20 Bad Dates

The beautiful flowers I got right before the breakup died overnight. They lasted 10 days. I’m not sure why I kept them. It hurt to look at them and continued to recreate the confusion I felt, but it felt karmic to keep them until they died.

Now I can throw them in the trash. Symbolically letting go, releasing the feeling of failure that always seems to come at the end of a relationship.

Fear of failure is not something new to me and I know I’m not alone in this fear.

My best friend was waylaid by an injury a few years back and was going stir crazy not being able to do many of her normal creative pursuits. I recommended a few things she could do and one of those was write poetry. She said she wasn’t any good at that, so I said then write bad poetry. She laughed but I told her I was serious. My birthday was coming up and that was what I wanted — a collection of bad poetry.

She had a great time writing them and some of them really were truly awful, but the laughter they produced was priceless. I still have the little booklet she made and grin every time I see it.

Yesterday a friend of mine told me about an experiment she did a few years back. She called it a “20 Bad Dates” experiment.

I admit I blew it off at first, but it’s been percolating in my brain and now I am intrigued. What if instead of fearing that I’ll never find my person, I intentionally go out and have bad dates? Knowing they’ll likely be a failure. Could I do that?

I still have some healing to do before I have to decide, but I think I might just try it. Some might be truly awful, but maybe there will be lots of laughter too.

Stay tuned and be well by friends.