she makes her way and never looks back

each year that passes seems to have a main theme. for 2017, the theme was year of the ex. and not just one of them.

there's a reason these dudes are not in my life. in order to truly move on from any feelings i once had, it's important that these dudes no longer play a role. they have served their purpose. and i have no desire to see them again.

unfortunately, i make the mistake of not changing my old habits or watering holes because, well, why should i? these habits and places were mine first. so occasionally, we might run into each other.

it started off innocently enough. we showed up to the same event. you clearly saw me and ran away. cool, looks like i won this round. the next time, i went to a store i enjoy and saw you down an aisle. this time, i made sure to run away. i was having a bad day which got worse when i saw you and i was not interested in dealing with anything. and that was it for you. one ex - a couple of encounters - okay, no big deal.

wrong.

at a bar and things seem oddly familiar. i recognize that guy up front. next to him is the second ex. panic. well, maybe it won't be that bad. oh, wait, it's worse than i thought. not again. i can't possibly have more bad luck. wait - what's that? - you work here? oh. guess i'll be leaving then.

year of the ex continues on the very last day of the year. the third and final ex.

this time, i'm less ready for it because you were so far from my radar. you caught me by surprise in that place i took you once. and then it all came back to me. one of the last times i saw you, we were seeing that band, at that venue. you liked music. we may as well have traveled back in time 4 years and had that night all over again. but this was different. things didn't end in a bad place. they ended because timing is a bitch. and you were probably what i should have been chasing all along. but young me thought you were too good for me until it was too late. and sitting across from you on new year's eve was the reason we ended.

all of these dudes shaped who i am today and i do hope they are happy with whatever it is that they're doing currently. but please, all of you, go back into hiding for another 4 years. i have reached my maximum quota of feelings for a long time.

adventures in tinder

the biggest change that has happened since my last update is that i'm currently single.

i use the term "biggest change" very loosely because not much has actually changed. i could sit here and write out everything i'm feeling and thinking and believe me, i have tried to do this. for once in my life, i had no words to express my frustration, so i didn't. i kept to myself and have every intention of keeping it that way.

in order to get out of my head, i needed a distraction. seeing as how i had extreme curiosity with tinder, i joined. here are my adventures in tinder in somewhat chronological order.

that cute simpsons dude 
not thinking much about it, i instantly matched with a very cute blonde dude in town to film some movie who asked me just the right amount of trivia questions before falling in love with me. it went on like this for a few days and that was the end of that. it was a good start that i knew was going to end up totally misleading during my adventure.


that dude who had no idea how to converse (dick pic #1)
i matched with some dude with a limited profile and now i understand why his profile was so limited. this dude was cute but had no idea how to talk to me. eventually, this ended with him sending me a dick pic. i couldn't have ran away fast enough. thanks for not letting me waste my time on you. here's the things, dudes: familiarize yourself with that of what a girl wants in a dick and decide whether or not yours is it. you know that porn you watch? pay attention to the dude next time. does yours look similar? then maybe send that dick pic. if it doesn't, i'd suggest not sending one.

some cool dudes 
they're cool. maybe we'll meet someday. maybe we won't. whatever.

all the dudes i matched with, initiated conversation, then was frustrated with the lack of everything
this is kind of self-explanatory. isn't this not what tinder is about? matching based on physical appearance and then hooking up/hanging out/whatever? if you don't respond, what's the point? i even played on the offensive side and initiated a conversation with every dude i matched with within a period of time. this is frustrating in itself and makes me hate online dating even more.

all of those aggressive types 
take a step back, please. i'm not a piece of meat. no, i don't want to come over. no, i don't want to be your fantasy. no, i don't want you to tell me what you want to do to me. no, i don't care of this "won't be a one time thing". what if i want it to be a one time thing? come on. there are 2 people in this. i don't really give a fuck what you think. buddy, you know nothing of the online dating world. i understand why you're here.

intentional matching of dude friends 
only to see how long it takes to match with each other while we're standing next to each other. pro tip: it took them longer to find me than it did for me to find them.

unintentional matching of dude friends 
absolutely hilarious. still laughing about it. swipe right.

unintentional matching of exes 
not hilarious, whether they are quite recent or very old. not cool, tinder. let those wounds heal. problem is, they likely were the ones to swipe right.

