Online dating and the depressed girl

I have had a couple of online dating profiles for about a year now.  I haven't had much luck. When I first signed up I found quite a few attractive guys and even met a few of them.  We would simply meet for coffee as I figured that was a quick and easy way to meet for a date where you didn't have to sit through a big expensive meal if you didn't like them.  None of them really did much for me so I left it at one date.

Then it sort of fizzled out.  The last several months there have been many attractive guys that I messaged with, a few that I texted with but they seemed content to just converse that way and never pushed to meet.  I admit, neither did I. 

Because while I want to have someone in my life to fight off the loneliness, I just didn't think that any of these guys would amount to much in the relationship department. I enjoyed having someone to chat with but was reluctant to make that next step and ask them to meet. 

I would almost rather sit home and watch TV than get all dressed up and get all ready to meet a guy who most likely I would only meet once and never talk to them again.  I don't know if this is a symptom of my depression or if I just don't want to be dating. 

Its kind of hard to tell the difference.

I know that I am not really depressed.  I don't have that awful hopeless feeling that things are never going to get better.  I feel ok.  My energy level seems ok.  But I have a lot of the symptoms of depression:  I don't sleep well, even with the medications the doc gave me. I have a hard time showering every day.  I kind of avoid it until I start to feel dirty, usually every 2nd of 3rd day.  My appetite has been nonexistent and I actually lost 50 lbs in the last year and a half.  I don't really leave the house for anything other than work and my weekly trip to the grocery store.  I started a new medication that has helped with my appetite and I seem to be in a slightly better mood but the other symptoms persist. 

The thing is that I have never in my life thought that I didn't want to date.  Before Ben I always had a boyfriend (or 2?) and as soon as one was looking like it was a lost cause I would have another one lined up.  I tried desperately not to be alone.  I just don't even recognize this feeling of not really feeling up to meeting someone new.

I worry that this is not just a phase.  That I am permanently depressed and will never get to the point where I want a relationship and I will end up alone and old.  I worry that if I decide to just take some time (a few years?) and stay single for a while that I will miss out on someone great and again, I will end up old and alone. 

Actually finding someone to date will require me to knock off some of my depressed habits. I will need to shower every day.  I will need to get my ass dressed and out of the house to see someone.  Of course, I would hope that meeting someone I like would make me WANT to get out of the house to see them so I wouldn't struggle with this so much but this is sort of a catch-22.  I want to meet someone so that I will feel like getting dressed and going out but I need to get dressed and go out to meet someone. 

I have disabled my dating profiles for now.  I still look at the site and figure that if I see someone worth messaging I will reactivate it.  But the longer I have been on this site the fewer attractive candidates there are to choose from.  And the guys that message me?  Most of them are either in their 50's looking for a younger chick or in their 20s looking for that cougar.  I am not interested in it either way.  I am not looking for a sex thing.  And I am not looking for a sugar daddy.  I just want a guy who is my age who likes low key activities like eating out and going to the movies who also happens to be good looking and employed.  I don't think that is asking for much.

About the breakup.

When did I become so boring? 

I recently started doing those surveys of questions on my other blog as something to post so that I don't have to come up with my own material.  But I fill them out and the answers are so bland.  I used to be a smart ass.  I used to be witty.  What the hell happened to me?

I attribute a lot of this to the breakup-the split 2 years ago from my kid's father.  We had lived together for 8 years and much of those 8 years we were mostly just people who lived together and raised a kid together.  We weren't really in love.  Or at least it didn't feel like it at the time.  The split was mutual.  And it was amicable.  But about a month after I moved out, I found out that he had been seeing someone for a few months and I had a breakdown that almost ended me back in the psych ward.  I don't know why I reacted like that.  But it was bad.  I was not okay.  My doctor changed up the medications I was on and that brought me back from the edge.  But I was changed by that. 

