It's official

I'm miserable. I caught a cold from my nephew last weekend so physically I've been feeling awful. I feel a little better today, but still not 100%.

Emotionally, I can't say that I've been feeling much better. My mind has been all over the place this past week. Mostly, I've felt just numb, almost to the point where I forget that this life is not the one that I want, the one that I would choose for myself. I feel neither sad nor distressed. I just am. Other times, I have very serene moments where I realize that this is my life and I can envision my life this way forever and feel very mature for coming to this realization, like maybe I'm a bigger person for accepting what life has dished out for me. After all, I'm healthy, I have a family, I have a good job now. I, in other people's eyes, have a pretty good life compared to some.

But there have also been times when I miss being around people, miss going out and doing things, only to angrily turn on myself and think “You're such an idiot. You did this. You pushed everyone away thinking that taking time away from them would help you understand how you feel and give you the opportunity to resolve your feelings. Only, time apart just allowed any feelings of hurt, jealousy, and resentment to fester and grow. It's all my fault. I did this, and so I must live with it. It's too late to fix things. It will never be the same as it was, it can't be, too much has changed. It's never going to get better.” I find myself repeating this little mantra in my head over and over again. “It's never going to get better.” This can't be healthy.

And still other times, I think, “Well, if I just pretend that everything is fine, maybe it will be fine.” You know, if you think happy thoughts, happy things will happen, and you will be happy. I was at work a couple weeks ago and there is this Simpsons card that when you open it it's Marge Simpson saying “Well it doesn't matter how you feel inside, you know? It's what shows up on the surface that counts. That's what my mother taught me. Take all your bad feelings and push them down, all the way down, past your knees until you're almost walking on them. And then you'll fit in, and you'll be invited to parties, and boys will like you, and happiness will follow.” I literally almost cried at work. What is wrong with me? I started thinking that this is what people do, this is how normal people probably deal with their problems, right? You just deal with it like a grown-up and move on. But is it? Is that healthy? Shouldn't you embrace your bad feelings to a point, to find out why they're there, where they came from, and then to deal with them?

I don't know what to think anymore. I feel like nobody has the answer. I have nobody to talk to. Even my shrink doesn't seem to be pointing me in the right direction, or any direction for that matter. When I try to talk to my mom about it, she just doesn't get it. No. 1: she doesn't understand anything about men and how to deal with them in the 21st century. She has to be THE most naïve and innocent person I've ever met and she's 58. She started dating my dad when she was 15 and waiting til marriage to have sex. She was shocked when my sister came home with a hickey once in high school; she'd never had a hickey. She didn't know what a beaver or twat was until she was in her forties. She just doesn't get anything. No. 2: She doesn't understand anything about my friend situation either. Sometimes I feel like she really doesn't want to know how sad I am because she doesn't know how to fix it and that to her is frustrating as a mom.

My sister isn't any better either. She has her own problems to deal with. Her house is pretty much a money pit with one thing going wrong after another. Her kids are a lot for her to deal with too. So I feel like I shouldn't bother her with my problems. When I've tried to talk to her about my friends and was letting her know that I was pushing them away, she didn't seem too concerned or wondered why I would want to create my own loneliness. She just said, “Sometimes people grow apart and friends move on.” But, she was never one to have lots of girl friends, either. She has one, but mostly she hung out with guys. Plus, she is the type of person who always had a boyfriend. Ever since high school, it was one guy after the next all the way through college until she met her husband in her post-grad. So, I can't talk to her about men either. I've told her about the guys, but she's never really been the friend I've needed, only a sister, if that makes sense. She's there to remind me how they're jerks and that I deserve better than that, but, I don't know, it's not the same as talking to a true friend somehow. I can't describe it.

So all along, I've told myself that I'm not depressed. I'm not, I'm just unsatisfied with the way things are in my life right now. But, maybe I am. I'm starting to feel a bit crazy inside. I don't like to use that word, because I'm sure every mentally unstable person has a medical reason behind their actions besides pure insanity.

I'm not even sure what I want anymore, which makes it harder too. I feel like I'm on an emotional roller coaster. I thought I wanted a normal life, which for a single woman living in a decent sized city, would entail going out with friends, dating men, having fun. I've tried to look further into the blogosphere to seek solace in the fact that there are other women like me out there, but what I've come across more often than not are these sites where women basically talk about their sexcapades with men and I think that is nowhere near close to what I want or who I'd want to be friends with, or is it? Sometimes I think that yeah, if I had friends we'd be like the Sex and the City girls talking about all the men we've dated and slept with, but is that actually what I want? I guess the Catholic upbringing did have some kind of effect on me because I don't think of promiscuity as a good thing, but at the same time, sometimes I am so jealous of having a “normal” sex life. I can't find an official average, but it seems women usually have an average of below 10 sexual partners in their life. The older I get, though, the harder it is to get close to men without the fear of them “knowing” everything about me and being completely embarrassed and humiliated. (Although, I'd have to actually meet a guy first.) Other times, I'm completely jealous of some of my friends who found their partners in college and never had to “sleaze it up.”

With my friends too, I have no idea what I want. All along I've said that I want friends who are interested in the same things I am, who want to go out and do things. Sometimes, I wonder what these things are that I talk about. I feel like I really first got upset when they didn't want to go out on the town like we used to. Usually we would go to bars and pretty much get wasted. Is this really my idea of fun? I often think about college and look back and think about how much fun we used to have, just us girls, but realistically, all we did was get trashed every weekend, hook up with different guys, and then laugh about it all. Is this my idea of fun? Is this all I see for my future? I've seen what that kind of attitude can do to someone. My dad had a fun time in college, probably too much fun for his own good. He's always told stories about his friends and their shenanigans and they always involved them being drunk. My sister and I have always thought that was partly the reason for his alcoholism, that he still thinks that those were the best times of his life and he's stuck in the past, which is why he acts so completely immature. I don't want to be that person, always living in the past, thinking that those times were the best and that no other part of my life will ever be as good. Sometimes I wonder if I really do want the life that I've envisioned for my future: the husband, the family, friends that are married with kids, so we can raise our kids together. Maybe I'd want them more if I was in that place, but I'm not. I'm in the single girl place. To me, being single, has always been going out, getting drunk, hooking up with a random guy, which for me has inevitably led nowhere. Maybe I need to get out of that place, but how? That's all I've ever known. And what's on the other side? Grown-up stuff. Does that equal boring stuff?

Man, I think I'm either bi-polar or have a raging case of Peter Pan syndrome. The screen's making my eyes hurt, this post is way too long. I'm not even proof-reading. Sorry for any errors.