yearning & hating

couples ruin everything. i'm letting myself take a brief pause from trying to have a nuanced take on everything to bask in my bitterness, so if you'll allow me the same: couples. ruin. everything. they've ruined my friendships, though fortunately, the older i get, the less that rings true. they've ruined perfectly good tv shows that lose all sense of urgency once the lead couple admits feelings for each other. most of all, they've ruined concerts.

i'm pretty stiff by nature, and i mean that in more than just the sense that i've had screwy joints since puberty. when i'm in my room with the door locked and the music playing loud enough to mask the impact of my movements, i can let loose and find some fluidity. but add in the remote possibility of someone spotting me, even if it's just a stranger walking by my window, and i turn into a rigid stick. unless i'm learning choreography and can funnel my brain power into perfecting specific movements, i find that the stress of being watched inhibits me in a way i haven't yet gained mastery over, and as a result i spend most concerts nodding and swaying in ways that never feel quite natural, though they're several steps up from the tiny, rhythmic shifts i used to make that you'd need a microscope to detect.

which brings me back to how much couples at concerts piss me off. i don't love the inebriated girls with diminished spatial awareness jumping around when a fun song comes on. i don't love the six-foot-something guys who stand near the front of center stage, leaving us petite people in the lurch. i especially don't love the people who shove, though at the standing room only indie shows i frequent, this can be forgiven in certain circumstances. but it's couples that completely draw me out of my enjoyment of the performance and taint it with their overtness.

a lot of them are innocuous at first, and i can convince myself their relationship is platonic until i glance over and see them rocking side to side, the shorter one leaning back into the taller one's chest, their arms around each other. i envy a lot of things about this scenario, but most of all that they could have so much ease with each other, that they could be so comfortable in their bodies in front of all these people.

that's not to say it's always admirable. i've seen couples completely shirk basic social convention, making out and grabbing each other's asses with complete disregard for those around them. while—and hold me accountable to this in case my future infatuation makes me start acting up—i'd never want to emulate them, there's an undeniable undertone of jealousy in my judgment. i don't want to do these things, necessarily, but i want someone who i could do these things with if i so desired.

if you want a comprehensive look into my dating history, here it is:

okay, if you want to get technical, it's more like a few dozen crushes on celebrities who had no clue i existed, another dozen on classmates who knew i existed only marginally more than the celebrities, a regrettable instance of me professing my feelings for a guy during high school and having them "reciprocated" (also known as me pining after him for six months while he pretended i didn't exist), and three perfectly fine hinge dates that nonetheless culminated in me getting ghosted while, conveniently for him, i was out of town. i feel almost obligated to conclude with some kind of optimistic spin, but the reality is that it would take a stronger soldier than me to not allow this to affect my self esteem.

i don't know exactly when this started being the case because i can so clearly hear my deeply insecure middle school self proudly professing that i didn't even want to start dating until college, but now, college has come and gone. it doesn't matter how much progress i've made with my confidence in other areas—there's some essential lack that i feel from never having been desired. almost all of my friends who i once commiserated with about this very topic have entered (and in some cases exited) a long term relationship. one is married now. i'm still, for all intents and purposes, in the same spot i was standing in during middle school, except when i try to lie to myself that i'm not bothered by it, it doesn't work anymore.

as proven by the ill-fated declaration and the unsuccessful series of dates, it's not for lack of trying that i'm in this position, or at least not entirely. dating apps don't scare me as much as they did the first time i installed them (i may or may not have panicked and paused my profile for months after sending my first right swipe on bumble), but getting a notification about a new match has never made me feel anything other than a tinge of excitement overshadowed by a massive, cresting wave of dread.

it's hard to explain. on the one hand, when i'm hovering around the midpoint between uninstalling the apps in a fit of frustration and allowing my hope/naivete to convince me to reinstall them, all i do is yearn to fast forward to when i'm in a relationship that's moved past the awkward beginning phase, when it's all "what do you do for work? how many siblings do you have?" and no one is being their authentic self. on the other, when i'm actually on the apps spending my daily allotment of likes/hearts/swipes/roses before i hit a paywall, no one seems promising, and i have little hope that those who do will reciprocate my efforts.

i've blamed it on men in the dating pool not meeting my standards (not having an ultra generic profile and openly professing to be liberal—a big ask in the south), but each time i find myself giving up yet again, i have to wonder if the problem is me. if you're one of my friends, or generally just a kindhearted person, this is where you'd interject with "what! no! of course you're not the problem!" and then you'd tell me i'm any number of positive attributes and that my time is coming. and i would appreciate you saying that, and it would do absolutely nothing to make me feel any different.

i often wonder if couples at concerts will piss me off as much when i join their ranks at some undetermined point in the future. i expect to have a mellower perspective, but maybe my acrimony has done permanent damage. maybe i'll always convince myself the stage lights are shining brighter on them than anyone else in the room.