Recently I was puttering around the kitchen, minding my own business, juggling a colander full of eel strips and thinking about how "eely" is overused in crossword puzzles and is it even a word anyway, and if it is a word could it also be applied to the smell of something, since what was in the colander had a very distinct odor, and is it supposed to smell like that, and...suddenly out of nowhere came this thought: hey, I've always assumed that I would fall in love and get married and have kids. And that might not actually happen.
Thinking back on it, I bet it was the crossword puzzle thought that took me from eels to relationships, since the one time I've been in love, one activity my boyfriend and I enjoyed doing together was the New York Times crossword puzzle. Since that time I've rarely done crosswords. Anyway, the strange thing about the "wow, I might not ever get married and have kids" thought was that it only hit me for about 10 seconds, and then my reaction was "Bummer. OK, well, I guess I should adjust my expectations."
Not that I'm against love--I think it's cute and warm and fuzzy when two of my friends are being all kissy, and when Tina said, several weeks back, "Dr. B. is getting married!" my first thought was "Yay! I'm so happy for him!" but I'm wondering whether I should be worried that I love being around people who are in love, without feeling jealous or sad or panicky or...whatever.
Now it looks like I'll have 7 weeks to figure it out with my friends, because a girlfriend has bamboozled me (how does she do that???) into being in a book group discussing a book named "Calling in 'The One'" that is supposed to prepare you to meet your soul mate by doing journaling and changing your life and so forth. I am valiantly trying to keep an open mind about it, but I've already read the whole book and my first thought was "what I really need to be happier right now is 1-2 more hours of sleep a night, and how is meeting my soul mate going to accomplish that?" Being in a relationship has always decreased the amount of sleep I get, and post-MS I really feel it. Because how do I date the kind of person I want to date (i.e. not a couch potato) without getting exhausted? Hrmph.