One of the reasons it’s been so difficult for me to find dates is because I don’t have a very active social life (which is to say, I have no social life whatsoever to speak of.) I used to have a close knit group of friends that carried me through high school and beyond college for a while, but eventually we began to drift apart for various reasons, until one day I found myself living the life of a loner again.

I was never one for attending social gatherings though so I could maybe gain some new friends, mainly because there were, well, people there. And I hated people.

Ok, I wouldn’t go so far as to say I hated them, maybe that I just didn’t get along…no I hated them.

Unfortunately, if I was ever gonna meet girls then I was gonna have to go where people were, sooner or later. With a mindset like this, it’s a small wonder why I was always holding out hope that I would meet someone at my job instead. After all, I’m forced to be here, and there were people here too, soooo….

For the longest time I used to entertain fantasies of meeting the girl of my dreams at work, so much that it started taking on a life of its own. I even nailed down what she would look like too: deeply tanned skin, big brown eyes, and luscious brown hair. She would be as sweet as an angel, maybe assigned somewhere close to me so we’d run into each other on a regular basis. Things would be strictly platonic at first, but before I knew it she would eventually warm up to me… and love would blossom out of nothing at all.

Out of nothing at allllll….. Out of nothing at… *ahem* but anyways, that’s how I imagined it. From that we would eventually become engaged, get married, and live happily ever after. Oh how I prayed and begged God that this would all happen for real. My fantasies here were so vivid that I could have weaved a cheap romance novel out of it. Probably could have made some cash from selling it too.

I had been churning over this latest fantasy of mine for a few months, when something weird happened: we got a new coworker assigned near us who had… deeply tanned skin, big brown eyes, and luscious brown hair. I swear you couldn’t make this stuff up. Our department doesn’t attract a lot of young workers to begin with, so just getting another coworker around my age would have been odd unto itself. She was a year older than me, but single and beautiful, and had a mellow, pleasant personality about her. In her previous job she worked with kids who suffered from various disabilities too. It was perfect! My dream was actually coming to life!

Except she hated me.

Well, she didn’t really hate me. She just had no interest in me whatsoever. I tried everything I could think of to woo her too, all in the futile hope that eventually, sooner or later, she would warm up to me in very much the same way her alter ego did in my fantasies. I kept her company when things got quiet during our late shifts. I helped her out whenever she needed to learn something about the job. I helped her find her keys when she had lost them and was freaking out over it, and at her request I burned dozens of her CDs into MP3s so she could use an MP3 player she bought for the gym (even though she didn’t have a computer). I changed my hairstyles, clothing, and yes, I’m ashamed to admit it, during my low points I even tried using TAG body spray (I’m suing those bastards for false advertising by the way.)

Yet despite all my efforts, when it came to asking her out to lunch, or even just coffee, she had no interest at all. The more she blew me off, the more I pined for her love. After a couple of months of this I eventually gave up. I decided I would continue being a nice guy as always, but I resigned myself to the fact that she would never be interested in me. I was just a pathetic loser who could never be good enough for her. My fantasy was not to be.

And that might have been the end of it, except that shortly afterwards she fell madly in love with another coworker, and within a few months they were engaged to be married.

My fantasies were coming to life after all… but for somebody else. Honestly, mere words could not convey the state of my emotions as I watched some little bastard boy enjoy what I previously could only experience in my dreams. Every day I had to come in to work and see those two nuzzling noses or holding hands at a picnic table (just as I envisioned it), and it was all I could do to keep myself from screaming at the top of my lungs and stepping on the gas at a nearby red light hoping an 18 wheeler would plow into me.

The best though was when the wedding itself was soon coming up, and she asked me if I had any suggestions for wedding songs she could use. I ended up making a CD of what I considered to be my most favorite love songs, songs I probably would have picked for my own wedding too. From what I heard my CD turned out to be a big hit, though I wouldn’t know, since I wasn’t invited.

