This Is It

I am a good liar.  In fact, I’m such a good liar that I will often lie to people about what a bad liar I am.  It’s twisted and something that I figure only a therapist can work through.  But for nearly two months I’ve been finding it harder and harder to lie about something in particular.  Don’t worry, I’m still lying when I say I didn’t see your text, or that I have plans (I never have plans, I don’t even want to have plans anymore) and I’m definitely still lying when I say I’ve read the Terms of Service Agreement for anything I sign up for.

I just can’t lie to myself.  I can’t keep telling myself that it’s all okay when it’s really not.  For about six months or so after I moved out of the apartment with The Boyfriend (Jesus Christ I have to get another name for him) I had trouble making it through the drive to work or the drive home without tears welling up in my eyes.  I think it was the immediate feelings of lonesomeness that drove me to cry.  I was clinically depressed for various reasons, and when I finally learned to be comfortable in my skin it stopped.  But for the past two months it’s crept in again.  I find myself gripping the steering wheel too tightly, turning off the radio because I don’t want to hear another rendition of Call Me Maybe, and without even realizing it tears drip onto my cheeks out from under my sunglasses.

It’s usually over before I get home, but the other night I sat at the bar with Bosslady and finally managed to squeak out the words that I had avoided for four years.  “What if this is all there is?”

I think Bosslady was confused because I put up a pretty good front most of the time.  I am the life of the party and of the day-to-day.  In fact, I swear to God that I invented YOLO.  For so long I have been the girl who will stay out at any hour of any night, will be down for anything fun.  And any time somebody might have the ‘audacity’ to ask me what I’m doing with my life, what I’m planning on doing in the future, and why I don’t have somebody in my life, I’ve been the very first person to tell you that 27 is too young for all that.  It’s too young to be married, too young to have children, too young to be tied to a mortgage, and certainly too young to be worried if you don’t have these things. You can be old for a long time.  You only have a limited amount of time to be young and wild.

I put up a brave fight and I have plenty of fun sayings to explain why I’m too fabulous to be tied down, but the truth is for the past couple of months I’ve really had the sinking feeling that maybe this is all I am–a good friend, a good daughter, a good employee.  But not a good wife. Or a good mother.

“You’re too young to think that way”, she said, as I started to cry harder than I should have in a bar.

“Some people don’t get married, some people don’t have children.”   I think that’s what I said, but I’m fairly certain neither of us really understood what I said.  She made do with what she heard.

“Listen, you have to be certain that if this is all there is for you, and I don’t think that’s the case, but if it is, you have to sure that what you have is good.  Are you okay if this is all there is?”

What I have is good.  I have a job that I love.  It pays my bills.  My friends are great people, they really do enrich my life.  And I love my family.  But that’s not enough for me.  There are things I want to experience in life.  I want a partner, I want to have children.  I want a family of my own.

And there is no material item, no vacation, no friend that can make it well with my soul if I it doesn’t happen for me.  I could drive a Maserati and live in a gated community and have a toilet made of solid gold and it would not be well with my soul that I didn’t have a partner or child.  And I’m beginning to think that may not happen.

So what now?  What do I do when I know that nothing will make this good with my soul?

It takes a really messed up person to start doubting yourself and your ability to find a mate at 27.  But that’s where I am.

The Friend is married, another guy wrote  me the other day to tell me he’s getting married.  Thanks for the heads-up.  And The Boyfriend moved on pretty easily. Going to get married. Married, married, married.

And here I sit with this failure of a blog that has only really successfully detailed for you my inability to move on from these ‘tragedies’ that other people so easily have moved past.  I mean, The Boyfriend and I are Facebook friends now and he actually sends me friendly messages–that’s how okay that whole thing is now.  Why am I the one that ended up alone out of all these people I know? I know that’s a selfish way to look at it.  But sometimes I feel selfish.  Sometimes I would think all those boys would call me selfish.  Sometimes?  Most of the time.

The thing is…I thought I did all the heavy lifting.  I thought I took the time to evaluate myself, make myself better, figure out what I wanted in life.  I thought that I slowed down and that was the right thing.  I thought out of all of us, I would be the healthiest because I was figuring out what went wrong.  But maybe I didn’t.  Maybe I just took all my momentum.

I don’t know.  I just know that there are times of the day that I freeze and wonder if it’s really not going to happen for me.

You know what, I’m fine.  I have plans.  I’m too young to worry about this.