Soup for 1, Salad for 1, Wine for 3...

So I've been up all night, no sleep at all. If I was running from Freddy Kreuger it wouldn't be so bad but in actuality I have work all day and I'm going to be one grumpy panda. Regardless, like most nights that I can't sleep my mind drifts to one topic in particular. I don't know what it is about lying in the dark, alone save the presence of my ever looming conscience, growing heavier by the day, that makes me think of my past relationships. The worst part is thinking about the good times because once you do that, there is no going back. Reminiscing leads to old pictures which leads to old Facebook messages which leads to over analyzing that last fight before typing out a frantic text message, your thumb hovering mere molecules above the send button, waiting for a reason, any reason at all, to press it. I've been in that very position more than once but thankfully tonight was not one of those nights...well everything but the text message part, that ship has sailed. Unfortunately this brings me to the topic of this post: will I ever find love?

Sometimes I realize how stupid that question is, I mean I've found love before, more than once, sometimes by accident! However, I have noticed a depressing trend in my relationships: they're getting shorter. This is giving me cause for concern as I'm pretty sure that I'm doing it backwards. I always thought you started out with short flings and then worked your way up to full blown, truly, madly, deeply Savage Garden-esque love (and not just because 1/2 of that band is gay...gayer; they were pretty gay to begin with). I don't want to use this space to analyze my doomed loves of years past, for the morning sun has breached the suffocating blackness of night and I grow weary, barely able to type this sentence...and it would just take too fucking long. Besides, I've done that ad nauseam since my first break up. I don't know why I do it either, it's not like I can get in a time machine and go fix whatever it was that I was going to fuck up not to mention the fact that I would need a cloning machine too because I was always fucking up. Seriously, I made my ex leave a wedding once for no reason...a wedding he had invited me too! I cannot stress how frequently I fuck up as a boyfriend and that wasn't even that bad.

I was reading through Bro-tips the other day, you should check it out BTW, totes more insightful than I would've guessed. Anyway there was this one bro tip that went something like this "It's called first love for a reason bro...". I keep coming back to this one bro tip as much as it pains me too (on a side note you really should check out Bro-tips, they're chock full of life lessons that can really be applied to anyone's life). See my problem is that I don't want to admit that any of my relationships are truly, 100%, the body has been cremated please go home, done. For some reason I've always thought of myself as special, dare I say, one of a kind. I want to believe that I am so unique (and sometimes so batshit crazy) that I leave some kind of indelible mark on each and every person whom I encounter. Perhaps I am such a strong life force that people cannot help but be forever altered for having known me. However, the harshest Bro-tip of all is this: the cemetery is filled with irreplaceable bros, bro. Am I so narcissistic and selfish as to believe that the guys I date will never get over me or find happiness with anyone else? Okay maybe just a little. However, I know that's not right and just a bit on the crazy side. I guess it just hurts to watch someone be happy without you. Having said that it's okay if someone is happy without you as long as they aren't happy because they aren't with you...I think.

Being happy for an ex is really difficult for me. I want so badly to be the bigger person, to let bygones be bygones and to maintain some kind of healthy, mature relationship...but that's just not me. I'm small, petty, and vindictive. Or rather I always have been, up until yesterday actually. As part of my "year of growing up" (and yes I realize that as a 25 year old man I should be ashamed for typing that) I want to change this. Not completely, I think a small amount of pettiness is healthy, but enough so as not to derail this magical year of learning, living, and lurking! (to be continued...)