Quack Quack, Motherfucker

(title is an homage to The Bloggess)

I've been chatting here and there with my ex-husband a bit more frequently lately, and while it's never anything of any real importance, it's kind of nice. First of all, it's a good feeling to know we've somehow managed to regain a semblance of friendship after everything we went through together. And second, it's a reminder to me that once upon a time, a long long time ago, in a galaxy far far away (please don't sue me, Mr. Lucas), someone loved me. Someone thought I was worth the risk and the effort and that I had something real and valuable to offer him.

The downside to thinking that is that it's made me think about my current state in life. In the almost-decade since our divorce, I can count on one hand the number of men outside of my family who have said "I love you." Hell, I can count on two fingers - one was ridiculously drunk and possibly concussed at the time, and the other listened to AM talk radio and believed in chem trails (if you don't know what those are, oh please do Google them).

I feel like a duck surrounded by swans* (kind of a reverse Ugly Duckling story). You may think I get treated like a duck because I believe I'm a duck - it's a chicken & egg (okay, duck & egg) question. But I think of myself as a swan most of the time. When I start seeing someone new, I believe I'm a swan. I believe that we're good together, that this could work, that I'm worthwhile to him and he can see that. Even the guys who say they aren't ready for a relationship yada yada yada - stupidly, foolishly, I believe that he will see my worth and somehow, my patience and kindness will gradually heal his broken heart and he will realize that I was so wonderful to him and I am so right for him. FAIRY TALES.

Yeah, yeah, I know it's stupid. I'd tell anyone else to run. But that's how earnestly I start out believing I'm a swan.

Then I realize: he thinks of me as a duck. I'm being treated like a goddamn duck. What the hell? I want to yell, "I'M A FUCKING SWAN, YOU DICK!" but I'm pretty sure that's neither patient nor kind. Also, it's kind of psycho. But I'm weirdly soft and squishy and full of feeeeeeeeeelings on the inside, despite how I may present myself to most people, and so I get all hurt (or butt-hurt, as we used to say in middle school). I don't WANT to be a goddamn duck.

When I was younger, I would then take that hurt and rage and go find someone else to be nice to me for a minute... and treat him like a llama**. Asshole move on my part, I realized, and now I take great pains to avoid doing that. It feels like shit to make someone else feel like shit, plus I still feel like shit from before, and that's a lot of shit when you add it up (shit x shit + shit = SHIT). I don't know about you, but I kind of dislike feeling like shit.

I can tell you first-hand from my experience over the last few years exactly what it feels like to be treated like a worthless, secret sexual release, of whom the other party is ashamed. It's not pleasant, as you may have gathered, and it's super frustrating to have it happen to me over and over. When I muse out loud that perhaps I will be alone for the rest of my life, I'm not saying it in a self-pitying way or to elicit comforting. I'm saying it as a real probability for my future. Maybe I only think I'm a swan... I mean, if I keep getting treated like a duck, time and again, isn't it perfectly reasonable and even expected for me to start believing that maybe I really am a duck?

Which again leads us to the duck & egg question. Did someone make me feel that way once a long time ago, and now somehow without realizing it, I'm projecting that image to everyone else? No matter how much I think I'm projecting and showing that I'm a swan? If in almost 10 years the only two men who have decided I am worth risking their hearts are a drunken possibly-concussed man (who changed his mind once he was sober) and a guy who believes completely that Jesus was an alien (and the 10 Commandments were carved by a laser from a spaceship), then it's only natural a girl's gonna start to question what sort of bird she might really be...

No, you know what? Fuck that. I'm a goddamn swan, mofos.

*Swans mate for life, or at least for a long-ass time. Ducks, on the other hand, just want to fuck every girl they can and run.

**Ummm... because llamas are nice to you and then spit on you? I'm not totally sure. This analogy is FALLING APART. Just go with it.