So, I joined Match.com to make myself feel better- you know, just to drag me into the future a little bit. However, when I realized that it was not like Tinder at all and it was mostly just advertisements for giving them A LOT of money, I deactivated/deleted my account.It didn’t do the job I hoped it would, which was hook me up with more people in my area that I could talk to without going down an internet rabbit hole. I mean, I’m sure it would have if I was willing to drop $125.00, but for me, even looking at free pictures is pushing it. Now I’m really angry that I still get multiple e-mails from them every single day saying that people have matched me and I better go ahead and pay up “before she slips away into someone else’s arms.” That is an actual quote.
Please. Slip away. Nothing would make me happier. Match is a trap, and a huge one, because even my spam filters don’t catch everything, and if my account was truly deactivated/deleted, I wouldn’t be getting matches at all. It’s a ruse, and a poorly executed one at that. I am sure that if I was willing to drop money on one of their packages with “a match guaranteed,” I’d get more out of the service than I did just browsing for free, because it would open me up to e-mail, instant messaging, etc. But nothing scares me more at this point. Looking at people’s internet profiles has proven to me that I never want to date anyone that can’t spell or use grammar even in the basic sense.
The last thing I want is to meet someone that abbreviates the word “you.”
I sort of get it on Twitter- you’re limited to a certain number of characters, and the links you post count toward them. On a dating profile, it just looks like you dropped out of middle school.
Plus, there is no shortage of dumb blondes with boyfriends……………….
My name is “no.”
My basic MO is that I don’t have one. I don’t know what I want, except that my next partner, just like Dana, has to be a lot smarter than me. It’s a standard I’ve held for years. It doesn’t matter how you’re smarter than me, just that you are. For instance, you might be a scientist. I’m a writer. Between us, we have a complete education.
The last woman I’d ever want to date is another writer. If there’s anything to be avoided, it’s two baskets of crazy in one house, and we all are. Just trust me on this one.
I also don’t know what I want in terms of being single or dating. It’s just such a mixed bag. There’s so many things that need to change about me before I’m willing to open up to someone else, and at the same time, I feel like I’m driving myself crazy by being lost in my own head. Every day, I am reminded of Dana. If it’s not Facebook memories, it’s the moving pictures in my head of the seven years and change we were together. We’d been through so damn much as friends that kissing (finally) brought me down on one knee, under a tree at 37th & Hawthorne that I’m glad I don’t have to drive by all the time.
She’d helped me right so many wrongs, and I would like to think that I helped her do the same, but I cannot speak for her. Only she can do that.
However, one of the last conversations I overheard as I was on my way out, leaving her apartment because it had gotten weird, was her saying to her friend Erik, “no more projects.” I don’t think she knew I heard it, but I did, and I had so many feelings about it that I couldn’t/wouldn’t share, like, “if we are going to talk about projects, I might have a few words to say on the subject…….” But firstly, she was on the phone. Secondly, she wasn’t worth it. Fuck her. If I’d ceased to be nothing in her eyes but a project, without seeing the log in her own eye, then all I needed to do was get the hell out and not look back. I think it’s the one time in my life where her words just sent me over the edge, and I just put on my shoes and walked out the door. Sticks and stones, etc.
By that time, there was no fight left. Just an emptiness that continues to this day. The emptiness that makes me feel I don’t have much business in a relationship in the first place, because I don’t have anything to offer. I have a hard time seeing myself as I am, rather than how she sees me, and it limits my ability to put myself out there in any situation.
Just another reason my anxiety showed itself as rage to Argo, and why I’m having such problems letting that relationship go, because the person that I was to her is someone I hope to never see again. I feel empty where she is concerned, too, because when the Orlando attack happened, there was nothing I wanted more than the mountain of love she used to shower on me, because it made me walk taller It didn’t matter that I couldn’t see her, her words were enough, and always will be.
The Orlando attack kicked me in the stomach, and just reinforced all of my kid fears. I’m not over it, and I won’t be for a long time. Anywhere I am, hand-holding and kissing are a calculated risk. Dana was never as shy about it as I was, and I am ashamed to say that many times I looked over my shoulder and thought, could you not be quite so gay? I don’t know what the difference was between us that I was always afraid and I never felt she was… or perhaps she was just stronger than I was, willing to say “fuck it.” The worst of it was moving back to Houston, because I was so acutely aware of every neighborhood, every street… although ironically enough, the one place I was bashed and tormented was in Montrose, the one place I should have felt comfortable in my own skin.
Just like Pulse… when gay couples congregate, bashers know where to find you a lot easier.
In another ironic turn, if this attack truly was a “hate crime,” and Mateen was just an asshole with a grudge, give him life in prison, the death penalty, whatever. But don’t call it a hate crime. The government should not be allowed to convict you on what you think, just on how you act. There are homophobic assholes in every state… but few of them are deranged enough to kill 50 people in a night club and injure about 50 more. All crimes are hate crimes… to say that a particular kind of hate is motivation is violently in conflict with The First Amendment. Think whatever you want, act and we’ll find a way to own your ass.
We’ll pinch your match out.
Stories That Are All True 