Sunday Blues

I've got the "Sunday Blues". My fragile little mind and body are definitely not friends today. I keep wondering to myself when I first experienced this feeling. Did I ever feel like this as a child when my Sundays were spent with my sister creating fictitious worlds where bedroom carpets became seas and cupboards under the stairs became entire worlds? Or as a teenager when my Sundays were spent lying in, doing homework and staying up to watch the late night Channel 4 film? In all honesty, I know when I'm going to experience "Sunday Blues" and I know why because I've experienced it more in the past two years than ever before.

Alcohol and singledom are a lethal combination. Everyone feels rubbish when they are hungover but when there is no one to wrap their arm around you feelings of patheticness and self-loathing ensue. I am pretty disappointed in myself for allowing my thoughts to wallow in such murky puddles of self-pity. However, beyond being disappointed, I am angry that the lack of a cuddle can darken my evening. I am usually the optimistic member of my gang. Proffering words of wisdom and a kick up the bum to melancholy friends far and wide but it's hard to be happy all of the time.

I have a feeling that this current case of "Sunday Blues" may be augmented by the fact that everyone around me is moving on or changing. Marriage, babies, future plans and fears. None of which I grudge but all of which seem very far away from me; glinting in the distance, something I am inexplicably drawn to but can't reach for now. At one point in my life I was certain that all of this would be in the bag by the time I turned thirty and now I'm not sure if it will or whether I want it to...

A man once said:

Sometimes life’s so much cooler when you just don’t know any better and all the painful lessons have not hammered your head open yet.

I think everybody reaches a point in their life where this is true. I think it's called adulthood. Damn you "Sunday Blues".

The Human Condition

There are some things we never say out loud because we don't like the way it sounds. Things like "This isn't working." "I live with my parents." or the biggie... "I'm lonely." But are these the very things we need to start saying aloud? Do we need to acknowledge the negatives in our life in order to turn them into positives? Are we simply being protected by pride or held back by vanity?

This onslaught of heavy-thinking was brought about after a weekend in bed with the flu and a session with my Sex and the City boxset. In the episode All or Nothing, Samantha; the strong, independent, man-eater of the group, also catches the flu. She says "There are two types of guys out there - the ones that hold your hand and the ones who fuck you. And the ones that fuck you aren't worth a damn. We're alone."  This struck a particular chord with me dear readers (and not only because I had neither a man to hold my hand or... well... you catch my drift!). Looking in the mirror, in the midst of all the sweat and snot, I finally understood the phrase, "She has a face only a mother could love." and gazing at my ghastly reflection I doomed myself to an eternity of life in the boxroom, alone and lonely. Because, despite being dutifully nursed by my mother, that is exactly how I felt - lonely. I am definitely at my most maudlin when I am ill. I played Jeff Buckley on repeat and stared into space until my eyes hurt. 


Now that I am back to full health I can attribute my feelings of loneliness to "just feeling sorry for myself." But should I? I hark back to my original quandary: Are we protected by pride or held back by vanity? Pride will mean I'll brush off my feelings from last weekend, smile and soldier on and in doing so I'll save myself a lot of difficult conversations. Cue reactions from friends, "Oh you're lonely... Emmm, I'm not really the hugging type of friend." or even worse "Your loneliness is pathetic." 

However, determined not to be held back by vanity I voiced my loneliness and I was not greeted with awkward responses but genuine concern and some cheer me up flowers and a card. Once I'd said it, I felt better. My cold subsided, the weather changed and I felt positive again. March has been an interesting month. Unfortunately I am another year older and the older I get, the more contemplative I become.  It has been one roller-coaster of a year and I cannot begin to express how much has changed. I suppose part of that change has been recognising myself as an individual again; spending a lot of time alone with my thoughts and asking myself what I want from life. Nearly a year on from the break up and the birth of my quarterlife crisis I am still asking myself those questions and learning to accept that I may be asking those questions for some time... And p.s. yes, sometimes I get lonely. 

Why is admitting you are lonely so taboo; the fear of failure? I know so many people who are unhappy or unsatisfied yet they soldier on, keep up appearances because they'd rather be unhappy than be lonely. A lot of people this year have said I'm brave - I wonder if it's because I have faced their biggest fear? This has been the most difficult post I have written. Partly because of vanity and partly because I wasn't exactly sure what the point of this post was but I think I see it now... while pride has its place, it is definitely okay to feel lonely, or sad or lost. Nobody is strong all of the time; we're only human after all.

Plenty Of Fish In The Sea

You might have heard of the phrase POF doing the rounds recently. It stands for "Plenty of Fish" and it's a free online dating and matchmaking service for singles. My friends and I set up a fake profile for a look as we had heard it was the new Facebook for singles. However, what we ended up discovering was that it was a hub for cheating boyfriends and bootycalls. Internet dating is big business. Who hasn't sung along to their catchy TV jingles? "I like old movies." or "Girl on the platforms smile." The people in these adverts are attractive and sensible looking individuals who, according to the adverts, have a greater chance of finding their perfect match online. True or False?

Okay, so curiosity killed the cat. I edited my profile and downloaded the iPhone app and had a proper browse minus any photos. Could I find MY perfect match online? The site is interesting. A mixture of people genuinely looking for a relationship, people looking to date and people simply looking for sex. Cue 1000s of pictures of naked torsos and tight underwear with not always positive results.

