Dating

"I've been dating since I was 15! I'm exhausted! Where is he?" - Charlotte York

Dating is awful. It's even worse when you thought you'd never have to do it again.

Luckily, however, for all the awful, there's plenty of funny too. The title of my memoir, if it's not "Bits be Damned," will absolutely be "No One Needs Thirty Three Ferrets." (Yes, I went on a date with a guy who had 33 ferrets. No, I'm not proud.)

But sometimes, even the funny starts to wear on you. I don't mean to complain. Getting attention is nice. Dates are often nice. Having fun date stories to tell your girlfriends is great. But after awhile, is there anyone who doesn't start to think, "my god...is it me?"

In the last year, I have gone on probably 20 dates. Let's recap:

-The guy who was SO BORING I couldn't hold a conversation with him, who then suggested we go out, in Collierville (which is a billion miles away from Midtown), didn't pay for my lunch, then texted me later to say that I had "too much personality," which some people might like, but he didn't.

-Another guy who was really boring, and didn't even have any funny/ridiculous distinguishing features to mock.

-The date that never happened with dick-pic. A never-ending saga of unsolicited pictures continues to this day.

-The "good horse in the wrong race" guy.

-The "set-up" who told me we were just in "different places in our lives" and thanked me for my "tenacity." I didn't do anything tenacious, so I'm not really sure he knows what that word means. Maybe we're in different places in our vocabulary?

-The crazy conservative. This one started out so promising. Lawyer, very nice, took me to get CUPCAKES on our first date. And buffalo wings on our second. From a purely "I love food" standpoint, this guy was awesome. Until he told me that Jesus was the "universal truth" and that he always felt sad for his friends that didn't believe, because "they're absolutely going to hell." If that wasn't bad enough, he brought a gun to Buffalo Wild Wings, and told me that believing that abortions should be legal was as bad as going around murdering people.  And that Obama is not a US citizen. Yikes. 

And some other just boring or unremarkable ones. I guess the point is, when do you start to think that, yeah, all these people are crazy, but their common denominator is...me? Am I the crazy person on the bus? How many years (15 in my case) can you date and not find anyone not insane or awful before you have to accept that it's you? I'm not down about this at all, and I certainly don't need to date someone to be happy, but I'm definitely looking around and seeing the bizarre things that happen to me and just kind of going...is it...me?