Dreamless Girl

The plan was for me to start dating when I went away to college.  I would have at least one friend to show me how.  I would be married by thirty and I would have at least three kids, so they wouldn't feel the loneliness I had growing up. (for some reason, I always pictured them as triplets or quads).  Obviously, this didn't happen.  I stayed at home for college, burdened by the reputation I felt I had gotten in high school.  I had no friends to teach me.  I also had a very strict four pm curfew, that I felt I shouldn't try to ask to be extended.  Frankly, I wasn't really attracted to anyone there.  Most of my female classmates were older and already married.  I also may have subconsciously not want any connections to a place I did not like, such as a future wife.  Who knows?  Since I failed at applying the graduate school and getting a "real" job, those were two more avenues closed.  Let's not forget the four years I spent mostly in exile at home.  I thought things would change once I opened my store, Booknotes, but it didn't.  I still was unsure about dating, especially since I had little time to figure it out.  Anyway, I wasn't making enough money to support a family and I couldn't figure out what I wanted as a real career.  After getting on social media, it hit me.  I am forty-five and I have wasted the best years of my life.  I had forgotten to even try to find someone.  Even if I started dating now, I would need to be with someone about ten years younger than me to start a family, if not up to twenty years younger, perhaps. I have always hated the fact that I always seem to be alone.  It is hard to explain.  It was never supposed to be this way.  I once thought that I would be dating in high school.  It was the summer before my junior year.  I had decided that I might finally ask some girls out.  I had been crushing on them since grade school, first grade even.  At least one of them, I was sure, knew what I may have been feeling.  I thought I knew that their old boyfriends had graduated or they otherwise had broken up; I couldn't really understand the complexities of relationships (still can't, really).  First week of school, maybe even first day, and I saw that they had new boyfriends.  One guy had just transferred to our school!   How could they even have met?  To add insult to injury, some of those guys would become my closest friends by senior year.  I never told them how they "broke my heart," until now if they read this. Some female friends tried to set me up with someone, but it never got further than discussion.  If only I had been more assertive and confident.  If only I had had more independence over the summer to be with people.  If only someone had been there to help me out.  Instead, I have become this passive wimp of a man with social skills rusty from years, no decades of disuse.  This is not who I think I am, but it is the way someone else might see me.  It is just not the way I see myself.  I don't think I am destined to be alone.