30 TRUTHS IN 30 DAYS - DAY EIGHTEEN

Truth #18: You never know where or when Murphy's Laws will strike next! It's usually when you're least expecting it and least prepared. I always say that it's better to be alone than to be with the wrong person. It seems my whole life has been testament to proving that theory to be correct until I put myself in a rather lengthy time-out. Just recently I've been half-ass dabbling with this online dating stuff and wouldn't you know it that I stumbled across someone quite accidently who actually tickled my fancy by what he wrote in his profile, etc. Of course, I couldn't leave well enough alone! I had to send him a message. 

In my mind I see this guy getting with a bunch of bimbos, airheads and all sorts of women who just don't get him and he's bored to death. He wants a little mental stimulation to put some pep in his step. He wants pizzazz! Some gusto! Something real! I had no intention of doing anything, but giving him some encouragement but not on my behalf but to stay in the game and to continue his hunt. So I sent him a message:

Nope! I don't want to be anyone's "Florida vacation."  The last time that happened, it put me in a lengthy time-out and I'm just starting to dig my way out of that now. You talk about a severe case of PSTD! The trouble here isn't that we wouldn't click, it's that we would and then hey, reality would set in. We live over 500 miles apart and long distance relationships rarely work. Naturally, you want to be with the person and can't be. Then the worst happens...convenience finally wins out. One or the other or both of us would find someone locally to take the loneliness away. Don't you like how I just had a whole relationship with someone I don't even know in just a few sentences? That's very insightful of me because I know myself and I see the writing on the wall. I know the far away galaxy he seeks too well and I think I could razzle dazzle him with some deep meaningful whatever and then some. But I'm not going there...I can't!!! So repeat after me, Mildred! I am not going to go there. Back off and leave it alone :)

CAN MILDRED COME OUT TO PLAY?

I haven't been feeling well for the last few days and in one of my "spleeny" (it's a Maine word meaning whiny) rants to a friend of mine about an old boyfriend, I had a lightbulb moment. No, it was more like a holy shit moment.  All of a sudden all the stupid, wasted, self-destructive relationships I've had made sense. It didn't make me feel any better, but at least it made me see why I had taken the path I had taken. 

Being sexually abused as a child severely fractured me and distorted my image of what relationships should be like. I grew up pretty clueless. And since my abuse went unchecked and like many sexual abuse victims I kept it hid. I buried it and blamed myself for it happening. I never felt like I deserved to be loved. I truly felt unworthy of having anything good or wholesome in my life. It's sad for any child to grow up feeling like that. At the time I didn't have the foresight to see the direction that was going to take me and no one seemed to want to enlighten me. As I got older, I did drugs to numb me and then I became promiscuous, but strangely enough I never connected the dots. I always gravitated to men who wouldn't love me like I needed to be loved or deserved to be loved. I lived a self-fulfilling prophecy to prove my unworthiness. If any good guys paid me any attention, I passed them by like they had the plague. I just wasn't interested in what they were selling. I found nice guys boring and sedate. What I thought I needed was something that was going to set my hair on fire and make me teeter on the edge of insanity. What a waste of time and energy that was! I should have gone with the dude offering the house and the white picket fence instead!

I have spent a lifetime proving to myself that I'm not worth anything. I'm not worth loving. I'm not worth having a decent relationship with because I believed I'm not a decent human being. That really makes me sad that I have done that to myself, but what makes me sadder is that the people who love me...my family never have questioned why I have done this to myself. Or why no therapist has ever questioned it? Why hasn't anyone simply said STOP IT? Just stop it and try something different because your way isn't working? Now, I'm afraid I don't know how to start over and do things differently. I don't know how to feel differently or be different. I know I should. I know anyone who has put themselves in timeout for 17 years has a HUGE problem, but here I sit. It's safe! No one can hurt me. I'm isolated!

Recently, I started to do the online dating thing, but only to find out that 95% of the people on the site aren't even who they say they are. The other 5% may be the nicest people in the world, but for one reason or another just don't appeal to me. Let's face it! We all have preferences. So for now I put that great idea on hold! I'm not going to say my time has passed because I don't have a crystal ball and I can't see into the future.  But I do know I am a bonafide freak magnet and until I can figure out how to curb that and how to trust my own choices in what appeals to me then I need to stay in time out for a while longer. 

OVER THE RAINBOW

BootsandBraids stated in a comment yesterday that I was brave, but while I may have spent my whole life being fearless I'm also foolish to cast caution to the wind as many times as I have. I'm lucky nothing bad has ever happened to me in any of these lapses of judgment on my part. I need to think before I act in the future. So for what it's worth I want to thank you for helping me define and clarify my actions.

