Opening Up

So, just to recap a bit, my last serious relationship was two years ago.  I was with this great looking, not very successful but nice enough guy.  In all honesty, his good looks really kept me sucked in because being an average looking gal, I never really thought I'd be with such a gorgeous guy.  If I had been watching a movie of my life at the time, I could have called it, but because I was in the lust bubble, I had huge blinders on.  After two years of insecurity and fighting over his incessant drunkenness,  I caught him cheating on me. I marched right over to his place, took all of my belongings, told him to go fuck himself more than once, and was out of there.

It has taken me a long time to get over this.  Of course, as a woman, I blamed myself for being too fat, too mouthy, too opinionated, too demanding, too bitchy.  Maybe if I had worn a different shirt, stopped eating food, drank less, drank more, told more jokes, turned left instead of right, everything would have been okay.  Of course this was my fault right?  After a year and a half, I have realized that there is nothing a woman can do to push her man to cheat or keep her man from cheating.  It is his decision.  If he was a real man, he would have broken up with me before he did it.  Plain and simple.  Those that sneak around are selfish and weak.  I get it now.  But, in the year and a half that it took me to figure that out, I had built up my walls so high and so thick that even some of my friends have been blocked out.  I found myself cutting out friends that kept in contact with him because I felt betrayed by them too.  As childish as it sounds, I still believe that if you are my friend first, and this guy stabs me in the back, then as my friend, you have MY back and tell him to fuck off.  The friends that knew what happened and stayed friends with him just made me feel like they were saying that what he did to me was okay.  And it wasn't.  So, long story short, I came out single and with fewer friends.

Cut to the present.

I was in Mexico for two weeks in April and had a pretty good time.  For the first time in  what feels like forever, I met a lot of people, engaged in nightlife activities, made friends and was looking forward to seeing them every day.  There was one specific bartender that I thought was really cute and by day 5, we were making out in a bar somewhere in town.  Now, I've made out with boys in the past two years but not like this.  I was really enjoying it, enjoying him, enjoying the closeness.  WHAT?  Closeness with someone else?  Wow...I'd forgotten what the felt like.  I liked it.  A lot.  Over the next week and a half, we saw each other every day - had lunches together, got together at night, had drinks, made love, cuddled, talked about our families, joked and had a great time.  For the first time in longer than I can remember, I was connecting with someone and feeling safe.  I loved looking into his warm brown eyes, and kissing his soft, beautiful lips.  I loved when he kissed me goodnight and told me to have sweet dreams.  I loved when I would be in his bed falling asleep telling him I should go and him holding me tighter and saying "shuuuuuddup" and smiling.  I loved when we were walking that he would hold my hand. I loved when he would stop mid-walk along the beach, turn me around and kiss me.  He was amazing - everything I wanted.

I knew going in that it was a 2 week thing and I told myself not to get attached.  And I did it - until the last night.  On the last night, we were lying in bed, talking.  I had my head on his knee and he had his head on my legs and my heart exploded.  I liked him.  A lot.  I felt so comfortable with him and remember what it was like to be intimate with someone.  To actually be intimate - not just fucking.  For the first time in my life, I made love with a man and looked into his eyes.  I looked into his eyes and didn't automatically feel awkward and turn away.  I liked it.  We were connecting.  I was falling for him.

The day I left, everything was fine.  We had lunch together right before my taxi came to get me at 2pm.  I kept my feelings in check and we said our goodbyes, exchanged Facebook's/emails and said we'd keep in touch.  Neither of us had any fairytale beliefs that these 2 weeks were anything more than they were so it was easy to find some peace as the taxi pulled away.

I got home the next day and, as a Facebook addict, began adding all of my new found friends.  Over the week, I because friends with them all, except him.  1 day, 3 days, 5 days later and I was going out of my mind.  Had I been duped?  Were all his words and actions fake and he was just looking for some temporary action?  Even thought I knew it was a short term thing, my feelings were hurt.  I was preparing myself for a block/delete.  What a fool am I?  I turned into this 12 year old girl, calling my girlfriends and going insane.  I was checking my Facebook, literally, every 10 minutes to see if he'd been on.  I was psychotic!  How did I go from an ice cold heartless, feelingless girl to this sniveling teenager?  And the most baffling part was that I didn't even know whyI was doing this!  We were not going to continue anything.  I had no delusions of that. So what was my problem?  He finally added me today.  In his defense, I could see that he hadn't been online since last week and he did tell me that he didn't Facebook often.  It gave me some relief that he wasn't avoiding me and for some reason, with that friend request confirmation, my sanity returned.

