A Healthy Helping of Veritaserum

As I am sure you are all well aware, I've been working through a lot of stuff lately.  Good stuff, bad stuff...stuff.  It gives me a headache just thinking of all the stuff I've been processing over the last few weeks.  And thanks to you all, I think I've been able to look at things from more than just my little limited view of the world as I know it.

Last night, some more reality hit me and my overanalyzing-self decided it was time to take a look at what was going on and determine just how far I'd come.  Truth be told, I'm not sure what I discovered.

To be honest with you, I don't know if my heart, head and body are all on the same page.  Let's start with the loudest, most boisterous of the three:  my heart.  This unfailingly optimistic organ tells me that everything is going to work out the way I want it to and that my Prince Charming (when I envision this, he looks a lot like Prince William, but he's just a placeholder) will come galloping into my office one day, wink at me, pat the saddle seat behind him in encouragement for me to join him, and we will ride off into the sunset, never to be heard from again.  I'll be super impressed with him because he was able to get his galloping steed up a fire escape staircase or an elevator that usually only fits three human beings comfortably.  But, as I sat staring at the ceiling and watching the clock rapidly approach the ridiculous time I have to get up on weekday mornings, I wondered if my heart has been as resilient as I once thought.  Had the thousand shattered pieces mended nicely as I'd hoped or was it still cracked and chipped, just pretending to be fixed?  If I squinted hard enough, it looked whole again.  It at least resembled its old self...

To further dole out the honesty, my head tells me to stop torturing myself with this endless stream of non-descript emails and text messages with the same conversations, the same lines and the same characteristics.  The "blah, blah, blah" until we coordinate a meeting. I can't count the messages and comments I've received from anyone aware of my online dating presence that go something along the lines of "Why are YOU online dating? Surely with such a great (insert characteristic), you can easily find someone!" Sorting through profiles feels like job-hunting and reviewing their three basic parts:  photos, opening paragraph that almost always (as we talked about before) includes the line "I'm a laid back kind of guy," and the "What I'm looking for" section, gets monotonous.  If you've ever searched for a job, you can easily relate these to job descriptions. But, this latter section is amazingly similar from profile to profile.  We're all looking for the same thing, someone who gets our humor, makes us laugh and engages us in great conversation.  Period. Nobody puts "I want someone who likes to tie their shoelaces so tight their feet throb" or "I want a partner who will listen to records backwards with me to hear the hidden messages."  It just sometimes feels so hit or miss that it's hard not to cash in your chips and go home. 

Adding more truth to this heaping pile, my body has got this down pat.  I won't lie to you; I feel like I'm looking pretty good right now, probably the best I've looked in a long time.  I've got a brand new assortment of great fashion choices, I'm close to the possibility of being confused with the Coppertone Girl, and my hair is shiny and downright bouncy with volume.  I look the part.  I look like a girl on the market of love.  But, I'm worried I'm just going through the motions, doing all the things I know I need to do to be attractive, but not cutting the mustard when it comes to those other two pesky factors (see above).

Maybe I'm not ready to jump in head first into the pool of other Singletons.  Could it be that forcing myself into the deep end before I could swim was a recipe for failure? Flailing about in search of a life raft is not appealing.  Attention-getting, but not appealing. I know that I haven't been at this game long yet and it's entirely too early to make any rash decisions.  Could be fatigue from the cramming of what probably would have been months of pursuits in the real world into the last three weeks.  I don't intend to quit.  I can't.  I just hope that I haven't created a dating monster that just can't find what I'm looking for because I haven't cleaned up the wreckage from the past yet.  And all of this is with great timing mere hours before my date with Mr. Banderas!  Pep up, Singleton!  I spent too long on this makeup this morning to finish it off with a frown!

P.S. Without an at-home computer right now, no update on my date until Monday.  I know...pathetic.  Feel free to start the "Get Melanie a Computer" fundraiser outside your local Wal-mart.  Get some of those Girl Scouts to help...if they can talk people out of $3.50 for a box of 12 cookies, I'm sure they'd be stellar at this.

P.P.S. Bonus points to anyone who knows what veritaserum is.  I don't know what you'd do with those bonus points or even where they would get you, but you'll have the satisfaction of knowing your pop culture references.  :)