Here’s the situation: I think we waste a lot of time filling our days with distractions, not realizing there might be a bigger reason why we’re doing what we’re doing

I recently got sucked in to an episode of Dr. Phil, and I never watch shows like Dr. Phil!  It was a long weekend, a friend and I had just got back from a really long walk and when we plunked our lifeless bodies in front of the TV, Dr. Phil was the first thing that came on.  I’m ashamed and embarrassed and what’s worse – it was 3 parts, so I even set my PVR to record the next 2 episodes, because I had to know how it ended!

We missed the first 20 minutes, but were quickly intrigued by the topic of a lady who had been catfished by multiple men and scammed into giving away thousands of dollars.  I’m talking thousands; like over $100,000!  She met these men on online dating sites, but never in person, 3 of whom she got engaged to after as little as 5 days, 2 of which engagements overlapped, and conveniently, the men always happened to be stuck in another country or in some other extenuating circumstance that required her to send them money!

This lady pissed me off!  She was mousy and insecure and would barely look up to make eye contact.  Every time she opened her mouth to speak, I got more and more frustrated with her.  How can she be so naïve?  How can she fall for what is so obviously a scam?  How can I reach through the TV and slap her across her stupid face?!

She didn’t compute that she had been catfished and scammed, so throughout the 3 episodes Dr. Phil tried to make her face the facts.  He walked her through a timeline of her relationships and the money she’d lost and the absurdity of it all.  Dr. Phil sent a staff member to the country and address where 1 of these men said to be, but the address didn’t exist!  Dr. Phil even found the real men behind 2 of the photos and guess what?  They weren’t the men this woman was engaged to, but rather, men whose photos had been stolen and used by the catfishers’ on their profiles.

When all was said and done and Dr. Phil had done his best to prove everything was a lie (even though she still didn’t believe all of it was), she hung her head and said “now I have nothing left”.  What she had, and lost, was really just a fantasy and a distraction from reality.  As much as I hated this woman, a small piece of me felt for her and could even identify with her.  (Is this that empathy thing people are always talking about?)

Little Miss Analyzer

I think I’ve done every personality test out there and the result is always the same –  I’m an analyzer.  I’ve also cursed every personality test out there, because I want to be one of the fun personalities instead!  Alas, they are accurate, I am an analyzer.  I’m always surveying and processing and calculating the information I’m taking in.  I’m like the Terminator.  You know how he would scan someone up and down and gather data on his little red computer screen eyes?  (That’s how 1991’s Terminator 2 worked at least!)  Well, that’s how I feel – especially when it comes to guys.  Brace yourself for the crazy…

It doesn’t matter who you are in relation to me: someone I’ve been friends with for years, someone I’ve been on 1 date with or even a stranger I had a 3 minute conversation with; I’m constantly collecting intel and asking myself 1 of 2 questions – could this be the one*? or could you see yourself with this guy? (Unless of course you’re married, then you’re dead to me!)

I know that makes me sound like I should have the shower scene music from Psycho playing behind me at all times, but I swear I’m stable!  I blame this romanticism on my upbringing with Disney and rom-coms and years of listening to real life couples tell the tales of how they met!  The normal and/or “we met online” stories don’t often get expanded on, so it’s usually the unique ones that you hear every detail of.  Like, a guy that helped a random girl get her luggage off the baggage carousel at an airport, or strangers who met in line at a Starbucks.  When you’ve been single for a long time, or maybe I should say, when you’ve been hoping to find the one* for a long time, and infiltrated with so many exception-to-the-rule stories, it’s hard not to think that that magical moment could maybe, potentially, hopefully, one day be a possibility for you too.  Thus, your senses are always slightly heightened in every situation, especially when you’re already an analyzer!

If my brain can contemplate those questions with guys I’m not in a relationship with, just imagine how far and how fast it runs when I’m actually dating someone!

* I don’t subscribe to the notion of there being “the one”, so I’m only using this phrase as a concept that you can relate to, but really what I mean is I’m looking for my SOMEone

Love Hurts.  Love Bites.  Love is a Battlefield.

