Sitting in a Laz-E-Boy chair surrounded by hot water bottles and cursing whoever decided that the female reproductive system was a good idea. Grah!

It's been a long time since I've bee up at this hour. It will probably make the rest of my day unbearable.

I had some thought though.

Couples depress me. It's not that I dislike hanging out with couples; roomie and her bf are good times and I visit married people regularly and have a whale of a time. Sooner or later, though, I always remember that I am replaceable.
I'm a Fifth Business. To quote Robertson Davies

:
"Who are you? Where do you fit into poetry and myth? Do you know who I think you are, Ramsay? I think you are Fifth Business. "You don't know what that is? Well, in opera in a permanent company of the kind we keep up in Europe you must have a prima donna -- always a soprano, always the heroine, often a fool; and a tenor who always plays the lover to her; and then you must have a contralto, who is a rival to the soprano, or a sorceress or something; and a basso, who is the villain or the rival or whatever threatens the tenor.
"So far, so good. But you cannot make a plot work without another man, and he is usually a baritone, and he is called in the profession Fifth Business, because he is the odd man out, the person who has no opposite of the other sex. And you must have Fifth Business because he is the one who knows the secret of the hero's birth, or comes to the assistance of the heroine when she thinks all is lost, or keeps the hermitess in her cell, or may even be the cause of somebody's death if that is part of the plot. The prima donna and the tenor, the contralto and the basso, get all the best music and do all the spectacular things, but you cannot manage the plot without Fifth Business! It is not spectacular, but it is a good line of work, I can tell you, and those who play it sometimes have a career that outlasts the golden voices.

Sooner or later, with every person I befriend, they will reach a point when they go "Oh yah, Becca! I haven't talked to her in a while! I should check in on her." Then they will give me a text or facebook message asking to meet up for coffee or some such and I will be excited to see them too, though not at all for the same reasons. When we go out we will chat about the person's life and talk about their significant other and I will oooh and aaaahh and giggle in the right spots. Then they will ask me about my life and I will say something along the lines of work carrying on as usual. I will tell entertaining stories about me and whatever friend I recently had taken up and the person will shake their head and laugh and say "Oh Becca, you are so silly/unique/crazy/etc." Then they will go home thinking how nice it was to see that they had grown up and I had not.
I suppose what I mean that people being in couples reminds me that they are growing up and leading adult lives while I am childishly blundering on, attempting to keep my mind in the same time zone as my body and keep my body in a time zone in Africa. My relationships will always be transitory, while my peers will eventually settle down with a partner and their social circle of other couples that they like to have dinner parties and weekend camping trips with. Because I won't get married because I am untrustworthy because I am emotionally stunted I'm not going to the have the luxury of a circle of dinner friends.
Because I am not a long-lasting friend I must do my best to concentrate my effectiveness. Unorthodox, unwonted, unreasonable, unusual, unfiltered, uncomplicated, untoward, undermining, unsuspected - I'll be who I am as hard as I can at people so that even after they've gone on with their weekend barbecues and I'm in some remote corner of the internet, they will remember me happily.

I won't be depressed by couples anymore. I'll just tell myself that I must be replaceable because no one can handle a full lifetime of pure, clear, 100% all-natural Becca.