No feeling is quite as degrading as the feeling you get when you wait for one particular person to call. You don't leave the house because you're waiting for her to call. You become a raging lunatic when the phone rings and it's someone else. Your list of priorities is shot straight to Hell because all you do is wait. And she never calls.

I've played the fool enough for one summer. Next time, regardless of who she is, I'll know to be even more guarded and even less trusting. And to my friends both here and everywhere who are in relationships, good for you. Just don't think you're better or happier because you've found someone. That level of happiness and understanding that only your significant other can give you is matched just as powerfully by everyone else in every other relationship. So for those of us who don't find happiness and understanding from people other than ourselves, please, in the name of God, quit being so fucking smug.

P.S. - Nothing that any of my relationship-inclined friends has done or said has instigated this rant. So don't take it personally if you're attached.