I’ve been wanting to write this article for a while, and I probably would have written it two weeks ago, if I hadn’t fallen back into my ways.
Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash
Why not me? What single 30-something girl hasn’t asked herself that question.
I wasn’t sure I had the guts to write my disdain, to swallow my pride with this article. And then, one weekend with friends, I had a bad one. Not a little one that lasts a few minutes, no, no, a big one. A few hours of brooding. A few hours of brooding on my dark thoughts, of dramatizing my poor situation. A few hours during which I opened the floodgates, I cried, I ran away from the party, I mixed my tears with the warm water of a good bath.
If I hadn’t swallowed my pride one too many times that night, I wouldn’t have ended up sleeping with him again, I wouldn’t have forgotten the pain and wounds I’d just opened up in the open, and I wouldn’t have hidden them under a layer of hope and tenderness. And at the same time, it wasn’t any worse for the rest of the weekend.
Lightness vs. 30’s depression, to have a good weekend, we quickly made the choice.
Why me?
If we were still talking about a “Why me?”, Ok maybe it would have been worth tears. Yes, if something horrible had happened to me, something terrible had fallen on the corner of my nose, an incident, a ritual of life, a setback, or what have you. Yes, if I had had something to complain about, lying on the grass at the bottom of the garden sobbing would have been justified.
But no, the “Why not me?” is more perfidious, it is more pernicious. Because basically, my life is cool, why complain about it. I have friends, an apartment that I love, a job that I enjoy and almost no money problems. So why complain?
Do we really have the right to complain when in the end our life is a beautiful cake, just missing the cherry?
Why not me?
Well yes, sorry, but we have the right to complain. Especially when the cherries are not distributed fairly!
Oh yes, because I know tons of beautiful cakes without cherries! And I can tell you that these girls deserve their cherry! They even need one covered in chocolate for the wait.
And it’s human, but wondering why we don’t, why they have the right to it and not us, jealousy and bitterness start to appear.
“Congratulations,” “I’m so happy for you!”, “You deserve it so much! “, “You make too good a couple!”. The more time passes, the more we repeat these phrases tirelessly to our friends. Marriage, babies, shopping together, trips together, perfect love… We are ecstatic about the success of others, we are sincerely happy for them… Except that the sincerity is unfortunately tinged with a small refrain that strikes our mind… When is it my turn?
And I curse those who keep telling me that the wheel will turn.
Well, if it’s a wheel, my beauties, and you’re on the right side, right now… If it spins, you’re going to fall into the dark phase of celibacy. Ah yes… suddenly, you’re not so hot that this little wheel turns, huh?
The questions
And the series of questions arrives, because the “why not me” inevitably leads to “What is wrong with me?”, “What am I doing wrong?”, “What do I have less than them?”, “What do I have too much? “It’s because I’m not pretty/smart/cultured/razy/mysterious/thin enough”. And so on. Here, in terms of creativity, I can tell you that we are not bad!
The answer is that I haven’t found the answer. For me, yes, I have the beginning of an answer. But for the others, I have no idea.
Why did the cherry go away when everything was fine and you were on the love highway? I don’t know.
Why after finally putting a cherry on a few years of celibacy, this cherry that had taken its place on your cake, decides to leave a beautiful crater. I have no idea.
Why, I’m still trying to put a cherry on a cake that is probably so slippery that none of them seem to fit, and they all end up falling. Falling for lack of feeling… If I knew that, I wouldn’t be tapping away on my keyboard.
It’s like with the phase of 4 year olds who repeat “Why?” over and over again, there comes a time when you don’t have the answers. Because feelings, perceptions, the human being in fact cannot be explained. You just have to deal with it.
And yes, it’s not fair.
Love yourself, and others will love you
What is sure is that it is harder to be loved when you don’t love yourself.
And yet, no!
For one thing, it’s not enough. When you finally think that you love yourself, that you accept yourself, that you are in an assumed self-pleasure, you see that it is not enough! And bim, vicious circle, you lose a little of your love for yourself and you have to start all over again.
