Online Dating, why do you have to suck?

I'm not doing that well with Internet dating.

First of all, I haven't actually gone out on a date. I'm not even getting that far. Apparently boys don't like it when you go four, five days or even a week or two without responding. But, ugh, I can't really be bothered with it. This whole e-mailing your list of fantasies, requirements and expectations isn't really what I would like to be doing right now. I went out of town a couple of weekends ago to go to my friend's cabin in the moutains for some quality time and some tubing down the river. We had such a good time that we are planning a white water rafting trip down the 96' Olympic rapids course before the summer is over. I'd much rather be out there and living than chained to my e-mail account on some free dating website.

Then people tell me I need to up my investment and get on a pay site to avoid all the crazies, but, ugh, I can't really be bothered with that either. From what I understand, that's just a whole lot more e-mailing and questionnaire completing and that sounds like more work, not less. I just want to log in every couple of weeks, check my e-mail and respond how I see fit.

I was e-mailing with this one guy, but he seemed much more into it than me. Y'all, it is it BORING to sit there and type out what you want in a man, only to have him say "that's me!" Because, one, I don't believe him. Two, everyone thinks they are funny and caring and easy going. That and chemistry can only be determined by face time and spending every day for weeks e-mailing someone is really just a waste of time. I get bored about three e-mails in and just quit.

This same guy asked me my short-term and long-term goals. This is a good question that I believe should be asked. My short-term goal is to buy a house in the next couple of years. My long-term goal is to settle down within the next 10 years. Well that took care of him responding. But seriously, if I said I wanted to be settled down in the next three years, then I would have to meet someone TODAY and then date for a couple of years and then be engaged for another year. That is way too much pressure. And, ugh, I can't be bothered with it.

I'm open for something happening organically, but my heart isn't in prowling for it.

What Dreams May Come

-----Original Message-----

From: Sarah
Sent: Tuesday, August 24, 2010 2:21 PM
To: 'Ex-Coworker'
Subject: Hi!

Hi! How’re you? I had a dream last week that I had your baby, so way to spread the dream seed!

I sent this e-mail to an old coworker. About a month before he had called me and told me he dreamt that I was pregnant with twins. His twins.

My phone immediately rang.

“Are you and I sharing the same dreamscape or something?” he asked.

“Why?”

“What night did you have that dream?”

“Friday. I mean Thursday night. Why?” I pressed.

“Because that night I had a dream we were living together. We were in bed reading and you announced that you were pregnant.”

“Did we have a girl? We had a girl in my dream. She was kinda pudgy and she had my hair, well really, she had my everything, but she had your nose. I distinctly remember that,” I rambled.

He stopped me. “Don’t you think it’s weird that we are both dreaming about having kids with each other on the same night?”

I gasped. “Does that make it true?”

DOES THAT MAKE IT TRUE?

I say that half-jokingly, but seriously, has anyone else heard of having the same dream at the same time?

Dark and Twisty

In the May 2010 issue, O Magazine ran a series of articles on what it means to be happy. Eat, Pray, Love's Elizabeth Gilbert contributed an article. So did beloved Grey's Anatomy creator, Shonda Rhimes.

Of course I skipped ahead to the Shonda Rhimes article first. Because what Shonda and I share that Elizabeth and I do not is the following phrase: Dark and twisty. While I wish that I could spend an all-expenses-paid year abroad after every breakup, it's Meredith Grey with whom I identify. Dark and twisty. Mer used to combat her problems with drinking too much tequila and sleeping with inappropriate men. Mer is jaded. Mer is me.

So what does the creator of TV's dark and twistiest character have to say about happiness? Give up.

She writes about it a little more eloquently. As women, we're told we should do it all: be an executive, raise children, have a great relationship with your husband, donate to charity, buy organic and train for that marathon. I was taken aback with how I have been trying to do all of those things without even realizing it. I'm in a battle at work for manager, I already do my charity work, I've spent this summer switching to organic and trying to psych myself up for that damn 5k. I don't even know why I've been trying to do all of these things. I might even blame O Magazine for touting mind, body, spirit health every issue.

