Kvetch in the City - Men. Oh. Pause.

While I’d like to go off on a kvetch about mask wearing or lack there of in the middle of a pandemic and the way I’m being triggered ever other minute by non-wearing maskers, I think I’ll pivot and go off to a land far, far away…

When was the last time I went on an actual date? It almost sounds absurd to make this kind of brain leap from mask wearing to dating…yet, here I am.

A reminder to my savvy readers, and that means you…this whole column started from my complaining about my love life, or lack thereof. So, it seems somewhat reasonable, in this time where hate seems too prevalent and life so fragile, who wouldn’t want to think about love.

I recall a time in my life when dating was fun. While there was always an element of anxiety attached to the prospect of an upcoming date, in the overall consensus, dating was fun. I think I noticed the big change of fun dating to just about done dating when I hit my mid fifties. All of a sudden finding myself a woman of a certain age (precisely, a woman past menopause) I began to wonder, did menopause actually mean, Men. Oh. Pause.

I began to have this visceral feeling creeping in, like I was disappearing. Unnoticed. I realized it was going to take a lot of money, time at the gym and time at the hair salon to keep the affects of aging at bay. My physical self was doing it’s natural aging thing and showing it. And the more I aged, the less I felt noticed. Noticed by the opposite sex specifically, who apparently are visual creatures.

Forgetting about men for a moment, I’ve always been a bit vain, loved fashion, and unfortunately have also wanted to be at least ten pounds lighter at any given point in my life. I say unfortunately because looking back, it seems like such a waste of time and energy to put so much emphasis on a few pounds. Still, that has always been who I am, regardless of whether a man noticed me or not. At the end of the day, I must say, I’ve always appreciated a compliment about my appearance.

As a single older woman I still succumbed to this societal pressure to somehow make myself look younger and sexy while stuffing my muffin top into tight skinny jeans that made me look anything but skinny or youthful.

Suffice it to say…the long haul of this deadly pandemic has certainly pushed my obsessive vanity along with the possibility of dating to the side. Could this be higher power’s way of cleaning the emissions in the air and my dating life for good? Was this a reset of immense spiritual proportions to finally get a handle on what really mattered? On a global scale it certainly seemed so. On a personal scale…I’d rather be wrinkled, alive and ten pounds heavier then six feet under. Was this once and for all, the ultimate sign to stop, let it go, stop the kvetch? Stop the endless search and trust that somehow, if love was meant to be, it would find me?

So many questions…so many big world worries to hold at bay, so much to ponder, as I grab my mask (who needs botox when you can wear a mask?!), content for now, to be by myself, heading off to Trader Joe's.