love

I’m not afraid anymore: stuff about dating in your 40’s.

Dating in 2026 is a wild ride for anyone but for a woman in her 40’s, who did not date before her 40’s, it has been an eye opening experience that has taught me a lot about human nature and myself.

I started really dating for the first time in my life in October 2022. For context, I was born in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and eighty-one. (I am technically a millennial. I just squeaked in. Stop calling me a boomer, Derek.) That’s 41 years, 9 months and some change of not dating. That doesn’t mean I was single. I had boyfriends before I got married. I just didn’t date.

Ok, so what is the difference between dating and having boyfriends, you ask? I don’t have a concrete definition. It’s like that quote from that judge about porn. You know it when you see it. Dating is just more of a casual endeavor with the possibility of evolving or mutating, if you will, into something else. Something more than casual. But when I was a teenager, I wasn’t out there going on first dates or coffee dates or grabbing a drink together or “shoot I forgot I have an early morning thing tomorrow do you wanna just come over to my place” eggplant emoji, gag me emoji. No, it was the 90’s and I was a good little Christian girl. We went from making eyes at each other across the sanctuary to holding hands and telling everyone God had led us to each other. So I never really dated before meeting and marrying my ex-husband at the near spinster age of nineteen. And then I was married for 21 years.

After my marriage ended in 2021, I still did not date right away. I immediately got into a situationship and fell head over heels for a guy who did not like me. We hung out for 9 months. He is a very sweet guy and I still consider him a friend. We just didn’t feel the same way about each other. And then we both moved. He moved to the Pacific Northwest and I moved to Iowa. And if I am being completely honest on the internet to a bunch of strangers, I waited for him after moving to Iowa. I hoped somehow we would still end up together. Oh my sweet summer child. You are an idiot.

Then October 2022 happened. Something happened that the internet doesn’t get to know. But it made me download Tinder. And not because I wanted to start dating. Nope. I wanted to get laid. I wanted a hook up and then never see the guy again. I didn’t want to know his last name. LOL. That’s not what happened. But that’s neither here nor there. It was the catalyst that finally pushed me into the dating world of the 2020’s.

I would say after my marriage abruptly ended, my biggest fear was dying alone. I watched my mother hop from relationship to relationship my entire life, only to find herself alone at the end. The saddest part of it was that the love of her life, her once best friend Mark, wanted to be with her. But she broke his heart and stuck him in the friend zone years before. Even though she wanted to be with him too. He lived in North Carolina and she lived in Missouri and toward the end they were barely talking. He died a month before she did.

And I was terrified that would be me.

I just kept picturing myself alone on the holidays in a mobile home park somewhere wistfully staring out of the window while my children celebrated the holidays somewhere else, forgetting I exist. And then I just die and no one even knows I’m dead. And my cat eats my corpse.

So anyway… lol.

I have been on and off the apps a few times now over the last four years. And here are a few things I have learned, in no particular order. Also I am still learning and figuring this ish out.

1- I’m not ugly.

Please, don’t misunderstand. I still have a very hard time with this one. But dating has taught me that I am not the disgusting troll I thought I was. Am I fat? Yes. But for a lot of people that’s not a bug, it’s a feature. Who knew? Not me. Do I have grey hair? Yes. Again, feature not bug. And, since I stopped dyeing it, I have come to actually like the grey streaks in my hair. Life is crazy.

2- Dating is deeply unserious.

Fact: I do want a real relationship someday. Another fact: most people on the apps don’t. At least the apps I have been on. I realize if I want to get super serious about finding someone I will have to try the “wow, I’m really serious about finding someone” apps. But those cost money. And I want to keep my money. So for now, dating is gonna have to be deeply unserious.

3- Men are weird and insecure.

I know, I know. Not all men. But a lot of them. I have met some very nice guys but I have also had to block so so many others. Y’all think it is okay to say some very unhinged shit to women. Please seek therapy.

