Yeah. I haven't been sleeping well for the past few nights. I get insomnia in the summer, always. I've had insomnia my whole life...trouble falling asleep, and now, lately, I'm waking up every freaking hour and a half. The cats don't help. And please, I've tried every remedy: homeopathic, prescriptions, meditation, therapy, change of lifestyle, blah blah blah....this is how I am. I've taken Ambien for a couple of nights, and while that usually works, it's been tricky lately. I'm one of those people who do funny things on Ambien...like call people at late hours to leave spacey voicemail messages, and just the other restless night on the drug I joined a dating website for a SIX MONTH subscription, at quite a chunk of change. I then proceeded to write quite an amusing "profile" of myself, and the banner or title of my profile was something along the lines of "I love seersucker! Boy do I love it. Do you wear seersucker?" I am shitting you not, this is what I wrote to attract men to me. It wasn't until I was on the subway the next morning that I remembered this, and I was mortified - not because I had decide to venture into online dating (ahem, AGAIN), but because I spent money I do not have, and because I know that this type of dating always makes me feel awful about myself. I feel as if I have to give my measurements and full body pictures in a bikini so the potential paramours are not "mislead" by my profile into thinking that I was skinny or voluptuous or whatever the hell they are mislead by. As I have mentioned previously on this blog, I am terrible, terrible on dates with strangers. Thankfully, in the middle of my mortification and regret haze I realized I could cancel this membership within three days and still get a full refund, according to NY State law. Unlike joining that insanely expensive gym I couldn't afford, and never went to, and to which I should have also terminated the membership, but did not...this time, I pulled the trigger quickly. Especially after receiving my first glimpses of potential dates (old! really fat! really old and fat!) and their badly-written/un-spellchecked/all-capitalized/completely-wrong-for-me profiles. Listen, they are not all like that, I know. And I do have friends who have met their mates on dating sites - more than one, in fact. But after my last few horrid dating experiences, I have lost any desire to venture into the patience-testing territory of dudes with fuzzy teeth and bad manners. And I don't think I could bear to have another experience where I become very attracted to a guy through our emails and pictures, have a great lunch/coffee/dinner, and then never hear from him again. My rice-paper ego can't take it.
I know what my problem is. More specifically, I know who my problem is. I just can't shake that ghost. Maybe I don't want to. Maybe I am wearing this hair shirt of solitude to punish myself for sins of the past. The cat-o-nine-tails is pain and pleasure to a masochist. Or the devout.
God I need a beer.
