Internet, love!

I am doing an Experiment. I am Experimenting with my non-existent love life, trying to make it... existent. I suppose. I suppose that is the ultimate goal in online dating. I am somewhat embarrassed to admit I have created a profile on a site that deals with such matters. Under pressure and at first unwillingly, but I did get excited about it whilst writing my profile but that was only because I could write about myself. That always makes me very excited; when writing, I can try and fool people thinking I'm Cool, which I am obviously not in reality - goodness gracious, I just wrote 'cool' with capital C. Nonetheless: filling out a profile questionnaire, what more could a girl want?

Well, apart from boyfriend, of course. If you're single, there's a reason you're single, and this current society we live in seems to think the reason is something other than your own decision. If you're single, it means that perhaps there is something wrong with you when you haven't been able to get someone to agree to regurlarly exchange saliva with you. (In the case of many a gentlemen on the site in question, the reason most likely is absolutely appalling grammar.) Coupling up with a suitable fellow being seems to me quite a natural thing to do, socially and from an evolutionary perspective. I get that, yes. It is what we do, an instict over which we have no control. Nine months or so of counselling have taught me that we are, in the end, very emotional creatures and despite pretending to be logical and rational, we are anything but. It's very fundamentally human to wish to have some love, back scratches, and a Netflix mate.

What baffles me in this game of boyfriending and girlfriending is the strange, complicated social rules that determine how it is done. As a side note, let us not even talk about the highly public demonstrations of love, both online and out in the wildnerness of asphalt, concrete, and stone. It makes sense to have these online dating things, as you can do nearly everything else on the Internet as well, so why not look for a cherished one as well? I can't say it would not be strange, though, with my flatmate's words are echoing in my head: "What happened to meeting people through mutual friends? Or in bars? Or bookshops?"

It is not the fact that it is happening online but rather that you are actually, actively, doing it. And it's weird as fuck, for reasons I cannot fully explain but may have to do with my personal insecurities and such. I am not just used to being so open about that sort of thing. Yet, there I am, my profile is available for anyone to look, judge, despise, favourite, or wink.

That's the creepy part, the part that makes me grimace, lift my shoulders to my ears, and vomit verbally. Winks? Favourites? They're not even favouriting my clever puns or witty remarks like they might on Twitter, but just me. Me. They are evaluating how attractive I am as a potential date and then announce it by favouriting or winking. Naturally, they can also message me, which is a lot less creepy. You're straight-forwardly appoaching someone you're interested in, like you would in real life, whereas favourites and winks just seems like you're watching someone from a distance and thinking all sorts of nasty things you'd do with them, probably involving whips and fedoras. I am convinced those are the sorts of guys who wear fedoras, complain about friend-zone, bitch about girls being sluts and going for the douchebags while trying to assert they are "nice guys."

Right, of course you are, you misogynistic, self-centered twats.

All this leaves me confused. Fine, confusion is my default state but this time my it has a clear direction. I will sketch some questions that arise regarding this whole business of online dating, and they are as follows:

1. Does online dating really work?
2. Do normal people meet other normal people there?
3. Or would it be safer to go to bars and bookshops, despite the fact it means entering the Outside World?

The nature of online dating is very forced; it's like going shopping and trying out different tops until you find the one that fits. But, in the end, are you absolutely certain you need the top? Most likely you already have very nice clothes at home. Perhaps not the type of top you thought you wanted, but you can look perfectly nice in your old clothes as well. On the other hand, it is nice to liven up things a little. Change is good and refreshing. Buying new clothes just to entertain yourself is not very environmentally convient, so I will try and make my way out of this rather clumsy metaphor.

So your life might be perfectly alright as it is. Mine is, at least, or-you-know-sort-of-is, and I am rather doubtful that a boyfriend would actually make it better. Yes, it would be a new aspect, but new aspects in one's life can be acquired by other means as well. I may be quite simple in this matter, but for me, sometimes reading a new book can be enough for a good while. Of course, the book would need to be fantastic, but the excitement you get from a really great book, especially if you share it with someone (recent experience: reading Waiting for Godot out loud with my flatmate while wearing suitable hats, she Didi, I Gogo) and reading is far less complicated than trying to have an actual, interactional relationship with another human being.

I am tempted to go back to my old habits, perhaps with added going out where there's people. I mean, that's why we go out and get drunk. To have fun and to meet someone who is likewise funny and cute and likes Doctor Who and then in the morning awkwardly exchange numbers knowing you'll never hear from one another again. Ah, the life!

The Middle

Sometimes it's half an hour past midnight on a barely Wednesday and you should be going to bed but there is still tea left in your cup and your mind wanders. It leaves the room, scrutinises the sitting room for a while – nothing to see there either – and then ruthlessly, with permission of only its own, takes the keys and walks out the door. The November night is clear but chilly, crisp, nearly crunchy, like the leaves on the footpath. It's quiet and only artificially light: it hardly ever gets truly dark in the city.

Countryside, on the other hand, is different. One time during my few days of au pairing, I was walking back home in the dark. It was November then as well, I think. The family lived outside a small town and although modern development had delighted the residents of the somewhat rural outskirts of the town with an asphalt road, it had not (yet) brought street lights to that country road that was and still is, I presume, going through fields and forests and fields. I suppose that could be called metaphorically and literally one of my darkest days.

There are small burns in my hands, two or three, careless use of the oven, and the polish on my finger nails has started to come off in irregularly shaped bits. I care too little to do anything about that.

I have read some Donna Haraway and sociolinguistics today. I have read about the outrage to do with that one scientist's slightly tacky shirt (had we not better focusing on the actual causes for women's oppression, marginalisation, and objectification rather than on an individual shirt?) and the controversy around Lena Dunham's autobiography (had we not better criticising, should we want to do so, Lena Dunham for what she does or writes rather than for what she is – amongst other things, a woman, that is?) and I don't feel much like anything.

Continuous existence. Tomorrow tomorrow tomorrow, tomorrow's tomorrow and so on.

On nights like these when you don't sleep even though you should, when you're actually resisting sleep, things start manipulating themselves. They distort, they lose their usual measurements. I don't want to go to sleep because I know I need to get up and the day will not be different from any other.

You are the one making the change. If you are not happy with something, change it. Change your attitude. Read a self-help book and/or find Jesus and/or have a baby.

Sometimes you do not want to let go of the nothingness. It's become a feeble equivalent for familiarity. Familiar = good, safe, secure, keep holding on. There might be a drop or two of self-pity but that's also just as familiar and nearly undistinguishable from the overall feeling. Certainly it's constituting for that, so it is. But it's not all and there's more and it's more complicated than that. I want to think I'm stopping the time even if for a very brief moment, even though according to my vague understanding of timey-wimey things that is largely based on pseudo-scientific articles on the Internet, that would mean that we would somehow die or stop existing or so.

Well, I can fairly confidently say that I would like to exist indeed, but I would like to enjoy a moment of not getting anxious over college, stressed about money, guilty of being a bad friend and poor daughter. It's in front of others I define myself but sometimes I just wish I didn't need to do that. That I could just be without explanations, obligations, responsilibities. No expectations, no failures.

Nothingness, mere nothingness; there is everything in nothingness.