You've lost that lovin feeling...

Maybe it's because I watched Knocked Up with my roommates this afternoon, which Kirstin described as "the best birth control ever." Or perhaps I'm having a John Mayer-esque quarter life crisis. I think I've just about made the full transition into a Los Angelina. This city is getting to me. Bad.

It's the reason I keep looking at my sister's picture on my desk and imagining myself in Nashville. The reason I've taken to journaling more, trying to sort through emotions that I wouldn't brave on the blogosphere. And it just might have something to do with the panicky, sick-to-my-stomach feeling I got this afternoon as I was driving to hang out with some friends. This morning I got into a conversation with a friend I hadn't hung out with in a while in which he asked if there were any new developments in the boy arena. I threw out my usual one-liners and slightly pointed verbal quips. I've always got some story when it comes to guy drama...I like to think that it "somehow miraculously follows me" but the truth is that I probably drag that stuff around by the hair like a caveman's woman. Actually, now that I think about it, I communicate my feelings on the subject with quite the cave-like articulation as well. It doesn't help that I rarely can identify my own emotions anyway, since they change about as often as my hair color. But I digress...

So I'm driving along thinking about my earlier conversation when I actually start to feel physically ill at the thought of trying to date anymore. It's just soo much work--trying to convince them to like you, and having to figure out how they work and what their buttons are so you don't accidentally push one...rearranging your schedule and losing touch with your friends. Ew. All for someone who I will probably be bored with after a month, tops. What is the point?

As I'm explaining this to my roommate later, she gave me this puzzled look. "But don't you want a relationship?" she asks. I guess I don't. She continues, "it's not supposed to be so much work. I guess you just really haven't found the right person yet." I reply with a hearty, "thanks, Mom." Quite after-school special of her, but she's probably not too far from the mark. Moms are usually right after all, so I swallow hard and do my best to appreciate the advice.

My brain won't stop working.

It's this LA thing that I keep getting hung up on. I mean--as days go by, I morph little by little into the stereotype, single city-girl. I'm still a little too Christian to be ok with working the bar scene and rocking the one-night-stands. Which only means that I'm caught in this absurdly awkward limbo between my pro-marriage, pro-baby old-self and the metropolitan socialite I fear is my future. Each day I'm here I become less and less maternal, more of a work-a-holic...less interested in having a man, and more self-sustaining and self-sufficient. On the whole, most would consider it an improvement. I am much more functional in this environment now that I've adopted its values.

And that's why I keep entertaining the thought of getting out. I kind of want to leave. Because if I don't like who I am becoming here, then maybe I need to get back to my roots...in a new place. Somewhere that would appreciate the little girl I must have lost along the 10 freeway on the drive out here three years ago. I kind of miss her.