Humility None Too Soon

This is a difficult subject for me to write about, but I don't think I'm going to be able to purge it any other way.

The long and short of it: I'm accustomed to getting what I want. Especially where men are concerned. This time I didn't. And now I feel...

Well, silly.

And broken, used, angry, frustrated, sad, old, undesirable, and humbled.

But mostly silly.

You see, I'm new to the "trying" game, because usually I don't really have to. Being new to it, I certainly tried too hard, and for far too long. And the bitterness I feel now would be very easily directed toward the man himself if I were less human than I am (or more so?), as it would have been very simple for him to prevent me from making an utter fool of myself by just being completely honest about his motives or lack thereof. The reality of it is that I kept trying, far past the point of diminishing returns.

That's hardly his fault, right? Right.

But the "diminishing returns" statement is really the key to the heart of the matter. In retrospect, there weren't many returns in the first place and "diminishing" is generous. There was some joyriding in there, but it was the kind that is the usual precursor to further intimacy and this time that just wasn't the case. I wanted to show him so many things! Not the least of which was the fact that secondary relationships often enhance primary relationships and don't have to reflect the nightmarish forced-morality scenarios that Hollywood loves to exploit our fears with. And I interpreted consistently mixed signals as a sign that, somewhere inside, he really wanted to come along but hadn't yet broken free from the moral paranoia that's infused into our social norms. And I kept trying!! I approached it from every angle I could think of and failed miserably. And now, thousands of dollars, hours upon hours of time, and a million suggestive self-portraits later, I am...

Silly.

But I realized, driving home today, that so much of my failure to secure the thing I wanted can be attributed to factors beyound my control... yet, I have taken this failure upon myself and somehow turned it around to fit into my newest litany of self-hate: "You're old, you're ugly, your thighs are out of control and you're too lazy to do anything about it, you're boring, you're a total bitch, no WONDER he doesn't want you...," et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And though these things may, in fact, be true for the man in question, they are certainly not true across the board.

I've found myself using this one experience as an excuse to isolate myself, a reason to just quit the game entirely. Because of this one failure - which, in the grand scheme of things matters not at all - I wound myself into quite the little tizzy of self-doubt... which, naturally, led me to believe that all I had to do was try harder - even though failure was - and always was - inevitable. The worst part of this is that I based my sexual value on this experience rather than on the input of several others who were pushed to the curb because I was trying to get something out of my reach. And that's the sickest thing of all: I would willingly choose to interpret my extrinsic value based on the guarded and dowright cagey reactions of the one person who obviously doesn't want anything to do with me rather than on the honest and open admiration of those who do.

I'm glad I've figured it out. Silly, indeed! But an important lesson nonetheless, as my own predilection toward self-deprecation needs better monitoring lest I find myself in another unvectored thrust toward trying too hard for too little return.