5/6

So, lately I've been thinking about my relationship status, and feeling a need to be in a relationship. There are a lot of contributing factors to this: I see people younger than me getting engaged or in relationships, one of my friends from high school died this past Friday, and a couple worries that crop up every so often.

First, I'll talk a little about why I don't think I should jump into a relationship now. I'm likely thinking about this at all due to the wrong reasons--feeling like I need to get this going now or I'll be alone for the rest of my life, mild jealousy of my friends, etc. I'm also still basically a big kid--I've only had one job that lasted more than one day and wasn't dependent on bad weather, I'm still in school, I don't have any form of personal transportation (or even governmental permission to operate many forms of transportation). I also tend to put women on a pedestal, whether I'm intending to ask her out or in a relationship. My mind makes this big imaginary relationship, and when that is shattered, it sucks. The woman essentially takes over my thoughts, pushing all else out to the edges. This makes me wonder if I'm capable of having a God-centered relationship.

Also, I'm not really used to the position of pursuer in relationships. Throughout middle school and high school, girls used to pursue me--until they gave up trying to get me to realize they liked me. I could never understand why they were interested, so I often thought they were setting me up for some cruel joke. I had hygiene problems; I was so nerdy that even the other nerds picked on me; I had big, plastic frame glasses (think Drew Carey's glasses); I almost never cut my hair; and I was fat--even compared to now. Yet I still seemed to attract the intelligent, attractive girls. It makes my head hurt just to think about that. Just last night at connection group, one of the guys said I was "the most eligible bachelor in Salt". Of course, I started listing guys that I think are "better". Yay for low self-esteem.

Now you may be wondering about the "couple worries" I mentioned in the first paragraph. Well, every once in a while, this feeling comes upon me that I've only got a few years left. I have no real reason to think so, but I feel that I won't live past 30--I about had a panic attack during class today because of these thoughts. On top of that, every time I think about the future, two things keep coming to my mind: a head injury and a car accident. I don't know if these three worries are connected (or even if they'll come true), but I just get a sense that a head injury and a car accident will be important in my life. It doesn't make sense for me to think that I won't live past 30. My parents are both alive and in their 50s, with their worst health problems being sleep apnea for my dad and diabetes for my mom (and she's got that mostly under control). My grandparents all lived to at least 80, with my dad's mom still alive. Even with that, I still occasionally get this strange feeling that I won't live much longer. From that comes the thought that "if I'm ever going to have kids, I need to get working on that now". I'm four weeks away from 25, so if this feeling is accurate, I've only got about 5 years left--at most. So yeah, random worries causing me to act somewhat irrationally. What else is new?