Scattered thoughts in the night

Sometimes when it's late, you find yourself chasing thoughts in the dark. It's not an easy process folks. The little things scurry under the bed to join the dust mice & the cat hiding from something unpleasant. At least they are worried that it will be unpleasant. Like my Tabitha when she hears the vaccuum monster start. She's quite certain if she stays out in the light that she'll be swooped away & eaten by the monsterous machine. She won't be, but even now 13 years after the fact she is still certain that she is right & my assurances are wrong.

Goddess to have such faith in yourself, in your instincts. Unfortunately that is not the way of mankind. We do have doubts & when an instinct says we are unsafe we oft times freeze, like a doe in headlights.

I don't want to be frozen. But I surely do feel the light is on me right now. Not long ago I made the decision to try out several dating websites. It is an uncomfortable awkward process, but I screwed up my courage & took the plunge. For the most part it has been an easy enough process, answer some questions, write some essays & wait for names to drop from the sky (at least drop whenever the connection gods are kind). But then there are the hard ones. Like the gentleman who posted in answer to what he wanted in a woman "younger than me"... he put "don't care" pretty much for all other questions about the female to be his mate to be. Ahem, ok, so he wants someone young & breathing... no other filtering or qualifications. An essay just bound to make any woman feel like that special someone... then I looked more closely at his age & location.... ahem 74 & Anchorage.... sigh. I guess he really is that desparate... but with that qualifier it seems funny. Without that it just seems sad. But even sadder is the fact that I see a significant number of postings that are just that wide open.

How sad & empty a life must be to not have any idea at all of what one wants in a partner. Physical issues aren't big factors to me. But ethical issues & internal views have tremendous impact. One possible match told me how brave I must be because I filled out every essay. I was completely surprised, I responded that actually I was fairly shy. I figured answering the questions was my duty as part of the social contract here. We all joined because we were lonely, the least I could do was give potential friends a clear view as to who & what I am.

Then I found the sad/hard part. Someone attacked me out of the blue. Hurtful comments, telling me to go crawl under a rock where I belonged... Definitely not what I expected from someone on a maybe we should meet site. I always figured if you didn't want to meet someone all you did was not send them mail. I guess for this person that there are other positions on this to hold. Funnily enough it hurts, even now & it happened hours ago.

Why do people need to strike out at others? Why be hateful & hurtful? Does it really gain them anything? I guess I really am out of touch because I just don't get it.

There is a different man, one I've met in person just once, who is putting what feels like a huge amount of pressure on me. Based upon my statement that when I'm in a long term relationship again I'll insist on the same 30 minutes us time that I shared with my husband (before his death), this man has decided to call me a day later & demand 30 minutes on the phone. One meeting does not a long term relationship make. It feels presumptuous to me, as if he's invading my space. Then I got all tangled up in whether I'm being fair to him... but wait what about fair to me. When he called he wanted to know all about whom I'd talked to, whether I was still looking at the boards or responding to matches. When I answered honestly he started pushing, hard, about my responses to folks, very judgemental. I don't get where he comes off feeling that he has the perogative to tell me how to communicate or whom I can communicate with.

There has been email from men asking me to dominate them, have phone sex with them, and a surprising number who are just alone & lonely wanting to know how to go about meeting a woman. Has Aspbergers taken over the land?

I know that I'm lonely because I am both widowed & no longer working in the outside world. But to find so many with regular jobs who are so lonely as well saddens me. What are we coming to as a people that we walk blindly into the night baring our souls looking for some conversation & companionship. Have we forgotten how to be a community? When we left school did we disconnect from the human race?

The hostile person called me a loser.. funny while I have most definitely lost something huge from my life *I* myself don't feel like a loser. I'm just someone circumstantially alone, for now. How harsh and how cruel we can be to each other.

Well, I'm going to practice my boundary skills, exile the cruel one & trim the sails on the controlling one. I'm willing to be friends, with most folks and I am looking for someone special, I will use this new tool for enlarging my world. I won't be frightened away into the night or under the bed. I am older & wiser than my cat.