i gave myself 2 weeks and expected to quit. after 2 weeks, i realized that this was now a fairly decent tool to use to add to my ridiculous life stories. i began to play more and more with various techniques. i spent one day swiping right on every dude. that was probably the biggest mistake i've ever made. unlike my veteran online dating life of plenty of fish with me in a bikini picture which i used to troll dudes, my tinder profile was about as real as it gets. if dudes asked me what i was doing on tinder, i told them the truth: research - and to talk to some cool dudes. if things got a bit more serious in conversation, i'd explain how i'm recently out of a relationship.

some dudes were quite turned off by me being newly single. i don't quite understand why as it had nothing to do with them. except that maybe the odds of me sleeping with them were down about 900%. some dudes were pissed off that i was only looking to talk. one dude even had the audacity to tell me to try okcupid. yeah, fuck you. what a dumb dude.

similar to what happened before, the minute i leave the online dating world is when i'm going to find my next dude.

just give me some time.

the girlfriend gene

i probably don't say it enough, but i'm so thankful for my family.

my parents are amazing people who have been able to handle me both at my best and at my worst with unconditional love. they give me hope when i feel like i have none. i can say the same thing about my brother who, as of the past few years, has been a major influence in my life. watching us grow up from disliking each other entirely to becoming as close as we are now has essentially shaped the girl i am over the last five years.

i've talked about how my brother and i are very similar in both personality and stature, but we also deal with romantic endeavors the same way. now, you might think it's weird that we do, but you have to understand that although my parents have been happily married for 32 (!!!) years now, i can't say that anyone else in my family or extended family has been that lucky. my half sister was only recently married a few years ago and things aren't great for her. my one half brother doesn't seem like the kind of dude that can even talk to girls. my other half brother married a, for lack of a better term, a slut, way too early and divorced. his kid (my nephew) is only growing up totally fucked because of it, but i love the kid. my brother's relationships have a tendency to end shitty, if you can call some of them relationships. and then there's me.

yesterday, while at the bar watching the jays game, i asked about my brother's.. kind of.. sort of.. not really girlfriend. things were not well. he went on to tell me about some other girl problems in his life and the only conclusion we could make of it was that the both of us only seem to be attracted to people with problems. while that's probably true for him, i don't believe it is for me.

since i moved to toronto, i've engaged in only one form of relationship: polyamory. and i've said it before: gone are the days when one person can give me everything i need. it's not a race to see how many dudes i can fuck (contrary to the film nymphomaniac) in that my desire to be with different dudes is not always sexual. but even if you take away all of the issues i have with commitment and intimacy, i bet i still wouldn't have the girlfriend gene, or be girlfriend material.

this is just the way it has always been. despite multiple times in my life where i know i've only wanted to be with one dude, that's not how it works. i can never express how i want things to be because it scares me too much. but, let's face it, the few times when i was forced into girlfriendism, or girlfrienditis, if you will, i was not in favour of either. in these situations, i didn't have a choice. and the right choice was to not go that route. however, with forced girlfriendism, it's always the wrong choice and part of the reason why i continue to engage in polyamory.

i've discussed this issue in great detail with several friends over the past couple weeks. one of who told me that the girl he's been dating for awhile now seems like total girlfriend material, but his words to me were that he's "just not feeling it." another, who continues to keep in contact with an ex and occasionally fuck, even though the two of them (and the entire world) knows that they shouldn't. and yet another, who has switched gears entirely and no longer wants to just fuck around with anyone, but rather, date. and i mean, maybe we're just getting to that age when relationships change to, what i can only hope, is for the better.

but when you lack a girlfriend gene, it's difficult to know when something will come along. as things started off quite slow with a dude i was starting to really enjoy spending time with, eventually, he told me he wasn't having any of it. this can also be said for a dude i had hung out with a couple of times who, upon the next time, decided to tell me he wasn't looking for a relationship. that's all well and good, but when did i ever express an interest in starting a relationship with you? it's almost like a slap in the face. "hey, i know we're hanging out and having a good time but i'm not interested in doing stuff... even though i'm not sure if that's what you want to do or not yet"  yeah? well, that's nice.

what i don't think i'll ever know is what about me screams these things to dudes. when did i ever send you a vibe that i wanted to date you? that time i said  you were attractive? that time i flirted with you? don't flatter yourself. not to ruin nymphomaniac for anyone, but there's a scene i definitely identified with that needs to be talked about here.

