It was kind of a friend of mine to tell me right off the bat when he discoveredmy blog that he didn't think of me as ugly. It is unfortunate that he's wrong. I don't really see myself as some vile abomination, but I know how women react when I show interest in them. And given that I am generally regarded as a sweet, smart, nice guy, having a sense of humor, a decent job, and other intangible assets, I can only conclude that I am so physically unappealing as to more than cancel out any positive aspects I might have. There may be "plenty of fish in the sea," but to catch any one requires at least some bait. When no girl even gives you a second look, it's hard to convince them to spend any time with you.
I wasn't so depressed for most of the day yesterday, but got hit hard at the basketball game last night (UNR hasn't had a good game against a decent team since I first called that girl, and has dropped from 10-1 to 13-5). There's nothing like seeing a bunch of college aged couples all over the place to make a guy feel old and single.
So, yeah. It's going to be a long day. 7:30 tonight - that's when the concert I invited her to is showing, which she may be attending with her mother (note the implication - she considers the show worth going to, but my company to be undesireable. But it was "sweet of [me] to offer."). I'll probably be curled up in bed, feeling pretty miserable. But a broken heart was a risk I was willing to take. I just hoped that maybe, just this once, things could have been different. My bad.
5 comments:
I always thought of Ugly Evangelical as a parallel to Ugly American. And for what it's worth, if I was a girl I'd tell other folks I thought you were cute, in the Fred Savage/Wonder Years sort of way.
That was the primary meaning. But the other one works too. If you were a girl, I'd be flattered. But the actual girls I've known have voted with their feet, as it were.
Maybe Simon Birch cute. "Like a baby turtle - it's cute, but you don't want to kiss it."
I did, however, pick up the nickname "Kevin" as a freshman in woodshop and autoshop, because of the aforementioned resembelance. The hair, mostly.
I realized the problem with your well-intentioned comment as I drove to work today. It's that it has no teeth. Talk is cheap. Anyone can say "you're cute," if they are not intended to have to back it up in any way. Heck, you might even think you mean it. But when the words give way to action, the expressed sentiment is quite different. "I'm sure you'll make some lucky girl very happy" comes across as a pile of male bovine excrement because the words and the actions don't line up, and so the words ring hollow. If she really believed that, she'd act differently.
Believing hollow words brought me to this point. I would like to believe them, because considering myself some form of unloveable creature sucks. But as an illusory cup of water does nothing to slake the thirst of a man dying in the desert, so are words without substance without any power to help.
can i say that i think you're problem is written right in your blog. its not a matter of you being ugly...its just that YOU think you're ugly.
maybe you should become happy with who YOU are and then the right girl for you would come along, instead of playing the poor victim in all of this.
but hey. im just some girl. i dont know how girls think at all.
Thanks for the comment. On most days, I would even agee with you. I have heard (though in my more depressed moments I am not inclned to believe it - moments that have been more frequent recently due to circumstances) that confidence is the key, an I know that I lack this in spades. But they say success breeds confidence, which helps explain my lack.
What you see here is me trying to figure things out. Not understanding drives me nuts (which is not encouraging given the historic ability of men and women to understand each other).
But what if being happy with who you are is a shell? It is not a player who is satisfied with his game who seeks to put in long hours of practice, but one who wants to improve. An alcoholic must first admit that he has a problem before there can be a solution - to be happy with himself as he is dooms him to a poor life.
I think what you mean is that I cannot sit where I am moping about the past. Both examples of healthy discontent cited above have a common bond - they accept the good and the bad about the person's present condition and look to change in the future. The past is behind us, and to live in it is foolish. But many people, myself included, tend to do just that, in part because if nothing else we have made it thus far. The future is scary and uncertain, but could also be full of opportunity.
Before the holidays and my recent funk, I had been taking a proactive approach - if unsatisfied with your looks, do something about it. My biggest problem being a fixable problem, I have no right to complain about the state of the universe, but ought to suck it up and move forward.
I would dispute the "the right girl will come along" simplicity of things in your encouragement. I wish that were the case, but the two main problems for me are (1) that most girls in my circle would expect that the man be the one to make a move. If I just sit and wait for the future, there will then be no future. (2) It is, if you had not figured it out, in my nature to sit and do nothing. When I do cross paths with people, they are almost unavoidably all guys. In order to provide the opportunity for what you say to happen, I have to take action.
Ugly is my answer (however admittedly poor) to why. It does go beyond the spare 80 or so pounds I carry around, to become a sort of all encompassing "There's something about me that makes women incapable of seeing me as anything beyond a good friend." This is an overly pessimistic view, but one that is generally supported by the evidence. But what I don't talk about are the times when a girl has shown interest, and I either did not return it or missed it in pursuit of someone else (only to usually regret it later). But it is in everyone's nature to disregard evidence that doesn't support their conclusion.
Perhaps the best answer is that there are girls who might like me and girls who will not. I am incredibly bad at discerning between the two. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to it, save that I always seem to miss it. Perhaps it will not always be so.
I am hurting, and I speak out of my hurt because I'm tired of putting a brave face on things - showing the world a stoic exterior while feeling eviscerated. I lay my emotions (or most of them, though I still reserve some) out for all to see just because. Not to "play the victim," but simply because I think there is entirely too much pretending in the world. I would rather be honest and thought false, than false and thought honest. This is not to say that all or any of these emotions are permanent, or even long-enduring. Much of this is written in the heat of the moment, while still feeling emotional. I go through periods that are not so emotional, and times of curling up on the couch crying, and already I am moving from the second to the first. Yet even as I write this, to think about the situation brings tears to my eyes. To seem the victim is perhaps the natural result of my feeling utterly crushed, while she can get on with her life with perhaps some minor inconvinience. But it is unfair to call her a victimizer, as unfair as it is to blame a rock that a ship runs itself aground upon. The ship doomed itself, it was simply the nature of the rock to not yield.
Rejection sucks, and everyone knows this. Ugly internalizes it. It makes it my fault, a problem with me, not with the girl rejecting me. If I could simply shrug off the hurt, I would. But while it lingers, I would rather blame myself, because I don't want to blame her. She is a kind, godly, compassionate person, who I have the utmost respect for. I don't want to blame her because I do not want the love I feel for her to turn to hate. I prefer to hate myself than to hate her. I can and will pass through this. Wounded, but not beaten. Walking, but not fainting. If I allow myself to hate her, she changes to a charicature, an evil parody of who she really is, until I hate a woman who doesn't really exist, but a real and undeserving person becomes the target of it nevertheless. Keeping it within myself means that even if I charicaturize myself, I do have the real me around every day to keep it more grounded. If anyone dares to blame her for this, I will call you on the carpet over it. She deserves much better.
I am feeling better the past couple days, in large part because of some extensive e-mail exchanges with a comparatively new friend, that have left me with renewed hope that things won't always be this way. To talk to a fellow single who can say "I've been where you've been," without needing to hook up with someone as the happy ending to the story is good. My fear has always been being single forever and always hating it. Not everyone who wants to get married does, this is an unfortunate but very true tstatement. Most do, which is a qualifying statement. But should I end up in the minority, I have hope that even then it will be okay.
I'm not sure if a couple chomosomes are sufficient to speak for every girl, as I would hesitate to speak for every guy (but I would sometimes hesitate to speak even for myself), but I do appreciate the thought.
Post a Comment