Aim for the Stars...

1994 (age 13) was a rough year.

I have always had good taste in men.  Even the gay guys that I've had crushes on are exceptional men.  Even the guys that I loved as brothers were (and are) some of the most special people that I'll ever know in my life.  For the purpose of this blog entry, we'll ignore some of the shittier examples (like the guy that almost broke my neck).

As a 6 year-old on the elementary school black top (in a brand new town), I singled out the boy I'd have a crush for the next 11 years.  While I ended up being a bit of an outsider, he ended up being the captain and quarterback of the varsity football team, a great basketball player, an honors student, and an all-around nice guy. 

He taught me an important lesson:  I think he knew that I had a crush on him all those years (I have the subtlety of a sledgehammer sometimes) and he never once disrespected me for my feelings.  He was kind and gracious even when he didn't have to be (like the time I called him half an hour after finding out that my mother had died, and I just needed to hear his voice and have hope).  At a time when it was easy for everyone else to make fun of me, he never did (or if he did, he did it in a way where it never got back to me).

I think that I was keenly aware that from age 8 onward I was an overweight, pimply emotional wreck, though I was smart and talented.  I knew that I wasn't a catch or popular, and that I probably would never get a chance to date a guy like him.  I had a few other crushes over the years, but my crush on him was enduring and grounded me.  In a way, adoring him was a promise to myself to always aim high, to have standards, to not give up on myself.

This is my sexy face.

All of this is a very long prologue to what I actually wanted to say...which is... that it's ridiculously sucky that even though I'm a completely different person (that no longer resembles a goth Janet Reno), I'm still doing the whole "pining away for unattainable guys" thing.

But it was so much easier to swallow when I didn't think I even deserved a chance.  It was so much easier when I thought that I was dateless and unloveable when I didn't love myself.  Now that I've had a chance to know myself and love myself, I have no clue why guys aren't beating down the doors to love me. (It can't just be that I'm intimidating.)

Never once in my life have I had a guy relentlessly woo me.  I've never had a guy tell me that it would be the end of life as he knew it if I look his way.  I've never had a man stand under my window with a boom box (mp3 players just don't have the same gravity). No flowers sent to my office every day.

Thirty-two years spinning round the sun, and very little romance to show for it.  This makes me so very sad.  I've yet to experience the kind of person that I am or could be with reciprocal love under my wings.  I have the love of my friends (**hugs to everyone**) and family, but it's very different than romantic love, eh?

For many years, I think that I was afraid of loving someone because I know the absolute heart-wringing pain that losing that person feels like.  It's very natural to want to avoid pain like that, and so I did.  But all the same, I'm that foolish girl that runs straight at love, full speed, without slowing down to let it come to me.  I'm not afraid of my heart breaking as much as I'm afraid of living a life where it never gets to be used to its full potential.

I know that scares the shit out of boys.  Good thing I am looking for a man, right?