Sunday Scaries (Luck and Love)

They call you Lady Luck but there is room for doubt. At times, you've had a very unlady-like way of running out. (Originally posted to Substack on November 2, 2025)

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Luck be a lady because I’m feeling just about as unlucky as they come. That’s not entirely true but it’s a Sunday and that is a most opportune time to lament over one’s love life. This is often done alone in your room which is sometimes clean and sometimes not. I have just bought new room decor and switched out my bedding— not just because it is fall and fall is a season of change, but also to reclaim space. The space was always my own, but making it look almost entirely different says: This is your room and things are different now. I’m moving on. Do not think about that. That is over now. He is gone and not coming back. No no he’s not. No no put the phone down. It is important you commit to the idea of him not coming back into your life for your own sake. No you don’t even want him back. No stop remembering the good things and just remember the bad things. No those were actually things to be taken seriously not just glossed over wistfully. No it doesn’t matter what you think might happen because you don’t know and you do not want to find out— even if you think you do you don’t. What am I still doing at this job wasting away I am so old and my life is over and I am capable of love but what if it never happens for me and I end up completely alone because all of my friends find love and girlhood dies in the face of lifelong partnership and husbands and kids.

Ahem.

Pardon me.

It’s not like my other bedding was drawing up fond memories of lovers past, but it certainly wasn’t helping the situation.

I actually am a stranger to Sunday Scaries. I’ve worked Sunday nights for the last two years, give or take. Sunday has me feeling quite forlorn. Quite Pride and Prejudice (2005). Quite Ladybird. This may be the one avenue in which I romanticize my life. I romanticize my own sadness. A perfect pairing: the bleakness of my love life accompanied by the sound of rain on my windows— of which there is none because this is Los Angeles. I long for the ache in my chest and the limerence that just won’t quit. I buy things to make myself feel better. I’ve replaced the binge eating tendencies with shopaholic tendencies because it’s more chic. It’s not the bliss that’s romantic about me, it’s the aching. The most touchy-feely-romantic me is the sad one. It’s the me at “goodbyes” and the me when I’ve stayed up too late.

Tomorrow, two of my best friends have their first days at their new jobs. They both secured 9-5s and everything will be different for them. I guess this Sunday things are a little scarier. Things are very different now than they’ve been. There are people I feel like myself with, and there are people I don’t. Lately, I feel like I have button eyes. I sit in dark movie theaters where for a brief moment I can rip the seams and place them in the seat next to me. Then, when the credits roll, I stitch them back in and go on with my day.

I’ve been luckier with each passing romance. I like them more and more and I get more and more in return. I seem to be trending upward on all fronts, which makes the fall that much harder. Every time I think: This must be it. I used to think: This can’t be it. It is much more difficult this new way. I’ve been unlucky in love. When the new decor and plucky slice-of-life music and book doesn’t quell the voices, I write. I write to give meaning to something I can’t find meaning in— my love life usually. I write so that my life can amount to more than just lessons to make the living I live turn out better. Because, if the goodness or badness of my life only serves to produce more goodness or badness in my life then why live the life at all? It insists upon itself. I don’t mean that in a suicidal way, just your average, existential one. If it only exists to serve itself then what about it matters, unless right here right now I can put it down on paper and make it matter. I can make my lessons into something more. Something more than just being unlucky in love.

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Your Sunday recommendation/ My Sunday to-do: Watch Bojack Horseman. Get to episode 6x10 called “Good Damage”. Cry.