I blame you. Source
*August 13, 2017: (very brief) AUTHOR’S NOTE AT THE END*
Hey.
So, I’m back.
I’m not going to talk about where I’ve been. Mostly because it involves TMI about my uterus and the fact that I write an awful lot of fan fiction.
What I do want to talk about is the fact that last night, the season two finale of “The Mindy Project” aired. It was wonderful. I laughed. Out loud. I also cried. Quite a bit. There was screaming. The good kind. I love the show and wish very much that my life mimicked it somehow.
I mean, I wish that about a lot of media. I’m an intelligent only child; like, 75% of my life has been spent daydreaming and inserting myself into television, film, and book plots. And half the time, I’m not even the star. I’m the wacky, foul-mouthed side-kick with a heart of gold. That’s usually because in these dreams of mine I’m too busy with a successful pop/soul/R&B career to commit to being the star and head writer of a hit sitcom.
It has recently dawned on me that in my elaborate fantasies, I am Justin Timberlake. Well, I have Justin Timberlake’s career. Unlike him, I’ve embraced my curls and I can’t see myself settling for Jessica Biel.
Anyway, with all the daydreaming and fantasizing that I do, you’d think that I’d realize that sitcoms and movies and novels are just that: someone else’s daydreams and fantasies brought to life. In other words, these aren’t stories to measure one’s life against. They aren’t even real.
So why do I feel so horrible to have made it to almost 35 years of age without ever having been told “I love you” in a romantic context?
If all that stuff is fake; if it’s just a bunch of made up stories, it shouldn’t really bother me so much that I haven’t had that particular experience. I mean, I love the “Lord of the Rings” and “The Hobbit” franchise. I don’t curl up in my recliner and weep inconsolably after the midnight viewings because a gang of dwarfs still hasn’t shown up unannounced at my door to recruit me to be their robber so they can take back their mountain kingdom from an evil dragon. That’s just as made up as a sitcom about a chubby, almost 35 year-old, dark-skinned, Indian-American OBGYN living and searching for love in NYC.
The answer is obvious; one is based on some version of a totally plausible reality, and the other is the stuff of legend and religious allegory and maybe a metaphor for World War II (I don’t know; I haven’t read the books yet, okay?).
No one is expecting me to go off on an adventure with Gandalf and Thorin Oakenshield (He’s been mentioned twice on a single black woman’s blog. That’s got to be a record or something. And that was probably racist? Eh.). But people do wonder why I don’t date. And by people I mean me. I’m even wondering if I could at this point. It’s been almost fifteen years since I’ve been in what I thought was any sort of committed relationship or had sex. At this point, I’d be less surprised if Bilbo Baggins invited me over for Elevenses than if I was involved in a sexual relationship with a man.
And that’s not normal.
I don’t know what to do to change this. I’m in therapy. I’ve been in and out (but mostly in) therapy for the last fifteen years. I’ve gone on dates with two men, the last time around the summer of 2011? 2012? And they were both terrible. Pretty sure they felt the same way about me, but we all thought “Well, he/she went to college, and is a sentient being, and I don’t know. This is what people do, right?” That’s it.
There’s nothing normal about any of that.
From what I’ve gleaned from my mass consumption of media involving interpersonal relationships, one either dates around unsuccessfully until finding the one that was always there all along or finds the one at just the right moment or some shit; or is tragically knocked up or widowed and walls their heart off to protect against any future heartbreak, but they’ve got the tragic story or the dumb kid, so there’s that. Or there are the lucky ones, who find someone and it works out and they go along on the suggested path of mortgages and wedding registries and baby showers and date nights and blah blah blah.
There are no stories about weird freaks who got maybe a little bit raped in college and then got fat and then woke up and realized they were 34 and infertile and crying hysterically because Mindy Kaling and Chris Messina just have so much chemistry and overhear some girl – hardly even 21, for fuck’s sake – refer to 35 as being “kinda way up there” and said that a different 35 year-old woman needed to “hurry up and get on the boy thing” while you think to yourself “I wouldn’t even know how and every time I’ve tried the guys have literally run away in the other direction” and you wonder what the hell is wrong with you if every form of media featuring people your age shows them either married with kids or in some weird friend-group-living situation or dating all the time and you don’t have anything, nothing and you can’t even have a one-night-stand because you don’t know how and even if you did what about AIDS and sexual assault and your gross body?
