Just Don't Call Me Nuts

Dating is just... terrible. It's just terrible.

I'm not talking about exclusive dating situations or long-term relationships where you're basically married only without the tax benefits and are just as emotionally screwed when a fight has to be had over who gets the writing desk. Those still have safe, comfy routines. Routines that can be broken and shatter your entire reality, but you have them. Same with being single and not dating; you feel comfortable with coming home from work and eating a dinner of microwave popcorn and Fannie Mae chocolates in front of marathons of whatever horrible sitcom you watch.

But dating, at least for me, is just kind of awful. People are trying to put their best foot forward, which is pretty much always a foot that doesn't even exist. They saw a foot once and thought, "I bet ladies are into THAT," and fashioned themselves a peg leg to stick out the bottom of their trench coat. And then you find out that it's not even a human under the trench coat, but twenty squirrels sitting on each other's shoulders. Then me and this squirrelman play laser tag, only instead of wearing the awkward little harness with the target that allows you to be "shot", the squirrelman has fashioned one out of cardboard so I'm the one taking all the shots while mine do absolutely nothing to him.

And this is all just a metaphor, so it's not like I can just go around kicking dudes in the shin to check for a hollow, wooden sound. I can't simply chuck the laser gun at his head when I realize the hit pad is just drawn on with felt marker.

This is all a ridiculous way for me to illustrate the exhaustion of filtering through fake people with faker personas and how they fake emotional availability while I'm basically streaking through the dating world naked and with the worst hair day ever. I'm on one end of the spectrum where I didn't get the memo that we are all just going to bullshit each other until we get the sex, street cred, or snack cakes or whatever we came for. I actually want to meet other real people and have feelings for one, and do so as the real me. Even in normal life I'm forward to a fault, falling just short of texting "excuse me" to my texting partner if I fart in my own house miles away from them.

It's not to say there aren't real humans among the squirrelmen. There are just a surprising number of highly intelligent super squirrels that want to experience a weak semblance of human relationships.

And I'm nutty, so I am total squirrelbait.





(I'm very happy that I've now used the term squirrelman enough that autocorrect corrects squirrelmen to squirrelman.) 

Bullet Time

Over a year ago, a week happened where I knew I had a tumor (and a cut on my breast) but didn't know if I had cancer or not, and it was the longest week of my life to that point. Well, something changed that week, because ever since then I have been living in what feels like "bullet time" from the Matrix.

Every day feels long. Mondays are a tough transition out of a long weekend like getting back into the swing of school after summer break. Waking up in the middle of the night is a sentence to lie awake for days. I can barely listen to any music that doesn't have a frantic "bootsandpantsandbootsandpants" rhythm or bitching guitars because anything else will be boring. Misplace something? Enjoy the Tolkien-esque quest for the bra you don't remember throwing on the spare bed before somehow covering it with your "bar jacket". It's like riding on a bus that's traveling slower than you would walk.

Because I know any task I take on will seem like it's taking way longer, I have been dreading things like doing my taxes or the loss reports at work. I know that same satisfaction of a job well done is waiting there, but I see what looks like a big, dumb, boring hill I have to climb first. It's not that I feel like I can get more things done in an extra long day... it's like I know everything is going to take forever, so I've been avoiding it.

For the last couple of weeks I have been actually trying to be productive, so I'm more aware of this caveat to my "bullet time" power than ever. It doesn't help that the tasks I set ahead of myself are big and gradual anyway. Epic closet overhaul, the always-vague resolution to "be more active", finally reading that book that was recommended to me... nothing I can finish in an hour that feels like three. But I'm determined to do them and hope that since the frustration has been so great, the results will feel even grander. Nothing good ever came easy, and if these things are going to feel way worse to do than they ever should, maybe that means there's also a disproportionate amount of satisfaction waiting on the other side.

In the meantime it feels like doing the worm in slow-motion to climb the side of a big, dumb, boring hill.

An Analogy Via Squirrel

While looking up a certain model of Aston Martin a friend had compared me to, I came across a photo series of a squirrel facing off with a plastic T-Rex.

Naturally, that got me thinking about deep eternal truths of human struggle.

How do animals understand the things they see that we make? My mom's elderly dog is mostly blind, but he will stop and stare at the electric fireplace like it's some kind of magic mirror that tells him the secrets of life. How does a squirrel interpret a T-Rex action figure? Hell, when I was four, I was too scared to go up on a porch while trick-or-treating (guising, for British viewers) because of an animatronic witch... that was maybe a foot tall. To a squirrel, that's a life-size replica of a fearsome predator. It's ugly, it's creepy, and holding alarmingly still like it's just waiting.

Maybe I'm not giving the squirrel enough credit, but let's just pretend his tiny mind is blown by this thing.

Okay, cartoons are on so I'm losing interest in this FAST.

That squirrel may or may not have been taking a huge chance in his own beady little eyes by approaching that dinosaur for snacks. But looking at those pictures, I choose to see the progression of a squirrel that is uncertain... to a squirrel that's sitting on top of a T-Rex eating free food.

And what have YOU done today?!