Try

So there's a point where I have to step back, take a look at who I am and what I've become, and say to myself "Who the fuck are you?!"

All through my twenties I had a full-time and at least one, sometimes two, part-time jobs going on simultaneously.  I may not have been saving money but I was paying my bills on time and spending the rest on what and who I wanted, how I wanted, and when I wanted.  When I turned thirty with financial problems, mainly because I was in between jobs it was a blow to my ego.  At thirty-two, being in between jobs again, and knowing I am not growing professionally is hard.  It's very hard.  To sink so low, to apply for jobs that are professionally beneath me and still be turned down because I am overfuckingqualified is hard to swallow.  It's a bitter pill.

Despite the depression caused by my seemingly growing inability to find a full-time job, I have incredible friends and an amazing boyfriend.  These amazing people are all that really stands between me and the cloudy abyss of nothingness.  I love them dearly, they mean the world to me ... they have become my family, and yet I still feel alone much of the time.

My best friends have jobs.  My boyfriend has a job.  Sometimes I feel like their lives are all going somewhere; mine is stagnating.  Some weeks I am gung ho, out there like a trooper ... commando job applicant/interviewee ... some weeks I'm so depressed it's all I can do to make it through the day.  I try to this depression but I think they know.

But sometimes I think they don't know, or they pretend to not know.  It's like "Well Mike used to always be okay and bounce back, he will find his way back."  What if I don't?  What if I don't make it back?  What if I have become so disconnected that I cannot find that switch to turn the tides?  Sometimes I fear I am dying ... paying a penance perhaps ... for karmic misdeeds of my youth.  I know how stupid that sounds.  What if it's true, though?


There's another contrast that seems striking.  From the age of 19 to 30 I enjoyed financial fruitfulness.  I always had money to spend, my bills were paid, and I never really hurt for anything.  But I never really knew lasting love.  Sure I fell in love a few times but it was always doomed from the start.  Now that I am in love with someone who could and very will likely be with me for a very long time  I am pretty much broke.  That's a very bitter pill to swallow.

I think about the over one hundred partners (not friends) - romantic, sexual, semi-sexual - that have littered my past and I wonder what I am supposed to take away from all that.  Sure I have a veritable fountain of youth of sexual experience and could please anyone sexually.  I don't care about that anymore.  Sure, the idea of casual sex is still hot, but the only person I want to please sexually is the man I am in love with.  Everyone else can rot ... sexually, anyway.  

But I've always been, even now, with my ultra-monogamous views, a very sexual individual ... a liberal one at that.  And while I believe in monogamy, I do not believe in complete long-term monogamy.  I do not believe two people can be together and be sexually happy for forty years without fucking someone else.  That's not to say I don't respect monogamy.  I very highly believe that before a relationship can survive under any other circumstance, a few years of love and respect must flourish between the two individuals in said relationship.

But I don't even want that ... I'm not even thinking about that.  What I think about are the amazingly small things.  I think about making him breakfast ... homemade blueberry pancakes with maple syrup and a tall glass of milk ... waking him up with little kisses all over his body ... flowers sent to him in the middle of the day ... a walk through the park holding hands and talking ... a romantic dinner and a night out ... having intense hardcore sex all night long and then falling asleep in each other's arms ...  with one man ... with the man I am with and in love with.  

In previous relationships, even those where I've been in love (Adam, Dan, Noah, Nate), I've always held a free idea of sex.  Some of my friends have commented on how weird that is, and that perhaps it's because I always held myself back.  I suppose in some ways I can see their point; There were dozens and dozens of casual partners from the ages of 15-24 but I never fell in love with any of them.  I don't consider my lack of such freewheeling this time around as growing up.  In fact, I firmly believe our ideas of sexuality actually mature with age as long as we are open.

But some days I feel like I am at a precipice and I'll just make the same mistakes I've made in relationships past.  I've been officially single most of my adult life (despite the number of partners I've racked up), and I've always been okay with that.  I came to terms with "Me" a long time ago.  I'm comfortable growing old with Me and a dog.  But now that I've experienced a slice of what it's like to be with someone who is not only beautiful and sexy and intelligent and funny, but sweet and caring, and honorable and respectful of the "me."  How can I give that up?

And how can I continue to deserve this beautiful gift unless I can quickly get my shit together?  I've tried, so hard I've tried.