What is ~ Drama Queen's Guide to Dating

Dating did not come easy to me.  I was (and am still) a late bloomer.  I watched my teen girlfriends embrace the dating game with ease while I fumbled around desperately.  Cheerleader Natalie played the cute card and knoodled (sp?) with John through 8th grade.  Athlete Kelly leveraged her wholesome, girl-next-door card through 9th.  Forensic Chris and Journalistic Carol played their sensible cards through junior and senior year.

I was a sophomore in college before a series of unfortunate events landed me in relationship.  Alison died in a car wreck and the floor fell out from under my feet.  Alison, the coolest freak with a rat tail I'd ever met that didn't have to pretend to be my friend.  Alison, who lived life out loud and wrote naughty little stories with her boyfriend and passed them around the school.  Alison, who demonstrated the proper way to eat a slice, experience the City 110 stories up and start from the top in the Guggenheim.  Alison, who helped me pass algebra and who loved Sting more than anything else in this world.  She was going to write for Rolling Stone.  Instead, she took a road trip to Chicago and overturned her car while trying to change out a CD. 

I received the news Sunday night after it happened and I immediately called Sean who drove me to KC to hear Alison's mother say it wasn't so.  But it was "so" and I was drowning in denial.

Death draws a circle around those of us left behind.  It unites us in a club none of us ask to join and gives us shared experiences with those we might not otherwise engage.  Sean had been my friend since the start of school, but the drive home that Sunday night revealed our mutual loss and grieving became bearable as friendship evolved into something more. 

There will be more to say about Sean, so suffice it to say that our story eventually (and dramatically) came to an end. Dating awkwardness -- temporarily diminished in college -- rebounded with a fury upon graduation and the search for "The One" resumed. 

In my Definitions post (January 25th), I posed the question, what is a drama queen.  Since its inception, I have struggled to reconcile whether "Drama Queen's Guide to Dating" is a book about drama queens or a book about dating dramas.  The latter certainly offers the promise of a NY Times Best Seller with its seven-step, self-help structure. 

Dating has been awkward in the best of times and dramatic in the worst.  Everyone has their path toward enlightenment and mine has more often than not been the path of romantic adventure and finding "the one"... you know:  the knight, the soul mate, the one who would complete me.  I stand by my January 25th post and declare that being a drama queen is less about suffering with some borderline personality disorder than it is about living my life in the fullest and loudest pursuit of consciousness.  It is about living my life in the most colorful pursuit of connection with a man.

The dating dramas are a pathway to relationship, marriage and family.  They are the houses dotting the landscape toward partnership.