Checking Out

So I'm at my local public library to return my most recent items (researching ironwork design for tattoo ideas), when a cute boy with no ring on his left hand catches my eye (the stealth with which I can detect a band amazes me). My nerdy self thinks: library?! How freakin' wholesome and lovely would that dating story be.

I can't see what he was checking out (literally) without obviously & intrusively craning my neck. So the obvious conversation starter was out. What the heck do I say? How's the weather?! Don't online book reservations and automatic checkout stations really take away the personal relationship we used to have with our librarians? Do you have trouble remembering your PIN? My six year old nephew knows his whole 13-digit library number by heart! Somehow I don't think that would be it. I need to check out a book with pick-up lines for real people...

Is lack of conversation topics just an excuse to superglue my lips shut? Was I not feeling up to the risk at that moment? Or just not needing to force anything that doesn't happen spontaneously?

The baby/family urge has been quelled for the moment (perhaps satisfied vicariously through pregnant friends) and activities in my life are in full swing so I usually welcome being home alone (rather than the empty no-one-to-go-home-to feeling that sometimes takes over). Could being more connected to my family through my housing situation be filling some of that hole?

A friend who was breaking up with a boyfriend once told me, "I'll just need to find other ways to get my emotional needs met." Which kind of blew my mind at the time. Is it possible to get all that feeling of connection and belonging from friendship and family? Isn't there something unique and irreplaceable about romantic love that we need? Am I looking for everything in a man when so much of what I need is right in front of me?

It could be possible that I use the excuse of not having a romantic relationship to check out of relationship all together. Certainly safer that way; no way to get hurt. I thought I had shed that defense way back in The Dark Years. But my connection with other people seems to be up, and the loneliness I have been attributing to the lack of a man is down. Maybe I still have been pinning it all on Him. Interesting...