4- My personality might be a bug not a feature.

Let me be clear: I think I am wonderful. But I talk a lot. Overthink everything. And I can be quite manic at times. Also, sometimes I’m just mean. I like to say I have bees in my head whispering shit to me all the time. The bees used to bother me but we are friends now. I love the little stinkers. But me and the bees can be a lot for some people. I get it. Ideally, I will eventually meet someone who doesn’t mind my bees. But for most people, I’m too much. That’s ok.

5- I’m not afraid to be alone anymore.

I have spent the last several Thanksgivings alone and a few Christmases. And it really hasn’t sucked at all. I stay in my jam jams and eat pie straight out of the tin because I don’t have to share and I do whatever I fucking want. It’s actually quite lovely. If I do get into a serious relationship, I very much hope they want to stay in their jam jams all day with me and play video games and eat pie. I did enough baking and cooking and cleaning and decorating, etc. in my other life as a sweet little wife and mommy. I’m full up.

Sometimes I imagine myself in that mobile home park wistfully staring out the window while it rains and the phone is silent and I am all alone. And I think “finally some peace and quiet.”

6- I have a much greater understanding of what I want out of life now.

You wouldn’t think casually dating would help me figure out my life goals but it has. Having to constantly explain what the fuck I’m doing with my life to people I have just met means having to think about it a lot. I’ve been reevaluating my goals and life a lot again lately. I think it’s healthy to take a look at what you’re doing and decide if that’s really what makes you happy. Inertia is a bitch. Can’t let myself become an object at rest. Not yet anyway.

7- I have a much greater understanding of what I want in a partner and what I am really attracted to.

Why am I feral for this guy but that guy, who is nearly identical, does nothing for me? Why does this girl make me want to settle down and raise chickens together and that one makes me want time to speed up so this date will finally end?

Okay, I don’t know if I know the “why.” That’s psychology and mommy and daddy issues and attachment styles and Meyers-Briggs bullshit that I find kinda boring. Weirdly, I used to find all of that stuff interesting and would often take personality tests that were trending like the Enneagram (I’m a 4) and what have you. But now, I think people generally fall into two categories: healthy and unhealthy. I am, of course, the latter. But, really, like everything else in this universe, it is a spectrum. We all need therapy and a hug. Nothing is easy and people suck. All we can do is decide to try to be decent and keep working on our own mentalities or something like that.

But I digress.

Dating hasn’t helped me to figure out the why but I am definitely a lot closer to knowing the what. And I now know I am a little demi and sapio. I need connection to really be attracted to someone and I am definitely attracted to intelligent people. But there are also physical aspects to the whole megillah as well.

I’m not gonna spell out what I want here. That’s for me to know and you to find out.

Well that about sums up all I care to write and think about on this topic today. Is it exhaustive? Hell no. Am I exhausted? A little, yeah. Too much thinking.

In summary, I am dating. It is teaching me stuff about life and myself. That’s a good thing. I want to be in another serious relationship someday but I’m not making it the priority of my life. I hope someday I will find someone who fits the bill and actually likes me. But I am not as worried about that as I once was.

Also, I am amazing no matter what. My relationship status doesn’t change that. I am no longer defined by my partner or lack thereof. So suck on that.

Be well, my little chickens. Make good choices and choose to love yourself in all iterations of your being.

The Catnip Paradox, Vibes, and The Real Reason I’m Single.

Is ignorance bliss? Is self-awareness is a blessing or a curse? I don’t have answers to these questions. All I know is me.

If you know me or read me, you know I’m perpetually on a quest to know thyself and that I’m always aiming to improve myself. Reading any of my personal essays will clue you in to the fact that I am often a mess because healing isn’t linear but I never let my messiness stop me. You’ll also figure out that since my divorce, I think and write about romantic relationships, love, sex, marriage, and all that jizz jazz often. Why? Cuz I got dumped, dummy. LOL. Ok, but for real, it’s because like everyone on the planet I want to be loved and wanted and I don’t want to be alone. My fear that I’m inherently unlovable, undesirable, and will always be alone has driven me and not in healthy ways.