I never doubted him.  I never thought for a minute that he would cheat on me.  I considered him honorable and good and honest.  I had total faith in him.  I was completely blindsided by the idea that he might be seeing someone else during the time that we both knew it was over but before it was completely and totally over.  I wished I had known.  I would have liked to have set up a rebound thing too.  It would have been nice to have someone to talk to and to go to in those last few months when he slept on the couch and I avoided him.  But in my mind we were still technically together.  Not so in his.  In his mind as soon as we talked about splitting it was over.  A done deal.

In that month after I moved out, I was still hopeful.  I spoke with him regularly because we were navigating this split with our daughter and it was important that she know we were still her parents.  I sat down with him for lunch.  We got along.  And I was hopeful that this was just some space that we needed until we each (read: ME) could sort some things out and that we would reconcile and get back together.  It never occurred to me that he had already moved on. 

Finding out that he was seeing someone broke something inside of me.  Yes, I had been cheated on in the past.  I had been lied to and betrayed.  I had been treated truly horribly by some of my ex boyfriends.  But this was something different.  I never trusted them.  I never believed that we would work it out.  I always knew that those guys couldn't truly be trusted.  There were always plenty of red flags for me to ignore.  Not so here.  Ben was a good guy.  We spent 8 years together.  I never doubted his love for me.

And then, just like that, I was face to face with the realization that he perhaps didn't love  me anymore.  And he said that to me.  He was moving on without me.  I didn't get another chance to be better.  He was done waiting for me to get over this depression and he was moving forward with his life without me.

This was a turning point for me.  I looked back at our relationship and all I could see was all that I did wrong.  I saw the way I needed to escape from my life almost daily by taking to bed most afternoons.  I saw the way I avoided doing things with him.  I saw the times I was unfaithful and lied.  Everything was magnified.  Part of this I can blame on this awful depression but the rest was squarely on my own shoulders.  I wasn't a good partner.  I wasn't present most of the time.  I did everything to make him feel like he wasn't valued and in the end I was the one who had to convince him that it was never going to get better.  I did this. 

I am not someone who has regrets.  I lived through my teens and most of my twenties doing all sorts of things that some people would regret.  But I always felt regretting things was a waste of time.  YOLO, right?  But with Ben I have some deep and permanent regrets.  I don't know if I will ever get to a point where I accept what I did and move past it. 

It's been nearly 2 years and Ben and I have a good relationship for Lila's sake.  We are friendly and have no drama.  It really baffles me when I hear about situations (which are most situations) where people split up and can't agree on simple things for the sake of the kids.  There have been some stumbling blocks like when he first started bringing his new girlfriend around Lila but all in all we've gotten past that.  I still don't like the girlfriend though.  I don't know if that will ever change. 

I would say that I am over the split.  I think that it was for the best.  I wasn't the person I wanted to be when I was with him and I don't think I could be.  But regardless of whatever lessons I have learned from this, I am in a much more introspective and self-aware place.  My self esteem sucks.  I am something of a homebody. 

I tried internet dating and at first I met a few guys but none of them seemed like a good match.  I questioned if I was ready to be dating.  A part of me wants desperately to meet someone new but the other part of me-the damaged part of me- says that no one in their right mind would want me right now.  I am not whole.  I do not feel like I am in a place that is conducive to being in a relationship.  I am not depressed exactly.  I don't have that hopeless feeling that I am so familiar with.  The medication seems to help that.  I am just not feeling like me.  I guess I don't even know who I am right now.  And that makes me boring.

I have started blogging again here and at my other blog to try to discover some of who I was and see if she is still there under all this seriousness.  But I re-read my blog posts and they just feel so lifeless.  And I worry that it is a reflection of me right now.  Am I lifeless?  Or did this just seriously knock the wind out of me?  I worry that this bump in the road was more than just a bump and that perhaps it has seriously altered the person that I am. 

I feel like only time will tell.

My Act of Confession

For those of you who don't know, my daughter goes to catholic school.  Although I am not a practicing catholic and neither is her father, we decided to send her there based on the crappy public school district that we lived in when she went to kindergarten.  I went to catholic school and once I was out of there in 9th grade because I went to a public high school, I never looked back.  Until I had my daughter.  When she was a baby, we had her baptized "just in case".  Not that I believe in heaven and hell but because my mother lobbied for her to be baptized so that if something happened to her (God forbid) she would be able to go to heaven.  This was a real concern for my mother so I gave in and we baptized her catholic.