The other night while chatting with a friend I had an amazing lightbulb moment. Suddenly everything became crystal clear, but in doing so it didn't make me feel better it made me feel empty. You see, I was told to trust my instincts, but to that I replied trusting my instinsts was the fastest route to OZ there is. Are my instincts really that bad? That flawed? I guess what I meant by that is with me you get a guaranteed adventure and who doesn't want an adventure? Adventures are full of fun and fantasy! It made me really sad because that's all there is...I'm just a bunch of adventures and nothing more. I'm Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds!

I want to be more than just Dorothy following the Yellow Brick Road or to be more than just Alice in Wonderland. I don't want to be just someone's adventure. Yes, adventures are great and we remember them always, but they end. The conclusions live on forever but here I am alone. I want the adventures to end or I want to find another adventurer...the male version of me. Is there one? Geez! I've been searching a very long time and that unicorn is an elusive creature. The next time I write I'll fill you in on what I've encountered to date.

THE BRICK WALL

Sometime after my divorce in 1998, I tried online dating with no real success. I likened it to repeatedly beating my head against a brick wall. So why am I even comtemplating doing it again? That's a very good question! I guess the best answer to that is that I'm either a glutton for punishment or that I have some eternal optimism buried deep within me. Since I decided to throw myself into the meat market again, I decided to share a few of my online dating stories from back when I did this the first time. 

Actually, I responded to this gentlemen’s ad online. The words he had written tugged at my heart and I felt almost duty bound to respond. After e-mailing and talking on the phone for several weeks, one Saturday evening about 6:30 p.m. he called me and asked me out to dinner. I explained I had been cleaning house all day, hadn’t even had a shower yet and was worn out. He said it didn’t matter and to just throw on a pair of jeans and we’d have casual dinner. Although it was on the spur of the moment, I love spontaneity, so I accepted with the stipulation he had to give me at least an hour to get ready. His drive to pick me up would be at least that long, so he said that wouldn’t be a problem.

As he drove, he called me on his cell phone a few times with the last time being about 10 minutes from my house. We talked until he arrived at my place. During this last conversation he told me he was allergic to strawberries and had inadvertently consumed some in a drink the day before and had broken out in a rash. This was not a problem and I asked him out of concern about the allergy and how he treated the rash. He also, at this point mentioned that his office staff referred to him as looking like a retired football player. That certainly wasn’t a problem. That just meant he was a rugged man. Well, let me tell you that when he got out of his car I almost fell over. If it had been daylight, he would have blocked out the sun!

When Jimmy Johnson was the coach for the Dallas Cowboys, he had a thing for BIG men on his offensive line.....somewhere in the neighborhood of 350lbs each. This guy made them look tiny!!!!! Okay, I’m not into looks and knew I could handle sitting through dinner with this man so his size was unimportant, but when we went inside the restaurant and I saw his allergic reaction, I lost my appetite. I’m no doctor, but whatever was all over his skin was more than one day old. It was scaly patches covering all visible skin with some of the patches having scabs. Not to sound gross, but some patches had scabs that were open and looked like they were oozing. Now, being the person I am...I could have probably even handled that, but as he sat through dinner telling me what I should and shouldn’t do with my poor dismal life and nothing I said was right in his eyes, he suddenly transformed from a very sweet, compassionate person I had gotten to know on the phone to an overbearing egotistical tyrant.

Everything I had done, he had done better. I got to the point where I just wanted to get through dinner and go home, but he had other ideas. He prolonged the agony by insisting on dessert which included showing me a portfolio of pictures of his ex-wife he still had in his wallet. He took extreme pride in pointing out how good she looks in a bikini. I sat in amazement wondering how much more I could tolerate when he started telling me he couldn’t stay out late because he had to fly out to DC early that next morning to testify before the Congress or Senate on some subject. At that point I was so tone deaf, I really couldn’t do anything more than try to imagine this HUGE OOZING male sitting in front of them speaking about anything. I smiled and told him I would make sure I turned the TV on in the morning so I could watch him testify......needless to say, he never appeared on TV and I never got asked out for a second date. As broken hearted as I was, I managed to pull myself together and struggle onward to be captivated by the next perfect man.

MILDRED GOES TROLLING

Every now and then you should shake things up and go for the gusto with a little humor.  The following ad is one I was thinking about posting on an online dating site. Match.com claims it's the number one destination for online dating with more dates, more relationships, & more marriages than any other dating or personals site.  eHarmony wants its users to beat the odds and bet on love because their bold, scientific approach to matching means more quality dates with deeply compatible singles that truly understand you. Which site do you think would yield a match right for me?

Hideous-looking, cynical, judgmental mature SWF with chronic bitch syndrome seeks emotionally needy man with money for LTR. Age unimportant. Disgusting habits, arrest record, deviant behavior and psychiatric diagnosis a plus. Physical characteristics, location and marital status not important. Personality and intelligence optional. Please respond with financial statement and picture of house.