Rhimes writes that wanting it all is the women's lament. And in her dark and twisty fashion, she reminds us that there are always going to be people better than we are at things. So, give up. Prioritize what you want out of life and let go of the rest. "Stop training for that marathon," she writes. (Mental note: check). "Let someone else have the great relationship."

My eyes stopped at those words, Let someone else have the great relationship. That's what I should do. I am so good at so many other things, I should have the career that I'm proud of and focus on my side knitting business I'm trying to get off the ground. Keep eating organic, 'cause I like it. Let go of running, because I don't. And let someone else have the love affair I've spent my entire life chasing.

I put the magazine down and picked up a dry erase marker and walked into the bathroom. Across the side of the mirror I don't use, I scrawled, Let someone else have the great relationship. And every time I brushed my teeth, brushed my hair or applied mascara before running out for the night, my eyes would trail across my new mantra.

I tried to embrace my dark and twisty, but it felt wrong. In the way that Elizabeth Gilbert writes about listening to your gut, it felt wrong. Lying- on- the- bathroom- floor- crying- because- you- don't- want- to- be- in- this- marriage- anymore wrong. For an entire month my stomach would sour every time I read it. It's a nice mantra, logically it should be my mantra, but I realized I can't give up.

I wiped the words off the mirror and replaced them with something that felt right: Someone, somewhere is going to love me.

And then I picked up my O Magazine and read Elizabeth Gilbert's view on happiness.

Vertigo

All week long I was praised by my coworkers and friends for my new haircut. This weekend I went back to the salon and got a temporary dye to match my natural brown color and eliminate some of the lingering blond highlights.

I held up two dresses I bought during my lunch break to my coworkers and they awwed with approval. "You're changing," one winked. "A new you."

I'm not sure which part of me is new. One would think that I should have gone through this after my breakup with S, not four months after my breakup with Christopher.

My mom saw me on Saturday and told me I was the prettiest she's ever seen me. "You did things backwards," she said. "Most people go through the outer fix first because it's the easiest. Then they work on the inside."

But I also think my mom is giving me too much credit. You see, I'm cheap. When I was spending $200 a month in therapy, I couldn't afford a new haircut or new clothes. I also only buy clothes that enhance my appearance; I don't buy clothes just because they will do. And when I didn't like what I saw on the inside, I didn't like how I looked on the outside, no matter what I tried on. Hence my year-long hiatus from clothes shopping.

The truth is I was too frugal to fix the outside first.

When I slipped in my new dress for the garden party on Saturday, I did feel pretty. I felt so pretty that I asked Harvey and Katie to pose for a picture with me in front of a flowering bush. But when Harvey's husband handed me back my camera, I was crushed. Harvey is 5'2" and Katie is 5'3". I am 5'7" and was wearing three-inch heels that day, making me almost a foot taller than them. And when someone is bigger, everything matches in proportion: my head is also bigger than theirs, so are my ears and my arms and my shoulders. And standing next time them, I looked like a giant freak.

In the painting classes I've been taking, the instructor tells you to not compare your work with others. That as soon as your get your painting home and isolated from the other works, you'll like it. But what do you do when it's your body?

I got home that night and stared in the mirror. Nope, nothing looked wrong. Stood facing the side to check out the other angle. Nope, everything is where it should be. Took out my camera again to see if I just overreacted. Nope, still looks hideous.

And then I happened to log in my e-mail account and saw an e-mail from a guy on Plenty if Fish. The one line said that I was ugly. Well that didn't help things at all. The profile was obviously a fake one. The pictures were secondhand scanned images of some shirtless model. The description was pretty foul: demanding that his date be the kind of girl to dance on a table in the middle of a restaurant and then take her top off. He had no tolerance for innocence.

Logically, the e-mail shouldn't have bothered me, but it did. Why does there have to be people out there that are so malicious that they seek to intentionally hurt stranger's feelings? And why does it feel like I am always on the receiving end of it? I've never heard of anyone else getting an e-mail detailing how ugly she is, and everyone I've told seemed so shocked that they obviously have never heard of it happening before.

