I am, as most people unconsciously are, trying to find someone. Someone to share life with and someone who wants to make out with me every so often. I’m more or less simplifying the situation here, but at the end of the day, I think it’s what I want. A girlfriend, a best friend of the female persuasion. But I have historically bad luck with potential partners.

I don’t know if I can necessarily chalk my romantic failures up to chance, poor decision making, or maybe both, but while it certainly makes me think that both are possible, I find a general consensus in regards to either perspective.

The first is that those who believe that fate or destiny or whatever plays a role in romance are “flighty” or “overly idealistic” or “my mom”. Maybe it’s just because my mother has some weird faith in my romantic possibilities, but I don’t factor any of it into my failures. I don’t really believe in any of it in the first place, and adding romance to anything this existentially confusing is bound to make you sound like someone who equates the existence of God to getting laid.

But the opposite isn’t much better. I get called out on “being too picky” a lot of the time when I complain that my romantic interests don’t return the feelings. But I’d like to point out that it’s not entirely my fault. I like the girls I like, and that’s about the extent of my understanding of it. I don’t know why my attraction falls to certain women and not to others. I really don’t.

I’m also surrounded by friends who don’t date, who have never been on dates, who are recently single, who are convinced they’ll never end up with anyone. Now I don’t know if I believe that either, seeing as I’m not out of my teens yet, but it’s awfully discouraging to keep falling for people who don’t feel the same way or barely register that you exist in the first place.

I write these articles about what’s bugging me, what’s weighing on my mind, for myself. Nobody reads these, and so I can essentially write whatever the hell I want. So, in the spirit of complete freedom of expression, I can confess. I can confess that I want to date. That I want to fall in love and break up four months later and have my heart and soul destroyed. I want the experience that I’m not given.