Warning: f-bombs ahead!

There is nothing more comforting than a blank page.

Space to create.

Room to breathe.

It’s not filled with errors, yet.

This is how every relationship starts off for me—I am in love with the idea of love.

I am a serial dater.

I have dated 21 men in the past year and a half. Of those men, five of them made it to a second date.

Not one of them has made it to a third.

I am not easy to please. But I fancy that I am. I consider myself to be easy going in most aspects of my life.

Except for them. Those boys. They get me every time. When it comes to relationships with men, I quite literally become the definition of a vagabond… I nomadically move from man to man, never settling down, never planting roots, never really giving them a fighting chance. One mistake and he is dead in the water to me.

If we go on a date, I will be scrutinizing his every move. I will watch for inflection in his voice in the wrong places, glances that go south too soon, any type of sexual innuendo and I am out the door because I know what he is really looking for.

I am the Jerry Seinfeld persona in woman form.

If he talks too much about himself, this means he is egotistical. If he asks too much about me, this means he is nosey. If he doesn’t talk about his parents, this means he is secretive. If he talks too much about his mom, he is a pansy.

I am looking for any and every reason to cut ties as quickly as possible.

This is really rather amusing to ponder, and doesn’t make a lot of sense when I examine what it is that I’m really looking for…what I’m really longing for…which of course is intimacy.

Love.

A life with someone.

I wish I would have just picked someone by now. I thought I would have, but I just can’t bring myself to do this. I don’t understand it. I have read book after book about how to date, when to date, how to be in relationships, how to be a decent, forgiving, loving human being. And in all of my other relationships, I am decent, and loving, and forgiving.

Except when it comes to those boys.

I’m sure Freud would say this is because my father left when I was young and died when I was young and so of course I must have some type of penile infatuation/rejection syndrome.

Maybe I wasn’t loved enough as a child, maybe I have unrealistic expectations, maybe I’m just a bitch.

Perhaps I’m disillusioned from watching relationships and marriages disintegrate around me and want no part of it.

Maybe I am afraid to be hurt.

Or…

Maybe it doesn’t fucking matter what the reason is.

Maybe life and people cannot be placed into tidy boxes with easy labels or psychoanalytical bullshit.

Maybe I am just a person who has a lot of requirements of the person she wants to mate with.

Maybe I am like a penguin and can’t pick someone until I’m sure that’s the person that I would travel a million miles through a frozen tundra with.

Maybe I find myself to be far more interesting than anyone else I’ve ever met … and maybe that’s not egotistical, but an attractive quality.

While I lament over this situation, I remind myself that with or without him…I am okay. I take care of myself. I spend time with myself and I enjoy it. I treat myself the way I would want to be treated, and I treat others that way as well. I show decency and kindness and consideration to myself when I am lazy and moody and hormonal. I buy myself nice things and I work hard, and of course play hard.

I relax.. I breathe it all in.

I wrap myself in loving embraces reminding myself that it’s perfectly okay to be human.

And perhaps, this is why I don’t settle down.

Because I am not lacking.

I do not need someone to do these things for me, because I already provide myself with everything I need.

I have built a safe, secure home for myself. Be it childless, be it man-less, it is a home. It is filled with laughter and love of family and friends gathered around sharing stories, sharing life.

As for those boys… maybe I’ll give one a chance someday. Maybe I will relax, and not scrutinize. Maybe someday I will provide them with the same accommodation of being human that I allow myself for being human. Maybe I will stop expecting them to be controlled, and polite, and well behaved. Considering the fact that I am a loud-mouthed bossy broad, maybe I will remind myself that a well behaved gentleman could never handle me.

Perhaps I will lean my shoulder deep into the idea that unknown and unpredictable do not necessarily mean bad, but instead mean life.

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Apprentice Editor: Emily Bartran / Editor: Renée Picard

Photo: Petras Gagilas/Flickr