I know I'm a perfectionist. I don't handle it well when I make a mistake at work. I've never hung up any of my paintings from my painting classes; all of my friends have and they love their work, and to be honest, it does look pretty awesome hanging on the walls. And I don't look like how I should look like in my head. That's the hardest one: to envision one image so clearly and just be out of reach of it.

I'm doing better. I've bought four dresses this summer; obviously I'm seeing something I like about myself. It's just that Saturday was a misstep for me.

Delayed Anger

Christopher returned. It seems like he has some radar for when I leave the state. I was sitting in the back of my father's SUV, sandwiched between my aunt and my step-mother on a quick drive to Hilton Head Island for the day. It's actually quicker to make the journey by boat, but I've read too many local books about people dying in the Port Royal sound, so I won't make the journey (yet. It's coming, I'm sure.)

My phone chimes and it's a text message from Christopher. I open it up and displayed in all of its MMS glory is a picture of an obscenely obese fat woman... or man... I couldn't tell and I deleted it before my aunt could lean over for a quick looksee. And now my phone is forever tainted because that was its inaugural naked photo.

The message made me angry. I don't think that the naked person intended for his/her picture to be sent around like that and I've seen too many Dr. Phil episodes of teens crying and attempting suicide over such a gross misjudgment. So I did what I suspect Christopher wanted me to do. I responded and told him in no uncertain terms did I want to receive any sort of message like that again.

Then he responds, "Sorry about the Homer Simpson pic." No it was not Homer Simpson. Homer Simpson is a fictional cartoon character. He sent me a picture of a living, breathing person that somebody loves. He won't even accept accountability for it.

Let's do a quick recap of Christopher's contacts since I broke up with him in the beginning of May:

• Called me and told me he was hanging out with a friend from college who coincidentally lived in the area but I had never heard of over the past year. Then he said he won a TV at his friend's pool party. I scoffed and said what kind of guy needs to give away prizes to get a friend to show up for a pool party, so then he changes the story to it was his friend's neighborhood's party, and then he finally admitted it was his own apartment building's party. That was a really long way of writing that he lied.
• Texted me and told me he was hallucinating off of Cymbalta, which was also a lie.
• Texted me a photo of an obese naked person.

This is the behavior of someone who is unstable. These stories scare me, because these aren't Christopher stories; they are S stories.

I get that he's desperate and trying things to get me to make contact with him. I know he wants me back. Of course he would. I too would want the only person in the 6 million-person city who would talk to me and hang out with me, occasionally bring over groceries and pay my way every time we went out. I would eat that up.

But I also wouldn't treat that person like crap.

Whenever I do think about Christopher, I get angry. It's some sort of delayed anger that's settled in now that I have had time to reflect back on it. The story that stands out most in my mind is this one. The one where I randomly show up at his apartment and turn on his shower and act all cheerful so I can take him out to lunch and pay for him. And he said no. He got back into bed, ordered me to turn the shower off and told me to leave before he pretended to go back to sleep. That is clearly not the action of someone who wants to be in a relationship with someone else. I remember feeling so hurt that I wasn't worth waking up for and I cried in front of him. Please, please go out to lunch with me. He just closed his eyes and rolled over in bed. Friend or otherwise, I have never had someone care so much about me that he/she shows up at my door when I'm acting depressed (not that I have in a long while, but still.) He said no.

He said no.

HE SAID NO.

He had his chance to be with me and he did not treat me or the relationship with care. If I could go back to that day, I would have stood up, smoothed my clothes and told him that this was no longer a relationship and that I was out. That was the moment I should have ended things. (I also feel like I owe an apology to the commenters who tried to be gentle and tactful, but I didn't see it because I was still emotionally entangled. You were right. I was wrong.)

It all just makes me so angry. I'm angry at myself too for just going along with it. My friends and I are usually only really active in the summer, so I was going long periods of time without them as well. I think if this happened in the summertime, I would have peaced out and met my friends for drinks on the patio and laughed at myself. Instead I let myself get caught up in that craziness.

