Off The Market

I’m off the market.

I’ve officially deleted Hinge, again. And this time, I ain’t going back.

Gone are the days where occasionally handsome men send me a like and I play a God-like figure judging their profiles where I choose to match with them or not. No. I have leveled up. Met my match. And they require so much of me that I can no longer entertain the distractions.

‘Tis me. I have finally matched with myself and I know that what I require, a quick conversation on a dating app will not satisfy. I am working on intimacy with myself. Really knowing myself. And some of this stuff, ain’t pretty.

Like the fact that I have noticed my pattern with men. Damn. You ever get yourself so worked up to respond to something until you realize the answer was very simple and now you’re just there looking, mouth slightly agape at the simplicity of it all like...”oh”. That’s me. After getting worked up and looking at my own habits and what I’ve attracted in the past as a result like… oh.

And then came the crippling guilt. I dare open my mouth to speak about preferences when dating when not realizing that a lot of it is based on my upbringing and what I think I need. Then I damn the people! How dare they not be enough for me! How dare they not understand, be deep enough, be sweet enough and still be. The audacity of these men.

Whole time it's been my world and I’ve been choosing from trauma. I’ve made permanent life choices without healing. Healing. I get to do that now. It’s a brilliant thing. But it is painful to grapple with white meat like truths. Oh the guilt! To acknowledge that you have not been okay, and as a result have chosen people, and have acted in ways that were not okay. Some people don’t survive this guilt. They don’t come out on the other side okay. But I am. Okay.

We are spiritual beings having human experiences. We ain’t perfect. We act out of what we know. Sometimes what we know, ain’t it, it ain’t shit and may mess you up. So long as there’s breath, you can make it though. I chalk it up to at most I have life, at least I have life. I choose not to wallow for long. I have spent time feeling bad and going down the rabbit hole of my choices. What a dark place that was. And then stopping. Stopping to care and comfort myself. I did this with good smelling incense, water and the movie Step Brothers, which is a go to favorite. My loathing lasted for a night. For a night I was not okay with myself. Couldn’t even look in the mirror.

In the morning, I am always my most grateful. And the next morning was no different. I woke up grateful to have life. To hear my son’s feet walking to me (up way too early for no reason). But I was grateful. Not because there are realities far worse than mine, which I acknowledge. Some people think of being grateful in comparison to the worst of realities. It is my choice to focus on what is purely and explicitly my own world. There is much to be grateful for in that, with no comparison.

I was grateful to be and now, to know. That knowing is why I am off Hinge. Somebody’s son will get chosen out of trauma and be part of a cycle I am not interested in experiencing. Plus, I know someone who’s singularly way more interesting than the collective of men in my DM’s. But even in that, I am working carefully to not perpetuate that of which I now know.

If I knew better, I would have done better in the past. I did not, so I won’t guilt trip myself with yesterday’s mistakes. I know better now. And I am better for it. I am loving myself through it. And working on showing up more fully in my own life to break what I thought I needed. Turns out I didn’t need those types of people or need to do those things. It was always a choice. I just didn’t know I had them.

I am an honest person, filled with love and integrity. It is my favorite part of myself. That I choose what is right when wrong is so damn easy.

To ya’lls sons: You’re welcome. You have one less, not fully available person to scroll by. But since I saved ya’lls son’s, everyone can now feast their eyes on my dating profile pics! Ha! YOU’RE WELCOME BECAUSE I WAS SERVING IN THESE ONLINE DATING STREETS!

No mantras. Just reflections.

What do ya’ll do when you realize you have been on BS?