Feeling kind of sorry for myself

So I have had an interesting time recently. It seems like I almost never meet anyone who I’m interested in dating, and I certainly never meet anyone who’s interested in dating me (unless, of course, they are completely and totally wrong for me in every possible way, as well as being entirely unattractive). And on the rare occasions that I DO meet someone I’m interested, they’re either

a) already taken
b) not in my age range (which is steadily getting bigger in both directions)
c) not at all interested 
d) all of the above

Usually it’s d. And it’s absolutely always c. ALWAYS. I was driving to work yesterday, listening to NPR as usual. Now, I was already in a bad mood because I had tried to bike to work, got about a quarter of the way there, realized the bike trail was under several feet of water, and had to rush back to my house, repack all of my stuff, and then drive to work. Which meant I got stuck in traffic since I was leaving kind of late at that point. But anyway, there I was, trying to keep my cursing to a minimum, when The Perspective came on. It was a woman talking about how her family has pizza Fridays, and all the things her kids and husband do etc, etc. And how when she was younger (and I’m assuming by that, she meant younger than I am now, because I’m not really a spring chicken anymore), she never thought that she would be happy sitting around at home on a Friday night making pizza, but it was the only place in the world she wanted to be. I almost started crying.


Now, it’s not that I want that picture of domestic bliss. I’m not really sure that I want kids at all. But I do want to have some family. I feel rather adrift in the world. And what I would love more than anything is a partner to share it all with. I just read another bog, where a woman was describing how she got to where she was. There was a lot of talk about how she just started a relationship here, and started another one there. As if starting a relationship is just something you decide to do one day, and you set out and just do it, just like going to the grocery store or making your bed. To me, starting a relationship is like climbing Everest. The attempts are few and far between, they take a ridiculous amount of work and luck to get off the ground, and then most of them fail.

And it’s not even that I necessarily want the perfect American dream life.  But I’ve pretty much destroyed all of my other options by going to grad school.  I’m up to my eyeballs in unsecured debt, and the only way to get rid of it is to pay it off (which I’m in no position to do) or to die (which isn’t my first choice).  It wouldn’t be so bad if I had the career of my dreams and was happy in it, but I’m not even USING my education.  It was all a waste.  And now I can’t run off to volunteer in third-world countries, or teach English abroad, or be a ski bum and work seasonal jobs in amazing places, or anything else of the sort.  Nope, I’m settled down in a quasi-suburban area, with my little house, and I go to a job every day that I don’t really care for, just so I can spend the next 20 years paying off this debt so I can be FREE.  And the only option left to me in my quest to be happy is to try to find someone to be happy with, although, like everything else, I seem to be failing at that too.

Yesterday, as I was running on the treadmill at the gym (because I have this somewhat insane belief that if only I was a size 6 instead of a size 8, then I would be able to start relationships as easily as everyone else seems to be able to), a song came on. “I thought love was only true in fairy-tales, made for someone else but not for me.” After all of these years, I still think that.