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36 Years of Playing Hide and Seek With Love

Love hides and I continue to seek it.

By Erika PotapPublished 6 years ago 4 min read
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I read somewhere the average woman had an average of four sexual partners—and you won’t believe it—that statistic isn’t per year... it's per lifetime. Wonder what that says about me—I had three just last month alone. Guess my sexual appetite is as large as my appetite for food. Luckily, sex has no calories. Sometimes I really think I could use a chastity belt, clearly self control is not my strong suite. My vagina seems to decide my evenings’ fate for the both of us. My brain’s really a pushover, always being punked by my heart and now my vagina, too.

The dating life is not the life for me. I can barely stay on top of my emails and rarely return calls outside of my favorite list of five closest friends, parents, and sister. You think I enjoy the ping pong exchange of words with a slough of potential soulmates who all have one thing in common—no potential.

And here’s me tossing my racquet across the table while muttering, “fuck this shit, ping pong sucks.”

With each date I find myself growing deeper and deeper into hopelessness, further and further away from the idea that he does actually exist. Far away from the notion that I too deserved happiness like everyone else. I was starting to think I was destined to live life alone and in constant search for something that didn’t exist in the first place.

If this were a perfect world, here is where I would introduce my soulmate into the picture. It would go something like this... There I was thinking I was destined to live without love and then he appeared. We had a beautiful fairytale wedding and three kids later we are still so very much in love that we make our friends sick with all our public displays of affection. I wish all of that were true but the closest thing I have to any of that is a 7-year-old Black Russian Terrier, who I’m pretty sure is in love with me... He isn’t big on words, just barks. There was no fairytale wedding, no kids, or amazing love story but he is huge on PDA.

As a single woman over the age of 35, I refuse to give into the fact that my choices are limited. My time, yes... very limited, with age inversely proportional to the percent chance of being able to conceive. And my choices are way beyond limited—they are virtually non existent. Option 1- settle and have kids for the sake of having kids and then resent those kids for the rest of my life for making me settle in the first place. Option 2- run the risk of never being able to have kids because I was waiting for Prince Charming to arrive and although he was on his way for the last 36 years, sadly he fell off his horse and lay in a coma in some hospital somewhere, making it difficult to meet. The truth is, I have more than just the aforementioned options. I have more. Before you tell me to go volunteer at the hospital coma ward, let me tell you what I have come to realize .

Fuck both options. Fuck it all. Fuck tomorrow and fuck settling. Fuck Prince Charming and his horse. Fuck my biological clock and fuck freezing my eggs. Fuck the pressure of being 36 and single. Fuck Tinder and fuck my right thumb. Fuck yesterdays’ should haves, could haves, and would haves, and fuck you for even bringing them up.

I’m done stressing over things I cannot go back and change and those that may or may not happen in the future. The truth is, everyone's time is limited. No one is promised tomorrow yet everyone lives for it alone. We forget about today, the day that actually counts. G-d bless today and G-d bless the “but didn’ts.” They’re all that matter.

I can go to bed tonight and never wake up again. Why spend time worrying about whether or not I will have kids when I should be making funeral arrangements for myself? Duh! I got you right there. You caught yourself agreeing with me for a split second. Not because you're stupid, but because you're human, and as a human what do you do better than anything in the world? Worry! If it's not one thing, it's another. Fuck the funeral arrangements. It's not like you’re even gonna be there to oversee things. You’re the one being buried. Wouldn’t you want to, oh I don’t know... maybe LIVE your last hours of life?

I don’t know about you, but I choose life, to live each day in the moment and as if it were my last, doing things that make me happy with people who are happy to be around me, those who love me for me. Life doesn’t have to be so complicated, so black and white, all or nothing. There is so much more in between, not just all these shades of gray but actual color.

I won’t settle and I won’t sit here waiting for something better to come along either. I will live, I will love, and I will do me. I will take on each day as it comes, without the promise of tomorrow. And for every time that it does, I will only be grateful.

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About the Creator

Erika Potap

I know a thing about a thing or two. Believe in the power of the universe. hope my words can somehow make you smile, even if only on the inside. Questions, thoughts or comments?

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