Nice, but does it come with a get your life back guarantee?
Someday, if I ever get that large blow to the head that renders me speechless long enough for a significant other to take as a Yes to "the question", I may have one of these. But until that time, I'll just stick to my plan of buying one for myself when I turn 40. That gives me about 10 years to save. And I don't have to worry about getting my heart ripped out and stomped on again.
A pretty fair trade, if you ask me.
Today I received the email. The one I knew was coming. The one that leaves me as the last girl standing.
My friend Anne is engaged.
We've been friends for a long time. From about middle school on. Through the bad perms, the bad early 90s music and the attempt at going grunge, we've been through it all.
During high school we had a standing joke. We called ourselves the Dateless Wonders. DW's for short. Not that we weren't interested in the opposite sex, it's just that, well, they didn't seem to have too much interest in us. In fact, neither one of us started really dating until college. If that's what you want to call what I did. More like hit and run hook ups in my case.
Not Anne. She dated a few different guys but stayed focused on her career, being a nurse. Being the smart cookie she is she graduated with honors from UPenn (early I might add), swiftly finished her masters degree then spend the past few years working in various hospitals before moving on to her PhD program (she's in the middle of it now) in Iowa.
Being the organized and efficient girl she is, Anne signed up on Eharmony.com. This after some disasterous dating experience on Match.com. And there she found Nate. They moved in together last fall.
Now they're going to get married.
Don't get me wrong, I'm happy for her. She's my friend after all. She deserves to be happy no matter what. And I wish them nothing but happiness. I on the other hand, well, I feel as if I'm stuck here. In Pennsyltucky. Trying like mad to escape. Trying to figure out what I want to be when I grow up. Doing my damndest to keep from getting hurt again.
It's hard. I still can't forget certain ones who have flitted in and out of my heart. Unfortunately for me, they're still there. And they aren't leaving anytime soon. I'm not sure when I became so bitter about love and romance. Maybe it was in the 8th grade when I wasn't asked to dance at our 8th grad formal. Maybe it was from too many years of attending high school dances and standing on the sidelines. Or it could be from watching my parents marriage, the one marriage I held up as the gold standard of what one should be, disintegrate over the past five years.
I don't know. But I've stopped trying. My heart can't handle it anymore.
So, because I'm the last one standing, the last of my high school friends to get hitched, I inherit the big house with 80 cats. If anyone wants to join me, I'll need some help cleaning the litter boxes, it get's mighty hard to get back up when you're an arthritic 70 something spinster.
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