Turning Bitter...

It's been awhile...

'Nuff said about that...I have begun to realize in these early stages of elderlyhood that I have the most able capacity to be bitter in my old age. I don't mean the funky bitterness of being old and being severely dissed about it happening anyway, despite all the partying, wearing clothes that don't fit and keeping up to date with socially awkward or retarded media.  I mean the quite focused bitterness of being lonely and without mate through most of your adult life. I'd always imagined the Wicked Witch of the West was a widow, Snow White's step-mother was a widow, as was Cinderella's.  They were all wickedly bitter women, squashing the life out of young people everywhere, especially if they seemed to be trying to fall in love.  I feel that tendency coming on.  I feel my brows knot, my shoulders hunch, and my nails grow as I grab the air in a dastardly way whenever one of my young friends giggle-texts to me: "I'm in love."

Not that I'm against love.  I think it is a wonderful thing actually.  It's like watching to sun set over the Grand Canyon or it rain on Ayer's Rock in Australia.  When it hits close to home - and it does when it's one of my contemporaries - I feel the need to destroy something, like I missed out on going to the Olympics because I waited a month too long to apply.  And then there's that nasty divorce in my past.

I was talking to a friend tonight that compared a woman being sad at her girlfriend's wedding to being upset about a friend buying the same kind of car you wanted. I tried to explain that it wasn't jealousy that I felt but a bad taste in my mouth from a similar experience.  "If I'd had a previous car accident in the car that you wanted and lost 2 arms and leg, then I can't say I'd be too happy watching you buy the same car I was mauled in." I explained.  That's how I feel about weddings.  Yes, it's supposed to be a happy day and for the most part it is. But as my dear sister put it to me before I was married, "All these people are smiling in your face so you don't run.  You're about to make the biggest mistake of your life. That man is going to turn crazy and make you want to die." I'm sure that's how everyone who has ever been married has felt at one time or another.  Not to say for those with 30+ years in that is wasn't worth it.  I'm sure it was.  But who WANTS to go through that? Worth it or not?

I'm not complaining about love.  I'm not complaining about becoming bitter.  I'm trying to embrace it.  After all, where would all the fairy tales be if there wasn't a Wicked, Step-Something to be ill about the happiness therein?