Hysteria

Sometimes after receiving a bunch of No's and realizing that I haven't been on a date last week or the week before or since I went on that vacation or since last month I start to pull the signs together and realize I am never going on another date and if even one single person were to say yes to me it would be an open miracle and people would talk about it for years but that doesn't matter because it will never happen I will never go on a date again because I haven't been on one in SIX WEEKS so my life is OVER and I'm going to go buy THREE STARTER CATS and name them MEREDITH, OLIVIA, AND BENJAMIN BUTTON and I'm going to go to sleep at 8:46 pm every night.

And sometimes it really does feel this way. Those six week periods multiple into three or four month periods and each day without a new resume just confirms the cat theory.

That's why I love data.

I have my handy dandy chart and while it can sometimes feel draining to see all the dating experiences I have had to go through lined up for me, it also allows me to say to myself:

Archer,

You have had dating pauses before and you still went on more dates.

You thought it was over at 21. at 23. And then you dated more guys at 25 than you ever did before. You dated through a global pandemic and two completely bonkers presidential elections. The world changed and changed and changed and you had months with 6 dates and 6 months with no dates.

Not dating right now does not mean never dating again.

But the hysteria still tries to creep in and poison me. It tells me to throw my resume away and prepare for my life as a single. It wants me to change my wedding investment plan into an attending all the Olympic Games until I die investment plan.

It even wants me to

G-D FORBID

Delete my 45 tab wedding document.

I think this happens to most of us who are dating. Well, most people don't have 45 tab wedding documents but at a certain point we all take stock of our lives and ask why do we pay too much for too small apartments to be in the same general area as some single guys or girls when we could move to Sweden or Australia or Utah and see the sun or the snow or whatever makes your boat float.

But we stay and we keep trying.

And I look at all my friends who have stayed and who continue to try through bouts of hysteria and dating droughts and floods and being treated horribly and thinking this one was finally the one and having the rug ripped out from under them and there is one trait that they all share:

Courage.

It takes courage to look at a list like mine, even when it helps calm my hysteria, and see 50 dates that have gone wrong in some way and to still keep going out. It takes courage to stay somewhere expensive where you can't afford to have an emergency fund so you have no backup plan but you stay there because that's the most likely place to find a spouse. It takes courage to get into a strangers car and to figure out another date location when you've been doing this over and over and over.

Hysteria wants to take me down and sink me into my fears. Courage is my raft where I cling on to the future and to the fact that I don't know anything and to knowing that exactly where I am right now is G-D's exact plan.

I need humor and vacations and the occasional drink to keep holding on. But I'm still here. My friends are still here.

That's something to be hysterically happy about.