Happy Birthday To Me

On a gorgeous Sunday afternoon, whilst bobbing contentedly in a warm lap-pool at the Glen Ivy Hot Springs in Corona (thanks to the fine planning of my friend “Darkness”), I quietly rang in my 42nd birthday. The next day, I slept through the whole day (something of a feat, since my surgery). Days later, I want to believe that sleep-a-thon was born out of relaxation or at worse, sleep deprivation. The truth is, I slept because I am depressed.

By all accounts I shouldn’t have that much to be depressed about. Although I am, at the moment, very worried about a much beloved mom to two of my longest and dearest friends, I know she’s in good hands and that she’ll be okay. Her illness did mean not having someone at the festivities that has been there for the last ten years, but that wasn’t enough to get all twisted up over. She was missed, but not “sleep all day” missed.

The night before my birthday, I enjoyed a delicious dinner, saw Super: The movie, and basked in the fine company of two of my best friend acquisitions since moving to LA. It was a perfectly delightful night! The fact that I didn’t have to come up with the plan for my actual birthday was a gift in and of itself, as well. There were slatherings of slick moisturizers, gooey mud and luxurious oils that left my skin feeling years younger and a much needed massage that soothed the aches I cannot soothe myself. Not one of those things is something to scoff at! So what could possibly have been my problem?

Right away, lets start with the fact that I’m still horribly ill virtually every time I consume anything that passes for food, since the surgery. I’m grateful for the surgery and the chance to lose the weight more “effortlessly”. But imagine feeling like you have the worst stomach flu conceivable for two months, then ask yourself what kind of mood you would be in (no matter what cheeriness was tossed your way). By the time I start feeling physically okay, its time to eat, and then shortly after I’m back on the express train to Barfytown. I’m not exactly feeling motivated to eat. The less I eat, the weaker I get. The weaker I get, the more I freak out and so it goes. So now I’m basically forcefeeding myself and that’s not as fun as it sounds.

But you know, I’ll get over feeling barfy soon enough, slip into clothing sizes I haven’t fit since High School (while maniacal laughter peals inside my head, mind you) and all will be forgiven. Most likely, that blessed event will take place well before I’m officially staring down the barrel of 43, so I’m somewhat discounting this temporary state of discomfort as being the derivation of my distress. Instead, I lay my inability to party down at the feet of the one thing that I fear will still be filling my guts with apprehension and despair next April… my being single and alone. I simply cannot bear the notion that I will spend another year fervently and forlornly trying to uncover the reason that the closest thing to an intimate relationship with a man that I generally achieve, is one where he fantasizes about me sexually and gives his love, care and self to someone else (someone, I hasten to add, he’s usually complaining about).

Rationally speaking, not knowing what makes me so unlovable to men who want to lay me but not love me shouldn’t cause me so much duress; much less should it ruin a perfectly good birthday. After all, if they’ve shut themselves off from the mere idea of loving me, that very detail makes them inherently wrong for me. I get that… intellectually, of course. I am, after all, a reasonably mature, somewhat sane woman. But there is still a part of me that sees their half rejection as a part challenge, part gut-wrenching mystery. I cannot seem to silence the “why, why, why” that plays endlessly in my head and causes my heart to ache all day, every day.

The thing is, I don’t think I’d care so much if it were only a smattering of men who behaved as though there’s some readily recognizable quality about me that shrieks, “Don’t love this one, you’ll regret it. But she is hot stuff so if you‘re horny, just keep manipulating her into thinking you care about her until she succumbs. In fact, don‘t even bother with that and just expect her to be cool with that. And be sure to get good and pissed off when she stands up for herself and says she deserves more. What the hell does she know, right?” If that were the case, I’m certain I would shrug them off as creeps who are probably incapable of genuine love or deeply fearful of true intimacy, and continue waiting mostly patiently for Mr. Right. Unfortunately, they aren’t small in number. They are, in fact, virtually every man I’ve ever dated, chatted with in effort to see if he was someone worth dating, and ultimately every man I’ve ever loved but one and therein lies the rub.

The two males who were charged with the unlikely responsibility of setting the tone for all my relationships with males to come, were just as greedy and selfish as the men who chase my tail. My “brother” is a preening, pouting Diva who knew all his carefree childhood days came off the sweat of my back and despite two decades of professing love for his sister, then stomped his angry feet until both our parents officially ceased to give a shit about me. Then there’s my “dad”. Until recently, I believed my dad to be as much a hapless victim of the wicked harpies that ruled our roost. He still considers his dismissal from the family home and hearth as retribution for having once stuck up for me to the screeching she-devil I called “grandma.” Way to assert male dominance, Dad! Good job protecting me from the beatings (verbal, physical and psychic). During the last conversation I had with him, just before he caused me my first full-blown, “Holy shit I think I’m going to die” anxiety attack, he was loudly asserting his completely misguided mantra “I TAKE CARE OF MY FAMILY!”

If by taking care of his family he means, “I will make you beg for anything you ask of me, and make you motherfucking miserable in the process by shouting incessantly, spouting inconceivable lies about you as if irrefutable fact,” then yes… he did a bang up job. When I was in grade school, my mother made me call him and ask him for money for school clothes (because, heaven forbid she do it herself). I was lucky to get $100 a year. Most of the time, I had to babysit or hope for some hand-me-downs from my mom’s best friend in order to be clothed because my mom used my weight as an excuse to spend all her money on my brother. “He needs nice clothes. YOU don’t. You’re too fat for nice clothes.” Before he was voted off Selfish Asshole Island, he used to show me their bank account balance, and tell me how much of that money was slated for my college education. Naturally my mom took all the money when she kicked him out and I never saw a dime. He occasionally offered a $20 when we saw one another, more out of not knowing what else to do, but I never got phone calls asking how I was, asking after my grades, or my health, or any other thing about my life. Instead, I hunted him down in order to spend time with him, which would be horribly uncomfortable, and like the men I now deal with, most our time together was spent with my listening to how much he loved and hated the woman he loved (never mind that his daughter was sitting right in front of him, wanting to pour her love and care into him).

Is it any wonder that I draw such men to me now? No. How they see it, smell it, sense it… I am still baffled. Surely some of it is subconscious connectivity… their bullshit links to my special bullshit and off we go. Still, I wonder, “Is there a certain facial expression I hold that bespeaks rejection and disappointment in the male gender? Is it something in my eyes? Something in my manner of speaking? Was it there all along, and therefore the reason my familial males denied me their honor and tenderness?“ My mind literally spins and spins until exhaustion. Every day I ask myself, “What is so unlovable about me?” I want nothing more in this world than to either stop caring or find the answer so I can change whatever despicable trait emanates out of me and causes this unfathomable chasm of loneliness. I fear I’ve been branded and fated to go on being unloved and unable to count on anyone, much less a man. I resent the fact that when I had someone who loved me for me, unconditionally, that I was so screwed up that I fled from him (because the feeling was wholly so unfamiliar)! Staring down the long, dark tunnel of another year feeling that way… well, it’s enough to make me crawl into bed and sleep until I forget, for a few sacred moments, the pain that drove me there.

This time next year, I want to be in a place in my life where none of these thoughts darken my mind. I want to blow out the candle on my complimentary dessert, at the celebratory restaurant of my choosing, and wish for World Peace or a hot new pair of shoes instead of the same wish I’ve had every year for as long back as I can remember: “Please, please, please… bring me someone to love that will love me back.”