I've known on instinct since I was a small child that there wasn't a husband out there waiting for me and that I was meant to be single. I've spent a lot of years rebelling against that, obviously. Thought my life wasn't complete without a guy, had to have at least someone to drool over and daydream about even if he wouldn't date me, went ballistic when dumped and/or refused to accept the signs of impending dumpage, etc. I idealized everything about relationships and ignored everything bad as best I could ("You want to move to Alaska? I hate cold! Uh...I guess I'll go?"). It was my drug addiction, only my suppliers kept cutting me off and sending me home (hah).

Only, things haven't been that fun for awhile now. Relationships bring out the worst in me. When I get comfortable and secure and thinking things will last, I start letting my ugliest self come out, and I start treating the guy like he's my teddy bear. One that gets smothered, beat up on, squished, dropped into mud puddles, etc. because I'm sure he can't object or escape. And that's not right or true. I kept wondering why guys would get burnt out...uh, duh!

And getting "engaged" clued me in on an entirely different problem. Trying to make my life fit with someone else's was too hard and a bitch to plan and stressing me out horribly, not to mention draining my money. I could feel my latent control freak coming out and wanting to manipulate and change what I couldn't. I wasn't too thrilled with myself as a person for acting like that.

Now I'm actually happy and relieved to be out. Relationships are a burden, too! Who woulda thunk it? I like just dealing with my own issues, without having to try to adjust myself to fit someone else. I like not finding ugly parts of myself that are brought out by relationships. I'm having a great time NOT having my life revolve around wanting love and nookie for once. It feels great. For the first time, I'm free from my addiction. I'm bouncing with energy, I'm excited as all hell to work on my projects, see shows, see new things, read, shop there's not enough time in the day for me to play at everything I want to play. I'm delighted.

There's this quote by Harlan Ellison in A Curmudgeon's Garden of Love that I hate.

"The one thing that I know about love for sure is that it's the only game in town and that you must keep going back to bat again and again and again. I have no respect for anyone who says that they've given up, or that they're not looking or that they're tired. That is to abrogate one's responsibility as a human being."

If all that there is playing the game of meet-love-dump, meet-love-dump on repeat until you die, fuck that! That doesn't sound like a great life to me. And really, "abrogate one's responsibility as a human being?" Overexaggerate much? That sounds suspiciously like "one's responsibility as a human being is to make babies" and crap talk like that. You can have a just fine life without someone to share it with 24-7, and hell, you might even be better off for not doing it.

Now I finally get those people who ARE happy to be single and don't want to be bothered with giving chances to relationships. There's a whole lot of crap that comes with the happy...and suddenly, I'm not interested in taking the bad with the good. I don't want to hop on the roller coaster any more and get off puking. (I don't understand how people who have been on the bad roller coasters keep wanting to hop on after uh, lots of pukings, either.) I want my life to be stable and revolving around me for once. I've already had the good parts of romantic love that I wanted in life, and I've had that need fulfilled, and I'd make an abysmal wife anyway. I'm moving on.

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