Dating after 30
or
The crease of hope
If you are in your late twenties,do yourself a favor…just marry whatever you have right now. You ever hear the term “as good as it gets and it ain’ t getting that good again?”. Just get married and stay married and accept whatever b.s. goes along with that person just like you put up with whatever b.s goes on at the job you have rather than face unemployment ….because if you don’t, here is what is waiting for you…
Here is what dating after 30 is like, it’s like being one of the few survivors of a nuclear holocaust. Anyone who is left is vomiting blood, or has a hunchback or a third eye and even the ones that appear normal on the outside have seen and lived through horrors that have irreversibly scarred them mentally. Maybe you find one that has none of these miladies…maybe they were locked in a bomb shelter, well…that person sure as hell ain’ t going to be able to relate to what you have gone through are they? And the odds are they have been taking so much iodine to combat the poison in the air that they taste like octopus ink. Okay…the analogy sort of falls apart with that last line and i’m not really sure if that ink tastes like iodine, but you get the idea, there is nothing but walking wounded as far as the eye can see. Hollow husks of humanity, shell shocked and staggering, having gotten so close to the release of raw energy too powerful for man to understand yet alone harness. They had been washed over by the blinding light and saw souls burn and heard wailing and shrieking of pain so pure and intangible that the only evidence that it was not imagined is that no sane mind could conceive it, and they are all ruined…except you…or so you tell yourself. You flee from one of the raving, scarred lunatics and in exhaustion you kneel down by a creek and rinse the cold sweat off your face. Then you look down into the creek and see hair floating. Your hair. The poison air has taken it’s toll on you as well. You rub your eyes in disbelief at your own mutant reflection, and as you rub your two eyes the third can’t help but look on in horror.
You are one of them. The horror you have been through has changed you. Anyone who comes along is quickly compared to and judged to have fallen short of the previous romances..not as funny as so and so, not as loyal as some other one, not as kind as the one from a few years ago. You only allow them equality in comparison to the others in your past for the bad. Hmmm…seems passive aggressive like so and so, too critical like some other one, too sensitive like the one from a few years ago that didn’t work out. Are the comparisons just? or is it a downward spiral of chasing each one away? You wonder this like a mutant in a nuclear wasteland debating with itself on whether or not to drink water that may be radioactive, while it dies of thirst. You look up and see another mutant eying the water suspiciously…it too has all the same concerns…has seen the same horrors. A song bird chirps in the distance and you both run off in different directions, startled by the cheerful noise.
All the while friends and relatives look on you with kind eyes and pity..and worse…find your struggle cute and endearing as they set you up with whatever scarred mutants they know, under the logic “hey, you’re both single”. Like men in yellow Haz Mat suits handing out meds to the scarred, sore riddled victims of the blast. They do their best to help, but it is plain to see the geiger counter clicking away as you get near it. A little geiger counter goes off in your head as you pass by other survivors of the torn landscape. Is is clicking because of you? or those you pass by? For whom does the geiger counter click? It clicks for no one…it is only in your head. So loud,so very loud in your head.
Well, not me Jackson. I have seen and caused enough damage. I have learned enough to know that I have learned nothing. I see now the problem is not what I actually see or don’t actually see. The problem is what I am looking for. It is time for a change in what I am seeking out. I’m not in my twenties anymore, and I shouldn’t be looking for what I needed in my twenties. Even if any of those traits are to be found in someone my age, it is no longer suited to what is left of me. It is not what I should be seeking. What I should be seeking now,to stay ahead of the game and not live as thought the fallout will ever completely settle, IS …….a favorite chair.
A nice comfortable chair to settle into to watch t.v. in between visits from…the pizza guy or maybe the mailman if I can catch him and engage him in a person to person conversation as he tries to drop of the mail at the weirdo’s house and scamper away unimpeded. I am thinking something not too big but comfortable, maybe corduroy or tweed type material…with a big crease in between the arm rest and seat, so I’ll always have one last place to look for the remote control. The crease of hope.