Last night I watched Twilight: New Moon, 27 Dresses and Knocked Up. DON’T JUDGE ME, it was late at night and I couldn’t sleep. Really I watched all of them at the same time, flipping channel when I got bored. Sunday night was better…watched Gamer, Babylon A.D. and Max Payne. More or less back to back. I was exhausted and didn’t feel like doing anything and didn’t really have anything I needed to do, except laundry.
But anyway, about last night….sometimes I get so frustrated with “chick flicks” they rarely reflect real life and have this phenomenal ability to make me feel like shit. Although How to be Single was pretty good. She didn’t end up with any guy at the end, but instead met her goal of hiking a mountain somewhere. Much better I think, and yet, as much as I hate the feelings of self-loathing and disappointment at the end of a chick flick I am inevitably attracted to them.
There’s something about the story line that never really changes that still draws me in. Girl meets guy, he usually annoys her or she’s in love with someone else or he’s in love with someone else first, then shit happens and more shit happens and they realize that they’re really in love and live happily ever after. I mean, what little girl at heart doesn’t drool over this idea? Well, some don’t, but there’s the idea ingrained into most of our brains that this is exactly what we’re supposed to want. Not unlike Mila Kunis says in Friends with Benefits, “SHUT UP KATHERINE HEIGL, YOU LITTLE LIAR!” Although there’s ANOTHER movie with the same damn story line.
Here’s what gets me….did I miss my window? When I see movies like Knocked Up and think about the fact that really, women are meant to have babies in their 20’s when they’ve got the energy of an energizer bunny, but don’t always have their shit together. Now women are having babies in their 30s and 40s when we have our shit together more or less, we’re stable, craziness of our 20s out of our systems. When we have careers and sometimes have partners, who also typically have their shit together and are stable.
But here I am, 36 1/2 no babies (human ones anyway), not married, but in a long term open-ish relationship for over 10 years, with no plans for change in the foreseeable future. We’ve discussed moving in together, but I really don’t think that will happen any time soon. He doesn’t want to have any more children (his are 13 and 16), I don’t know if I honestly want to have them or if I just tell myself that because it’s not going to happen with him. Sometimes I feel like I’m married and it’s not anything like I would have thought it would be. I know marriage isn’t all fairy tales and it isn’t easy all the time, but still.
I spent most of my 20s afraid and depressed, blaming myself for my ex’s infidelity and believing that it was my fault. Then I met Scott and he awesome, but didn’t want anything serious and this came with a whole host of drama and territory I was unfamiliar with. In the end things settled down and we’re where we’re at now. In a rut. We don’t have sex. We rarely touch, I can spend the night over there and I might as well have stayed at my own house. Being lonely when you’re with someone is the worst form of loneliness. I’d rather be alone. I could leave and I have considered it, but then I’d really be alone. I don’t have a lot of friends and I feel like I have virtually no support system without him. That wasn’t by anyone’s design, it just happened.
I used to travel 80% of the time for work and when I was home I worked from home (still do) so no office, no social life, no friends. And it’s harder to make friends as an adult when you don’t go to school or to an office. Sure I go to the gym and I’ve sort of gotten to know some of the ladies in my classes, but no one I’d go out to dinner with or hang out with. Most of them are married and have kids. My best friend is a stay at home mom and we don’t see each other often. My other best friend has a kid, a fiancee and is trying to open her own salon. I joined a women’s triathlon / running team in hopes of making more friends and I have, but most of them are married and have kids. When you’re more or less single and don’t have kids these people are hard to really relate to.
As for meeting other guys…ugh. Online dating sucks. It’s virtually impossible to meet guys organically any more. I have very few single friends and most of us have too much shit going on that we don’t go out or if we do it’s to someone’s house and not OUT, out. I’ve grown out of the “let’s go to the bar and meet guys” mentality, although there are nights when I wish I had the ovaries to do that again.
You know what I miss? That newness of a relationship, when you’re giddy with butterflies, can’t wait to hear from or see that person, the excitement, can’t keep your hands to yourself-ness, the passion, all that good shit. I wonder if I’ll ever have it again or if it’s all over for me. I’m not ready to leave Scott. There’s too much of our lives intertwined. Not unlike a marriage.
But I dream of it. Holy shit do I literally dream of it. Some mornings I wake up sad that it wasn’t real. So I guess that’s why I’m drawn to a good cheesy chick flick. Let me get my fix of what I’m missing, let me believe for a moment that it is possible…even though it’s almost always Katherine Heigl. Sometimes it’s worth the self loathing and sadness I feel after. Sometimes it makes me too introspective for my own good. Like today. I wish I could come up with something witty and funny, but I’m all out of witty and funny any it’s barely 12:30 pm.
Is there something you worry you’ve missed out on? Are we too late?
Blundering through life... 