Not this shit again

I'm on the verge of depression. Actually, I'm up to maybe past my knees in depression. There are good reasons for me to be troubled and blue. Leaving New Orleans, unemployed, not doing so well studying for the bar.

Yet the thing that's dragging me down, even though I know how damn stupid it is, is a failed flirtation.

Because this scenario seems to play out endlessly--someone comes on to me enough to get my attention, I'm uncertain at first but warm up to the guy, my libido and skin-hunger emerges from hibernation. I flirt back and, as best I can, I try to respond in an appropriate way--issuing a clear invitation without chasing or coming on too strong. And then......

(the sounds of silence)

And then I'm pulled into despair to a degree that's completely unjustified by the (in)significance of the aborted affair. I can never tell whether I've been too subtle, too blatant, or if I misread the whole situation from the beginning. I could write it off as the guy's flakiness, but this scenario has repeated itself four or five times in the past few years.

In the meantime, the only sex I've had has been uninteresting, with someone I had no chemistry with, and which I ended without any personal trauma. Of course, there was the whole Mr. M affair, which kept me emotionally occupied, or at least half-occupied, during much of that time. Mr. M's presence in my life helps explain the paucity of sex and romance in my life, but it is equally true that I used him as a hiding place from the difficulties of actually dating or having a real sex life.

My friends say I'm "too much woman" for these guys. It's true that they were all younger and/or shy. But even if the "too much woman" explanation is true, it's only cold comfort. It allows me to hold on to some dignity and self-esteem, but it still rests on the proposition that there's something fundamental about me that prevents me from finding love or at least sex worth the bother.

I'm so abominably bad at relationships that I tend to think I should leave the whole business alone. Certainly I can be happy alone, and I'm much more stable and sane without it. But this is not a perfect solution because -- I have the same inborn desires as everyone else -- I want to get laid, but sex is only ever worth it in the context of a relationship with some chemistry -- I want to be seen and loved and to be close to another person in that way, even if it's not forever or in the context of a domestic relationship.

If I could turn off the brain chemistry that causes me to desire these things, would I do it? Maybe.