i dismantled my okc profile for the last time. i'm done meeting people online. i'm done meeting people period. at least i'm done making an effort to meet people. not in a pouty, reverse-psychology way. it's just exhausting trying to develop new friendships and relationships, and i have enough of all of that. i'm like a patchwork quilt. bunches of little pieces and fragments of people all sewn together by me. i was thinking about myself in these terms and thinking about my sister-in-law as a perfectly machine-made tapestry. she's done everything in her life according to the laws of tradition. prom, marry her high school sweetheart, perfect wedding, exactly the right amount of time before a baby. it's all been planned out beforehand. my life doesn't flow like that. i was going to say i'm more like a scavenger but that conjures up nasty images. more i'm like a beachcomber picking up shells. i see one i like and i pick it up and carry it with me. i don't ever really throw any of them away. some of them just get put in the back corner of the case for forever.
this experience with natalie has kicked my brain into overdrive. i cannot stop thinking. and feeling. some of it is rather upsetting. i'm feeling very sad for myself. and there's not really much i want to do to change that because i feel like this is how things are supposed to be. it hurts me, but it feels right.
i don't think i belong with anyone. my standards for a man are so ridiculously high. they're not impossibly unreasonable, i just may have already hit my quota for awesome-men-you-can-know-in-one-lifetime. all of my grandpas, both my dads, and my brothers are all amazing men. they are providers, protectors, fixers of broken things. they are strong, faithful, loving family men. and that's what i want. i've never met one of those. i've never dated one of those in all the extremely high numbers of men that i've been through. at least i've never dated one that wanted to act like that with me. david was close, but even he didn't ultimately make the cut. the men in my family have never, ever, not even once let me down. not that they haven't all at some point put me through the ringer and delivered swift kicks of tough-love to my solar plexus. whenever any of these men get angry at me for something stupid i do, i KNOW FOR SURE that they love me very much. and they know me all the way through because they wouldn't be mad if i couldn't have done better.
i make them all mad quite a bit.
and i can't help who i am, nor do i wish to change.
so i don't complain too much about what i've got and what i don't have. i accept all of this as my own design. and i'm not too sorry about it all.
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thankful
