ON EDGE

You’d think after all these years being single and striking out, I’d be completely disheartened. I should be grumpier than Donald Trump. I should have taken to cooking with butter...gobs of it. Should be alternating between a gray and a black sweats ensemble. I should have five cats, two closets full of jigsaw puzzles and an online alter ego account to challenge myself to marathon Scrabble sessions.

Sometimes I come close. I do like a good jigsaw puzzle. I even have one with cats.

But despite the string of bad and boring first (and last) dates, that schoolgirl rush of anticipation still surfaces on occasion. I have hope. Not always, of course. Rejections and dead ends do take their toll, even on someone as foolishly naive as I am at the core. I can wallow with the best (worst) of them. Let’s just put that all aside again.

I have a date tomorrow. I didn’t want to blog about it. Maybe that jinxes things. Maybe I’m trivializing these encounters, whittling them down to one-sided online entries in an effort to fortify Team Woe Is Me. But writing is my outlet. And I’m so jittery right now I have to let my thoughts out. (My Scrabble partner is currently offline.)

Hope springs eternal. Thank god the expression has some truth! I eyed Clive’s profile a couple of weeks ago. He included many photos, each one revealing a truly handsome man. Parts of his message attracted me as well. Some of it also came off as Too Much Information, but then I can be too reserved. I was interested.

Later that evening, he sent a message. Three words. (Not everyone shares my propensity to ramble.) “Hey there, handsome.” Was he interested?

I truly hate the online messaging. It is rare that I ever get any sense of the person behind the pics. Oh, but let me repeat, Clive has some damn good pics. So ruggedly handsome. Such piercing blue eyes. And what a lovely name. Please, let him be a good man. Let there finally be mutual interest.

Yes, I don’t have much more to go on. Each time I receive a message as we work out the details on where to meet tomorrow, I feel a flutter of excitement. I curse the fact I still have to wait twenty-four whole hours.

All the eagerness could be zapped away within a split second of face-to-face contact tomorrow. That’s familiar territory. For now, however, I shall relish my inner schoolgirl and cling to the possibility that something good awaits.

It’s a wondrous feeling!