while waiting to be granted access to the cabins at bellows air force base, the subject of my luck (or lack of it, rather) came up briefly in conversation with a friend of mine who was kind enough to wait with me.

in the wake of that conversation and with valentine’s day looming, i’ve been thinking about luck quite a bit. on my way home this evening i remembered a line i heard… somewhere; if i didn’t have bad luck, i wouldn’t have any luck at all. and while that may not be true about every aspect of my life (it’s debatable), it’s certainly true when it comes to girls and relationships. here’s a brief recap, using initials so i don’t have to name names:

1. t.p. – first girlfriend,7th grade. if my recollection serves, we lasted several weeks, but it ended when i become convinced she was flirting/interested in another guy. i broke up with her.
2. l.n – we became friends by chance (i don’t remember the details), grew close and i had a thing for her, but nothing came of it. i was awkward and shy and she was on and off dating a football player.
3. g.s. – i definitely had a thing for her, though when i think about it now, i’m not quite sure why. she kindly spurned my advances (they weren’t anything dramatic, or even significant), but i took the rejection quite hard, lashing out and damaging our friendship for a couple of years.
4. a.r. – i can say with a fair amount of confidence that this is the first girl i was in love with, as much as you can be in love with anyone in high school. we dated for several months, but were doomed from the start. we both had ’emotional issues.’ she broke up with me.
5. b.b. – this is a girl who, at least initially, i think, had a thing for me. and i really liked her, but was a complete wreck after the a.r. breakup and wasn’t interested, not until a few years later, at which time she no longer interested in me beyond friendship.
6. k.s. – this is the hardest one. we were close friends and i have no doubt i was in love with her. and she loved me, but we never dated. when the friendship ended, i was crushed; i couldn’t get out of bed for days and nearly flunked out of school.
7. j.k. – technically my third girlfriend, but i don’t really count the second. it started basically by accident. i really did like her, but shortly after we started dating i moved to hawaii and we didn’t last long after that. i broke up with her.
8. m.c. – honestly, she’s the first girl i’ve been really, really interested in since moving to hawaii. no, she’s not even remotely interested in me.

that pretty much brings us to the present. now, some of these i’ve gotten over, most in fact. there is at least one, maybe two, that i will always lament and while i can count on one hand the number of girls who’ve been truly interested in me, clearly my list isn’t much longer.

in high school, i may have been considered cute, but was socially depressed, socially awkward, and totally hopeless when it came to girls i had a crush on. college wasn’t really any better. i’ve been told college is really the place where you learn how to interact with the opposite sex, fool around, and date. unfortunately, i was hopelessly crippled with self-doubt, self-loathing, and extended bouts of depression. i never learned those oh-so-important lessons. what’s more, there can be little argument made against the fact that i’ve grown less cute as i’ve gotten older. it can also be said that my ability to interact with girls i’ve got a ‘thing’ for hasn’t really improved any either.

therapy removed from me the self-loathing and depression (thankfully). it also gave me a level of confidence i never thought i’d have. fixing all that, there’s still one area in which i’m still a hopeless mess: women. when it comes to relating to and interacting with a woman i’m interested in, i’m still a hopeless mess. and because i missed out on those important lessons in college, my self-doubt is compounded by nagging inexperience.

given all this, i can say, with confidence, that i have bad, awful luck when it comes to women. i’m in a catch-22; my gaping lack of experience on the dating scene, which is a direct result of my previous awkwardness and self-doubt, puts me at a disadvantage in meeting girls, which adds to that awkwardness and self-doubt.  it’s a vicious cycle and it only gets worse as i get older. i look around me and nearly everyone i know is either couple-up, or already married. my odds grow increasingly slim, which is evidenced by the number of people i know or have met that are in relationships.

i’m willing to debate anyone who might say otherwise, though i don’t expect such a debate to take place.

having said all that, my bad luck in the ways of love only occasionally bother me.  valentine’s day is one of those occasions.  i used to be wildly bitter about it in college, ranting wildly about all the stupid fucking couples buying stupid gifts for each other, showing public displays of affection, and the like.  i used to fantasize about climbing the bell tower on campus and picking off those couples with a high powered sniper rifle.  i said used to be bitter and i wasn’t kidding.  i don’t have those fantasies now, though don’t be surprised if i’m just a bit moody and bitter on thursday, february 14th.

like i said, bad luck.  but that’s not to say, that bad luck didn’t, or doesn’t still, serve a purpose.  without all that bad luck, i wouldn’t have come to hawaii.  i might not have found my calling in politics and i might be a different person (i like myself now).  i have good friends and a loving family, for which i am thankful.  sure i have bad luck when it comes to love, but surely there are worse things in the world.  aren’t there?