When life is going good, I forget to savor the moments.  I have this tendency to take the moments and build on them in my mind with grandiose fantasies of what could be and reside in those future moments.  I really should be in a Disney movie or a rom-com, because that’s the reality I like to live in.  And in Disney or rom-coms, that reality works out 100% of the time!  Unfortunately, real life doesn’t always and nothing reminds me of that faster than a break up.

Break ups suck!  I used to think they only sucked when you’re the one being dumped, but it turns out, they suck when you’re the one doing the dumping too…maybe just not quite as much!  I think the hardest part about a break up, whichever end of it you might be on, is not always letting go of the person, but letting go of the routine and the rhythms you created with that person and letting go of the picture you had for your future.  A break up robs you of what might’ve been.  I think that’s where we can get hung up or feel like we have nothing left.  The certainty we (thought we) had, just became uncertain and starting back at zero is a discouraging and scary place to be.  What if we never find anyone again?  What if our life doesn’t turn out the way we hoped?  How do we survive reality, when reality sometimes just bites?

The Great Escape

How do you cope with pain? rejection? disappointment? heartbreak? loneliness?  Even boredom?  Do you lose yourself in Netflix or video games or drown your sorrows with drugs or alcohol?  Are you a workaholic?  Shopaholic?  Do you eat your feelings or do you go extreme in the opposite direction and harness them into fitness?  Do you post on social media strictly to get likes because you need an ego boost?  Or maybe you’re addicted to dating apps and have multiple meaningless hook ups because attention is nice.  Perhaps you go on online dating sites with good intentions and get rapt up in a chat relationship with someone you don’t actually know, but they make you feel special and like you have something in your life?  Does that sound like that was maybe the case for the lady on Dr. Phil?  If you couldn’t identify with her before, can you now?

I can only assume she poured herself into her alternate online universe to distract herself from the pain • rejection • disappointment • heartbreak • loneliness • boredom in her real life.  And I base that on the thinking that we often do the same.  Our distractions just might not look so overtly desperate or we can get away with ours because they’re more socially acceptable.  In fact, we’re so used to constant stimulation, we might not even recognize that we are just distracting ourselves.  And there ain’t no shame in that game, we’ve all been there in some way!

We don’t like to sit with our feelings or actually take the time necessary to heal before moving on to the next thing, because the reality of that is, it might hurt more than we thought and take longer than we want.  So instead, we distract ourselves because distractions feel good, but more importantly, distractions distract!  They are an escape.  They give us something to focus on and help us forget reality or numb our pain, if even for just a little while.  Distractions pass the time, but when we’re distracted, we’re not passing it with any purpose!

Dis·trac·tion (noun) – a thing that prevents someone from giving full attention to something else

I’m sure you’ve heard the sayings wherever you go, there you are, or wherever you go, you take you with you.  They’re true.  You can’t outrun your pain, because you take it with you and you can only hide it from yourself for so long.   Whatever you choose to bury or ignore or distract yourself from, doesn’t go away, it just drags out the process and delays the inevitable!  It’ll still be there waiting for you whenever you’re ready to deal with it and you will have to deal with it, in some way, at some point.

Insert Food Related Metaphor Here

I don’t know about you, but when I’m at a potluck or a buffet and I have a variety of food on a plate in front of me, I like to take a nibble of each first to gauge the order I want to eat in.  This way I can avoid the stuff that isn’t good, eat the ok food next and finish with the really good stuff, leaving on a high note, because there’s nothing worse than your last bite sucking!  Moral of the story – I don’t want to fill up on food that wasn’t worth the space in my stomach and have no room left for the good stuff or a second helping!  That’s kind of how I feel about life too – I don’t want to fill all of the empty spaces with distractions and have no room left for the good stuff when it comes along!

So what do we do with our free time if we’re not distracted?  Honestly, I’m still trying to figure that out!  It can be especially hard when you’re single and watching other people with their full lives, while yours feels pretty vacant.  Distractions almost seem like the only option to bide your time and believe me, there have been plenty of moments I’ve found solace in almost every one of those things I listed.  Heck, there are still times I find solace in them!  I think the best we can do is keep our motivations in check to make sure we’re not just just trying to fill a hole and instead, “distract” ourselves with healthy things.  Set goals, better ourselves, (maybe write a blog) and trust that one day God will bring your grandiose fantasies to fruition.

Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. – Colossians 3:2 (NIV)