And today I felt pretty...

So today I went shopping. I needed some specific items, and I didn't really get much more than I needed, but it was still quite an enjoyable day. I discovered that I now have so many choices-- I didn't have all of these choices before, and now suddenly I do. After purchasing the much needed items along with a couple of others, I found myself feeling pretty. This doesn't happen often. Most of the time I either hate the way I look or I am indifferent because it doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things. But today I felt pretty. I put on some make-up and a new shirt and met up with some of the other ladies in the church for pizza. But I really wanted to go out. I never want to go out, but today, I did. Unfortunately, the friend I was supposed to go out with tonight bailed on me. Oh well.
So now is the part where you all get to laugh at me and how completely ridiculous I am. You get to laugh at what I am about to confess because it is so wrong. Here goes: So when my friend called me and bailed, I decided to go to Barnes and Noble. I love books, and I like coffee beverages that don't taste like coffee, and since I felt pretty I hoped I might see some gentlemen who love books and like coffee beverages that don't taste like coffee. But wait-- It gets better. So I order my coffee and head out into the book store to browse. On the way out I pass a table with two guys sitting at a table doing their homework. I smile at them (this is not uncommon, I always smile at strangers) and find myself thinking in my head "look at me... look at me... come talk to me..." (this IS uncommon since I usually don't want people to look at me). If your still not laughing, it gets even better than this. After I go upstairs to look around, I look in the poetry section, then the Christian fiction section (I always get a good laugh out of some of the plots they come up with and the corny jacket passages) and when I got done there, I started to head over to the social sciences/current affairs sections when I notice that there is a guy about my age looking at poetry. So I go BACK to the poetry section even though I've already looked there. And in my head I'm thinking "Ask me what I like-- I'll tell you about my autographed Billy Collins books..." And then I realize that I've gone COMPLETELY mental and that it is time for me to go home. I go to the front to purchase my new journal for church notes and the guy cashing me out asks for my phone number to look up my rewards card. The psycho voice inside of me says "That's not all my phone number is good for--wink wink." And then I go home, thinking that I must be hormonal or something because as much as I hate being single sometimes, that psychotic inner dialogue is really not like me.
So now I am home, and I have decided that it is time for me to read a particular book again. It is called Living Whole Without a Better Half. I think I've blogged about it before, but I haven't actually read it for about 5 years. I bought it in 2003 when I was in the midst of the whole "met the guy I want to marry, too bad he doesn't feel the same way" drama and I went on a Christian singles book binge. I bought a ton of them and most of them were crap. They all talked about singles as though we are all raging with hormones and can't wait to hop in the sack and how important it is to not give in to those feelings. Um, DUH! Most of them addressed singles who are always dating and trying to figure out whether it's right or not. This was the only one I read that addressed the spiritual needs of a single person as they are in this moment. When I read it the first time, I made quite a few notes, and probably half of the pages in the book are folded over because of something noteworthy I found on the page. The book was so good that it provided the material for my one and only experience teaching a group.
The summer I graduated from UNR, some of the other college students I knew from Intervarsity Christian Fellowship decided that they didn't want Intervarsity to end for the summer. Yes, technically it did, but about 30 or so of us decided to get together and create our own similar meetings for the summer. There was worship and a teaching and then general hanging out. Somehow, I got roped into teaching about escaping emotional dependence. I'm not sure WHY anyone thought this was a good idea, but someone did, and I, being the people pleaser I was at the time, agreed to it. I suppose that in teaching about a subject, we always learn something ourselves, and that summer I learned quite a bit and managed to not hate being single, even if just for a few months.
My battle with this has always been two steps forward and one step back, but I know I depend a lot less on people to provide me with meaning in my life than I used to. I know that I have grown a lot, and that I still have a lot of growing to do. And I feel like right now I might be in the middle of that one step back because I have been so lonely lately. I want to stop that, before it turns into two steps back. So I'm going over all the things I learned last time, and I will also hopefully learn some new things.

Next Time: Lies about the single life.