I set my status to "Looking to date" and struck up a few conversations. "How's POF been for you?" "Caught any fish?" etc. I wanted to find out if people actually met up or if POF was just a grown up version of MSN. I did, rather impulsively, meet up with one guy for fish and chips (an attempt at an original mini date if you will). We had completed similar degrees and happened to have a few mutual friends. The date went well but as a girl with relatively little dating experience, it's safe to say first dates are a bit of a nervous affair. I also question whether these essentially blind dates are ever wholly successful. It's easy to have chemistry with someone via instant messaging, however, I wonder whether having a spark online always results in having a spark in the flesh.

I decided if I was going to have a profile I might as well go the whole hog and put up some pictures. Even if only to compare results pre and post pictures. As a result, after a week and an abundance of emails, I deleted my profile. Messages asking for sex from men with inappropriate pictures. Messages from men nearing my dads age. Sometimes wonderfully witty messages from men who were, no doubt lovely chaps, but were certainly not my type of fish.

I think it's a bit shallow minded and probably a very Scottish attitude but there's a bit of a stigma of desperation attached to dating websites. I wonder, however, if that's just the opinion of a girl who was previously in a five year relationship and who's friends are all in coupled up? I was embarrassed to admit I was using POF. Even more embarrassed to admit I'd went on a date through it and I am fearful of anyone I know actually having viewed my profile. Nevertheless, it seems that anyone who is single (and sometimes those who aren't) is on POF. Do I need to grow up? Do I need to accept that internet dating is where it's at circa 2012?

One guy, very honestly, wrote in his "About Me" section: It's difficult to meet someone who shares the same interests as you on a night out in a club. After university, you rarely get the chance to meet new people and socialise within such a big and diverse circle. And anyway, when you hit a certain age, everyone in that circle begins to or has already paired off. So, true or false... Internet dating provides you with a greater chance of finding your perfect match? Or should we leave it all to destiny and circumstance?

Text and the Single Girl

My impression of being single was always very much based on Sex and the City. Single girls were approached in clubs, bars, coffee shops and the like by eligible bachelors. They went on dates to the cinema, for meals, to bars, for walks in the park, to arcades. And most tantalizing of all, they had fabulous short lived love affairs and frequently met up with their girlfriends and conversed over cosmopolitans. Let’s just say my experience of being single could not be further from this glossy American dream.

Okay, so realistically I know life doesn't work like it does on TV, especially in a wee Scottish village. Secondly, living at home, saving for a deposit, a trip to Thailand and working a nine to five job does not allow me mid-week jaunts to the “city”. And lastly, most relationships develop out of convenience; office romances, high school/ university relationships or getting it on with Harry from your local. But what if your local is your ex's local... Harry plays football with your ex... Your best friends' boyfriends all belong to the same social circle and all drink in the local with your ex and his new girlfriend... It's time to move further afield and close the EX-files, which is exactly what I have been trying to do since I became a single girl.

After being in relationships since the tender age of seventeen I wanted to date. Plus I wanted the chance to just be single, to be completely selfish and *embarrassing cough* find myself. However, in the space of eight months I have went on the grand total of ONE date! This consisted of a few drinks in a pub followed by a Frankie and Bennie's. I refuse to include my brief encounter with a guy I met at a house party which consisted of ordering a Chinese in his mum's house. When I suggested going on a proper date his response was "Eating's gay"... Oh dear.

However, at least these encounters were proper face to face, physical encounters. I have recently started to believe that men are only interested in one thing nowadays... TEXT. So you meet a guy on night out, exchange a cheeky little kiss or two, give him your number and the next day you receive a text. You try your best to be cute, funny, original. You discuss meeting up for a proper date. You start to develop an attachment to receiving his frequent flirty little messages... and by this stage they have become flirty. Then either it fizzles out because there is only so much that can be said before the texts become banal... beep,beep "Hey hows u?" beep,beep "Watching eastenders"... Zzzz. Or you muster up the courage to say "So when are we meeting up?" and the idea of an in the flesh rendezvous renders them finger-less and they never text again.

I for one refuse to have another text relationship. These potted relationships have all the drama of the real thing without the added bonus of face to face conversation, a few drinks and a snog. I fail to see where the payoff is and more importantly they are a complete waste of my time, effort and wit! The worrying thing is whether this is the future. I know fifteen year old girls who, despite sitting next to each other, text instead of talking. My iPhone is a constant extension of my arm and I struggle to function without it. My addiction to social networking is so much so that I check my Facebook and Twitter news-feeds in the morning as if they were my daily newspapers. While I appreciate the benefits of the virtual world we live in it saddens me to think that in the future all relationships will take place on a virtual plain where all "fluid transfers" have been outlawed, babies are made in a lab and sex is enjoyed via the use of sex-helmets. Slightly extreme you ask? A laughable concept? Well you ask your average Joe in 1995, when mobiles and social networking were a thing of the future, whether he would prefer spending all day writing to a girl or taking her out for a drink. I think you know the answer. Hint, hint gentlemen.

Sandra beautifully modelling her sex helmet.