Loneliness & Love - The All Important "L" Words

Tonight, as most of my nights start out, I had to force myself to get dressed in anything other than sweats. Living with your parents really slows down your social life, as well as your will to live. My will to live only includes living in sweats, but hey, they're Juicy sweats, so that makes me f-ing "cool" lazy. This new life choice of sweats at all times has been exacerbated by the sun setting at 4:30pm. I mean, it's fucking pitch black at 5:15pm. So at about 6pm I'm ready to watch an hour of tv and hit the hay. Hence, another reason why my social life has suffered. People don't even go out to dinner in London until after 8pm and by this time I've been solidly asleep for over an hour. The idea of going out and grabbing a drink at 10pm is just God damn ridiculous. But my struggle to get into the shower this afternoon/dark time was my Everest, but I did it. I even made it past base camp. I had a good sherpa though, I only have him to thank. So, thank you Sherpa Luigi.

My climb to Everest was needed because we were meeting family friends for drinks then dinner. These family friends are judgmental, so it's best I don't show up to dinner smelling of a fisherman out to sea for many months without a bar of soap to cleanse properly. We did drinks at an ornate pub in Maida Vale, then dinner at a cool Italian restaurant in Marylebone. Most of you reading this, won't have a fucking clue what I'm talking about, but it's cool, I know what I'm talking about. At least, I think I know what I'm talking about....

After dinner I was supposed to meet an old friend from Oxford, yep I'm that awesome: I went to Oxford, so I'm like a genius. Moving on, since I have to go pay my monthly Mensa dues, I told my friend I would call him (yes, I do actually talk to boys sometimes! go me!) after dinner to meet up for a drink. Read: 6 large ciders. We started dinner at 7pm, which is actually very early for a Saturday night, but it took a long time, the waiters sucked and were slow, so we didn't get out of dinner until 10:15pm. So I did the only thing that I seem to do anymore, I rejected my only offer of social contact with someone my own age and texted my friend and called off drinks. How totally, completely and ludicrously sad and pathetic is that?! I'm such a fucking loser. One thing in my defense, the tube line (Jubilee) I would take to get to his part of town was totally shut down for repairs this weekend. That makes everything so much harder and I'm poor so I don't want to have to deal with cabs, unless it's 3am and I don't know where my hand is let alone the fucking tube station. Get what I'm saying? Ok, to be honest, I was just tired and needed a semi-decent excuse to convince myself that drinks wouldn't be a good idea.

I mean, if you knew me during my hay-day, there was not a night I wouldn't go out or that I wouldn't be drinking. I have seriously fallen down a deep, dark and scary hole of soberness and social hemitude. Now I understand how people have no friends or are old and just stay in their house all the time. This process starts off with you being lonely and bored, so your forced to waste time with things like tv and sleeping. Then when someone does ask you out you're excited at first, but the idea of getting outside and trying to make conversation is intimidating, but you go and make the effort because you haven't breathed fresh air in days. You go out, have a reasonably good time, but it really wasn't worth the effort. Then you start to turn down offers every once and a while, unless it's something really good. When those "really good" times turn out to be okay, but they will never, ever compare to a night with Vinny, E, Turtle, Johnny & Ari, who always deliver on a good time. You suddenly are addicted to stupid-ass shows which are actually in Italian and you are constantly saying "no" to going out. Soon you get a cat, then two, then ten and you smell like cat piss 24/7 and you decide the only way to have fun is a bottle of pain killers and three bottles of Chardonnay, or if you are real classy, you'll just stick to the box. Not only have you not breathed fresh air in days, because you can have everything delivered right to your door, you can't even see the other wall because of the amount of cigarette and bong smoke that has filled your house. Again, I'm just guessing this is how it goes, I really don't know from personal experience. Not at all.

So from skipping out on another invite out to booze, I went home on the tube with my parents. In our carriage, there was a teenage couple who showed more affection to each other in three minutes than I've ever had in my entire life (from a man, my parents hug my all the time, so that's no problem). I was thinking about this while overtly starring at them. Why haven't I had this type of affection with a man? These kids weren't like grossly making out, the boy was just stroking her hair and kissing her hand: I almost fucking cried. I'm 24 3/4 so why have I never let a guy get that close? Have I been avoiding this type of intimacy like I would avoid a leper colony, the Ebola virus, or a half-off sale at the felt store? Have I been too drunk and skipped right past all the lovey dovey stuff? Or could I honestly not remember it because of a horrible, glorious thing called booze beverages? Is it because God hates me? I still can't figure it out..... this is what I'll be thinking about tonight, but if I do right and continue to drink maybe I'll numb my brain and not have to think about this until I push away another guy! Awesome.