Red Flags

I have dated many red flags in my day. In fact, there are days where I wonder if there are anything but red flags. Am I a walking red flag? I know I have a complicated ex and I trust few, but I dissociate with red flag potential these days. Reality, I dissociate from men, period.

Don’t get me wrong. I have been asked out in the last year and I have been on a few dates, but I stop talking to them after I start to see a red flag. Only two have made it to a date. One I was ready to leave before the date began, the other was friend zoned and no zoned quickly. Maybe it is me. Maybe I am too particular or maybe I just am not interested.

My life is busy and not complicated for the first time in over a decade. The biggest complication I had up until 8 months ago was my ex trying to get back together with me even after I told him no repetitively. I am learning to enjoy not having chaos. The only chaos I have is at work when I have a busy day working with some amazing kids doing something I love or working on a Saturday night at a restaurant when a bunch of people walk in and the door revolves most of my shift to keep a full house. In the past, the calm would have seemed uncomfortable. A moment of peace before all hell broke loose. Now, the calm is a craving and the small bits of chaos with work are enjoyable. At the end of the day, I get to go home to my kids and we get to enjoy our night in a peaceful solitude.

When I think about talking to someone or dating someone, I think…. why would I want to disturb my peace? Why would I want to risk my kids’ and my safe haven? For the first time in my life I am unapologetically single and not needing a man. Truth is, I never needed a man. I just thought I did. I never loved myself enough and wanted to feel good based off the opinion of someone else. If a guy told me I was pretty and seemed extra sweet and just a tad bit ornery, I would give them a chance. Then when they broke my heart, I would question myself and what was wrong with me. I knew the answer, but I never listened to it. I didn’t love myself.

I never use to love myself. I looked for love because I didn’t love myself. It wasn’t until the last year that I began to understand, you can’t love someone else until you learn to love yourself. My friend makes fun of me because I don’t go on dates with anyone that I let try to talk to me. If I have an initial attraction to someone, I will give them a chance and talk to them a bit, but then after awhile, I distance myself and stop talking to them. If I see a red flag in our conversation, I stop talking to them. Why waste my time?

The only time I give to someone is the times where I am bored and missing my kids. The times when they are with their dad and I am at home worrying about them. Are they safe? Are they seeing something that they shouldn’t? Then on Sunday, when I get my blessings back, we are spending time together and I am enjoying life to the fullest.

During the times when I don’t have my kids and I am not working, I get bored. I may talk to a guy who has given me their number, but within a few weeks after I have been talking to them, I ghost them. They have red flags. They are showing signs of control issues or are possessive. They can’t spell to save their life and their conversations are mediocre at best. They don’t have their lives together. They live with a family member and have no financial stability. They are judgmental. They are a ladies man but in reality they want every girl and say that every girl wants them. A bunch of walking red flags. Those are the guys that I attract and the guys I ghost after a week or two when their true colors start to shine.

Men don’t get past a text message stage with me. Maybe I am too harsh, but I have standards and I am not willing to drop them for someone. I am not sure I want to give someone the time of day, period. Maybe that is why I keep myself busy all the time with working two jobs, working on my masters and going to my students’ sporting events all the time. Not to mention, my own kids’ events and activities. I keep myself busy so I don’t have down time and theoretically the time appears to fly by until I can see my littles again. The guys who have asked for my number have only lasted a short period of time in text communication because I don’t want to deal with them but rather am using them as a place holder to fill some time in my schedule when my best friend, Holly, is unavailable to binge watch tv shows.

I am not a total butt. I did once try to talk to a good ole’ guy who seemed nice. I even allowed him to hang out at my house outside and work on some stuff with me. I started to get physically sick. I told him I wasn’t feeling good because of the heat, but the reality was that I was having a panic attack. I didn’t realize it at the time, but later on when I had one in the therapists office, it was determined that those waves of sickness were silent panic attacks.

Back to the hang out session outside my house… when I started to feel sick, I went inside, laid on the cold wood floor after I had put cold water from the sink on my face. I even went and grabbed and ice pack out of the freezer, but nothing seemed to work. I laid in a dark room with my head and chest pounding like crazy and a horrible sickening feeling overtaking my body. I was shaky and uncomfortable. When the guy walked into my house, no knocking or anything, to check on me, I threw up in the toilet and stayed locked in the dark bathroom until he left. I had no control over my body and was miserable. After he left, I came out of the bathroom and went to lay on my bed where I slept for the rest of the day.

Physically being around a man in my own peaceful place is nerve racking. Dates are tedious. The idea of dating someone and ending up a prisoner in the relationship is horrifying. I don’t know if that will ever change, but I am okay with it either way. I am enjoying being me, having peace in simplicity, and not having someone disrupt that. Maybe I am the red flag.