But you’ll always have your – hopefully quirky? – knack for stream-of-consciousness run on sentences on your semi-abandoned blog, right?
I don’t even know what the hell I’m trying to say anymore. It’s almost 5:00am. I’m almost 35. There is something terribly, terribly wrong with me. Please don’t tell me that there isn’t. The number one wrong thing is that I am not Mindy Kaling, for starters.
I mean, look, I’m at the point where I’m thisclose to consulting an astrologist? Astrologer? I don’t fucking know. And this sort of wacky, desperate bullshit would make for wonderful prime-time sitcom television, but the depression and self-loathing and blackness and fatness and fact that men find me absolutely disgusting makes it super hard to pitch my “story”.
Shit, I don’t even want to watch it and I’m the showrunner.
*Aug. 13, 2017: For Very Important Reasons, I stopped watching the show, and being a fan of Mindy’s, about two years ago. I was going to take this post down, but re-reading it provides me with a sense of bittersweet nostalgia which almost drowns out the embarrassment.
I Can See Why She's Single. 
Well. It could be worse, you could be almost 38 🙂 I watched that episode yesterday, I liked it, too. I do have to say that this particular episode is the first time I’ve thought they had actual chemistry. Prior to that I couldn’t stomach their relationship, didn’t seem believable. I like the show a lot, but ever since the uproar about her White only dating choices and her kind of simple response, I have to confess I haven’t been as obsessed. But, to each his own, and who am I to judge another person on how they got where they are, even if I am unbearably curious as to why. Anyhow, Ambrosia. I won’t tell you your reality is not real. I just want to tell you that I hear you. And I continue to love to read your writing 🙂 Take care.
How about just turning Thirty and never have had a boyfriend. I’ve never had a boo thang in my entire life. Oh, well there once was this time in preschool, I had one boyfriend. This white kid with a snotty nose and big bifocal glasses. Once we kissed. Somehow the snot from his nose dripped into my mouth. That’s another story for another day. I’ve always been overweight, tall and awkward. You’d think the lord would bless me with charisma since he punished me with big bird’s body. No, I’m just as weird on the inside, as I look on the outside. However, I’ve started losing weight. Thus far I’ve been successful. I’ve enrolled in graduated school. I’m in the process of getting a new apartment. All I know is, if you don’t like something in your life, change it up. Several months ago I was working a shitty job, no money, very fat and living with my mom, yes my mom. Now, I’ve lost 50 pounds, I’m in graduate school, I have money because of a student lone ( Sadly, I have to pay that shit back ), and I’m closer to finding a new place to live. Not great, but better than where I was back in December. Sometimes I get really sad, because I feel like I’ve just slept my life away. I woke up one day and I was fat 30 and living with my mom. But things don’t have to stay that way. I say keep looking for a date. Be more aggressive. There is someone for everyone, if you want them. This girl in my class who is about 300 pounds, no personality and bad skin was just talking about her half native american boyfriend the other day. I was like, what the fuck?!!! You have a man?!! See, someone for everyone.
Don’t even get me started on how I stalk the facebook pages of the people I went to College with. There is this one woman who I couldn’t stand in College. She is married, has a cute husband, new baby and nice home. However, I know that I can have those things to. All I have to do is make it happen.
Oh and please do a fan fiction with Michael B. Jordan.
I fucking love you. I really do. I stumbled across your blog, read it back to front, laughed a lot and cried a lot also. Mostly, I just want to say: please don’t stop writing, because my life is better with your words in it (is that selfish? I feel like it is. Please always do whatever makes you happiest and ignore internet strangers and their wishes, but yeah, I like reading your blog).
I would also watch your show, just sayin’