Mouldering

As I was shaving my legs in the shower this morning, which I do every other day, and have done, despite there being no one touching my legs save my gay yoga instructor, I started to wonder: at what point does all this upkeep and hope that a man is going to come along degrade into mouldering? When does a person become Miss Havisham?

Of course I don't mean this literally; in some ways what I do is the opposite of mouldering. I wear makeup every day, I wash my hair, put goop in it so it looks pretty. I dress relatively well given that I work from home. This is partly because I think it's important to take care of yourself but it's also a little bit because a fairly big part of me, the happy hopeful bright-eyed bushy-tailed light in me that refuses to be extinguished despite all the bad luck I've had, whispers in my ear that yes, this could be day that he shows up. And you want to look good, don't you?

But what if I'm waiting on a life that isn't going to happen, and meanwhile the life that I am supposed to have is rotting away on a table somewhere?