Ahhh, I love when I stumble upon drafts that have been marinating in their own juices! This is obviously a bit old, but, still relevant.

While I attempted to gain perspective into this roller coaster of weirdness I was on regarding my personal life, I actually started meeting with people recently. I was really against the idea of dating, of bringing people into my inner thoughts. I’d been hurt, I was really busy, and I get really bored with the process of telling all my dirty secrets, over and over again. Except here, of course. My own not-so-private internal dialogue. My head was jam-packed with a whole lot of confusion and hesitance, and I needed to figure out what the hell was going on in my own mind, what I wanted, where I was going and how to get there without making huge waves in my life and with The Crew. So, I met a couple of people, one-on-one, just to test the waters and see just how interested I was in jumping back into The Game.

Romance is so much easier when you belittle it. Just sayin’.

I sat across from this guy, Mr. September, sipping coffee and eating a bagel, I kept reminding myself that this was just part of the process. We’d chatted online a few times, and he finally convinced me to meet him for breakfast, since our schedules weren’t aligning and I wasn’t about to give up a precious weekend night for a guy that I wasn’t really all that interested in. But, I sat there,  trying to explain my reason for showing up, before 9am, when I had a million things to accomplish and was barely able to blink without falling asleep. It came out something like this:

I am a mess.

But, it sounded like this: I’m separated, I have a house mate, I have a business partner I spend a lot of time with, I have 4 kids, I work all the time and I only went to the dating site for business reasons.

The look he gave me was pretty priceless.

That is the moment when I realized that I needed to stop kidding myself, I really wanted some sort of connection with someone. Not Mr. September, not the guy I called in from out of state to substitute for the biz partner when he bailed on me for an important event, and not really even the biz partner, as wrapped up in that as I was. Just someone to have fun with, that’s all. Mr. September, for the record, was not that guy. I knew it before I even met him, but, my need for perspective won out over my gut instinct. Plus, I wanted a bagel.

Mr. September was sweet, and tried to get me to come to his house for breakfast the next day. I said I had to work, and never heard from him again. The out-of-state,  pinch hitter guy was diligently texting me to see if I wanted to come and visit with him, an hour away, but I eventually just stopped responding. Too much commuting, not enough spark.  Then, there were the bar guys and their 1am texts – “hey, what’s up?”

And then, there was me, realizing that I was dabbling in the world of dating for a reason… because I wasn’t dead, and because I could, mess and all.