The Grieving Stages of Dating

Sometimes (in my head of course), I catch myself asking, "Is this real life?" in the same voice as David at the dentist. And also, "Am I gonna be like this FOREVER?"

Basically, that video is the story of my (and many of my friends') love life. How are such amazing people still single? For instance, one of my friends is this gorgeous and vivacious girl, incredibly smart and funny. Yet she's never had a date. How is this possible??!! Another one of my friends is this great guy who is actually looking for a serious relationship (I thought those guys were a myth until I met him), yet he can't seem to find a mentally stable girl. It hit me that maybe we don't all find someone. Or it takes forever.

.... aaaaaand that's where I hit my five stages of grieving while dating.

1. Denial
I just haven't met the right person.
I'm sure he's right around the corner.
It's because I'm not trying to find someone. When I decide I'm ready, it'll just happen really fast, you'll see.
I've used all those lines (and many more) on myself. But I could never quite fool myself, and I quickly exited this stage.

2. Anger
UGH MEN.
I spent many, many months here in stage 2. What's wrong with them, why are they such jerks, why, why, whyyyyyyyyyy meeeeeeeeee.
I feel this would have been a great time to take up an angry sport like kickboxing or roller derby.
I also don't know how I managed to retain my male friends during this time. I think it went a lot like, "UGH MEN. I hate them. They're so [extremely rude generalization of some sort]. ......but not you, of course."
It was hard to step out of anger. And I won't deny I sometimes revisit this stage. You can't help getting frustrated when things don't work out, or you simply can't seem to find a decent guy to try to start something up with.

3. Bargaining
Here I feel like this stage is composed of many mini-stages. Fortunately (for you), I went through it, so let's break it down.
First, you plead with your mind/God/whatever else. "I'm willing to not ever find my perfect home, just PLEASE send me a boyfriend!"
Then, you rationalize that you just need one good relationship. If you could please just have someone now, you'd be ok with the fact that it wouldn't last more than a year. Cause at least that's one year happy, right? ....no.
What happens after is dark. Really dark. You sink to rock bottom and you think, "hey, I'm gonna settle!" Settling. The word alone makes me shiver. You start to doubt yourself and the standards you had set, and you lower them. And you go lower, and lower, and lower, and loooooooowwwwwer. It's bad. Because things aren't any better with the loser men you now date at this point.

4. Depression
This is where you end up after said losers. My time here was mostly composed of a lot of cake, chocolate, and watching The Notebook and other tortured love stories on a loop. Because nothing else worked and at least chocolate wouldn't stand me up or make me cry. But this stage is BAD. You let yourself go, your hair isn't shiny anymore, and you wear a lot of plain tee shirts and sweatpants. So not okay. Yet when you go through it, you can't help it! It's the mindset of "why bother?" I think it's a slippery slope to ending up obese with acne and no friends. Fortunately I snapped out of it. And by that I mean that my DVD of Love Story broke, so I had to give up and move on.

5. Acceptance
I think after a certain amount of time, you just kinda shrug it off and realize that whether you search actively or you go about your life normally, it's just not up to you. You find the right person when you find them, and in the meantime you might as well live normally. OR you will in fact end up alone and you may as well prepare for it. And that is why I adopted Florence, the first of 20 cats I will one day probably own. And that is just A-OK.


So, my fantastic single friends everywhere, I say cry. Eat cake. Bargain. Even settle for a while if you must. It is perfectly fine for you to go through these stages. As long as you, like me, arrive at the conclusion that you are fantastic and that a relationship more or less isn't gonna change that.

Not so serious words

True words of wisdom.

WIN for single girls everywhere.

My first thought. ALWAYS.

Grammar is so underrated.

This just made me cry I laughed so hard.

Serious words

My claim to fame

So my fantastic friend Sarah published on her AH-mazing blog my little attempt at seriousness. I'm all giddy about this and I invite you to check it out.

And Sarah, one day it'll be worth millions.

12 before '12 recap

So 12 before '12 was a major fail. Basically, it was foolish to give myself a list of things to do when I'm in the middle of a tough exam period. Not to mention I then jetted off to my parents' new home in the country and..... let's just say I mostly ate and slept.

Some things (photoshop, finishing a book, my art 4 art contribution, my book review, reading all my magazines) didn't happen because of a complete and utter lack of time for anything. I did manage to get pleeeeeenty of real nights' sleep at home though! And I saw Twilight (no seizure, yay!). Also, I hunted for fleece-lined leggings, but I didn't find any. I decided to instead buy face cream with a good SPF in it, because I watched Canada's Next Top Model while at home, and they got a skin analysis.. Let's just say I'm scarred. Because your skin may look flawless on the surface, but underneath... Oh man. So now I'm all paranoid about keeping it flawlessly protected. But face skin is expensive! So I made the executive decision that face cream >>> fleece-lined leggings. Therefore, my legs will just have to deal. Maybe I'll moisturize them too.

Then there's other things that I was just like, why is this on here? Like training my cat for instance. She's cute, she's a non-stop purr machine, and yes, I did get her to pipe down in the morning and wait for me to get up, but she has a bit of a furniture-scratching problem (understatement). Which I haven't even attempted to fix. As for painting my nails, I decided perhaps I'm more of a "natural" person. I love having the splash of color, but it's a lot of work, and then it's freaking distracting! It's all I looked at all week. And I never even made it to my toes, because I thought oh, hhhhhheck NO, no one is even gonna see them. I also am far too lazy to become obsessed with tea. I bought some. And it has yet to be opened.

So as we can all see, a) it will be a miracle if I manage to finish my bucket list and b) I should just not resolve to do anything anytime soon. To make my life easier, I decided not to make any conscious resolutions for 2012. Instead, I scheduled myself some recap time at the end of each month, to kinda assess how I'm doing with food/exercise/mental well-being/furniture holes caused by claws/cold legs/etc. That way I can kinda gauge every month if I'm doing well or if I should change something. Smart right? Sometimes I'm really impressed with myself.

#24: See the Nutcracker ballet

As a little girl, I think I watched the movie The Nutcracker about a million times. It's the Love Actually of my childhood. Anyways, for some reason I'm really into a big, traditional Christmas. I like the dressing up, the food, going to midnight mass, making gingerbread houses... Everything Christmas-related feels like it should be done. So, of course, I always wished to have my grandmother take me to the ballet (and preferably I got to wear a beautiful poofy dress). Alas! I lived in the middle of nowhere, so clearly there was no ballet, and so I never went.

That is the story of how seeing The Nutcracker around Christmas time landed on my university bucket list. I rallied my bestest and closest friends, we dressed up, and to the ballet we went! It was even better than my inner young girl had hoped. The costumes, the choreography, the music... I left the theater filled with Christmas cheer and peace. And the promise to bring my own granddaughter to see it one day.

We had amazing seats on the first balcony.

My favorite dancers of the show, their dance definitely got my eyes a little teary.

The very talented little girl who played Clara.

A few pictures to say a thousand words