And secondly, wait, I know some very appetizing cakes, melting in the mouth, with an incomparable taste, that feel like old dry cakes. And fortunately, the love they don’t have for themselves, they found it elsewhere.
So please, don’t keep harping on about “Love yourself and you’ll see love will follow”. Sorry Sigmund but your two sesterces psychology you can swallow it!
No, the cherry does not lie in the appearance of the cake, nor in our self-confidence.
It’s something else… But what is it? Karma?
The kennel
A few years ago, I had written a text where it was not about cherry, but about a kennel. I had probably written this text after one more disappointment in love. At the time, I probably thought that 4 years later, the speech would have changed.
Wrong, Gertrude, it’s still true.
Because at 28, I was imagining myself as a dog in a kennel dreaming of being adopted. Life in the kennel is cool, we have fun with the other dogs, we are well fed, we are taken care of, but we are not unique. Nobody scratches us behind the ears at night before going to bed.
Then as any small puppy (finally at 28 or 32 years, we would be rather on the dog well adult), we hope more or less secretly that one will come to adopt us. Each visit is a hope of more to reach the grail.
The visitors stroke my rump, they linger a little, play with me, and they disappear with another doggie. A shot of tenderness and life in the kennel starts again.
But not for everyone, because some of them do. And one after the other, I see the other little dogs being adopted. I’m happy for them, but it makes me sick. To see them disappear, but especially to end up alone in this kennel, too old for a good soul to come and adopt me.
Why them and not me, I can bark, shine my hair, learn acrobatics, nothing makes it. I am never chosen. Even the little watery eyes are not enough.
Why not me? I’m not the ugliest dog, and besides, even that wouldn’t explain why. I’ll remind you that there are people who adopt Chihuahuas. From there, anything is possible.
So there you have it, I don’t know how long I’m going to stay in the kennel. I see some of my friends come back, who were badly damaged by their previous owners. And sometimes I think that at least they have seen a bit of the outside world. And then, I feel angry when I see their suffering.
Some of them stay sometimes for months or years, running away from the visitor’s look, hiding in a corner with a twisted eye. To be adopted, never again….
Too light a manner
I leave the kennel, and I go back to those refrains that I am told over and over again.
“Don’t have sex on the first night,” “You’re sending the wrong signals,” “Don’t tell him about your experiences. “Be less sexual. “1 “Start out slower.” “No blowjobs until the third month,” and on and on.
Look, I’m doing what I can, right? First of all, because we all need a little caress from time to time, and secondly, it’s part of me!
Shit! If you don’t understand that my shell is made of condoms, tubes of lubricants and subtle hints, too bad.
Oh yes, we prefer shells made of pain, loneliness, shyness, mystery, secret.
Love explorers like to take their pickaxes and try to break the shells of dark stories.
However, when faced with my smooth and slippery shell, they don’t risk it. After all, do they even know it’s a shell?
So yes, you’re probably right. Blah, not the right way to start a story, blah, need to get them on the right track right away … Okay, I… Wouldn’t take your advice, I know that. It’s not me.
Because I need to lick the cherry a little, to crunch it, to desire it before being sure I want to put it on my cake.
And then, as I know that the surface of my cake is too smooth (I may have put too much lubricant) and that the cherries don’t fit on it, I take advantage of it before they fall off…
Maybe I’ll have to think about using lychee, it will hold better…
Conclusion
To all my single friends, to all the thirty-year-olds who still dream of Prince Charming, I wish you to find your cherry so that you can, like the others, taste the sweet cake of love.
To those who are fed up with red fruits, and who prefer a good brownie sprinkled with nuts, rather than a black forest, I admire you, and who knows, one day I might give up this vain quest for the cherry with studs….
And then, to me, I wish to finally get out of the kennel one day, if I come back, not to come back too dented. I wish myself to be a little less bitter than I was on this Thursday morning, post fruit disappointment.
And I wish all the cakes that have found their cherry, to keep it tenderly in the icing.
Without forgetting that a cake, even without a cherry, must be tasted bite by bite.