in the scene, it shows the leading lady in various cut scenes having sex, 1 on 1, with a dude, and achieving an orgasm. in the cut scenes that follow the sex, she pillow talks and gives the exact same line to every dude she just had an orgasm with: "i don't know if it means anything, but i've never had an orgasm before; you're my first."

no, i haven't said anything quite like this before, but the fact that she says it to every dude is something i know i've done before. not about achieving an orgasm (because yes, i've had more than one) but just in general, my damn flirty nature. i don't use the same lines but i feel as though it can confuse the dudes i'm with, especially if i'm flirty and don't want anything sexual.

maybe as i continue to grow up, i'll somehow fall into this girlfriend gene. if not for me, but for at least my parents' sake of seeing their daughter settle down with the right dude someday.

new year, old dicks

it's pretty rare for me to stay friends with an ex.. or barely an ex.

i'm always really confused when other people in my life seem to do it easily. but then again, i'm just as confused when people break up and continue to fool around with that person. i mean, because, you broke up for a reason, right? it wasn't working? then you probably shouldn't be fucking each other.

yes, there's maybe a handful of dudes i've fooled around with in the past that i'm still friends with. but that was always after a very long time of not seeing them once things ended. the longer i hold off on seeing someone, the easier it is to forget the feelings i may have once had. sometimes, it actually doesn't take very long when i realize that i didn't have any feelings at all and want to continue to be that dude's friend. but again, it's rare. i can count two in the last seven years. both of which it didn't take too long for me to know we're better off as friends than anything more. and i know they feel the same.

i suppose things get much worse when you're living with the person you broke up with. and then i wonder why people get into relationships and commitment as quick as they do before they realize the crushing disappointment that will eventually come with it, sooner or later.

that's something i could never do for him. and it's what he wanted. he wanted a live-in girlfriend. someone who would be there when he came home from work. someone who would make him dinner. someone who would always be around. but i made it clear to him in the very beginning that wasn't who i was and it would never be. i was not going to be his mother. but that's what he wanted and he found someone else willing to be his mother. willing to move in with him. willing to tell him that she loved him. willing to take countless pictures of the two of them together pretending to be happy, frame them, and put them up around the small, half-room they now shared. someone who was willing to change him into, what is supposedly, a better person. someone who would spend the money it costs to buy him a PS4, only to break up days later.

but you don't ever take an eye off of the one who kind of meant something to you once even though you weren't exactly officially dating. as much as i tried to remove him from my life entirely. and every time i saw something, it irked me just a little bit. until i finally stopped caring and knew getting out of it when i did was the best for me at the time, because he was willing to settle for less, then come crawling back days later once she rejected him the first time. and when i rejected him after listening to what he had to say to me to get me back (and me pretty much laughing at him for thinking we'd ever get back together), he went back to her and apparently she was also ready to settle.

and just over a year later, i get what seems to be the inevitable - a message from him on the same dating website where we met. where he has the nerve to ask me to get a drink. fuck that. fuck you. i remember telling him that at one point we might be able to be friends and i knew i was lying. for some reason, he thought we could someday. no. no we can't. please stay the fuck out of my life.

and days after that, i see another bizarre sighting on the same website. this time, it's the dude who picked me up from sneaky dee's that one night in october. where we lasted a few weeks and he continuously told me he wanted me to be his girlfriend. and i kept telling him that wasn't what i wanted. but he seemed to know what he wanted and without warning, disappeared. legitimately.

i had almost forgotten about this one since it had just been this strange little blip in my dating history until i recently came across a blogTO article where he was featured and i recognized his name. well, at least he was having success in doing something he loved. and unfortunately, i made the mistake and made the message move. in which, i received a quick reply of him saying he wanted to message me but thought it would be weird. well, fuck. yes, it's fucking weird. then i made the even worse mistake of saying maybe to meeting up after he told me that he just ended a year long relationship.

uh, wait a minute - a year ago - uhhhhh A YEAR AGO THAT WAS US.

he disappeared on me for someone else. he then had the nerve to ask me if i was interested in hooking up. thankfully, i told him that wasn't the case and the texts have stopped. 

2014: the year i stop dating and keep the past in the past.

but then, i don't know what the fuck i'd write about.