Holiday Dating

 Online dating during the holidays is worse than online dating any other time of the year. I mean dating is bad, online dating is worse, and doing it during the holidays is brutal. What if you start dating a Christian man, do you buy him a gift after a couple dates? Do you see him on the beloved day of Christmas?Oh what to do. My family and I will be eating chicken curry for Christmas Eve, which is no big deal. I have lately felt the need to go on three or four dates with three or four different people to see if I liked any of them. Needless to say none of them worked out. And no, I’m not an Internet slut; I just went on dates with them.Not that I should have to defend myself. But I never know what you all are thinking. But overall dating during the holidays is depressing. Especially when it doesn’t work out. You sit around a café, waiting to meet someone who will take you away from the ho-hum drab of your life.Apparently no one can really do that for you. Is another person capable of making me happy, why can’t I do this by myself? What’s the deal? Why am I looking for a significant other to make my holidays special, to make my life meaningful?Maybe because it happens in the movies all the time. Love Actually etc., the best holiday movies start with a lonely woman like me, and end in holiday beauty, with love next to a huge Christmas tree. I want that. I want that fantasy. In fact I want that fantasy so badly I’m going on a first date today, on Christmas Eve. Just in case the universe has a fantasy in store for me.True love and the holidays mix so well. Even though I’m pessimistic about this whole online dating process, every time I meet someone new, I’m optimistic. I hope. I dream. I think love will find me.I’ve been in love before, but never with the right person. It’s magical anyways though, it’s like a sparkly Christmas tree, it’s so pretty to be in love. It feels as though candles are being lit from inside you. That feeling of joy and infatuation. It is I suppose like a drug.But I'm mixed about the whole thing.Part of me thinks it should not be legal. Love that is. It should be banned in civilized societies. Love is terrible when you don’t have it, and if you do have it you keep thinking you will lose it. It makes you insane. Forget pot, love should be illegal. We should be able to smoke all the weed we want to forget about love.As Tina Turner said, “What’s love, but a sweet old fashion notion?” That’s all it is really. A thought, something that we used to think would bring us some kind of salvation. But in the end you find that love won’t save you anymore than money or friends did.So why this perpetual need for love? Do other species need love the way that we do? I think we, as humans, have bastardized the shit out of love. We think it will be like a movie and when it’s not, we are not satisfied. It’s like the guy who watches too much porn can never enjoy real sex.I wonder sometimes, am I experiencing my life, or am I watching it like I watch TV? Has love ever really happened to me or has it always been a fantasy?I hate to say it, but love is stupid. It makes me do stupid things and think stupid thoughts. It’s been a while since I’ve been in love and I can’t remember what I loved about it.What’s so great about feeling insecure and vulnerable?You know what, I should focus. I want to be rich more than I want to be in love, right?No, I’m lying. I’m a liar.I want a Christmas fantasy. A gift from god, a guy who I can make my eyes sparkle like tinsel.I know, I know, I’m the stupid one. Setting myself up for failure.I will keep doing it though, keep dreaming of a love filled Christmas. A romantic Christmas.I want to fall in love during the holidays to forget. Forget how lonely I am. Forget how I’m not sure who I am. Maybe love will take care of all that. Maybe it won’t.I know, I know, love is for fools. I’m a fool though, a perfect candidate. I sometimes think that I will summon my husband from this blog. He will read this and fall madly in love with me.Or maybe I will make him cry. Or even laugh.Love is as simple as a single tear, a laugh.I think maybe love is everything. I know it sounds a bit overreaching and vast. But I think there may not really be anything but love.nina