Forever Alone | Chapter 4: Signs & Synchronicity (Part 3)
In which I question the existence of God, flirt aggressively with a boy dressed as Jesus, get stalked by Sting, and develop remarkably witch-like powers.
I published Forever Alone: One Introverted Millennial’s Half-Agonizing, Half-Hopeful Journey Through Singledom in 2021 as a 7-part podcast miniseries. I’m re-publishing it here on Substack for the first time in written form! Start reading from the beginning here.
To be fair, plenty happened, but not meeting my person. Match triggered me at every turn—A guy would message me who I wasn’t interested in, and I would have a complete spiral about whether or not to message him back. Maybe I was judging him?? Maybe If I just got to know him better? But I didn’t want to get to know any of them better. What I wanted was for someone to message me who was so clearly right for me that I wouldn’t have to overthink or doubt at all. I wanted someone who would slice right through my fear and disbelief and instantly leave me with no question that this was it. But that never happened.
At one point, I even got off Match and then, about a year later, got back on Match, this time with Kristen as my “online dating secretary,” as I affectionately dubbed her. I allowed her to do the filtering for me, so that I didn’t have to see every loser and awful message I got. She’d just show me the most compelling people. But that ended, too, after I had a meltdown on her. She showed me a guy who she thought was a 9, and who I thought was AT BEST a 6. I told her she clearly didn’t know what she was doing, and didn’t know me like she thought she did, and I promptly quit the whole thing.
I was bruised and deeply disappointed. I thought the Universe had had a reason for telling me to get online! I didn’t expect to just be put through the emotional ringer, only to not get anything good out of it … except what, growth and some lessons?? Give me a break.
The same cycle of high hopes followed quickly by major disappointment repeated itself multiple times with guys in real life, too. One afternoon at Heidi’s she told me, “Look out for a guy with reddish hair.” That afternoon, I got a voicemail from the owner of a roofing company who my and Kristen’s landlord had contracted to come work on our townhouse. He had a hot voice, and I immediately pulled up his website. He was a young, very good-looking dude with reddish hair named Josh.
The day Josh came over to check out the house, I strategized. I put on a cute outfit, did my hair and makeup, and when I opened the door I could tell he was very pleasantly surprised to find me there. After he looked at the roof I casually handed him my business card, with my phone number written on it. To my delight he texted me minutes after he drove away, and immediately proved to be very flirtatious and quick witted. I was SO excited—OK, this must be it!! Sure, I hadn’t thought I’d end up with someone three years younger than me, but how crazy is it that Heidi said to look out for a guy with reddish hair, and then he popped up hours later?!
Except after 24 hours of texting with Josh, it became very clear that he wasn’t interested in a girlfriend. A hookup, for sure. But since I didn’t want something casual, I told him thanks but no thanks. Another bummer that I couldn’t understand.
A few months later I was out to lunch with Kristen and my friend Stacy for her birthday, when a dude sat down at the table directly across from us, perfectly in my line of vision. He was tall, fair, had dark hair, and was wearing a t-shirt that had NAVY emblazoned across the front. He looked like he could BE the guy from my Thanksgiving vision the year before!
I nudged Stacy and Kristen, and they both went wide-eyed. I sat there flustered, unsure of what to do. What does one do in a situation like that? Walk up to his table, interrupt his conversation, and say, “Excuse me, I think I had a vision of you once?” Instead, as he and his friend got up to leave, I hurriedly scribbled my name and phone number on receipt and handed it to Stacy, who chased him through the restaurant and, in her naturally friendly and disarming style, tapped him on the shoulder and told him that he’d caught the eye of her friend over there, and passed him the slip of paper. The dude’s friend laughed out loud and said, “Oh, your friend has good taste. Jake here is a winner.” Jake himself, according to Stacy, didn’t say too much. He was probably taken aback after being accosted by a random woman passing him a note, like we were in middle school.
But still, we’d done it! And for the next hour I stared at my phone, waiting for Jake to formally introduce himself. As the hours ticked by, my heart and stomach sank. If Jake was really my person, he’d have texted right away. Fate wouldn’t keep me waiting like that.
Two years after that, a friend asked if she could set me up with her brother-in-law. She said she just had an intuitive feeling it was a good idea. Plus, there was at least one potential connection between this guy and the signs I’d been getting. I love and trust this friend implicitly, and know her gut is solid, so even though I was really nervous—I mean, I didn’t even know what the guy looked like—I said yes, go ahead and give him my number … and then he never reached out. For what it’s worth, my friend was peeved. She assured me she’d never have attempted a set-up if she thought there was a chance he’d bail—she was surprised; that kind of behavior wasn’t like him!
So, what was I doing wrong?? Did I have some sort of crazy intense forcefield that repels men out of my orbit and into the farthest reaches of the galaxy?? I’d been getting all these signs and I’d had the courage and audacity to act on them, but nothing was happening. Time and again, for years, despite countless signs big and small, nothing happened. Had I misinterpreted? Read it all wrong? I couldn’t doubt the existence of something bigger than myself at that point … but I could doubt myself. Maybe there was something wrong with me that was making it impossible for all the signs to turn into something more.
Maybe I wasn’t bold enough. Maybe I needed to do something BIG. Maybe the Universe was just waiting for me to up my ante. So, on the eve of my thirtieth birthday I took a trip to Europe with Kristen and my mom. Kristen and I spent 5 days in Vienna with my brother and his wife, and then we met my mom in Scotland for another 5 days.
Yes, Scotland. The place of Johnstones and Gilchrists and blue, green, and yellow tartans. If the Universe wanted me to marry a Scottish man, it seemed sensible to go to the one place where I’d have a decent chance of meeting one. That story is next time, on Forever Alone.
This was Chapter 4: Part 3 of Forever Alone. Read on for Chapter 5: Part 1!