I can't get over the fear that I'm going to be all alone forever. In my house hidden behind a wall of creepy looking trees, with my 5 cats, living my librarian life. (I think I've decided to take a year or so off and then go get my master's in library science. We'll see how long that resolution lasts.) I don't know why, but loneliness is the greatest fear of my entire life. I think the greatest thing about dating D is that I knew I always had someone I could come home to. Whenever we were both home, we spent all of our free time together. I always had weekend plans. We planned for things months in the future expecting that they would happen, that we would still be together to do them. (Although that didn't turn out so well by the end--now I have all these dates in my head when I no longer have anything planned. Example: President's Day Weekend: going to Disneyland. Oops.)

Now I have no plans. I graduate April 27 and 28. I'm still going to Southern California over President's Day Weekend, but going with your roommates, no matter how cool they are (and they are pretty dang cool), is not the same thing as going with your boyfriend and your roommates. I've been feeling great this entire week. I've felt like I could do anything, like my life would be great no matter what happens. And then today, I realized that I really just wanted a boy to cuddle up with. I want to fall asleep with my boyfriend on the couch. I want another kiss as great as our first one was, on a pier on Utah Lake. I want to meet the family of the man that I'm actually going to marry, the man I actually love, not the man that I sort-of want to marry and have convinced myself that I love. I think it was real while it lasted, but it's hard to judge the reality of the love I was feeling when I broke up with him 10 days after we first said the l-word. I think that was the problem with D: everything throughout our relationship happened so darned fast that it's hard for me to separate the really great times from the really awful, gut-wrenchingly depressing times. And there were both. D was the best boyfriend I've ever had, but he was also the worst I've ever had. It's not like I've ever had more than 2 BFs, but the thing with Josh was that I didn't feel any extremes of emotion toward him. I liked him. I thought he was cute. I liked spending time with him. But I never completely surrendered to the relationship with him, never made it the most important thing in my life. It's hard to do that when 1) you're only dating for 3 weeks, and 2) he's not that into you as a person, only as a person with really kissable lips that you think is hot.

Why is that? Why do I never seem to get with the guys who fall in love with my mind first? It's not like I'm that hot. I'm 15 pounds overweight and am whiter than anyone I know. Even D, who said that he was attracted to my personality, was more attracted to this Audrey-idea, this construct of me that he created. I wasn't the person he thought he had fallen for--there's a lot more to me that what I show to acquaintances (which is what D and I were when he first fell for me). Why can't I be with people who get to know the real me and then fall in love with that, then think I'm beautiful afterward? The real me, not the idea of me that they have in their heads. Yeah, I think physical attraction is immensely important. But, at least for me, it comes way more strongly after I've gotten to know a person than when I see them passing on the street. Why am I unlovable?

I guess that's what I've been trying to get at. Why don't I date more? Why can't I be one of the 10 percent of girls who date 90 percent of the guys at BYU? Why do I have to belong to the majority of girls, who feel lucky if they go on a date a semester? The BYU dating scene really sucks for most women I know (and in my calling, I've gotten to know a lot of women). Most of the girls I know just want to go on casual dates a lot, and get to know people better. The reason that girls analyze things to the extent that they do is that most girls don't go on a lot of dates. Of course you're going to analyze the ones you go on--how else can you ever maintain a hope of ever getting married? If we dated more people each date would be less pressured.