So it’ll come as no surprise at all that this personal essay is about that shit. Again. You’re bored already and I get it. I’m bored too. LOL. So for both of our sakes’ I will try to keep this brief.

Here is my latest theory and the reasons behind it, as quickly and as succinctly as my loquacious little fingers can write it:

Theory: I don’t think I will ever be in another serious relationship.

Reasons:

One: I rely too heavily on vibes.

I don’t really give people much of a chance on dating apps. If I don’t feel it pretty quickly, I move on. Truthfully, I find most of the “talking stage” to be so egregiously tedious that I would rather lose the ability to speak (something that might kill me) than to have to suffer through innumerable iterations of the mother fucking talking stage. KMN.

One A: If I don’t find you mentally stimulating, game over.

If I hate the talking stage so much, how will I ever find out if I find someone mentally stimulating? I don’t know, bitch. I don’t make the rules. Again, it’s about vibes. If the vibes are vibing then I’ll stick around long enough to find out if you’re a dumb dumb or not. If I find myself dissociating while you’re telling me a story, we probably aren’t gonna go on very many dates.

Two: I have a type and my type’s type is not me.

It’s cliche but I like me a bad boy with a heart of gold. Or to put it another way, there is a certain type of masculine energy that is absolute catnip for me. However, the type of masculinity that I’m attracted to is not attracted to soft, autistic, nerdy girls. They want the hot, baddie. The girl all the bad guys want is not me. LOL. And let’s be real just cuz Sandra Dee dressed up like a dominatrix at the end of Grease didn’t mean she was really a “bad girl”. I could try to play the part of a baddie, but the reality is I’m not. I’m an emotional, socially awkward, fat girl. (With a wicked sense of humor and entertaining writing style, but that’s neither here nor there.)

Two A: I know that to someone out there, I am absolute catnip. The problem is they are not catnip to me.

I’m talking about catnip a lot. The point is somewhere out in this wide world there are people who like my personality, think my face is pretty, and don’t mind my soft bod. But the people who like me I don’t typically vibe with. It’s extremely problematic. LOL.

I see one likely outcome, one “eh, idk, maybe” outcome, and one “would take an act of a deity to happen” outcome as a result of all this.

Likely: I continue to go on casual dates and make friends and have fun but never settle into another serious relationship. It’s a bummer but I’m starting to accept this as my fate for being such a picky ass.

Eh, Idk, Maybe: I settle for someone who is not my type but that likes me and I get along with. I mean, this could happen. I’ve settled before. I wouldn’t be alone. But I’d probably be bored.

Would Take An Act Of A Deity To Happen: I meet someone I fall head over heels for. We vibe. They stimulate me mentally. They’re a baddie with a heart of gold. And somehow, impossibly, I’m exactly what they want too. I know, sounds unlikely. One in a million.

That’s it guys. That’s my theory and the reasons behind it. I’ll be honest, today I am ok with the likely outcome of being alone forever. Today, I can handle it. Another day, who knows? But for now, I accept it. I accept myself as I am. And for today, I love myself.

I started this post asking if ignorance is bliss. Would I be happier if I weren’t so self-aware? If I wasn’t always reexamining myself in order to improve as a human being, would I just be a happy, ignorant, slut? IDFK. But at the moment, instead of making myself miserable because I’m not loved/wanted/with someone, I am accepting myself and my singleness and knowing that somehow it will all be ok.

spaghetti sauce stain on a country crock tub: stuff about deep seated pain or something

Sometimes our understanding of ourselves comes at a great price. Sometimes we lose and sometimes we hurt. And sometimes wounds we didn’t even know we had reopen. A wound of mine recently reopened and it changed my understanding of myself on a fundamental level.

