I am not Aphrodite.

Broken Heart picture from here. Enjoy.

Despite having slept for only an hour and a half last night (it’s a long story), I strangely am full of energy today. I think it’s being all hyped up on caffeine and adrenaline. I had a paper due at 0730 this morning, and because I have far too much drama going on in my life right now, I was distracted yesterday evening when I was trying to work on it. Plus I left my car parked in a lot that we are allowed to use on the weekends, but that by 0630 Monday mornings must be moved back to another lot, which happens to be a 20 minute walk away. So. In an effort to motivate myself for a morning run, I left my car parked in the weekend-lot. Thus, around midnight when I’m finally looking at the essay prompt, I was none too thrilled. An hour and a half later, I had finished reading the article I was supposed to critique and had written an introductory sentence. A SENTENCE.
It gets better.

By 0200, I had some notes, two sentences, and a bunch of quotes I planned on using, and was beyond unproductive. So I set *three* separate alarms for 0400 and began to get ready for bed. My roommates, meanwhile, had long since retired. My plan was to get up, make some coffee, finish my paper, then go move my car and run back. My running buddy had also left her car in the weekend lot, so we had agreed to meet there by 0530 to drive up together and, if I wasn’t too tired, run for a good half an hour, which would leave us enough time to shower before breakfast. And--for once--my morning went entirely according to plan. I finished my essay right at 0520, tied my key to my left shoe, and took off for the weekend lot. We ended up taking a detour on the run back for some extra distance since we were strangely moving really quickly this morning. I think it was just the adrenaline from the run and leftover from the weekend, plus all the caffeine from the half liter of French vanilla soy-milk latte I had chugged an hour earlier, but we maintained about an 8-min pace. Normally my runs are about 9-9:30 min pace, depending on the terrain and distance. Albeit this morning’s run was relatively flat and on easy footing (roads), but 8-min is still a little fast for me, even if it’s just 30 minutes…and it becomes especially fast when we were yacking the entire time (naturally, gossiping about my drama) like the fantabulous future-spinsters we are.

But yeah. It was a good weekend, and a good morning, and I was thrilled to see something actually go according to plan. Normally what happens is I sleep through all three of my alarms, wake up panicked an hour too late, and then am scrambling around to make it to formation two minutes late, get yelled at by our company commander (his being one of my best friends this year makes no difference), and then just being exhausted all day. I managed to not only get my essay turned in on time, my car moved to the proper lot, stay awake in all my classes, finish another sketch of a mural in my company’s day room, play a good game of Frisbee, and *pretty sure* pass my exam, but also to come to a shocking conclusion about what to do with all my drama.

As I do not want my blog to turn into a diary, I will not be discussing my drama per se, but I do feel the need to rant a little and throw my two cents to the wind. I’ll begin by admitting that I’m having some problems with a handful of young men who, despite seeming entirely otherwise, are just like all the other young men who say one thing, do another, and then decide that no matter how awesome someone is, it’s just not worth a relationship. Everything is just fun, right? Nothing serious? In my mother’s words, “Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free elsewhere?” I’m beginning to wonder if the only genuinely good men left in the world are the ones I’m related to, and that thought scares me. For starters, incest is just gross, and secondly…we don’t live in West Virginia anyway (pardon my bad joke).

I know that true love exists. I grew up with it; just seeing my parents interact every day affirmed that people really do have soul mates, and that sometimes, it really does work out and fairy tale endings are possible. Maybe they did me a disservice by being so obviously in love, always, under all circumstances, because they made it look too easy. However, I refuse to settle for less than the best. I want to find my perfect match, just like my parents did. Just like my aunt and uncle did. Just like my cousin and her soon-to-be husband did. I want that, and no matter what anyone tells me, I refuse to settle for less, and I don’t think it’s unrealistic or selfish or even naive. How can it be? I saw it literally every day growing up, and it’s still blatantly evident every time I go home to visit my family. Love. Is. Real.

But love is not what I’m looking for right now.

When men say they don’t want anything serious, they mean that they just want to hook up, party, have fun, and then pretend nothing ever happened when the buzz wears off. However, when I think of something serious, I hear lots of big scary words like “marriage” and “children,” not necessarily just any relationship or commitment at all. And that’s where I think the disconnect lies. I don’t want to even consider marriage until I’m closer to 30 than 20, and kids aren’t going to register on my radar until I’m out of the Army…and since I currently intend to stay career, that may be a big fat never, or maybe when I’m retired at 38 I can adopt. Nevertheless, when I say that I’m not looking for anything serious, that doesn’t mean I just want to kiss and forget. It means that I’m not looking for a relationship, but I won’t pass one up if it comes my way. I’m not looking for the right guy, but if he comes along I won’t tell him to scram. I’m not expecting anything big, and I certainly don’t want a ring and bells and to be brought flowers every day, but I wouldn’t mind having someone to hold consistently. It’s nice to have someone around who knows who you are, what you’re all about, what you like. I don’t understand my generation of men’s aversion to all things that smell of an actual relationship, rather than just a one-night-stand. It doesn’t have to be anything big and scary, but it doesn’t have to be meaningless either. I don’t want to fall in love--that would be terribly inconvenient right now--but I’m not going to dig up the roots of the flower before it has a chance to bloom.

The Amazon is in my soul. It's my life, full of my career, my goals, my hobbies and MY destiny...but I'll admit it's kinda lonely, now and then, being a rock.

And that, dear readers, is my rant. Now I must return to the important things in my life right now, like the four remaining exams this week, the two research papers, the three murals I still have to finish, and at some point I need to visit my little brother. I’ve been a bad sister lately and haven’t seen him in a few weeks…and he lives literally just a 7 minute walk away.