I'm terrible at this blogging thing. It's been over a year since I've written a thing, and maybe it's due to the pressure I put upon myself to feel like Carrie Bradshaw and say deep-yet-recognizable truths. I also have this bad habit of coming up with a million different things that I want to say, usually in the shower, so I forget these strikes of brilliance as they go down the drain along with my shampoo suds.
I also didn't think I had much to eject into the ethosphere. With the many, many heartbreaks I had both professionally and personally in the past 12 months, it was too much, too soon, too personal. I've had time to process it, and while it disappoints me no less, the murkiness that I had to paddle furiously through has finally led to somewhat of a surface. I'm still climbing an uphill battle, but I can say that I got through these things and have emerged with as much grace as I could muster, and a bit more cynicism. This coming from a girl who told an acquaintance from an improve class that, since I moved from Florida, I've become more cynical answered, "MORE cynical?? Eek!"
ANYWAY. I was doing my usual weekend activity of watching one of the Jane Austen or Bronte sisters' novels film adaptations, and said to my roommate "I should start a blog about being a spinster!" She agreed. My apartment is like a home for modern spinsters. We have jobs, are well educated, are stylish, and have loads of class, yet are lacking in one department: our love lives. And yes, its pretty much by choice.
I began to think about this and, as I was scrubbing my hair, I had a thought. Carrie Bradshaw was super fun and fabulous and sexy, but her column and the thousands of other advice columns and blogs, etc. etc. etc. are so alien to me. Where is the blog about the girl who HASN'T had a date or a boyfriend (let alone all that goes with it) in so long she now has a natural reflex to chuckle cynically at the notion. Where is the blog for the girl who identifies more with the sad guy in love with Keira Knightly in Love Actually and has to hold back her tears when Kate Winslet begins The Holiday with this achingly truthful monologue: "What about our stories, those of us who fall in love alone? We are the victims of the one sided affair. We are the cursed of the loved ones. We are the unloved ones, the walking wounded. The handicapped without the advantage of a great parking space! Yes, you are looking at one such individual. And I have willingly loved that man for over three miserable years! The absolute worst years of my life! The worst Christmas', the worst Birthday's, New Years Eve's brought in by tears and valium. These years that I have been in love have been the darkest days of my life. All because I've been cursed by being in love with a man who does not and will not love me back."
Steak through the heart, that one is, and all because it so perfectly and eloquently describes so many of the one-sided relationships I've been in. You know, the ones where you hang onto every word they say, knowing just knowing, that your loyalty, your unwavering and profoundly open-hearted interest in what they have to say will land you a spot in their heart. Really, it just means that you're their therapist and the second you try to talk about anything significant to yourself or say anything honest about your opinions, you will get railroaded with their needs once again. And you take it. And take it. An endless torrential downpour of them, them, them, until you snap and let the Florence Nightengale act slip just for a second, and BOOM, you've betrayed them. They either throw a pity party for themselves, or, as one of my more recent heartbreaks went, they go completely AWOL, shut you out of their lives, and (insult of insults) block you on Facebook. All because you decided that you have given enough of yourself, listened to them for months on end with nothing but kindness, compassion and complete selflessness, and wanted to be heard, listened to. You want to feel, if even for a second, that you mean as much to them as they do to you, and you have things in you worth being listened to. Selflessness is a virtue but it can also be a torture device that tightens around your neck and keeps you in a stranglehold, manipulating you to turn this way or that to the direction they desire, and if you make one false move, jerk to the side even a little, you die. Your relationships dies. Your heart dies just a little more. The only thing borne of it is the emerging of a little more cynicism and self-doubt. You've done it again. You were no longer convenient.
And yet, you still troll the boards of Pinterest, creating the most perfect wedding ever. You know who your bridesmaids will be, the color of their dresses, the amazing sit-down dinner, the fun little makeshift Photo Booth. All you need now is the groom. That's the tricky part. Despite being raked through the coals over and over and over and over again you are still a romantic at heart. You never miss a Jane Austen marathon on a Friday night. You long for the balls of the Regency Era, the subtle romance that can leave you breathless from a man simply staring at your lips while delivering a passionate line about his ardent and unwavering love for you.
But at the same time, you don't believe a word of it. Oh how you want to, but there is that nagging voice in the back of your head reminding you that you are the doyenne of the one-sided love affair. You are no great beauty, so you smile bravely at your acquaintances ADORABLE wedding and baby photos thinking "WHY ARE THEY MARRIED AND I'M NOT?!!?" You continue being a shoulder to cry on for those ones that light up your day, if only to know that you've made them smile if only for a moment. You fancy yourself to be Saint Diana, protector of the Aching Hearts but retain your rep of being the sassy single one with witty, buzzy one liners. You want to be the one with the tales of wild weekends making out with dark and handsome rogues in a nightclub stall. But really, you spent your weekend with Pride and Prejudice and Prosecco one again, and you're actually just fine with that.
Where is the blog for THAT girl? Assuming I can keep this business up, maybe that will be this blog.
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