Every time I talk to my friends from back home, their first questions to me is: "So, Rad, how is your love life?" My answer? "Nonexistent. I go to Vassar." "Uhuh," they commiserate and then the conversation promptly turns to their girlfriend/boyfriend/sex buddy(ies) and what nice hands/eyes/toenails he/she/they have and what they gave them for their four-and-three-quarter-month anniversary. Oh god. Spare me.
Some days it feels like I am the only person from my high school who is uninvolved. I don't do the whole hooking-up thing: that's not my style. The only thing that has been exiled from my room thus far is a cockroach. I live a quiet life but often wonder if there is anything wrong with me--stopping before a mirror, trying to understand if the problem is merely skin-deep, or if there is something darker and uglier within me, hidden. Sometimes I'm ashamed to tell people that I still have never had a first kiss.
Saturday night at the TAs, however, talking to my friend after a few (entirely non-alcoholic...) drinks, I realized something. "I'm not upset that I am not in love," I told her "I'm upset that everyone expects me to be." I'm upset because I'm supposed to be out "getting the guy," because I'm supposed to flirt, because I'm expected to somehow magically stand out from the other ten beautiful girls who want him and win him over. That's not love. That's The Bachelor, Season 1, Vassar edition. The right person I won't have to try to impress. To the right person, I will be irreplaceable. And this intuition to wait it out is an inhibition I don't want to overcome.
So next time my friends call, I won't take their sympathy. Instead, I'm going to interrupt their sugary-sweet stories with tales of my own, stories about last night, about how I sat on the roof at 1AM with a bunch of sweet people, about how we huddled under blankets and sang songs to my guitar and watched our voices float away like smoke up to the stars: so real, so full, so living. I'm going to live my life until love is found.
Take it easy, sluggers.
Radish
4.07.2008
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10 comments:
That's The Bachelor, Season 1, Vassar edition.
i literally lol'ed
you're not the only one!
"You and Me and Everyone We Know"
Yeah, I know! So many of my friends are in the same situation. :-)
~Rad
in the immortal words of mika:
live your life until love is found
or love's gonna get you down!
i adore you,
Peabo
Wow. Amazing, Radish.
I don't know if "wait it out" is the best course of action though. I understand what you're saying, and it doesn't make sense to get into a relationship for the sake of getting into a relationship, but at the same time, if you want one, you can't expect it to come to you. You have to be out there. And yes, you have to impress people -- but you should impress them by being yourself. People are impressed by others precisely because they made an impression on them. If you don't make an impression on someone, how can you expect them to remember you?
just wear stilettos and a miniskirt, and then pretend to trip in front of Mr. Hottie, then look up and blink your eyes dumbly while he helps you up and ask for help finding a water fountain.
I JOS KEEDEENG! :D
I like this post. Rad, I'd do you if I was gay or a boy.
When you live your life for you, people take notice.
Happiness is infectious.
love love looove your writing!
ps: if you want to talk about these kinds of things with more people, check out the conversation on dating/hooking up this wednesday at 9 in the raymond parlor. it's supposed to be totally laid back and informal.
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