I am feeling the "popular guy" syndrome. Everyone knows me, everyone likes me. If you asked anyone who I am, everyone has seen me around. Yet I go home at the end of the day and my phone does not ring. I enter my house and nobody is home. I pick up the phone to talk to somebody but there is nobody to call. I try to cry, but no tears come. I am a loner, and I am a prisoner within the elite world I have built and I am its only inhabitant.
I lie in wait for the day that someone will decide that they want to date me, forcing myself to metaphorically sit on my hands when really what I would like to do is tear down the walls, break down the system and find a woman on my own. This whole passivity approach where a person lets another person set them up does not work when as a result of the system, you are not meeting people. Yet what do you do when the system has a monopoly over the kind of women you would want to date? Readers, I hate you for thinking I have a choice and that I can just go online to some dating site or that I can find a girl in a bar or at some event where the girl would be of the caliber of someone who loves Judaism and follows it without the grumbles and without their own interpretations as to what laws they will decide to follow and what laws they do not believe in. Can't you understand that I want someone who lives with the system, from within the system as their framework?
"Why then the contradiction within some of your own lack of observances and all the complaining?" you ask. The difference is that when for example I was in Israel and I went to the beach with women present in a place that is not modest, I didn't say that I didn't believe in the laws which prohibit a man from going to a place that has unclothed women and vice versa. Instead, I thought to myself what a piece of dirt I was that I wasn't strong enough to do the right thing when the men’s' beach was just down the road. And during those few times that I neglect prayer, I never deny the validity of the rules and its application to me; rather, I get upset at myself how weak I am that I won't take the half hour out of my uneventful life to do something so simple for G-d that would likely also benefit me too. The answer to why this happens is the same reason why I often don't go to the gym when I love the swimming, the hot tub, and the feeling of exercise -- I simply do not feel like doing it at that particular moment.
But it is unfair for you to think that it is my choice to live a single life. It was my choice to live a religious life. It was my choice to try to live a pious existence and to abstain from sex and fucking and dating and clubbing. It was my choice to shut off the TV and to stop seeing the movies and to stop shaking women's hands and to stop hugging and touching, even if it was for the sole sake of interpersonal touch. (Do you know I got a scholarship in college because I wrote a paper on the therapeutic benefits of people touching and hugging each other?)
These were all my choices because they are the moral fibers for the religious life I want to lead. How much of a puss-filled infected pimple would I be if I considered touching a woman even on the shoulder when I know that my wife-to-be has likely never done that with a man? How disgusting would I be if I dated women and fooled around with them when I knew that my wife-to-be might be waiting for marriage as I am?
If the answer in your head is "but you're human" you might as well say "but you're a pleasure-seeking animal like me" because there is something irresponsible about a person who hedonistically indulges in every fantasy. [Maybe that is just my indoctrination talking because if you asked me, logically it seems wrong to hold one's self back from pleasure-seeking. Even those pious people are guilty of looking for a good job, a good wife, many kids and the luxuries and pleasures that derive from having those things. And true asceticism is stupid because it takes you away from the physical world where the true power to bring down spirituality lies.]
Plus, people did not make themselves available to me as readily as others think they do. "But you're a handsome man" they would say, "You can get any girl". I used to think "tell that to the girls". All members of this under culture who have sex with each other and who screw around and take sexual boons and favors from their peers fully eluded my temptations because they never made themselves available to me. Even here at law school -- I see everyone hooking up with everyone. I was warned in Rabbinical College from the other students who previously graduated from law school that when I go to law school, everyone will be having sex with each other and the temptations to join them will be very great. But whatever I do, I shouldn't give in to those temptations because they will corrupt me. Well, from what I am told from people who are engaging in that hedonistic lifestyle, that is the way it is. When I asked why I didn’t see it before I was told about it, they tell me that because I am religious, I have been below the radar. Should I thank G-d for giving me this painful blessing in disguise? Or should I curse him out for putting me in a position where I must abstain from my temptations – my favorite sin -- all day, every day.
So I am below the radar, and I have my piousness to thank for that. That doesn't make the sadness any less when I have nobody's hand to hold and nobody to hug or to hold. Wait it out, the religious world says -- in good time, you will find your match -- "soon by you" they all say.
Yesterday I danced my heart out at a friend's engagement party. "Soon by you" everyone told me. That's also what people told me at my close friend's wedding. Yet I look around and soon does not feel so soon. My heart aches each minute of the day from my loneliness, and from this downward cycle I can not pull myself out of from for more than a few hours at a time. I look around at how everyone is with someone, whether it be a wife, a husband, a date, a girlfriend or a friend with benefits. Even those with troublesome partners still have some kind of void filled. My void aches and screams out to the world with such agony and pain that no one-time experience will cure the pain. My pain wouldn't even be healed if I gave in and found someone in a bar or even multiple people to do the most immoral things with. What I am missing is the companionship and the feelings of knowing there is someone thinking of me and me of her that go along with a meaningful relationship.
While I was dancing at the engagement, I felt disconnected with the moment. I feel disconnected right now. No acquaintance or study partner or good friend will solve the kind of loneliness I am feeling. Sometimes I think of just going away to a foreign country and telling the world to call me when something comes up.
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