*Deep breath*

Boys suck.

Thanks for the bangs

Wish I had more to say, or at least a real story to tell, but I don't.

I took some time off to go to my father's beach house in South Carolina. We took the boat out and sailed into town for lunch, and I felt very fancy right up until we walked into the restaurant and all the girls there were wearing their cute summer dresses and giving me the stink eye as my bathing suit peeked out from under my tank top and my hair was styled with salt and sea spray. A shrimp po' boy and a beer later, it didn't matter anymore. And then we sailed back to the house and got caught in one of those random summer storms that appear out of nowhere when it gets too hot outside (104 degrees F with a heat index of 118) and then we had out own Deadliest Catch reenactment. It felt like we were sailing through ice chips with each drop of rain stinging the flesh. It was terrifying and exhilarating at the same time.

The Femme Fatale underwent surgery, which I will now pay for for the next year. She had a lipoma (a benign tumor of fat) growing on her right hing leg. I waited as long as I could, but I took her to my father's house and she had trouble climbing out of the swimming pool with her giant club leg. The surgery cost me $1,700 and the vet removed 7.5 lbs of fat from her leg. That's about the size of a cat. She was carrying a dog and a cat around with her. And if you did the math, that's about $227 per pound, clearly the most I have ever spent on fat. She seems much happier even though they shaved half of her body and she's sporting the worst hair cut until it grows back.

I've been hanging out with my girlfriends a lot lately. Harvey has typically been at the center of our group of friends and people only go out if she is there. However, Harvey's been busy so the rest of us are starting to go out without her. And it's been just as fun. I've been spending a lot of time with Jenna painting and drinking wine and I think we are both looking for friends in each other. The group booked a 5-day cruise through Mexico next summer, and we'll be rooming together with Katie.

I signed up on Plenty of Fish, but it's made me learn that I am really not interested in dating right now, which is such a strange feeling for me. I don't think I've ever been at peace with not dating before. Of course I think most people would feel the same way when they are contacted by the people that have written me. One listed his interest as "Gambling of any kind." One was married and looking for something discreet. Most are older than my specified range. None have graduated from college. And one, one e-mailed me with this gem which I have stolen and made my new mantra:

"First off, I'm looking for a rock star, someone who is so awesome that it only adds to my awesomeness and creates a super nova of awesomeness that opens doors for us, makes our hair fly in different directions, and basically everyone is jealous of!"

I've only written two people back and then stopped after their second e-mails. Neither were Mr. Awesome.

I got my hair cut. This is only worth mentioning because for years I have been going to the Aveda and Paul Mitchel schools to get my hair cut for cheap and this time I went to a salon. (If you have one in your area, I highly recommend the Aveda school, especially for color or highlights. You get the signature Aveda color at like 75% off. Paul Mitchel I did not care for at all. The stylists there were more obsessed with their own appearances than they were the clients'. Mine wore leather boots with a tutu and a beret straight up out of the original Fame. And she did not take her shades off when she cut my hair.) Anyway, I sat down in the salon chair on Saturday and proclaimed that I wanted bangs. The stylist tilted her head to the side and said, "Not with those cowlicks." We went back and forth and she tested my hair and I won. When she asked what kind of bangs I wanted, I reached in my purse and pulled out the DVD insert for Gilmore Girls and pointed to Rory's picture. So to solidify my obsession, I now have Rory Gilmore bangs. (I also doubled the tip for my stylist when she said, "Let's look at Rory's picture again" without me telling her who it was.) It's gone over really well. My boss couldn't stop praising it this morning. She said that it suits me very well and it looks like I've always had them. She went on and on for several minutes about how attractive I looked, so it really made me feel great. Thanks, Rory, for the bangs.

This weekend I am going to a party that 5k Guy will be attending. Despite a random e-mail that I got from him on July 4th, he never did call or ask me out. I suspect he has feelings for Katie instead, which is quite funny because Katie can't stand him. Anyway, I'm buying a new dress to wear so he can eat his heart out.

That's all I've got at the moment. Sorry I'm so boring, y'all.