20070213

lonely

It was Valentine's Day again, and that's another reminder of another year alone. The loneliness eats at me, and I try not to care but it perpetually feels as though my life is incomplete, as though everything I've accomplished doesn't really mean anything. The trick to dealing with it is to stay moving, to keep focused on the future and to hold on to hope in some way.

I've never had a girlfriend. I've never kissed a girl. There's never been a girl that likes me. These are all things that most other people have had happen to them by now. Statistically speaking, they will happen to me eventually, but there's always the possibility that I'm one of those rare outliers, a statistical anomaly where everything I hope and assume will come to happen never does. And then all my life I'll just have been waiting for something to happen.

It's a frightening thought, but there's only one alternative: I'm undesirable, I'm doing something wrong somehow and if I just knew what it was I could fix it and be happy. Or maybe I couldn't fix it, but at least then I'd still know what was wrong. Because it's not like I don't try. I try and fail, repeatedly. It's almost as though I'm comfortable trying because I know I'll fail, and then I can curl up in my rejection like it were a familiar blanket.

Right now, there's a girl that I like, and a girl that maybe likes me. The girl that I like probably doesn't like me, and all the historical evidence from past cases would seem to make that a certainty. The girl that maybe likes me might not like me either. I can't tell, because there's never been a girl that likes me, so I have no experience with what that might be like. But maybe it looks like her. I don't especially like her, but she's okay enough, and if she likes me then maybe it's time for me to just give up on my dreams and settle for something. But it's probably a moot point. Because not only do probably neither of them like me, but they're both too busy to get together more than just once every couple of weeks anyway.

I know I've said this before, but I'll reiterate: Fuck.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Can you explain today's Penny Arcade comic to me? I really, really don't get it. K thx.

Erik Bear said...

You know, Amber, you can leave your name on things...

Anyway, I'm not really sure what you're not getting, assuming that you're talking about Friday's comic. See, it's a robot. And the fact that they're trying to put a shirt on it and pretend it's a human is humorous.

I guess there's the subtext that Sony Online Entertainment is evil, what with them making Everquest and Star Wars Galaxies and stuff...

Anonymous said...

Don't ever settle. Please. But, how can you be so sure that the girl you like doesn't like you? Girls can be shy too...have you ever asked? Are there definitive signs that it would never work?

...and how are you so sure that there has never been a girl that has liked you? There is always someone, you may just not know it.

Besides, Valentines Day is the worst day to think about these things...it is the night of WoW and heart-shaped pizzas and maybe a little Miles Vorkosigan.

Also, I think you should smile more. You have nice teeth (unlike a lot of people) so, show them off!