Dare I Fall in Love with My Future?

You know how that Billie Eilish song goes? “I’m in love…with my future”? God, am I feeling that, every lyric of it. And not because I’ve been giving it a listen recently (in fact I haven’t played it in months). No, it’s because I’ve been ruminating on my own path in life.

More than ever before, I’m decided that I must have my California beach baby on my own. Oh, if I can find my dream girl before the process is signed, sealed, and delivered, I’d certainly rather have the storybook romance, the passionate marriage, the adoring wife and mother with a baby in her arms…but I have no such person in my life. Can I afford to wait for the day when I find her? Can I afford to take the risk that I’ll never find her?

Honestly…no. You know what really cements this course in my mind? The startling truth that of all the types of people out there my own experience in life and my own mentality has by far the most in common with escort girls and single mothers by choice. I always knew even as a child that I had little in common with the white-picket-fence nuclear family types, but even the most out-there and niche conventional families don’t tend to be nearly as good a match for me as the escorts and choice moms. That’s an ominous sign.

Another ominous sign? When I try to picture the process of being in a relationship, of parenting children as a team where compromise is required, and of even putting myself out there and getting dates…it’s like the whole idea in my mind is shrouded in some sort of fog, and what little I can apprehend of the path ahead is fraught with danger. The vision in my mind just doesn’t seem to me like something I could actually do. It’s like there’s some kind of psychological block within me. My conscious mind can rattle off every step, every aspect, but my intuition seems to believe it’s an impossibility.

By contrast, when I try to picture the process of hiring myself an escort girl and going on a date with her, it’s like the whole idea in my mind is pictured with complete clarity; no anxiety, no apprehension, no obscuration intimating danger, no psychological block…I rattle off every step, every aspect, and it’s like my intuition actually believes I can do it! I can picture myself actually doing it. The process just doesn’t intimidate me, even though I have in mind to spend a four-digit sum and go on an airplane overseas to a city, a country, and a continent I’ve never even visited before to do it. I’ve never been more than a hundred miles away from the United States border, yet somehow it feels easier than the process of finding, establishing, and managing a relationship with an amateur at home!

When I try to picture the process of having a child on my own and raising her solo, again, it’s like the whole idea in my mind is pictured with complete clarity; I can wrap my mind around the doing of it in a way where it feels consciously and unconsciously like it’s something I could actually accomplish for myself, that it’s possible. Somehow what is often thought to be the hardest thing in the world you could possibly do with your life — creating a test-tube baby and parenting it entirely solo — seems easier and more realistic for me than getting a date like a normal person does.

Which is especially bizarre, considering I actually have been on dates! I’ve even had something resembling a relationship. I would seem to have the skills to make it work, and even enough experience to know I could. I’ve noticed a pattern in my life that what other people deem hard comes more easily to me than what other people deem easy, but I doubt that’s it.

Rather, I suspect it’s because hiring an escort and solo parenting a child are both straightforward processes you can accomplish on your own. You don’t have to wait around for anyone else or their feelings; you certainly don’t have to chase down people and woo them like it’s your second job just for them to maybe give you a chance. I’ve always had a hard time trusting people, perhaps because the few times I have brought myself to place my trust in anyone else it’s usually been misplaced and they’ve disappointed or betrayed me in some crucial way.

Maybe I’m just not the relationship type; certainly the idea of compromising what I want in my or my children’s life is entirely unappealing. But I do so yearn in my heart for the storybook romance, the passion of marriage to the love of your life. I suspect I would only be truly happy with someone who’s about perfect for me, someone I’m madly attracted to, deeply in love with, and wouldn’t need to compromise with, because we’d be on the same page from the start.

That’s a high standard; perhaps an unrealistic one. So be it. I know what I need, I know what I want, and frankly I’d rather just do everything by myself than build a life with someone who’s anything less than what I’ve always dreamed of. In her absence, I must act alone, to get the sexual experience I want, start the family that I want, all by the ages that I want, as much as I can.

Everyone I talk to says that my time hasn’t come yet, that my life has barely even begun, and that when I move to the beach of Southern California and travel to Europe I’ll be able to make a lot of friends and go on a lot more dates with people I’ll actually be attracted to and have a lot in common with. Perhaps. But for people like I identify with, by the time they reach my age, 29 going on 30, and haven’t come remotely close to finding their special someone, most often they continue to strike out through their thirties…and their forties, and even beyond.

Of course you can always get lucky, and even make your own luck by moving yourself to settings where your sort of person would be most likely to be, putting yourself out there, and keeping an eye out for her. I certainly don’t intend to give up. Even if it’s many years until I can have my first passionate romance, I wouldn’t necessarily consider myself a failure; it’s just that I need those life experiences while I’m still young. Dream girl can wait; those cannot.

Whenever I decide in my mind that I’m going to go through with all of it, my anxieties wane, replaced with comfort, fulfillment, the satisfaction of knowing that I’m doing the right thing.

And in the final analysis, that’s all I need. To hell with the white-picket-fence families; I never fit in with them anyway. It’s high time I stopped waiting around for someone else’s dream, someone else’s future, and started living my own, my own dream, my own…future.