As a child I was treated in a way by peers and caregivers that left me feeling insecure about myself as a feminine person. I have never thought of myself as masculine but because of circumstances beyond my control, I was often mocked as a child and told I wasn’t a girl. I was forced to have a short hair cut because my caregivers didn’t want to teach me how to care for long hair. This was the 80’s and the kids in my elementary school teased me, calling me a boy and “Mr. Wilson” because my last name is Wilson and Mr. Wilson was a character from Dennis the Menace. My parents called my sister and I “tomboys” and despite wishing I could wear dresses like the other girls, I was not allowed. I remember when I had to go to a dinner in the fifth grade and I got to wear a dress. It was the most beautiful I had ever felt.

I thought the teasing would stop once I went to junior high but the same group of girls who’d harassed me in elementary school had lockers next to mine. They loudly made jokes at my expense while I pulled books from my locker. I started carrying all of my books in my backpack so I wouldn’t have to go back there.

At other times in my life I was told by male friends that they didn’t see me as a girl. I was just one of the guys to them. “You’re not a girl,” stung so much even when said to me by someone I really kind of hated. I didn’t want to be one of the guys.

On top of all of this my mother spent a lot of time telling me I was fat, not pretty if I didn’t wear makeup, and would never attract a man.

I remember being around 11 years old and thinking to myself that I should just kill myself when I turn 40 since I was clearly so undesirable physically and I wrongly assumed I would start getting wrinkles at 40.

I’m 44, by the way.

This insecurity about my physical form has informed too too too much of my life. And no matter how hard I try to shake it, it remains. I have no idea what it feels like to be a trans individual but I can honestly say I know the pain of being misgendered.

When I am truly honest with myself, I will say I think of myself as a beautiful woman. But something inside grips me like a spaghetti sauce stain on a country crock tub and tells me that no matter how I see myself, no one else sees me as a woman, let alone beautiful. And without being aware of it, I’ve become more and more sensitive to the perceived treatment of my gender.

This schlock, unfortunately, was buried deep in the bricked up wall of my heart, rotting and putrefying, like Fortunato looking for some grappa. I didn’t know why some interactions with people left me reeling from pain so intense I could feel my pulse in my neck. I just knew I was hurting. Deeply, deeply hurting. And I wanted it to stop. I needed reassurance, validation. I needed to know that I was seen as a woman, maybe even a mildly pretty woman. I needed to know I wasn’t any different from any other woman.

But I didn’t know this was what I was looking for. I was just hurt and jealous and angry and sad and confused.

Why don’t they treat me like a woman? Why am I different? Is it my hair? My features? My weight? Is it my mannerisms, my voice, my diction? What in the actual fuck was it? I didn’t know. I just knew I felt different and I hated it. And I hated the crippling pain and depression I went through over this.

All this recently came to light for me when I experienced something so painful it knocked a huge fucking hole in that brick wall in my heart and exposed the corpse of the little girl shanked by mean girls with side pony tails. And, of course, as I processed all of it, I thought to myself, “Holy fucking shit?!? That’s why I overreact and act like an overly sensitive psycho bitch? Fucking hell.” It feels like I’ve unlocked the secrets of the universe somehow.

Now that I’m aware of this I have to accept a few things.

One: This isn’t going away anytime soon.

Just because I see the problem doesn't mean I know how to fix it. Healing is not instantaneous or linear. This will be a process. In fact, even as I write this, the pain of it courses through me like electricity causing my breath to catch in my chest. Nevertheless, I stride on.

Two: I have acted like a crazy fucking bitch sometimes because of this.

The crazy in me has been very strong at times and I have to own it. Looking back over my life and how I let this ruin me is beyond painful. It's straight up embarrassing. But I can't change the past. I can only strive to do better from the moment I hit publish on this post forward. Always forward, never back.

Three: Actions have consequences.

I have to own that my actions have led to hurting people that I love. I have to own that my actions have pushed people away. I have to own that those relationships may never be repaired. Actions have consequences and I need to accept mine.

