So yesterday afternoon,  I did a stupid thing. Something I can’t believe I’m about to blog about. Whatever. I’m doing it for the sake of literature.

Who I am I kidding? I need for somebody to laugh with me. It was pathetic. A low point. I have a feeling that, despite my initial enthusiasm about my new apartment, I will find myself having many pathetic moments that will serve as good blogging material. When I say good blogging material, of course I mean self-obsessed ramblings that no one actually cares about. Nevertheless, I pretend everyone is  wildly entertained by the way I combine words. I suppose that’s a pretty good working definition for a writer: one who deludes herself into believing people find her word combinations intriguing.

Maybe I’ll return to that.

Anyway. I was home alone for the day with nothing to do. I had just returned from my parents’ house to see the new kittens and was feeling sorry for myself since even the damn cat had friends to hang out with. I only let that last a few minutes before I made plans for the night. But I still had plenty of time to be alone before I was going to meet up with my friend. So naturally, the only thing I could do was turn on Netflix and make a profile on POF – formerly known as Plenty of Fish.

Before you react, I’ll tell you that you’re probably right in whatever you’re assuming. Yes. I was lonely. Yes, I was feeling ugly. Yes, I was feeling self-indulgent. And yes, I was at such a pathetic point that I actually thought I would be comforted by strangers telling me I was pretty.

It worked for a while. Within two hours of making a profile, I had over 50 messages sent to me. Most of them were messages from men who I am not remotely interested in  (re: Men whose picture is taken with a camera phone in front of a mirror, men over the age of 13 who find it acceptable to use “u” in place of the actual pronoun, suspiciously old-looking 29 year olds, men who list beer pong as a hobby) that were just “wut up. u r pretty. wanna hang”.

I kept getting emails saying that men wanted to meet me. And then I had these bubbles pop up on the side of the screen, telling me that men wanted to chat with me. I didn’t really know what was going on and I ended up chatting with a guy for a while. He seemed like a perfectly nice young man. We got to talking about relationships and what we were looking for. As the conversation went on and each of his messages reminded me of his apparent animosity for punctuation, I realized I didn’t want to be doing this. I didn’t want to be chatting with some guy who couldn’t bother to separate his sentences coherently. Furthermore, I didn’t want to be comforting myself in such a disgusting and cheap way.

So I did the mature thing. I ended the conversation with niceties (“It was nice chatting with you. I’m sure we’ll talk again soon”) and deleted my account. That’s the nice thing about online anonymity – you can do things like completely blow off a guy you’ve been talking to for an hour without having to see what an asshole you look like.

I’m going to call this my own version of the rebound: shamelessly and selfishly taking advantage of someone’s affections to make myself feel better momentarily. For a few hours, I was able to quantify my allure. See? I am still pretty and at least 50 men wanted to meet me and/or rape and kill me.  But when I finally peeled myself away from the screen, I realized I was still alone in my apartment, wishing I was talking to one person and one person only. And until I get to a point that I’m just lonely in my apartment, I don’t have any business flirting with someone else. It’s reckless and selfish. No one wants to feel like he’s in a relationship with someone who feels she needs to be in a relationship. She should want to be in that relationship, not just any relationship.

And yes, it would be much less painful and probably a lot more fun to heal if I had somebody to hang out with constantly, somebody who I knew I could call whenever I wanted and have him come over and shower me with affection. But I also know that I’m not going to find the deep and meaningful connection I’m longing for in something right now, because at this point, I can only offer superficiality. I can’t share myself or my complex emotions with another person because I’m hesitant to deal with the responsibility of another person’s emotions since I’m still dealing with so much of my own pain. Momentary distractions might serve as a cheap salve, but they won’t actually help my healing process. It’s a bandaid over a bullet hole.

So in the meantime, I’m going to just keep drinking tea, watching Netflix, and singing along to Regina Spektor because she’s the only one who can truly express what I’m feeling right now.

Now that I’ve effectively scared off any future beaus, I’m going to go to take some nyquil and go to bed.