I have a realization during this time that changes my outlook on love entirely.
I almost write it all up as an xoJane piece, but it feels too precious somehow. I want to nurture it just as I might that little person inside of me.
One day when I am walking to an AA meeting after a long day at xoJane, as I cross the street, I begin absentmindedly praying to one of the saints I’ve always felt most connected to in life: St. Anthony, who is known as the patron saint of lost things. As I pray, I ask the question silently to myself, again and again: Will I ever find my soul mate?
Because maybe, I think, my soul mate is just lost. Maybe that’s all it is. Maybe he just got bad directions.
By the time I reach Forty-Second Street and walk up the stairs to a run-down theater building in Midtown to make the 8 p.m. meeting, the answer to my question comes to me in a flash. I actually stop walking and laugh out loud.
Me. It is me.
I am the soul mate I have been looking for all this time.
I am the only person who can decide if I am the good guy or the bad guy in my story. I am the only person who can decide that I am worthy of love—all the time, even when I am falling down on my face yet again or when I am trying my absolute best.
As I think about this concept, I start exploring and investigating, and the possibilities feel like beams of light and love are shooting into the most bruised and battered parts of my soul. What if I were to truly focus on giving myself all the love and compassion and forgiveness I’ve longed for from someone else all my life? What if I no longer beat myself up? What if I learned to treasure the idea of taking care of myself and my heart and my boundaries, even when it felt unnatural and uncomfortable? What if I accepted and forgave the ugliest parts of my history—every guy, every drug, every deception—and stopped terrorizing my heart with impotent regret?
What if I was forgiven and free? What if I always had been?
Maybe all the costumes and disguises and posturing along the way didn’t matter. Because the only self that ever existed could be explained in one single identity.
I am a survivor—and I can and will always be there for myself, no matter what.
After having spent so long chasing some external source of relief in the form of sex and food and drugs and work and even shame itself, realizing that I alone can give myself reprieve feels like the most beautiful gift of all.
I will never let that go. It will never be lost again. I feel unified at last.
I TELL MY friends. I tell my therapist. I tell my parents and my sister, with whom I’ve finally reconnected once again as I begin to develop more boundaries in my writing and sharing.
But I am also more open than I have ever been. I am open to the prospect of meeting someone who will support and love me the rest of the journey. That’s what a good partner does.
So when an online dating site called Plenty of Fish offers me $20,000 to blog about finding the perfect Valentine’s Day date while promoting their business venture online, I see a financial—and possibly even a relationship—light at the end of the tunnel.
Initially, I’m told I cannot take the gig by someone at xoJane’s parent company. When Jane finally intervenes on my behalf, she turns the project around. She understands how much I need it—in more ways than one. Jane, once again, is my guardian angel.
This online dating experiment—which we end up calling “The Mandy Project”—includes the game plan for me to “test out” thirty different relationship clichés in thirty days before V-Day. These relationship adages include “Put yourself out there” (which I test out by walking around Times Square with a sandwich board that says, I’M CURRENTLY SINGLE) or “Play hard to get” (wherein I create a scavenger hunt for my beleaguered suitor).
The schedule proves to be grueling: multiple dates a night, filmed stunts, social promotion, blog entries, and lots of corporate check-ins—along with nonstop writing and editing at xoJane, not to mention freelancing I’ve taken on at TimeOut, Penthouse, and Maxim, and the recording of my weekly podcast.
Within the first two weeks, I get so sick, I can barely get out of bed.
The majority of dates are pretty fun—like the guy who takes me on a helicopter ride or the man who plays along as we have to abide by assigned first-date topics—but others are less so. One man I meet on the rooftop of the Delancey, and a few drinks in, I ask him if he’s ever been to prison. I’m totally joking.
I don’t expect his answer to be anything but “Of course not.” And then we will laugh.
“Once,” he says, with a completely straight face. “For assault with a deadly weapon.”
Trying to keep from puking on the guy as the fever I am fighting burns hot, I focus on trying to placate him instead.
“Oh well . . . I’m sure that was all a big misunderstanding,” I say cheerfully. “Hey, can you sign this release form in case I end up writing about you?”
It’s not quite the Carrie Bradshaw dream I’m being paid to make it out to be.
When I get home, in between vomiting spells, I reach out to my friend Dr. Belisa Vranich, a talented psychotherapist who is in fact the amazing friend who hooked me up with this incredibly welcome gig in the first place.
“Some of the guys are kind of sketchy,” I complain. “At this point, I’m just trying to keep my shit together to even finish the project.”
“Well,” she says, “it’s not like you have to only date guys
