I turned twenty-five sometime around five p.m. on August 15^th in a five-star restaurant overlooking the marina about seven hours into my thirteen-hour double-shift, and the sun was already setting behind the boats in the harbor casting a golden glow in the main dining room that I knew would turn lavender and then cobalt blue before the windows would become mirrors lit up only by the glow within, and in their reflection I would see five years wasted in this place seating expensively dressed guests at tables I no longer had a seat at, serving dinners I could no longer afford, and instead of wrapping a diamond clad hand around a crystal glass of real champagne, I faded into the backdrop of my life’s choices, dreams scattered in the wind like the spores of a dandelion blown by the still sweet lips of a girl and became the commonplace and ordinary “help” to those who once dazzled to even know of me.

At five thirty the bartender, my roommate Rebecca and the cooks in the back snuck me a shot of frozen, cold, cinnamon whiskey from the walk-in and a glass of Silver Oak Cabernet Sauvignon leftover from a catering gig, and both burned my chest and warmed my stomach and we raised them in a toast, for I’m a jolly good fellow and we let the buzz matriculate as the guests began to pour in and the front of house started its nightly waltz. Blushing bus boys, arrogant servers in all black uniforms, guests in glittering heels and men in ties swarmed throughout the restaurant like a carefully orchestrated opera, a rise in tension and a slow and steady fall, the end of which everyone’s left in near tears. At ten p.m., a bottle of prosecco champagne from the gas station up the road was popped and all the girls who weren’t closing piled into the bathroom and changed for my birthday party, which was hosted annually at the karaoke dive bar Monkey’s Uncle, and a year later I would still be here, under the neon glow of bar lights and the circus crowd of those who never really showed potential but had so many dreams. I was always a dreamer, maladaptive maybe, or just dissociative depending on who you were talking to, doctors gave me pills but I stopped taking them, champagne always made me feel better. I looked around for someone to clink my glass with but realized once again I was alone and that my dating life had been a Groundhog Day since I’d turned eighteen of one year lease contracts, never renewed. This year something had to change; I couldn’t bear the thought of being here again at twenty-seven. This year something had to give. My rotation of boyfriends was a series of overcorrections, and after the last breakup I was left wondering what I even wanted and who I even was. I needed both a purge and simultaneously a surge in order to carefully decipher what I fit into and who fit into me.

I am twenty-six years old today.

I love dive bars, or one in particular off the ocean, with dark wood beams, a patio with falling twinkling lights and a pool hall in the back.

I am trying to develop a palate for wine.

I grew up rich.

Now I’m poor.

I left a life that was decided for me, to make decisions on my own.

I have made a lot of bad decisions.

At one point I was a debutant, a college preparatory graduate, a scholarship and AP awarded student, a beloved girlfriend of a surgeon’s son, a country club member, a beach club member, a ballerina, a mansion resider, a boat owner, an avid skier, a trust fund inheritor and someone who had dreams big enough to fill the New York skyline I hoped to watch the sun go down behind as I finished editing my next article for some big shot magazine.

Now the compilation of my assets was as follows:

A broken heart. The tremendous guilt of breaking someone else’s.

Two and a half years of college, no degree earned.

A stolen trust fund. A stolen life.

A small list of boyfriends that I never loved more than the glass of whiskey in my hand.

A collection of counting crows’ albums, e.e. cummings poetry, a copy of Pride and Prejudice, and last but certainly not least, a cat, half tabby half Himalayan, named little foot.

Like an alley cat myself I spent most of my free time grooming and my nights prowling around through garbage at various watering holes.

I now lived off kitchen scraps and bar food, glasses of wine, happy hour appetizers and two for a dozen oysters licking the iridescent shell for the brine my body so desperately craved to rehydrate.

It was heaven.

It was hell.

It was mine.

The only things that kept me company now were the nostalgic flashbacks a taste of the fine dining food at my restaurant gave me to a life of luxury I once lived, more of hallucination now than a memory.

The punishment I served myself for walking away from someone who promised to take care of me forever for the pursuit of what I could make on my own. The embitterment towards parents who gave me money instead of love, and then one day, in the middle of my junior year of university, decided I wasn’t worth their coin either. And words, words and words and words from the authors I clung to in high school who promised me a life of romance, a raging fire from a single touch and a heart race from the sight of another, the promise of a love so intense it would burn all the bad away and carry me off into an endless sunset.

Broken promises were what I got.

Twenty-five was a year that taught me and twenty-six promised I wouldn’t have to repeat the course.

But promises were broken a lot.

I was twenty-six when I stopped believing in love. Or at least, what I thought was love. The love you find in movies, in literature, in Darcy’s ardent need for Lizzy and Noah’s loyalty to Allie, in Adam Dutitz lyrics and e.e. cummings poems. I didn’t stop looking because I’d found it, on the contrary, I found that it definitely did not exist. Not in the ways the movies captured it. Not in the ways I’d played pretend with my high school sweetheart. Not in the ways I’d read about it in English courses, and not in the ways I needed it to exist. Instead, I found a lot of moments in love, then a lot of heartbreak and a lot of bad movies.

It was August and the night of my twenty-six birthday that I backslid so hard I woke up and was sixteen again, or at least I thought I was because there was Payton, my high school boyfriend lying next to me. Somehow, he’d driven me home and we’d made out all night, in my leather dress that I thought made me look like a real woman, and instead, I woke up a girl.

Having come full circle, I decided then that I was done trying to find love.

I decided then that it was probably time to start dating.

The plan was hatched at a bar later that evening.

As with all great plans of straight singletons, gays were involved.

They suggested a Tindervention for my romantic woes and serial monogamy. The rules were simple:

“You’ll go on at least one blind date with any guy that asks on Tinder. I’m making you an account now,” Ben said taking my iPhone.

Ben says he’s not sure he’s gay. I’m sure Ben’s gay.

“Yes, either on Tinder or otherwise,” chimed in Andy. Andy is sure he’s gay. Andy is positive I’m hopeless. Ben is hopeful for me. Ben pretends to be hopeful for me.

Laren is disgusted by the whole affair.

“You’re going to sleep with any guy that asks you?” she exclaims in her haughty tone. Laren has slept with one person. Laren is three years older than me. Laren’s dream man is identical to her father. Laren isn’t sure Ben or Andy is gay.

“No of course not, she just has to go out on a date at least once with anyone that asks her,” Ben explains.

“I guess I approve,” Laren said. “You realize. You are exactly where you were a year ago today?” she asked.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Last year you and Teigan broke up right before your birthday, and now you’re breaking up with Matt,” she said matter-of-factly.

“What’s your point?”

“My point is, whatever you’re doing isn’t working, so I guess I approve, you need an intervention,” Laren said.

“It’s a Tindervention,” Andy chimes in. “Were Tindervening in her love life.”

“Do you want to be Tindervened?” Laren asks.

“She has to, otherwise she goes back to Leonardo DiCaprio,” Ben says, and we all agree that we do not want that for me.

“So, it’s decided,” says Ben.

“Tindervention!!” cried Andy.

“You should keep a diary,” added Laren, “so you can retrace your steps when you’ve gotten an std.”

So, it’s decided. I was going to date, and I was going to diary.