A New Year; or: "Hope, the greatest gift"

So, December's dying again, folks. This month. I tell you. It's the drama queen of the Gregorian calendar.

Speaking of drama queens:

I'm over here, making work-life compromises that nobody is happy with, looking at my lonely old age, and shopping for a laptop that has to last me another ten years. I'm thinking Lenovo thinkpad refurbished. I've always wanted one, and there's no way I can afford one new. They cost like four times what my car is worth. More, probably. I pay the worth of the car every time I get an oil change.

I don't do New Years' Resolutions. I don't believe that change should wait, and I don't like the idea that something essentially arbitrary (like the Gregorian calendar) should have any material influence on my soul's progress. But I do take every opportunity to get all depressingly introspective. Just ask my dad.

I'm a fat old feminist. I'm an emotional minefield. I'm volatile and demanding and outrageously independent. I'm too accustomed to my own awkwardness and incompetences. It's time to shrug off blind hope and get to work living my life. I have never dreamed of being rescued by a knight in shining armor. I have probably dreamed of Sherlock Holmes, but it seems a common enough fantasy now that we've realized that brains are the crack of romance pharmacology. But I have always dreamed that someday I would be loved. It sounds like a moderately universal aspiration. I know that orientations and levels and types of preferred intimacy vary greatly from person to person, but as human beings, don't we all desire in some way to be known and accepted?

I have always known that I would need to learn to be tolerant if I were ever to embark on any committed relationship, but what I never realized was how reluctant the world of romance would be to tolerate me. I'd like to blame romance films for impossible expectations, but unattractive, big, stupid failures find love and marry nearly every day despite the media's attack on mediocrity. None of those facts would remove me from that giant public swimming pool of romantic hopes. Only I can do that, and I think I'm going to.

But oh, how I love to swim! I learn so much in the liquid world. But like most public pools, hope simply doesn't give me enough room to move, to be what I can become. However much I like the water, I need to get out of the dating pool and dry off. Maybe read a book in a quiet corner. Maybe I'll find the courage to leave hope behind entirely. I heard of a beach once with sand so soft it feels like flour, and the nearly silent whisper of waves will lull me to sleep. . .

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