This year Lila is in 2nd grade.  This is the year she makes her first communion.  But before she can make her first communion she has to make her first confession.  In the catholic faith you are not supposed to receive communion with sin on your soul so you have to go to confession before you receive communion.  All these firstd mean that Lila has to go to several weeks of preparation classes on Sundays.  The classes are after mass on Sunday and attendance at mass is mandatory as they pull all the kids aside during the service and give lessons then as well.  I have been taking Lila to church on Sundays.

I don't know how I feel about going to church on Sundays.  I am not sure I believe in any of this anymore.  In fact I know I don't.  When I am in church, I listen intently sort of wishing that I found solace in the idea that Jesus loves me.  I envy those who can pray and take comfort in the idea that God is there for them.  I just don't have that. 

This past Saturday, Lila made her first confession.  The celebration involved her having an adult come with her as she waited to confess her sins and the adult would go and confess after her to show their support.  Since Ben is Lutheran and her godparents live in Florida, I was the adult that went with her.  We carried a candle to represent the light of Lila's soul and after we both confessed we were to light the candle as a symbol of the light burning bright now that her soul had been wiped clean through the sacrament of confession.

I stressed about having to go to confession.  I haven't been in 20 years or more.  Not since junior high school.  So I was not looking forward to the required "Bless me father for I have sinned.  It has been 20 + years since my last confession." I wasn't going to be able to sit there and tell him all the ways I had sinned in the last 20 years and most of all I would have to admit that I didn't think I really believed anymore.  I thought I would be there for an hour holding up the line and people would start to wonder why I was taking so long.

By the time Lila finished her very brief confession (she only had one sin to confess: Sometimes she yells at her mother), I was playing the scenario in my head and dreading the whole thing.  I went and sat down in front of the priest.  Before I was even able to say anything, he began.  "I just have 2 simple questions for you.  Do you admit that you have sinned?" he said.  "Yes," I replied.  "Ok. Are you sorry for the sins that you have committed?" I stopped for a minute.  I have done a lot of things wrong in the eyes of the church.  I lived with Ben for 8 years without being married.  I don't know that I am necessarily sorry for that.  But I wanted to make this simple.  "Yes," I replied.  The priest sat for a moment.  "Then unless you have something specific that you want to talk about we can move forward with the absolution." 

This was the easiest thing I had ever done.  I didn't have to go into 20 some odd years of transgressions that I'm not sure I am sorry for.  He had made it as simple as just admitting it and saying sorry.  He blessed me and told me to go on my way.  He didn't even assign me a penance of prayers to say.  He didn't even make me struggle to remember my Act of Contrition.  Lila and I went and lit her candle and added it to the growing number of candles on a table set up on the altar.  I went back to my seat feeling light.  I felt pretty good actually.

This was something I missed about Catholicism. You go and confess your sins and you are forgiven and it is like a weight is taken off your shoulders.  For the most part I didn't feel guilty about the idea that I offended God.  But I had done some things that hurt other people.  Things I carried around with me for years feeling bad about them not knowing how to make amends.  But today I was told I was forgiven.  Now I just had to forgive myself. 

Part of me began to enjoy the idea of going to church on Sundays.  I like the pageantry of it.  I like the community.  I just wish that I could really believe in something.  I just don't.  In the end I have to admit that going to confession doesn't make amends to others that I may have hurt.  But perhaps I could forgive myself for all the ways I have hurt myself over the years.  The only person I really need to make amends to right now is me.  Perhaps I could be forgiven for not respecting myself or treating myself with kindness.  Perhaps I could be forgiven for the ways I have abused by body and not taken care of my soul. Perhaps I can use this as a starting point to begin to treat myself better. To take care of my own needs.

I don't know that I will make it a regular thing-taking Lila to confession.  But maybe once in a while, when I am feeling like I have just been awful to myself I can go and be told that I am forgiven. Perhaps just hearing those words will give me space to breathe. Now we just need to work on getting Lila a few more sins to confess.