Four: I am a beautiful woman.

I see myself as a woman. And sometimes even a beautiful woman. I see myself as feminine. So that is who and what I am. It doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks. It doesn’t matter how anyone else behaves towards me. I am a woman and what I think is all that matters in this equation.

Five: The only one I need to convince is myself.

I can’t make anyone see me as a woman or force them to treat me in ways that validate my gender to me. If someone sees me as a dude, nothing I can do will change that. And I need to stop trying. Yes, it will still hurt but, in time, if I continue to work on myself and accept that the only validation I need comes from within, then eventually it won't hurt quite so much.

Once that red sauce stain infuses itself into the elemental makeup of the country crock tub it is there forever, my darlings. And this tub is stained, let me tell you. But even stained tubs continue to do their job. I may be stained. And there may be no way to ever fully heal from this ish. But I’m still out here holding my metaphorical spaghetti. And even though I have damaged relationships along the way to get to this revelation, I am here now. I can start to heal and change.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have the corpse of a little girl to give a proper burial.

Be safe out in this terrible world, bambinos.

Here’s what’s wrong with you

Just a little clip from my favorite movie, Strictly Ballroom.

He’s been trying to figure out what’s so wrong with him for 3 weeks but I’ve been trying to figure out what’s wrong with me for 3 years. (Well, really my whole life but I really kicked it into gear the last 3 years.)

From what I can gather:

  • I’m too emotional
  • Too intense
  • Not enough of a filter
  • Too distrusting
  • I trust too much
  • I take things too literally
  • I read too much into things and don’t take them literally enough
  • Talk too much
  • Don’t communicate enough
  • Selfish
  • Too self-deprecating
  • Too full of pride
  • Overthink
  • Don’t think things through
  • Feel like a burden
  • Have abandonment issues
  • Need too much reassuring and validation
  • Too emo
  • Not goth enough
  • And according to my mother I’m fat and look like a zombie when I don’t wear makeup

I probably left some stuff out but that’s ok. You can email me your own list of what’s wrong with me.

Here’s what I think is actually wrong with me:

  • I’m worried that no one will love me and I’ll die lonely and alone and no one will find my body until it’s decomposed so much that I’ve become fused to the piece of furniture I died on and this deep fear that I am so terribly unlovable causes me to try to be whatever the person I love wants and needs but in the process I lose myself and become jealous and afraid and that jealousy and fear manifests as all that stuff I listed above, the consequences of that being that instead of retaining their love I push them away in a self-fulfilling prophecy kinda way.
  • I don’t really like horseradish

I will NEVER be enough for anyone and I think I’m finally ok with that. If I have to be perfect to be loved then I don’t know if trying to catch love like it’s a damn pokemon is worth it.

I am imperfect and a pain in the ass and dramatic and all of the things. I’m fat and I do kinda look like a zombie when I don’t wear makeup. I am intense and self-deprecating and I talk too much and I’m too emotional. One time I left some crumbs in a kitchen sink and for that I was called a worthless piece of shit and smacked around. I fully know that I am not perfect and if leaving crumbs in a sink means I’m worthless to you then so be it.

I don’t care anymore.

I don’t know if the good things about me outweigh the batshit crazy that rattles around my skull or if they even each other out. I really hope the batshit crazy isn’t winning the war but who knows?

What I do know is if I stop worrying so much if I’ll be loved at least some of that batshit crazy will wither and die. And I’d really like that.

I’m tired of being afraid and I’m tired of trying to be perfect.

I’m done with love. Tina said it best, “What’s love got to do with it? Who needs a heart when a heart can be broken?” Not me, bish, that’s who.

I will keep loving because that’s who I am. But I no longer expect love in return and don’t care if I get it.

Do your worst.

PS if you do email a list of what you think is wrong with me it’s going straight in the trash unopened because I don’t give a shit.