PUTTING MYSELF OUT THERE

This morning I was feeling very lonely. This isn't something I often deal with; I lived a pretty isolated existence before I was bedbound, and have intimacy issues, so I've rarely worried about loneliness or a need for contact in the past. You can't miss what you never had, right? Wells, so far this year I've done a lot of soul-searching, and started taking some very effective head meds, and there have been a lot of very rewarding positives I've experienced as a result. I think feeling a little bit lonely may be the first negative to come from dropping my emotional baggage and altering my brain chemistry with duloxetine and amitriptyline (I'm on the good stuff!). I'll take it. And I have felt this way before, but today is the day I did something about it.

Tankerton Latch, table for one!

There are a few factors contributing to my feelings of isolation today:

• I saw my parents yesterday, so I won't have any visitors until next Monday. 
• My brother's working the late shift so there's no family Zoom this week.
• I had to deal with the one cleaner here who's kind of an asshole first thing - lack of privacy and being unable to set your own schedule are the worst things about being in hospital or a care facility, there have been hospital stays I was underperformed for that felt a lot like doing time.
• My laptop isn't connecting to the care home's erratic Wi-Fi, so I'm using my tablet to surf and write this, which is less than ideal.
• My friend Strict Julie has agreed to my real-world punishment, a ridiculous development that just two months ago would have seemed about as realistic as me becoming a space tourist.

I'm not going to share the details, but it'll definitely be a real punishment for her, and I imagine she'll feel silly and embarrassed doing it, but she's determined to do it anyway. Those of you who are fond of Julie's sub antics (and I can't imagine you're not!) will be pleased to know that she did whine a little at first but agreed. When I sensed her reluctance I gave her the opening to yellow out, and was delighted when she aggressively declined my generous offer and restated her intention of serving her full sentence. She's the best.

My new friendship with Ms Julie makes me feel like a lottery winner: I don't know what I've done to deserve it and I'm in way over my head and I wouldn't trade it for anything. That said, part of me does make me wish, for the first time really, that I had a real-world playmate to have some fun with. If I have something to offer a woman 3,500 miles away then maybe I could share some of that with a woman in the same room. It also makes me want to try and make some more connections online. Keeping this blog is part of that, and it's very rewarding to see that a couple of you commenters have returned to the site to post another day. I'm a lurked by default, I tend not to read comments and almost never post them, but the one time I did it paid back dividends. Part of me wonders if I'm being naive, like a guy who's number pays out on roulette on his first game in his first visit to a casino, who then loses all his money chasing that high. But part of me wonders if, despite all my cynicism and scepticism and ironic detachment I've uncovered a simple truth: that by putting yourself forward and being confident and amenable and interesting you can make friends kind of easily. Maybe life really can be that simple.

I really have no idea how to best start looking for real-world contact, especially with Britain in lockdown on top of everything else. I turned to Google, searching for bedridden or bedbound and also lonely, meeting people, relationships, making friends, and dating. Nothing came up that was particularly helpful; mainly it was depressing articles about people ending relationships because they fell ill and advice for carers who are struggling to find a personal life because they find themselves lumbered with an elderly invalid. I was not doing well!

I tried a similar line of search enquiries but with the broader term spoonie, an identifier covering a whole bunch of illnesses that I feel uneasy uneasy adopting for myself. The term spoonie derives from the term spoon theory, a slightly inelegant way of demonstrating how people with chronic illness need to allocate their time/health. There are a lot of spoonies living full, active lives and some with severe impairments that require full-time support. Not knowing if I'm going to get better or not makes me wary of picking up the spoonie mantle.

There wasn't a lot of applicable advice there either, though I did leave my deets on a Tumblr called For the chronically lonely spoonie. The name alone is a red flag, and I don't know if I'll have much in common with the other spoonies, who generally seemed young, hip, female and slightly dark. I filled out the form as follows, so who knows?

Bedbound dude seeks friend for friendship, maybe more?

