Kissing Frogs

From time-to-time I look back over my life and think about how things have turned out based on the choices I have made. Life is funny in that sometimes you only see the fork in the road looking back. Occasionally, you can see if moving forward with big life decisions to make and whatnot, but other times the choice doesn’t feel like one until you’re further down the road. Looking back recently, I’ve seen how what I didn’t think was a conscious choice was certainly a decision I had made. I guess at some point, perhaps subconsciously, I decided being childless was a greater loss than being single. And so I pushed all of my energy into not being childless, focusing on staying open and available to accepting a placement and becoming a mother. Could I have channeled that energy into finding a mate? I suppose, in some warped way, my mind decided adopting a child(ren) was easier than riding the tides of dating, surfing for that one fish in the vast ocean who would be my match.

 

But, lately I’ve been feeling lonely. For a while, I longed for someone to be a helper-partner; someone to conqueror and divide all the things that needed to be done with the kids and around the house. Now I seek companionship; someone to talk to before I fall asleep at night. Someone to text or call just to see how their day is going or to tell them something that is on my mind. I miss intimacy, just sharing and knowing so much about someone else. The boyfriend I broke up with in January has been talking to me lately. He wants us to be friends, but I think it’s more than that. I think he thinks he can convince me to fall in love with him and I just wasn’t before, thus why we broke up. If I’m honest with myself, which sometimes I am not, I like Toxic Friend’s brother more than I let on and his abrupt departure still has me longing for more, which is stupid because I want nothing to do with him. I deserve better than being treated the way he treated me. Still, having someone around was nice.

 

If I had changed gears after Flaco left and focused on seriously dating, might I have kissed enough frogs to find my prince instead of all these toads? I don’t know. For whatever reason, it seems like the two things – becoming a mother and finding a romantic partner – were mutually exclusive; a one or the other situation. Before Toxic Friend’s brother popped up I as fairly content on my own. It seems he kicked up this old longing that I keep stuffing away, unrequited. Stupidly, I put a new profile on a new dating app and I’m being bombarded with messages that I just can’t keep up with. I have more date offers than I do the time to go out and date. And, I hate the whole thing. I find it exhausting and most of the time I end up being uninterested – just another toad. Soon I’ll get tired of it, delete the app, and go back to being alone.