one o these days i'll actually download these stupid diaries....there must be a function that lets you archive things. i would assume??? i keep saying i'm going to do it and then i forget about this blog for several months and then it's like lol oh yeah right

hey, did you know that i'll be 31 soon? isn't that fucked up? i'm pretty sure that's fucked up

having this random private diary for over half of my life feels wrong somehow. and yet, i can actually remember sitting in the computer lab in middle school writing those first few entries. glancing over at my best friend at the time, making sure she wasn't reading what i was writing. 

i want to say i've made great strides in the quality of my entries here but it was about stupid boys then and it's still mostly about stupid boys now 

i'm not really sure why i'm bothering with this. at the end of the day, it's just a really sad catalogue of a late millennial's struggles with accepting herself and finding love in an increasingly despairing world. like by the time i find real love and grow a healthy amount of self esteem, the apocalypse will happen, cos that's sort of how this stuff goes (narratively)

this last winter was really awful. i spent most of it basically scraping by, mentally, my ADHD meds and gym visits the only things propelling me forward, yanking a deflated puppet along the ground via a fistful of strings. breakups are umm, really hard? wow? only in the last month or so have i finally hit a point where i think i'm acceptably 'over' my ex enough to try on someone else

i've been on dating apps since like december, as foolish as that is. slim pickins out there. lots of people interested in ME, surprisingly, but few that i was interested in back. some conversations that lead nowhere. it's really tiring, actually, being on dating apps. surveying people like they're meat, judging them harshly based on little information or questionable photos...ugh. 

i maybe have a date for tomorrow, if this one dude i've been chatting with gets back to me in time. that's another thing i've been finding, that communication is really lackluster with the dudes i match with...things fizzle out after a few days of chatting. if i stop asking them questions, they just won't say anything else. which is aggravating! i've been told that it's partly just awkwardness or shyness on their parts, and/or the reality that is chatting with someone online that they've never met and have no physical connection to, etc. but like, that's the POINT, it's SUPPOSED to lead to a date? to meet? 

i've read that if a date isn't secured within a few days, dudes generally don't stay interested. but nobody has ASKED?? like yeah, i'm making a lot of small talk, and generally i don't go full boner into flirt mode cos i just don't operate that way and also i LIKE chatting a little because it gives me some indication of their character! apparently men don't need that as much, they are more drawn to looks overall initially and don't really care about a woman's interests/job/status etc. which makes women look materially shallow, but like, i want to invest my time into someone who doesn't need me to babysit them or mother them or won't stress me the fuck out all the time by not looking after himself or being a depressing blob !! i guess that makes me shallow 

i want to find an equal! but i guess men don't ...require that so much.

anyway, witht this last dude, the conversation had started to dwindle again and i was annoyed cos this one had a lot of appealing qualities and was actually chatty, when i got a hold of him, and so i asked HIM if he wanted to hang out and he was like yeah!! but getting the time/date nailed down has been wishy washy like holy shit man if you're interested, you could try a little !!!!!!!!! am i crazy? he said he'd let me know today for sure, the day before, and now i get to sit here all day waiting to see if he actually does tell me. it wouldn't surprise me if he said nothing at all, too. 

i actually think i'm pretty cool and interesting? yeah i'm a little unusual looks-wise but my ex was super into me and i think i have good qualities and skills not being put to use. i would enjoy...someone trying...

and then, the big spectre lurking over my horizon: i'm going to be 31 soon. i only have so many years left if i want to have kids. i've always sort of been...shrugs, about the entire affair, which to me isn't really enough to say "yeah kids!" in prospective dating situations. plus, i am very much NOT a fan of the concept of pregnancy. and BIRTH. i'm not very into the idea of permanently fucking up my body or possibly DYING. and then being responsible for someone's positive emotional and mental growth for 2 decades. 

the only circumstance in which i could envision children is like. if i loved someone so much that making a kid would...be the ultimate way to express that? to want to see me and him put together in a whole new human? that's..deeply romantic. to me. so like....i want to find someone while i still might have that chance, you know? 

bUT that someone has to also be a human that i could envision caring for a kid. having the mental capacity, the emotional maturity, the responsibility, and yes, the financial security to do it with me. my ex...during the height of my feelings for him, i'd pictured it. he wanted kids. he had a rough childhood with a neglegent mother and abusive father, and i think he wanted to rectify that in a way, to be a better father. and i pictured what our kids might have been like, and i was surprised by how much it appealed to me, i wanted to meet them. but. 

he was unreliable. he was broken. impulsive. he couldn't look after HIMSELF. if i latched onto that for forever and had kids, I'D be doing all the work, I'D be handling all of it. their stress AND his stress. we'd be broke. in some ways, it would be a repeat of my own family dynamic growing up and that freaked me the fuck out. i loved him, but i could not put myself in that position

...anyway. i hope he ends up in a good place. i HOPE he finds himself, i HOPE he can get what he wants out of life. we parted on a sour note, which blows, him begging me to stay in his life, and then when i said i couldn't be just friends so soon, he chewed me out, and i'm not going to forget what he said. he was hurt, and he lashed out. but it doesn't excuse it..

things in this new guy's favour: he is intelligent, articulate, easygoing. likes many of the same things i do. appears to be /shrugs/ about kids (at least according to his bio). has a decent relationship with his family. doesn't drink (neither did my ex, i will say, he was wise in his alcohol consumption as his father was an alcoholic..but he did smoke WAY too much weed). is a little flaky in correspondance but so was my ex. at least the correspondance is intelligent this time around (sorry...). and you know what, we haven't even been on a date. this could go nowhere! i shouldn't even be talking about it like it's a thing at ALL

i guess it's just cos this is the farthest i've gone since my ex with anyone. it'd be nice to have someone again, and preferably with like 80% less stress, JA FEEL???