I was talking about dating in yesterday’s post. Kind of. As with everything in my life, it’s much more complicated than just do I want to date or not? Because yes, I do, but also, no, I do not. Or rather, I do, but I’m not sure I want to go through all the pain and angst to do it.
This is how my brain works. Basic thought: I want to date/have sex. Tandem thought: I do not want to have anything to do with Trump supporters. Tertiary thought: I hope they all suffer from whatever the next four years bring. Quaternary thought: Shit. That means people I love will probably suffer as much if not more. Then my brain is off to the races, and I’m no longer thinking about dating.
It’s because I’m probably neurodivergent. I have not had that tested and/or confirmed, but at my ripe old age of 53, I am fairly certain I have one kind of neurodivergency, if not more. It’s been a relief to realize that because it means that my brain isn’t broken the way I have always thought it was.
I could go deeper into the weeds, but I shall not. I want to get back to dating.
When I was in my mid-to-late twenties, I used to do the personals for dating. At the time, the biggest ones pused were Plenty of Fish and Craigslist. Both of which were like dating in the Wild West. No quality control, no options other than what was on the front page, and just a bunch of ugh. It was discouraging because as soon as I said I was Asian, that was all the responders focused on. This was in the category of W4M, which was what I was looking for at the time. Well, I also had an ad in the W4W, but I did not get any answers for that ad. I don’t want to get into why I think that is.
I cannot tell you how many guys told me how much they loooooved Asian woman and sent me dick pics, even though I was very explicit about not wanting either. Worse, at that time, most of them said they loved ‘Oriental girls’, which was a sure way of making sure you would never get a piece of this ass.
That was a quarter of a century ago. I am even more strident about what I want and don’t want now. No straight men, especially white men. Does that cut out a huge portion of potential dates? Yup. Do I care? Nope.
I am still furious about the elections and the announced Trump picks. I was talking to my Taiji teacher today about the rage I feel and how I don’t like what it’s doing to me. I want bad things to happen to Trump voters, which is not who I want to be. She did point out that the working class/working poor felt overlooked by the Dems as a reason why they may have gone with Trump. I have many retorts for that, but my main one was that as someone who has never been the target of the Dem’s outreach, I can’t feel much sympathy for those working poor. Especially as the Dems always do more for that class than do the Republicans.
My teacher claimed that the Dems have been targeting rich people more and more in the past few elections. She said since Obama, and I vocally pushed back on that. I followed politics closely back then as it was my beat (I wrote for a political blog), and Obama was very much for the common person.
I also pushed back on my brother when–well, it went down this way. I said that when Obama won the first time, we got all three houses. Pretty decisively, too. My brother interrupted and said, no, it was the second time Obama ran that that happened. I said, no, it was the first time. I was pretty certain about that, too. Again, I wrote about it incessantly. That time is emblazoned on my brain. We looked it up, and I was right.
My point to my brother was that whenever a Democrat won, they were forced to say that they would reach out to the Republican supporters to unite the country. Republicans are never asked to do the same when they win (to Democratic voters).
I’m so mad. I did not come back from death (twice) for my niblings to have less freedoms now than I did when I was their age. It’s bonkers to me how far we got catapulted during Trump’s first reign, and I don’t even want to think how much more we’ll fall during his upcoming second reign.
I don’t know if I have the heart to date right now, but that might just be an excuse. Meaning, do I ever have the heart to date? Dating seems so pointless to me. Or rather, it feels like so much effort for so little result. In other words, the exact opposite of Taiji. I don’t know if it’s worth it. I supposed I could do some low-key probes (heh), but then I think of all the other things I can do that would excite me more.
I know that the end goal (sex) can only be accomplished if I actually put myself out there somehow, and you would think that should be enough to push me to give it a whirl. Because I really want to have sex.
Here’s another issue with that, though. I have not interacted with people on the regular since the pandemic. Sexing with people is way more intimate than anything I’ve done in the last few years–well, decade, really. I don’t want to get sick. I really don’t. And I don’t trust that someone else will take the same precautions that I do. I have a terrible immune system, so I have to be extra-careful about the air I share with others.
Do I want to have sex badly enough to risk my life on it? That’s a big hearty maybe. Do I want to have sex again before I die for a third and presumably final time? Yes, I do. Do I want it so bad I will actually risk that third and (presumably) final death to have it? That’s where I get stuck. The chances of me getting sick from having sick is pretty slim. But it can happen. I’m not great at risk assessment, so I can’t know how risky this behavior actually is.
Plus, I’m still so fucking mad. This is not a good frame of mind with which to approach dating.