.

I have a cocktail, a cigarette and candlelight. I have my cat purring next to me. I have Dinah and Billie and Nina. I have a gentle August breeze whispering through my balcony. Yet...

At the age of twenty-four, it has come to my attention that the tough, no one-can-hurt-me shield I've been carrying since the first time I loved has not been protecting me at all. By denying men the opportunity to love me I have, in effect, also denied them the opportunity to love me. No, that is a mistake to say, for I am certain that I have been loved and deeply so throughout the years, despite my fierce objections. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that I have denied myself the opportunity to love. Surely it is not healthy to dream about love, not when I am the obstacle. Yet...

I am open to meeting someone. Honestly. What seems to come so naturally to others though, to meet someone that sets off fireworks in their chest, is something that rarely comes my way. Damn me for wanting it all or nothing at all. Sometimes I wish I could bring myself to settle. There are so many lovely men out there, all my male friends included, but they don't make me zing.

It irks me to feel like such a Bridget cliche. These thoughts and feelings I've been having are exactly the sort that I've shunned, even ridiculed in the past. Now I am a cliche in itself. The unttainable, head-strong, unattainable, feminist party girl who justs wants to someone to kiss her forehead.

I am still of the opinion that I don't need a man, it's just that I'd like someone to take the reins for a while. I'm a prickly woman and I'm tired of having to deal with my own tantrums and neuroses.

This is all so foolish. I know what this boils down to. I'm tired of moving around and refusing to hold on to one address or one job. I want to start succeeding. I just don't know how. I have a lot of thinking to do. No, no more thinking. I have a lot of deciding to do. And even more doing.