I’m not one for bitterness though, so here’s a toast to their new life together. May their imminent divorce be appallingly messy and violently ugly.

No seriously, I do hope they’ll be happy together, I guess. I don’t begrudge anyone getting married, but for the love of kindness, did it really have to F*&%ING play out EXACTLY like I imagined it???

When I saw that, I guess I went through something of a system shock. My feelings went numb and I succumbed to a state of deep depression. In a way, I had given up on life. I no longer took care of myself, no longer went out as much as I used to. My clothes would get worn and start showing holes, but I didn’t care. I started suffering from health problems, but still I didn’t care. It wasn’t uncommon for me to sleep for 12-15 hours a night, and even then I just had no energy to get out of bed at all. I used to be punctual and on time for work, but I became so lethargic that if I ended up being only 10 minutes late, it was a miracle. It was becoming a regular tradition for me to hit the supermarket the night before my days off from work, stock up on groceries and DVDs from Redbox, then head home and hole up in my bedroom with my tub of popcorn, TV and laptop, where I would stay unmoved in my jammies until it was time to go back to work again.

I became utterly convinced that God hated me. After all, He wasn’t going to simply ignore my prayers here. Nope, He was going to twist and twist and twist the knife in so deep that it would all but ensure my psyche would never recover from this. It was almost like He recorded my fantasies and decided to orchestrate it in real life so that someone else would become the beneficiary of it, right before my very eyes. I mean really, what were the odds of something like that happening, down to even using the same collection of songs I dreamed would be used at my own wedding? (Which I say at the risk of sounding like a weenie girlie boy.) About a billion to one??

Why? Why did I have to endure that? Why did God have to hurt me like this? I know I can be a wiseass and all who deserves to get smacked around every now and then, but this was bafflingly cruel. It’s part of why I’m so slow to get out of bed every day, because I absolutely dread what new punishment He might have in store for me. My pathetic life must be a source of constant amusement for Him.

But… and before you Christian dweebs start berating me here, let me be quick to note that I don’t really believe this now. I know there’s a purpose to everything, and I’ve seen enough to know that for whatever reason God is keeping me safe from a lot of the evil that’s in this world. I guess that goes to show what a foregone conclusion I must be, that in spite of the complete embarrassment I experienced, I still believe God cares for me and has only my best interests in mind. Maybe it’s Stockholm syndrome?

Still, this one really got to me in a bad way, and even now I’m still nursing the wounds. Just when I think I’ve put it behind me, every now and then somebody will stick a finger in the wound, like when I run into her and she talks about her “husband” (just hearing her say that makes me cringe.) Ironically enough, the most recent jab came from my mother, of all places. My Mom never knew I had a thing for this girl, even though she met her a few times at work. One time we had a conversation afterwards and Mom said, “She is SUCH a sweetheart, Linc! How come you can’t meet somebody nice like her? She would have been PERFECT for you!!”

Poor Mom. She had no idea why I ran out after hearing that and started ripping and chewing on the grass on the front lawn.

Ah well. I guess the only thing that will make the pain go away for good is when I finally do meet someone for real. It’s hard to imagine even after all that how I could still retain hope that somehow, somewhere, she’s out there waiting for me, but I do. I guess I’ll always be a romantic at heart, no matter how loopy I get.

I still fantasize about meeting her though. But trust me, I have learned my lesson. Now I imagine meeting her in scenarios that are so outlandish that they cannot POSSIBLY happen to me in real life, much less to anyone else. Currently I fantasize about meeting her as part of an undercover operation I’m doing for the CIA. Oh, and I have superpowers. And the girl of my dreams is an alien from another planet who gets captured by the U.S. government. We fall in love and I spring her loose, then steal the USS Enterprise starship and together we make our way to the Alpha Centauri system, where we spend many steamy, romantic evenings on the paradise planet of Gimmegoomajamjam.

Let’s see y’all beeotches try to turn THAT one into reality, yo!