Too Long; You Don't Have To Read

8/29/14

I don't feel called to be single. I think I'd know by now if I were.

Apparently there's not really techniques or methods or tips or tricks to falling in love. And I don't understand how it happens. I ask, and no one seems to know. My mom said she saw Dad and just "knew." Super helpful, Mom, thanks. I've seen roommates fall in love, get all giggly distracted and engaged. Some of my friends just had chemistry together.

And then there's me. Thinking back, I've had multiple crushes but really only one crush. That was in high school, was probably my first crush, and I got shut down (really politely, too, for it being sophomore year of high school, and the guy and I are still friends and I'm glad I didn't date him because he and his wife are perfect for each other). After getting shut down like that, I guess I just hid any crushes too deeply to be seen, which basically makes it my fault that I'll be twenty-seven on Sunday and have still never gone on a date. I mean, that will make me the same age as Charlotte Lucas. Yippee.

Yet, how do I meet people now? It's undergraduates or married people at church, so there's that. (To be fair, I've had it pointed out to me by a trusted friend that maybe those around my age are out getting degrees like I am, and just aren't at my school. Fair point. Still frustrating for there not to be single men at church.) I don't drink, so bars would be boring and exhausting. (Superbly drunk people are not fun, no matter what they think.)

Besides, I don't really believe one can make a lasting connection on small talk. It has to be deeper than that. I don't want to play games or put on a show and I certainly don't want to dumb myself down or make compromises in regard to my beliefs. Most everyone says that's a good thing. So why am I still single? Obviously it's because there's something wrong with me--that I'm not beautiful enough, not confident enough, not flirty enough, something. And while I try and try not to believe that (because at least in part it's not true and I know that), it still hurts. It really hurts.

It just feels like I screwed up my time at university by only getting my degree.

Deep Sea Fishing?

7-5-14

I felt like I was in an Austen novel this afternoon.

Context: During my internship, I'm staying at the home of these really nice people, lifelong friends of the camp directors from my past three summers. They're really generous to have welcomed me into their home without even really meeting me. I love them and their kids. Suffice it to say, they don't make me feel like I was in an Austen novel. However, the dad's parents have come over to visit--and these are the parents who apparently paid for their son to go to college and graduate debt-free. So, you know, that says something.

Anyway, the gentleman is talking to me about Einstein's theory of relativity and how that might relate to how angels can travel from heaven to Earth in less than an hour, extrapolated from the travel time it apparently takes for Gabriel to get to Daniel from God in Daniel 8 (this discussion started with a Calvin and Hobbes comic strip, and no, it doesn't become more clear). Anyway, in the course of listening to him, I responded (apparently) intelligently about triangulation and this gentleman said, "You're smarter than I thought." But then he just goes on to keep talking about whatever it was that he was discoursing on.

And I was like, Wha? Just because I'm studying to be an archivist does not mean I don't have/didn't have other interests. Anyway, the Austen novel feeling came from him talking as if going deep sea fishing was a common activity for people to do regularly. (It's not, by the way.) I was a mix of diverted and confused because the paradigm this man lives in is not the one I grew up with.