random act of bravery

I’ve been struggling lately to leap a mental hurdle that popped up sometime in the course of this strange year. It’s a sentiment I’ve tried to articulate to a few people in my life, a sentiment that has been met with crazy face (not that I blame them). The ugly: I’ve become convinced, over the past year, that no one actually cares about anyone else. Fine, more to the point: no man cares about any woman. This isn’t about love – I believe in love, I do. But I have somehow come to the conclusion that romantic love is based more on a desire for stability, or for a certain lifestyle, than on an accurate, clear, intimate, compassionate understanding of another person. Basically, I don’t think they – guys – give a shit about the wholeness of the person they are with.

It’s ugly, right? It’s the worst. It’s not meant to be a gendered attack – there isn’t anger behind this. It’s just a sort of slow, gutting resignation. I can't even think about it for longer than a few moments without becoming totally bewildered by how bitter and depressing it all seems. And yet I can't convince myself otherwise. This ugly thought has also made me, at times, debilitatingly uninteresting. Since I'm convinced no guys are interested in who I am, I become little more than a mirror, asking questions, endlessly spinning the conversation back to them. And since I tend to date other artists, this is easy for both of us, as I'm legitimately curious and male artists can talk about their own work until their overwrought, abstract, dubstepping cows come home. I've spent intimate time with guys this year who I can pretty much guarantee would not be able to rattle off a single personal fact about me even if held at gunpoint. Which is, like, criminally boring, and totally not their fault.

Coming out of my hiatus has been enlightening mostly because I've determined that that imaginary boyfriend whose absence I was lamenting would actually be super annoying to the life I already have and truly love. Which has given me a kind of freedom I didn't have before, the kind that says yes to anything engaging or new, like spur of the moment trips to Philadelphia. Sometimes this means I get stuck uncomfortably sexting minor celebrity activists, but it also results in wine-fueled bluegrass jams with adorable Midwesterner's. I'm online dating! It's actually fun, now that I don't really care. And even though it is painful, I've been trying to stop myself from asking the next question and the next question and the next question, and remember that it's difficult to be cared for if you don't give anyone the chance.

(This was sort of depressing. Here's a great video to make up for it.)