Girls' Night Out

Last night was girls’ night out: frozen margaritas, guacamole, salsa, and all the color and festivity of a night in the big bad apple. It was also a breaking point of sorts.

There is too much going on, and the plate cracked. There is the job, the swimming, the part-time gigs, the hunt for the perfect man, the city, the fifth-floor walk up, and a lot of hurt feelings and regrets that come with the second breakup in the last five months. The friend listened patiently as I described the second guy – 35 years old, fit, a fellow swimmer, a gentleman – who spent eight months swimming, breakfasting, and movie-going with me, but never made a single move. He grew on me a lot.

She said it sounded like that at one point he liked me, and then along the way discovered that my personality just didn't jive with him, and that we weren't a match. That maybe he thought about this for a long time and decided to cut losses early. I'm sad about it. What's wrong with my personality? So what if I like to snack, that I often get up late, that I am a night owl, that I can be loopy and forget things, that I am always running ten minutes behind? What about all of the good things that I bring to the table?

"You need to find someone who will still be with you in the long haul, thick and thin," my friend says. But this is what always happens. The men look at the wrapping paper – cute 32-year-old woman, fashionable, well educated – and then in several months, they see the tardiness, indecisiveness, the impulsivity, the temper, and they run the other way. It's the ADD, I think—or my fear of intimacy.

Maybe unconsciously, I think I don't deserve someone. "Stop beating your brain up, and drink," my friend said. But I've been walking around with a frown on my face, a confused, quizzical look. The father told me I should make a survey and interview the type of men I like and ask them what they look for in a woman, and if I'm lacking some screws, I need to make some changes.

I wish. I regret. I am sorry that I was late all of those times when I promised someone I would show up. What else can I do? In the adult world, there are few second chances. OK, I am sitting in this hot and steamy kitchen in the fifth-floor walk up feeling sorry for myself, but what else can I do?

I need to move on and focus on the positive things about being my quirky self. If anything, I'm good at being kicked to a corner and getting up again. Call in stubbornness or maybe stupidity.