I can count on one hand how many times I’ve dated someone with mutual attraction. It happened in freshman year of high school. I was barely 14 and my first girlfriend was ultra-conservative. Like, mission-trips-to-Africa conservative. She and I got to first base on, like, three occasions before like a coward, I broke up with her over the phone.
My second girlfriend during my senior year was hopelessly in love with me. She had awful self-esteem, had been abused when she was 12 and was bottling up years of frustration and rage that my breaking up with her likely nudged to its bold manifestations in college. She later told me she’d fucked multiple guys and even cheated on her first serious boyfriend.
Sometime this year, she got married.
In January, I finally got laid.
Over the ten years since that last relationship, I’ve fallen for countless women whom I found irresistible. They all had a similar vibe: nice, polite, funny, slight attitude, self-reliant, and 100% sure they had no feelings for me.
Failure after failure plagued me until losing my virginity, the one highlight that feels so long ago that I may as well have tossed the ol’ v-card during that long-ago senior year.
The fact that you, the reader, know this personal bit of trivia about me hardly makes a difference. The truth is that it never really mattered in the first place. All that changed is that I know what happens when one actually manages to score. Aside from that, it’s business as usual.
Living with your near-elderly parents fucks up your confidence enough. Adding a global pandemic on top of that hurdle makes the thought of dating a mere fanciful fiction.
I’ve been on five dates tops since moving back home, all first dates, all last dates.
It’s clear why I’m not finding any luck, it’s mostly low self-worth and fear of failure. That’s nothing new. What WAS new was how little I cared anymore.
Once I had sex, the world was quiet.
If I ever thought of someone whom I had a crush on, it was a moment of blissful fantasy before hastily snapping back to the present.
Until I ran across a recent crush’s timeline showing off her boyfriend’s recent on-air accomplishments, the career I just so happened to abandon after I met the two of them before they got together this past winter, when she was technically “available” or as close as one can be at a given moment.
Instantly, that quivering gut punch slammed my chest. The blood pumped through my ears, my vision clouding over with jealous conceit.
Unrequited love, my oldest tormentor and closest companion, rang throughout the corridors of my psyche with unpleasant familiarity.
Lockdown has turned my focus away from serious thoughts of courtship. I have crushes here and there, mostly on women I’ll never meet in person at the moment. A few are people I know or knew once, either from school or work.
All either finding their other, in the process of meeting that true love, or posting endless Instagram stories on baby’s firsts.
I’m but an astute observer scrolling by snapshots of their best moments – or joyful memories worth sharing in public while keeping the messy shortcomings of their union behind lock and key.
Stuck in neutral counting down the days until election night in fitful anticipation, this wound of my pride plunks me into annoyed action, the clacks of my keyboard pecking the air while a distant car accelerates down the expressway a few blocks behind me.
Like I imagine so many other self-flagellating souls on the Earth, I’m hunched over feeling sorry for myself with little to no desire to make the necessary changes to one day get back into functioning society with a semblance of a clue as to what I’ll do if normality ever does return.
But hey – I did get laid.
Take your victories where you can?
Diary of a Mad Millennial 