My friend asked if I has ever failed at anything before. I thought about a second, but the only answer I had for her was, that I've failed at life. I joked about it. I laughed it off, but it kind of felt true to me. At least in certain moments of my life... or lots of moments of my life. An almost 34 year old woman should be married with a couple kids under her belt. She's probably already done having kids, maybe one more. I haven't even begun. I haven't even truly dated anyone in 8 years. I'm not even being the 33 year old single girl going on many dates finding the one. I'm nothing and nobody. What's even worse than that, is wanting someone who doesn't know you exist. Someone you haven't even met, haven't even talked to. Being in love like that, even though everyone would say it's just a fantasy, it doesn't feel like that to me. I feel connected to her in more ways than the obvious. I had gotten better by not seeking out this person and trying to forget about her but then she snuck back in and it's starting all over again. I'd almost rather meet her and find out she's a complete fake and complete jerk. Even though I seriously doubt that's true. But I'd rather get my bubble burst, my glass ceiling shattered, than continue to go on like this. Continuing to want her, continuing to feel all these strong, unexplainable, ridiculous feelings for her. As I write this Damien rice is singing the words "I can't take my eyes off of you... I can't take my mind off of you," which pretty much says it all. The song ends with "till I find somebody new.." Which is exactly what I need. It's the only thing that will get me off this drug she has me on. If I met a real girl, living in my reality, not in the alternate universe I've created for us with my words...but a girl that lives in my actual world and surroundings; well that would do it. That would break me free. My mind would shift. My focus would be on what's in front of me, in person, not what's on a screen. I may not live in the kind of fantasy world that involves dragons and gosh I don't even know, but you know what I mean: the online gaming world. I don't even live in a fantasy world created by the shows and movies I love. I mean I love talking about them, but it's not like I'd ever want to live in the world of The Walking Dead, I mean c'mon, seriously. But I do live in the fantasy world I've created with my own words. Sometimes when I think of something I wish could happen, but I know it wouldn't, not in a million years, I think to myself "I can just write about it. I can make it come true with my words." I'm in every story I write. In my fantasy "alternate universe story." In my "1995" flash back storytelling of first love (that never happened, it's just a 'what if' kind of situation). I'm even in the screenplay I was writing there for a long while. If things aren't happening for me, and they look like they won't ever happen for me, for whatever reason, I feel like if I write about it, it's almost like it happened. It's not that I believed that it really happen. I know reality from fantasy. But it's the second best thing to all those things I write about, actually happening. Especially when you feel like it's not in your power to make any of them happen. I know life is short. I know that you have to get out there and make things happen. But when it comes to finding true love, how do you make that happen. And how many times do you have to try? Is a hundred times not enough? I probably haven't tried 100 times, but you get what I mean. I don't know anyone that has tried for as long as I have, with no results at all. Not even just one relationship to last a couple of months. Nothing. Even not trying doesn't make anything happen. You're supposed to just live your life and see who you meet and not "try." Well that hasn't worked for me either. But I don't really believe that I am nothing and nobody. The work that I do with babies and moms, tells me that I'm not. The things I have read about myself or have been told in person, from the moms I work with, tell me that I am somebody and I have helped a lot of people in the 11 years I've done this work with babies with disabilities and developmental delays and their families. That's something. I may almost never get to see my friends, since they are married with kids now, but I get to still feel their love and their presence at times. For instance I had just written that first part of this blog, one day, a few weeks ago and I was really having a hard time and right at that moment out of the blue, an old friend texted me to say she was thinking about me in that very moment. Now this friend goes way back to when I was a baby Freshman in college, 18 years old. I was very much moldable and fragile and looking to figure out my purpose, who I am, all of those things people that age are trying to figure out. When she came into my life, I feel like I felt what it felt like to be truly cared about by another person, for the first time in my life. Like deeply cared about. I looked forward to talking to her and getting a hug from her and hearing "love you" from her, more than I looked forward to going home and seeing the family I grew up with. Probably because all those things weren't exactly common place in my home growing up. This friend does live in my surrounding area, in fact she's less than 10 minutes from where my parents live and where I grew up. But life is crazy, so getting to see her a few times a year is precious in and of itself. So when I got that text, I knew she still thought about me. She still cared as intensely as she did in college, it's just I can't see her multiple times a week like I did back then. On more than one occasion she has texted or called on a particularly bad day or bad moment. Sometimes you have those friends that even though you hardly get to see them or even talk to them really, you have a connection that will never truly break apart. Why else would she decide in that moment to contact me? I love stuff like that. It's rare, but if it wasn't rare, then it wouldn't be a big deal. If I was always having people constantly encouraging me or spouting praise at me or telling me how great I am all the time, then it wouldn't hold a lot of weight when it happened, now would it? It would be just "another day at the office."
Life is life. You take what you're given. Sometimes you can make more happen, but sometimes you can't. You can always choose to see the good side of things. Sometimes you have to look really hard. Even though it seems like life has happened in the exact same way for everyone else but you, it hasn't. And you never know what life is really like for them, because you're not in their head or their bed. So, I haven't failed at life. Life looks differently for everyone. I don't know why it is that I haven't met a girl that I connect with. I don't know why it hasn't happened yet. But I know I won't give up. Not entirely. It still may never happen, no matter how many more times I try, but I'm still alive, I'm still breathing. I'm still here.
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