And so, that's that.  I go on with my life, and he goes on with his.  We will have the occasional wall posting, commenting, poking.  He will live in Mexico and I will live here.  And even thought it was only 2 weeks, I am eternally grateful for this man.  He taught me how to feel again.  He brought back feelings that I'd forgotten I had.  He made me realize that I DO want a relationship, a boyfriend, a HUSBAND.  For the last two years, I had convinced myself that I was happy being alone and that I didn't want or need anyone.  Boy, was I wrong.  I want love.  I want to feel the love I felt with this man, but I want it forever.  So, I have decided that I will actively go out and meet people.  If my friends invite me to a show or get together, I will go.  I will not turn them down because I fear that I will be uncomfortable.  I will go, and hope that I will meet a man as wonderful as the man I just met.

Thank you, beautiful Mexican friend, for showing me how to love again.  I am eternally grateful.  For that, and a few other things ;)

A Little Bit About Me...

In the approximately 16 years of my dating life, I have had 6 long term relationships and have been engaged once.  The relationships have lasted between 6 months and 4 years.  When I see that in writing, it seems like I've had a decent run but it sure feels like I've been single and alone for most of my life.  My last relationship ended almost 2 years ago when I found him cheating on me.  I was all sorts of livid and hurt and it seems that it's taken me almost this long to get over it.  Am I over it?  Do you ever really get over a rug pull like this?  I think I need to get into another relationship before I can fully answer that.  Another relationship...how do I find that?

I am a self-employed gal who works mostly at home and with kids at their homes.  Days can go by where my only company is my own, the checkout person at the grocery store and teenagers.  I spend my mornings working out at a ladies only gym and I have two adorable cats.  Not a lot of room to meet men, huh?  Oh, and did I mention that a good chunk of my friends are gay men - I live in the gay part of town which I LOVE but doesn't really open it up to meet eligible men at the bank on the corner.  So, what do I do?

This seems to be the question of my life right now - where do you meet a nice, single man when you're a thirty-something gal? 

No Time Like Right Now, Huh?

I've spent the last few weeks sitting on this blog and trying to figure out what kind of blog will it be?  Will it be simply about my rants as a single gal?  Singledom is a part of my life but the life of a single gal has so many more components - friends, work, meeting new people, drama, clubs, dancing your face off and sometimes waking up in the morning and wondering "what the hell happened last night?".  So, I guess this will be more about my life and what goes on.

Let's start from the beginning - I was born in the winter of 1975 which makes me 35 years old.  I almost cringe when I see that number because I remember being 8 and thinking 27 was WAY over the hill.  I take small pleasure in knowing that many of my friends who were in my grade are already 36.  YAY for being a late in the year baby!  I was raised in the suburbs and really had a pretty decent childhood.  There were, of course, fights with my parents and sibling, there were the days when girls hated me at school, when boys I liked didn't like me back, but all in all, it was pretty normal.  We rode our bikes, threw dirt and dreamed about what it would be when we grew up.  What would be?  Who would we marry?  Would we be rich?

I met my best friend when I was 3.  We went to the same pre-school and were best friends all the way until a few years ago.  Now, we don't even speak.  I miss her sometimes, but the her I miss was the girl I knew and not this narcissistic, mean girl she has become.  She could have had it all, really.  She grew up a little bit plain, a little bit chubby and a whole lot loved.  She had amazing friends, had such great moral standings and was genuinely a great person.  When we got older, she got thinner, blonder and mean.  She became the centre of attention instead of the buddy and with that, lost everything she was.  I, playing the BFF, was patiently waiting this out because I figured she was going through her party stage later in life.  Unfortunately, she is still there.  Meaner than ever.  Backstabbing friends, gossiping and drinking her face off nightly.  I believe in karma but in her case, even thought we're not friends anymore, I wish karma didn't bite her back.  She is unfortunately cursed with an abusive criminal boyfriend, fairweather girlfriends and 80 pounds that she once shed came back and came back hard.  She threw away our friendship for surface friendships and although I wish her well in life, I can't be there anymore.  I can't take her meanness.

My second best friend when I was growing up was the most perfect girl you'd ever know.  Smart, beautiful, classy.  It seemed like everything she ever wanted was presented to her on a silver platter.  Her career, which was the career I always dreamed of, flourished and I was jealous.  I was so enamored with her, I tried everything I could to be like her. But I wasn't.  I wasn't pretty like her, I wasn't smart like her and I did everything I could to get boys to like me - but they didn't.  They always liked her.  Over the years, I have learned to be happy with being me and through this, I saw that she wasn't so perfect.  She just hid things well and smiled constantly.  I learned that no one really has the perfect life.  Alas, friend number one and friend number two were caught talking trash behind my back on more than one occasion and I decided to free myself of them both.  I still wonder if I was being childish and this was normal talk between friends but my feeling were hurt pretty bad.  Still are.  I miss them though.....

Rants, from a single gal

You know what?  Being single sucks. 

This blog will be about the trials and tribulations of being a single gal in a big city.  About horrific dates, about superficial people and about what a girl goes through before she finds prince charming.

Stay tuned, folks.