Shift. in On loves.

It happened gradually and then all of the sudden.

“I’m trying to decide if I should buy more plastic surgery or freeze my eggs.” I play it off as a joke (“You’re such a weirdo,” he says to me.), but in that moment I realize that I’ve started to accept the idea that I may never have children.

I throw my old ideas about dating to the wind and spiral down in what some might argue is a self-destructive whirlwind of behavior. In laymen’s terms: I become a slut. In politically correct terms, I stop trying to find someone perfect (side note: when you stop looking for “perfect” and start looking for “someone I enjoy in this moment,” dating gets a hell of a lot more fun) and instead sleep with four men in two weeks. These aren’t one night stands, but rather third date sex in each case. It’s over the course of a couple months, but as I meet new ones, they start to overlap. I am still seeing all of them, but need to break it off with oldest, a 43-year-old divorcee who wants me to be his girlfriend. We’re at his house in Palo Alto. I’ve brought ice cream, two flavors, and we’re snuggled on the couch watching the premiere of the TV show his brother produces. I arrived 20 minutes in, so he’s catching me up: “They’re in purgatory and the devil is trying to destroy the world and there’s a magic key involved somehow.”

“Is it a reality show?” I ask.

“No,” he says.

“That was a joke,” I say, but what I really mean is, “I’m done.”

Months ago, nose in the air, mocking singsong voice, I said, “I only date in the Ivy League.” It was, I realize, a self-fulfilling prophecy. I’m stacking up degrees by association. Harvard, Dartmouth, Brown, UPenn, Cornell. Fit them each into a slot, pull them out in moments of waning confidence. I ought to have a shirt made. I dated someone who went to Harvard This is all a symptom of something bigger, I know, I know.

I feel depression building up behind my eyes. Compulsively use the app Secret to tell strangers things I think I ought to be telling my friends. Delete it when I realize are things I ought to be telling a therapist. Sit at work, in the parents’ room where I’ve been staying the night while they’re out of town. Look at the tangle of neckties hanging in the closet and wonder, not with sadness, but with dull curiosity.

It occurs to me that I’m not quite right. Depressed isn’t the right word, I don’t think. Tired, maybe. Not unhappy, exactly. I just always feel like I need a nap, need to sleep, can never sleep enough, am never actually awake. Am waiting for something that will never arrived, or, worse, already has.

Last updated September 26, 2014