After you grow past the need to love, be loved, and be accepted by all, you’ll think twice about what dating means for you in life, and hopefully you don’t wait until your 36 to decide for yourself what is the best route for recovery, when it comes to love and belongness needs. Eventually you will find other ways to occupy your time, instead of wasting your hours waiting to be called, or contacted for love, let love come to you, even if it comes in another form or substance. I think love is for those who are healthy, who don’t have mental health issues, are able to marry and have children, and I don’t think I ever found myself in the other boat, free to love whomever, without recourse. I think at 36, you look back on whether you spent your years wisely, and really challenged your options in life to be loved, tried dating apps, and didn’t leave yourself in wonder, what if I tried, where would I be now. Love is not something that a career can replace, and fitness is not a condition better that love is guaranteed. This you learn the hard way, that to be a triple threat in life “beauty, brains, and success,” you will have to think harder about what it is you are doing with your life and whether or not that will attract options for you in life, and if you set work from home goals, then it will be extremely difficult to even imagine, all the people you could have met, had you chosen to work in a more established profession. I don’t think I would ever trade in my career as a writer, for any other career, it is what I went to school for got a Masters in Law, in legal research and writing, and that was my strength as an undergrad, in research and writing, graduating with honors. I think later mental health issues, do become about your past, no one wanting to take responsibility, for where you are at now, head wise, physically, romantically, or emotionally, no one wants to take responsibility, for what went wrong when and why, and that’s understandable, there comes a point, when you will stop having people in your life, simply because it means not to burden anyone with your problems now, if ever they were that way then, then I would not have had people in my life, that I grew close to, or who were once close to me, and its okay for people to move on without you, that’s common to not feeling well or doing well in life, you drift apart. I think not doing well is one thing, being in a situation where someone is hurting you because you are not doing well in life, well that’s nothing that I ever expected. Growing as a person, and becoming known online as a writer, is not a second thought, its been my primary profession for 10 years after leaving law school, how to be accepted, go to a new law school, and graduate how to get a job in the future, that has always been my goal, and sometimes when you don’t fit the bill for everything else, it can take a toll on your self-esteem, meaning you don’t feel good about yourself, because you don’t have a boyfriend, or you don’t have a job, two key ingredients to happiness and whats considered success in your 30s, not being alone, or unemployed, which is pretty much a recipe for depression, or in my case self-harm, this is how having someone to talk to helps, and started with treatments and then getting a new therapist, and a new diagnosis for that matter. When it comes to mental health your diagnosis, is beyond the science of what has happened to you in life, or who you have interacted with, its “not contagious” as I was told by a UCLA psychiatrist to my IOP program I attended twice for “thought disorders,” mostly concerning, how I am, what I think is occurring and what is not occurring, which could be what I think about a person, and who they really are to me in life, it seems the more distantly you are connected to most, seems to be the recipe for this to occur for you in life, at least for me in my life, that without connections in life, and talking to people, you are more likely to wind up being stuck talking to someone who does not know you well, or who doesn’t know you well enough to help you, or for you not to know and understand your own problems and discussions well enough, for someone else to diagnose you upon disclosure, and this is the immature part of mental health, that if you don’t get help, and if you don’t get treated, and if left untreated, things can get worse, this is why to seek treatment right away, so that you don’t suffer, or incur losses as a result of there being something about you that needs work, that a friend, companion, lover, or romantic partner cant help you with through normal day to day conversation, this is what therapy is for. -So when I say there is no point in dating, I mean it, if you are not in a stable place, you really have nothing to offer anyone who is looking for romance, and for feeling the comradere of being with you, which is what a relationship is for a team effort in feeling good, that extends beyond just having sex, it also means that you are a fun person to be around, and fun person to talk about, and that’s the about you that matters when it comes to image and reputation, which in your 30s you begin to thinking about based on what you are doing with your life, and also begin to think about who you allow into your life, what will other people think, stuff you don’t really consider as a private citizen in your 30s, maybe that’s something that people with a background in business are more aware of, how things look, and how power or influence is lost, based upon something as simple as a connection or by who is known to a person. All of that influences how a person feels, you would think that how things look should not affect or impact how you feel about yourself, but it does, it seems that whoever is the less identified subject of the two inherits the strength of opinion, taken from the more projected and amplified version of the two, thus becomes the spokesperson, the easier person to approach of the two in terms of what a situation is like, or what a person is liked, on the basis of how close a person gets to you, it seems like a free gift in interpretation, handed to someone who maybe hasn’t done the leg work, who suddenly is commended just for getting close to you, like you are a difficult subject for others to comprehend, I think that all mental health concerns are difficult to comprehend, maybe in a short form of interpretation “mental health” is an assumed label to mean, is: unpredictable, is not reliable, thinks things wrong, is confused, assumes, does not have proper perspective, makes poor choices, is insensitive, is impulsive, lacks respect, is lost, has addiction, doesn’t know when to stop, is selfish, anything and any term that can be used to illustrate a person as unimportant compared to who is describing them, seems to be the case, of deflating the significance of this persons life, in terms of what others are able to see, and to create a situation for reaction, where either the person who is being labeled as unimportant or “mentally ill,” is made to feel defensive, or wronged, asserting themselves in a way that makes them sound like they are fighting people, or that there are people against them, and this can be difficult, so that quiet space assumed to be respect for a person to hear them speak, is instead interrupted, by whoever is diagnosing them, to make everything said a little less important in the grand scheme of things. Therefore going to law school a finite, scientific way of dealing with problems and identifying issues, was not a methodology that could be used, when applied to my own life, analyzing my life and circumstances make decisions for myself, and that’s the stopping point, what you allow to get to you, and at what point you keep going, I was just thinking today, that someone who is upset with me, will not stop until a desired result occurs, that is me floundering, or not making sense, or becoming upset, and that makes them feel better, that its not only them who is upset with me, and to me that’s anger, which is much different from drive, or motivation, which is your ability to keep going and to stay focused, absent minded any upset or interruption, from those who are made to not be happy with you, and that’s not becoming upset in the process of trying to accomplish a goal whether that be to stay well, or to get certified, or to begin a new job, that much I don’t think anyone upset with me should have the power to control those outcomes for me in life, whether that’s moving on, or building a new life for myself, absent minded whatever mental health issues were thought to exist in a time, when I was slow, or not doing well, or having trouble vocalizing my disability in life, or any accommodations that were required in the time it takes for me to get well, which is space. 

Side-Note: I realized afterward that the title, seems unhopeful, and thats not what I meant, I just wanted to emphasize the fact that if you are not ready to date to wait until you get well, and that I have found more heartache when trying to make things work, before I have come full circle, so its best to be open and not rush things. No dating is a waste of time, every time you date its a learning experience, hopefully to be better prepared for the next time love comes around.