Dear Men

I never thought I would be alone for this long and yet I still have no one to share my night's or even my days. Someone to call for the good or the bad. Someone to dream with or plan with. My poor grocer watches me pick out a solo 6 ounce piece of fish and an ear of corn, two to three night's out of the week. A sad testament to the single girl's nightly dilemma of what to eat. And Ive got to admit that I'm pretty darn lonely.
I try really hard to pretend that I am happy, that this is the Hollywood dream it is supposed to be. But even if it means putting up with socks on the floor or the toilet seat up, I miss you men. I miss getting to be the girl. Being scared if the power goes out or of spiders creeping up the walls. I'm a single mother and an Emergency Room physician and there's not very much room for vulnerability in either of those positions. But God Damn I am tired of holding the world up on my shoulders.
I met you men every where. I'm great in groups but never seem quite able to make the transition from girl in the crowd to girl in your arms. You seem to sense the damage and pain from across the room and we never get much farther then you buying me a drink. Truth be told, I was never the girl who was going to go home from the bar with you. I'm just not built that way. I deal with women all the time who would never drink House vodka at a club but seem to go home with the House men all the time. Not me, I just can't seem to let go enough. I don't know you, which means I don't trust you and so the ending seems pretty inevitable doesn't it. I have finally let go off being able to kiss a man, but as for the rest of the game, I'm still not there.
I don't try to be a delicate girl. I hate being that girl so much I almost choke on the thought. That girl. The one who can't seem to completely relax, the one who tenses up when she is touched. That girl, the one who doesn't need to tell you she's been hurt because it's written all over her soul. That girl. You know exactly who I'm talking about. That girl. At some point I became her and she became me and I don't know how to separate the two.
I hate that I tense up when you wrap your arm around my waist. I freeze when you try to massage my shoulders. As one man said recently "you would enjoy it if you just let me love you" I have no doubt I would and as soon as I find the strength to , maybe I'll give you a call. But right now I can't. And I'm lonely and it hurts so much to be here and not to be with you men. I've learned how to put together furniture, and haggle with the car repairman. To learn the things through trial and error that seem to come so easily to you. But I don't want this job on top of all the others. I want to be held, to be vulnerable, to be the girl. And to let you be the big strong man once in a while. And if I knew how to say all that at the bar, at the club, even when were texting on the phone, maybe I wouldn't be so and feel so alone.
So Dear Men, I am broken and I am Damaged. But I promise you there was once a good women here. A loving woman. A trusting woman. And I don't think I can find her without your help. So I'm sorry I'm difficult, and suspicious, and probably a whole lot harder to be with then that girl dancing with her hand on the floor and her ass in the air. I'm the one the one in the corner, alone. And I'm know I much more work then you wanted to take on, but I wish you would try. I wish you could believe in me more than I'm able to believe in myself. I wish you could see me as more that that girl, and just see me as a girl. A girl who wants to meet a man. And get to know him first. And get to trust him. And maybe pick up two serving's of fish tonight for dinner, instead of one....