Gender: Make (like Jesus!)
Age: 33 (like Jesus!)
Interests: TV, comics, some light gaming
Seeking: The dream would be for a gorgeous, kinky, able-bodied lass to fall madly in love with me and care for my every whim, but I'll settle for a friend!
Bio: I've been bedbound since Christmas Eve, 2019. Rehabilitation was screwed thanks to a global pandemic I assume you already heard about. I hope to be back on my feet at some point, but I have no idea how realistic I'm being. I've recently started keeping a blog and have been told it's clever and quirky and sardonic and Gen-Y, and those labels apply just as well to me.

Tumblr page: No Tumblr yet, but my NSFW blog is The Malfunctioner, just set your interwebs to tankertonlatch.blogspot.com and you can learn all about me.

There was also some ads for spoonie-friendly dating sites, most of which required paid membership. I thought why not, if I'm throwing caution to the wind anyway, and made an account at SingleDisabled.com because they had free membership. Fuck it, right?

I copied across my bio and blog details from the Tumblr profile and uploaded the following photo of Fozzie, my regular one being too low-res:

Approachable, no?

I added a quick explanation underneath: "I'm very honest on my blog, so I'll show you my face once I know you're cool." Seems fair, right?

There really weren't a lot of questions about the type of women you were hoping to meet. There was a list of nine adjectives of which you could select as many or as few as you liked. I plumped for funny, honest and open-minded. There were also five very broad age categories, so I selected 18 - 30, 30 - 40 and 40 - 50. I've got no plans on hitting on any 18 year olds and dating a 50 year old would definitely raise some eyebrows, but I guess they know what they're doing!

I was almost immediately sent a message from a platinum blonde 39 year old in the same city, and another message half an hour later from a bespectacled brunette in a different city less than an hour away. To actually read these messages would require upgrading to a VIP account, which would entail paying out a minimum of £22.49. Looking around the website it seems too basic and has too few users to justify forking over that much cash before exploring alternatives, so I sent those ladies a brief message of my own, liked them and three other unattached local ladies, and edited my bio to include my e-mail. Thrifty can be sexy, right?

I googled "disabled dating" to see what sites had been recommended. I probably should have started there, but I don't think of myself as disabled (though obviously I am), and it's such a general term that I don't know how useful it will be.

I took third party advice for the top sites and applied for a handful of them with variations on the same bio. Here are my immediate thoughts:

Whispers4U - Hideous name, less than 30 women in the UK logged in over the past 24 hours, searching by region or city requires payment, seems pretty basic but I'm told there are lots of tools to help you communicate with a match and they were out time-wasters. Found one woman near me eight pages deep, a partially deaf mother of two who likes playing pool at bars. Decided to look elsewhere.

Special Bridge - Another weird name, could specify dating, friendship or both, read it's more like a community than a dating site. Wouldn't send me a confirmation e-mail so I took a screenshot of the error and I guess we'll see what happens!

Dating4Disabled - I like the term "life challenge" instead of "disability." Good options for what you're looking for, ranging from E-mail/chat to Intimacy/physical chemistry to Marriage and cDhildren. You can choose several. Another error at the end, another e-mail to customer support!

Disabled Singles Club & Disability Match - clearly Whispers4U under a different skin, which is weird, because Whispers4U has apparently won awards for being a niche dating site. Exactly the same members, search functions, pay features etc on all sites.

Genuine Disabled Singles - SingleDisabled again, but under a name that makes me feel like I'm about to buy a knock-off designer handbag.

I've also tried to start a BumbleBFF account with the hope of making some friends - my research tells me that Hey! VINA is very good for women seeking female friends and that Patook is good if you're looking for friends and are absolutely against anything more, as flirting will get you kicked off.

After an evening of messing about I've received four messages, all from SingleDisabled, all local. I'm thinking £20 for four potential friendships, and maybe a little more, is a pretty good deal after all! I guess I'll leave it there for now and let you know how I get on...

Peace!

✌