“I’m proud of me, too, but to be honest, also slightly terrified.” Even badasses get scared sometimes. “It’s a lot of money.”
A ginormous mortgage. A hell of a lot more than my monthlyrent payment for the existing studio. Which I wasn’t even going to be able to get rid of right away, because I was keeping it open while I renovated the new space.
And I was going to have to hire teachers. I wasn’t certified to teach yoga or Pilates, so unlike in the early days of the dance studio, I couldn’t just teach everything myself. And beyond the cost of the reno, I had to buy scheduling software and expensive Pilates machines, and, and, and…
Granola with Gretchen—or whatever—was a whole other level.
I reminded myself that even badasses get scared, yes, but the key point about badasses is they don’t let their fear stop them from doing shit.
Enough introspection. “Let’s talk about something else.”
“OK, how’s Ethan?” Rory asked.
“Oh, Ethan’s history.” She was referring to my latest Tinder dude.
“Yeah?”
She wanted me to elaborate. She liked my stories from the trenches of dating. She wanted to live vicariously through me, I guess, which was funny because I wanted to live vicariously through her. It wasn’t that I necessarily wanted the perfect domestic package she had—adoring husband, awesome stepkid, bun in the oven, gorgeous house on Lake Minnetonka. But I guess I had wanted it, once upon a time. So it was interesting to watch it all unfold for her, after the two of us had spent so many years as the main characters in each other’s life stories.
“I do have a date tomorrow, though,” I said.
“Oh! Who?”
The last man. My last date ever. Because Midlife Crisis: Averted had two pillars. Pillar One was the new studio. Theempire expansion. Pillar Two was my retirement from dating. I wasn’t going to tell Rory about Pillar Two, though. She’d try to talk me out of it, give me the whole “hope springs eternal” speech. Nope, I was just going to quietly let that part of my life disappear.
After tomorrow.
“Just some guy who’s visiting the Twin Cities.” I shrugged. “He seems fun.” I wagged my eyebrows. “And hot.”
“Oooh, look at you. Getting some.”
Yes. Getting some. One more time.
One more time, I repeated to myself twenty-four hours later as I pulled into the parking ramp at LaSalle and Tenth. It was a gorgeous summer night, the perfect setting for my farewell to dating. And I’d picked a doozy this time. It was probably because I could see the end in sight. Why not go out with a bang?
Hopefully a literal bang. Ha.
Usually when I swiped right on men it was because I thought they had potential. And I don’t even mean I could see myself settling down with them for the long term. Just that they seemed like decent guys. They could spell, they didn’t display any overt signs of misogyny in their profiles, they were age appropriate. Boyfriend material, if you will. I’d long since let go of the whole marriage-and-kids thing. I wasn’t sure I’d ever wanted the kids part anyway. But I did want… a partner. I felt like a dork admitting that, given how much I’d constructed my sense of self around my independence and my low threshold for bullshit. But I don’t know, sometimes when I got home from a long day at the studio, I wanted someone to be there, someone who knew who Sansa’s mom was and understood what I meantwhen I flopped on the couch and said, “Sansa’s mom is objecting to the recital costumes.” And then maybe that someone would hand me a drink or even, I don’t know, rub my feet. Gah. It’s excruciating to cop to wanting that shit, but I do.
Did—past tense.
I’d been dating as long as I’d had the studio—longer—and no one had ever stuck, not for more than a couple months. I had no shorthand and no foot rubs. Apparently I was not a girlboss when it came to love.
I was so, so tired of dating. Way-deep-inside-my-soul exhausted. I was not the kind of person who took shit from anyone, least of all men, yet when I faced my midlife crisis head-on and took a good hard look at my life, I had to admit that I’d recently started… bending a little on the dating front. Giving the benefit of the doubt where it wasn’t warranted. Censoring what I said so as not to dent any fragile male egos. Sleeping with guys I wasn’t sure about yet to buy time until I knew for sure I wanted to cut bait.
The stupid part was that it didn’t even work. The past couple years in particular had featured so many mediocre men, followed by so much ghosting. I was utterly tired of the men of the internet.
Or forget the internet: I was tired of the men of theworld.
I had to face the fact that happily ever after wasn’t going to happen for me. And, more than that,tryingso hard and so continuously to make it happen was turning me into someone I didn’t recognize. I didn’t give false compliments. I didn’t laugh at jokes that weren’t funny. I didn’t get my undies in a bunch when a middling man ghosted me. None of this was me. I believed that. But I feared that if I continued along like I was, I might end up at a place where I didn’t.
Just as bad, dating was increasingly making me sad. I was, by nature, a glass-half-full person. Sometimes people called me bubbly. Which I kind of hated, but I got it. I taught dance to kids, and my hair was usually dyed some candy color or other. I was a bubbly badass, I guess. The point was the dating grind was just that—a grind. It was grinding me down. Sanding away my natural optimism. Which sort of felt like it was sanding awayme.
No more.
Well, one more: Scott. A dude in town for two nights for work. Not my usual type of match—not boyfriend material whatsoever.
So one last hurrah with Scott, and then it was going to be all Granola with Gretchen and embracing my forties solo. Midlife Crisis: Averted: Pillar Number Two—complete.
