.

In "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," Clementine undergoes a procedure to have her memories of Joel wiped out after they split, and he is crestfallen when he runs into her and she doesn't recognize or remember him.  To make himself feel better, he has the same procedure done, but as Joel's mind is being purged of memories, he struggles to let them go and realizes he doesn't really want to forget Clementine. I think perhaps that's what happened to me to a degree.   The more I tried to forget him, the more I remembered.  And of course, selective memory when you're bumming is a dangerous thing.  Instead of remembering the negatives, I've honed in on the romanticized version.  Dangerous stuff.

After the breakup, I did my own memory purge of sorts and threw myself headlong into my life in an effort to get over it and get back to where I'd come from.  I had spent so much time and energy on the relationship that I lost a good deal of who I was.  So I had a reclamation of all the things that I couldn't do while he was around, and I blasted back on to the scene.  My friends jubilated.  "Welcome back!" they exclaimed.   I celebrated my newly reacquired independence with a vengeance; I tackled my house and made it mine again.   I was accepted into a professional chorus.  I started hosting friends and holding quirky dinner parties.  I traveled.  I wrote.  I performed. I worked.  I went out. I worked some more.

About a year after the breakup, I went to India for a month.  I had a brief whirlwind affair with a local man while I was there, which ended up being a catalyst to making the decision to start dating again when I returned to the States.  There's just one small problem there: I hate dating.  And I'm not very good at it.  I've made my feelings on internet dating quite clear before, but regardless of the method, dating just isn't my strong suit. At all. My ex, on the other hand, didn't seem to have any trouble getting back on the scene and finding someone new right away and falling in love and settling into a whole new life, complete with a ready-made family unit with two kids and a dog and a cat and whatnot.   And I suppose that's where most of the resentment stemmed from.  Why was it so easy for him?  If history is any indication, he'll probably marry this one, too (they ALL marry the one they find after me).

So this is what's got me down today. It's not that I miss him. I just wonder how come everyone else seems to be able to find love and fall right into it while I'm left holding a handful of broken pieces that never quite fit back together the same way.  It hardly seems fair.  Then again, not much in life is.