With Apparent Ease?

Spring has sprung, and love is in the air. 

Via mymodernmet.com

Perhaps one of the aggravations of persistent singlehood is that one is really trying one's best, but every other unattached semi-adult seems to have no problem pairing off. 

There he leaves shul with his amour. Wait, when did that one begin dating? I threw that kid off my property for trespassing just a few years ago; now he has a gal in teetering heels? Oh, you're kidding me, not that girl I babysat!

What shidduch crisis? In a wave of narcissism, I seem to be the only spinster in my five mile radius.  

The next night I attended a vort, dodging all the people who could nastily wish me well. Usually, I would work the room alone, but now I flung myself behind my father as a specific woman entered; she had set me up the previous week with a supposed "mensch," who in turn was . . . not. Since both he and I had said "no," I was then mortified to find myself cornered and ordered to expound upon my "thanks, but no thanks." No wonder I suffer from recurrent stomach pain.

I clung to Ta's arm as yet another harpy came into view, a woman personally responsible for a previous sob-session on my part. I spent my evening bobbing and weaving, using my parents as body armor, shielding myself from any vultures who would attempt to feast upon my apparently miserable flesh. 

While firmly at Ma's side as she conversed with another, a woman able to speak from experience. "This girl, " she said, "had been suggested for my boy before he even started dating. She was redt over, and over, but he was up to his eyeballs in schoolwork and couldn't even focus that much on shidduchim. Eight years later they met . . . it's all about the right time." 

Only those who were in it could say it, I have found. 

I left the function between my bodyguards, not particularly mollified. I am fast approaching the "Stick a fork in me, Jerry, I'm done!" phase. This week, sweet "it-all-worked-out-in-the-end" tales hold no sway over me. Maybe I'll be tolerant of platitudes next Monday.

Is it that it just looks easy, but never is? Do they all simply skip into the ethereal yonder without a backward glance, or did they clamber exhaustively to the peak as well, age regardless?

Then, there are books being marketed like Get Married Tomorrow! and Find Your Bashert in Two Weeks. Scanning some of this supposed advice, I am apparently not doing anything "wrong" in how I date; I don't think of myself as needing a mental rehauling, I had a healthy upbringing, I don't have an ego crisis, I think I am being pretty reasonable in what I'm seeking in a spouse. If there is a concept of bashert, how can I just "make it happen" this second? It's not like I'm elbow-deep in eligible men who could all pan out. Back to the "It's your fault" explanation, and my general reaction of "Bite me."  

It is at moments like this, when I feel fractures in my self-control, that I have to realign. This is what happens when I haven't listened to a shiur in a few weeks; as the hubbub of hysteria surrounds me and invades my consciousness, only a carefully selected speaker's calm, reasonable, logic can cut through my paranoid fantasies and bring me peace. 

A really good one is almost as potent as medication. Serenity, available on ishiur.com and torahanytime.com.