“We rip out so much of ourselves to be cured of things faster than we should that we go bankrupt by the age of thirty and have less to offer each time we start with someone new. But to feel nothing so as not to feel anything – what a waste!”
― Andre Aciman, Call Me by Your Name
Bo is the name of the plush dog I got when I was about one year old (the name here was changed to protect the privacy of the individual). It is also the name of the only entity who was always there, in the corner of my bed, watching me without judgment. Protecting me, making sure everything you do will end up all right. Every bad decision I made was in the absence of my guardian. You will thing that it is sad to put so much pressure on one single and by now really old plush dog but if you are still alone by the age of thirty, you are allowed to start getting a little crazy. Just kidding. Or maybe not. Anyhow dating starts getting a little complicated. Yes, more complicated than in teenage years. Most older guys are married or divorced but they come with kids and ex-wives or wives: a package deal that I am not willing to take, even if it is on sale.
People say the good ones are always taken but I seem to have difficulty finding the good ones, taken or not, and if you are picky, well… you will end up talking to your stuffed animal. Younger models are kind of fun, they have more stamina, but they lack the skills for deeper conversations, or they cannot provide interesting traits that you do not already have.
If you wait for your friend to set you up with someone, you can wait forever – until they show up with some strange dude and you ask yourself if your friends really know or care about you. By the way, just because someone studied the same as you it does not mean that you are meant for each other. And stop comparing teacher training with proper master’s degrees. It is not the same. No.
Eventually you will start playing the “what if” game with people you know but you never though about them that way because they were never so great but you start to lower your expectations. Very very veeery slowly. I cannot give you advice on that because I never dated anyone, I was friend with before dating. Maybe I should give it a try, but I would hate to lose friends that way. The few left have already passed so many tests and I know when and how there are going to fuck up. I hate surprises. And I am very lazy, I would hate to have to replace them. Think of all the people you have to talk to, to find some ok-ish ones, who got your back – most of the time. Way too stressful.
Dating sites or apps are… well… I do not get them. If someone approaches you in a bar, you do not start by looking at his face. You look at the way he walks, he talks, if he is wearing a stupid cap and how he is wearing it (not that the “how” matters), you look at his hands, you listen to what he says and you can feel the electricity in the air or not. All of this just to determine if someone is somehow attractive. I cannot do that looking at pictures of guys wearing sunglasses on a mountain (because everyone here is apparently climbing mountains) or reading stupid memes they use as profile pictures (some people do not understand how dating apps works) and frankly I do not understand how a face all up in the camera is supposed to make me feel attracted to them.
If somehow you manage to find a cute guy or girl who does not look like they are going to kill you in the basement of their mum’s house you get to the fun part: reading their profile info and write something. Since I seem to be very old school I would go with a “hi, how are you?”. And I found someone who approached me with a “hi” which was not so bad. So, I replied “hi, how are you” and the answer was “fine”. And that was it. Our whole conversation. A connection on such a deep level that even the devil must have been touched by it.
The next guy was one of those with a sunglasses only profile. I swiped right because… well because with a body like that it does not really matter how your face looks. And I have no idea what I was expecting but he texted me “Insta?” and was like “sure, I do not have pictures of me there but we can text there if you want to” he replied with his Insta name and added me. And there it was. Another dead conversation thrown on the side of the internet. At least now I can watch his personality fade away every day. Some things are better left to the imagination.
Then there was this guy who was nice – as far as you can call someone nice after making small talk – until he asked me to go to a party, on the same day he texted me – somewhere in the middle of nowhere, with people – apparently – I did not now, with no way to get back home by myself in case of emergency and all of this right after the quarantine. I told him “I have a master’s degree, I know how horror movies start. Maybe next time”.
How is someone supposed to be able to trust anyone these days? And how are we supposed to find someone that is right for us if we are constantly pushed to live faster and do everything in the few years we have at our disposal? On that note. Find yourself something to do for you. Take care of your body and your soul as good as you can. Love yourself so you do not need others to do that for you but do not be afraid to let your feelings run wild because your brain is not going to make you happy. Your feelings are. And yes I know, feelings come from hormones and hormones come from the endocrine glands that are placed all over your body but if I write “your brain is not going to make you happy, your body is” it sounds stupid.
Aromatic deception 