If the tightness of my shoulders or the noise my teeth are making grinding against one another weren't enough to alert me to the fact that I'm a little off, the fact that A State of Wonder isn't calming me down is a pretty good indication that I'm pissed.
Listening to Bach has always been the auditory equivalent of a warm bubble bath and a glass of wine. My heart rate slows, my breathing deepens, my shoulders relax, and my jaw unclenches.
Except when it isn't.
When Bach can't calm me down it means that my feathers are significantly ruffled, as they seem to be today. I don't know if it's the result of the woman next to me at my 6am Spin class who wouldn't stop moaning (Seriously, you're having too much or not enough fun. Either way, please dial it back a bit.) or the fact that I spent most of my REM sleep last night either screwing my exes or running away from serial killers in Disney World, but I am in a mood.
Nah. That's a lie. I know the reason.
I've been having a lot of conversations about love and dating recently. The recent revelation that OK Cupid has been screwing around with its users is part of it. Having a bunch of recently single friends is another. A great deal of wine has been downed, tears have been shed, and terrible dating stories have been shared. I've actively listened as people have dissected their dating lives and have dissected my own. The stories change a little bit, but the themes of love, commitment, and family run through all of them.
Usually, it's the kind of conversation I go for, but hand to God, if I hear one more story of a bad date or have one more person suggest that I try OK Cupid or go out to more bars I will go blind.
***
"Yeah, you're a few standard deviations away from Midwestern normal." She pauses, and I can see her smirking. "But you're not an outlier yet."
I'm curled up in bed with a cup of tea and a videochatting with a close friend. She's a fellow born-and-raised-in-fly-over-country. She's trying to talk me down from the edge of an honest-to-goodness panic attack (my first in well over a year). I'm wigging out over the prospect of going back to Wisconsin and sitting at a baby shower with about thirty-five Midwestern women.
Sounds innocuous enough, right?
Or rather, sounds innocuous enough until you realize you're the only unattached (one of a few unmarried) women in the room, definitely the only one who has no kids, no plans for kids, no significant other, and no plans to ensnare a significant other.
Put another way, the spinster auntie. At 29.
It's ridiculous. I know it's ridiculous and that I shouldn't care about it. Truthfully, most of the time I don't. But most of the time I'm somewhere aside from the itty-bitty upper Midwestern town that I grew up in. When I'm living my life in the Twin Cities (a life that I love and wouldn't consider trading for a husband, kids, and white picket fence ever), there are many, many variations on love, commitment, and family.
In a town of 1,200 people? Not so much.
It's the prospect of coming face to face with that kind of stoic (antiquated?) Midwestern sensibility that has me breathing into a paper bag .
***
"So, I mean, I guess if I were to be dating someone I'd want to date someone I'd see really intensely, you know, over the weekend and then just go back to doing my own thing for the rest of the week." I pause, waiting to be excoriated, told this is not how grown-ups do relationships and you're commitment phobic and need to seek therapy and listen to me I'm wiser than you are.
Instead I'm rewarded by a huge laugh and a "Oh my God. We are totally related."
The only conversation I've had about love and dating recently that hasn't left me researching monastic vows has been with my older brother. The conversation winds on for a long time and touches on everything to how our family makes me feel like a spinster to how dating culture is inherently kind of creepy. Eventually, after a long lull, I tell him what has me disgruntled with every other conversation like this I've been having.
I'm pretty happy being single.
I have a job that I like, friends that I adore, I keep busy doing things that I enjoy. And I would like to have someone to take on adventures and have all those giddy ohmygodI'mtotallyfallingforyou feelings and of course I'd like to be having more sex (although, past relationships being any indication . . . well, nevermind) but it's not a priority. Or it's not enough of a need to make me want to go back to online dating or shitty, creepy dating culture at all. And it's not wanting it that is making me feel a little bit crazy, that's causing me to wonder if maybe there isn't something broken that I need to have fixed.
It's the damndest thing.
It makes my older brother start laughing again and I can practically hear him rolling his eyes as he reminds me that yes, I'm a touch unusual for this part of the country but that if I lived near him, or in any major coastal city no one would think twice about it.
Translated from big brother speak?
Stop being so goddamn neurotic.
Or, put another way.
There can be many, many variations on a theme (quit being so goddamn neurotic).
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