Figures that my courage would choose to sell out now

So yeah. I think I'm too fucked up date guys or be in a relationship.

It's stupid… it's not like I was in an unhealthy, abusive relationship à la 50 Shades of Grey (which I haven't read, but this review sums it up hilariously). I don't have any psychological reason for feeling the way I do, other than the fact I've spent nearly my entire adulthood being self-sufficient and independent. (I'm so stupidly/stubbornly independent that I once hand carried six 12 can fridge packs of Diet Coke and two shopping bags of groceries out to my car in one trip despite people offering to help... the next day I realized I had pulled muscles in both my arms.)

Last night I had my second date with Aiden. We had a great dinner at a French restaurant and lots of laughs. After that we walked over to a sculpture garden, despite it being roughly 25 degrees outside, then over to the Metro since it was getting absurdly cold. He put his arm around me at that point, and it just felt weird. I'm not a very touchy-feely person even with my family and close friends (save for hugs and stuff), so it threw me for a loop – like, "Good god, now I can't think of what I was going to say because I'm too focused on the fact that his arm is around me and how positively alien it feels." [Headdesk.]

Me, apparently.

Anyway, we get down to the subway if only to get out of the wind/cold and sit around and talk. He had his arm around me again, but when we were talking I couldn't look him in the eye because inwardly I was chastising myself for being such a weenie and at the same time wondering why I didn't feel anything inside other than discomfort. Whatever giddiness I felt when I first met him is now cold, hard, scared-shitless steel. I don't know if it's 10+ years of [relatively mild] antidepressants that have dulled my ability to have a positive response to someone's else attention, or just the general feeling of "Meh" I have to anything that I haven't revved myself up for, but it's an awful feeling to have... no feeling.

That fortress I've used so successfully in the past to prevent myself from getting hurt by shutting people out is now preventing me from moving forward. All I've ever wanted was a boyfriend. (I know, there are so so so many things wrong with that statement, but when you're a total dork in high school and college is full of simply NSA hookups, you tend to start feeling like there's something inherently wrong with you.) And now that I've been presented with the opportunity, my response is to stick my head in the sand.

We finally get on the train and he gets off at the next stop. Before he leaves I give him a hug and a peck on the lips, because at that point that was all I could do in the middle of a subway car without having a nervous breakdown. Then, once the train pulled away, I started to cry. I don't know why I did, it just happened. Later he texted me to make sure I had gotten home OK, and we shared a joke about the unreliability of our subway system, so at least he doesn't resent me... right? I can't really process much more right now.

Post title song reference: "Crucify" - Tori Amos

'Cause I'm being taking over by the fear

A couple days ago I had a decent structure to this post, but the words aren't coming to me. (I even had a great post title, and I can't remember it.) The past two weeks have been stressful at work, and I ran out of one of my antidepressants, which I thought wouldn't affect me (it's a VERY low dose primarily to target anxiety). Yeahhh... it wasn't until I started sobbing when a Journey song came on the car radio that I realized I probably need them more than I thought. Oops.

Okay, it's sorta coming back to me. I think the gist of my post was I'm freaking out a tiny bit over a guy. Okay, I'm freaking out a lot. I met a guy a couple weeks ago at a bar, and we really hit it off. (I guess I need to give him a fake name.... let's go with Aiden.) He walked me to the subway and we traded numbers, etc. etc.

Anyway, we went out on Wednesday. I was completely strung out, though - I had a ridiculous day and hadn't eaten much, so I was super nervous that we wouldn't have anything to talk about. Fortunately, after a couple drinks things had smoothed out, and it went really well.

Unfortunately, for the past several days prior, my face thought it'd be really funny to be a total jerk and not only generate flaky dry patches but some very inconvenient, very RED zits on my face, and I was super self-conscious about it. There's only so much makeup can do, and standing on the harsh fluorescent lights on the subway completely killed any self-confidence I had at the end of the night. Thanks skin!

So I guess it went well. He wants to see me again, so we're going to dinner Sunday night.

This sounds dumb, but I'm scared now. I really like him, but I don't want to screw this up because I overthink EVERYTHING. I'm so used to bottling up my emotions and closing myself down that to do otherwise is downright foreign. Because of that, I feel like I need exact instructions on how to do this successfully: If there's no logical, "right" procedure that I'm supposed to follow, I can't do it... I feel awkward if I don't.

Even worse, I've never had real romantic "first kiss" with a guy on a date. (Good lord, that is sad.) So I am completely freaked out about the idea of kissing Aiden on Sunday night. Like it's going to be weighing on me throughout the entire meal, because right now I don't feel any desire to... not that I don't find him attractive, I do. But it's almost like my emotions have been tampered down for so long that the idea of someone actually liking me back is a frightening, foreign notion. And thinking about sleeping with him puts me into a full blown panic attack.

Anyway. That's enough rambling for now. Cross your fingers for me that I don't blow it too badly. ;)



Post title song reference: "The Fear" - Lily Allen

Match.com apparently has me on their poop list

I know, I know, I'm terrible at updating. Hell, I don't think I've logged into to Blogger for at least a month, so I have no idea what anyone else has been up to, so now I feel extra guilty.

Not much has changed – had my eyelid surgery back in September, only to find that the original stitches didn't hold so she had to go back and fix it last Friday. ("One little stitch" turned into many more stitches, so my eye was hugely swollen and bloodshot for 3 days. Super sexy.)

I also bit the bullet and bought a three month match.com subscription, but right now I am UBER pissed at the website. I think I originally made the profile when I was like 25, but hid it for 5 years because I wasn't an active subscriber. After my umpteenth failure on OKCupid, I thought it wouldn't hurt to purchase a few months' worth to see if the theory that paying for a dating service would yield more quality guys.

I went on one date that was just okay – good, but I wasn't really feeling anything. He was perfectly nice and normal, and we had a good time, but I just didn't really feel any sort of connection.

It probably doesn't help that Match keeps fucking up my account. Right after my date, my account was suddenly locked – I couldn't log in at all. I sent an email to customer service, they restored access, and everything was fine for a week. The next weekend the exact same thing happened. And then a week later, it happened AGAIN! By the second time I requested that they credit me for the days I was locked out, and the third time I asked the CSR *why* I kept getting locked out... he claimed it was because emails that were sent to me were bounced, which is complete B.S. – I keep getting Stir event notifications in my inbox, so it's obviously working! The annoying part is that when they do restore my account access, they don't notify me by email, and they also switch my profile to "Hidden."

Just now I uploaded a new photo, went back to my dashboard, and guess what? Yup, you guessed it – locked out. It literally was only about 30 seconds before I was kicked off. This is at least the fifth time it's happened. At this point I am so frustrated with the site, not only because I only get emails and winks from 45 year old guys living 50+ miles away, but I can't seem to use it for more than a few days before I get kicked off.

I don't want to give up on using the site, but it's not exactly useful when I'm constantly disappearing from it. I'm tempted to ask them to cancel that account and let me make a new profile (*and* give me subscription credit!) to see if that fixes the issue.

It'll also solve the problem of me using the "Daily Match" feature, which apparently emails the guys you've clicked "Yes" on to let them know you're interested! That was not my intention... I really just thought it Favorite'd them the way anonymously... nope. Way to tip my hand, Match.