The Gout and the Beyond

Is it normal to just feel constantly irritated? I know the answer is no, so let's just say that's a rhetorical question. I honestly think I have the patience of a two year-old. I basically know what in my life is sort of broken, and I want to make it fixed, or be fixed, or just "fix it!"  P.S., the broken part is my confidence.

I have a weird elbow thing going on. I've come to believe that I get about one bizarre medical thing once a year or every other year. For the most part, they're pretty benign. Corneal abrasion, fine; Sinus surgery, fine; gall bladder surgery, fine; gout and/or an inexplicable staph infection, fine. However, with the latter, I cannot move my arm all the way, and my elbow freaking hurts. Oh, age, you little rapscallion, thank you for these little surprises.

I find dating or just the existence of being single and finding the need to date exhausting. I have become a huge weirdo when it comes to dating, and I don't know how that happened. I am not generally a huge weirdo. I am a unique and delightful snowflake with scores of disillusioned and dumped men in my past. Maybe this is karma? But, I super swear, I was always so nice. I don't feel this particular brand of confusion is fair.

I am so happy for my married friends with little ones who are deep within the throes of domesticity, I really am. That is not a snarky statement. However, I feel a little like they are all feeling sorry for me, poor Emily who found herself divorced past her prime. Probably no one thinks that, I don't know, but that's what I think they think, and the only reason I bring it up is because I feel so far removed from that married with kids being-ness, that either a. It's not the life for me, or b. I'm still too raw from divorce to fathom it. I don't know which is the correct answer.

I have such grand, theoretical plans for myself. I'm constantly inspired by the words of others, and I know that no matter what happens, I refuse to ever settle. I joke about being old and the like, but I'm not, I do well realize that, and I am not lying down to give up my life to work, which I do love, but little else. Hope springs eternal, and I am nothing without hope and beauty and the promise of the next day.

In a backwards Father's Day jab, I blame my dad for my romanticism. He told me, constantly, that when I met "the One," that I would know it, as he did with my mother. He told me so many other wonderfully brilliant things, that you would think I could let this one go. But, I feel like this was a biggie. I love you, Daddy, but maybe the pure wholesomeness of growing up in the 50s didn't properly prepare you for raising kids that would get married in the '00s and deal with things on a whole other level. I do forgive him, but I would pay almost anything for his advice right now.