want

Despite enjoying my afternoon at the beach yesterday, I did end up feeling sad last night, too. The only thing that wasn't so nice about the beach was the frequent twinges of envy/sorrow/longing whenever I saw a happy couple wander past hand-in-hand. Sure, I suppress any indication that I might want to be part of a couple, and I can usually just be happy for others who seem happy, but sometimes the want is just painful.

For need can blossom into all the compensations it requires. To crave and to have are as like as a thing and its shadow. For when does a berry break upon the tongue as sweetly as when one longs to taste it, and when is the taste refracted into so many hues and savors of ripeness and earth, and when do our senses know any thing so utterly as when we lack it? And here again is a foreshadowing – the world will be made whole. For to wish for a hand on ones’ hair is all but to feel it. So whatever we may lose, very craving gives it back to us again. Though we dream and hardly know it, longing, like an angel, fosters us, smooths our hair, and brings us wild strawberries.

- Marilynne Robinson (Housekeeping)

The angel of longing can't quite provide the real thing, unfortunately, but it seems the most I can hope for. Even if I could resolve the issues I've mentioned previously, I can't see how I could possibly catch up on what I've missed.
I still feel uncomfortable thinking of myself as an adult. I'm always surprised to hear people my age referred to as women, even though I know it's not appropriate to call 26-year-olds girls. I think a big part of that is that I still feel like my same clueless 12-year-old self, not ready to move on from playing with Sylvanian Families to talk of boys and school dances. I still think kissing seems kind of icky, and my one experience did nothing to change that opinion. I'm assuming that at some point, attraction overcomes that childish repulsion, but I haven't got there yet.
Possibly I'm being too pessimistic, but I'm so far off even having any kind of crush on anyone and even assuming I got there somehow, I don't see how it could be possible to jump from being emotionally 12 to properly mature, without passing through some hideously awkward learning phase and what adult is going to want to deal with a 26-plus-many-year old who still thinks holding hands is a big frickin' deal?
So, I'm stuck where I was at 17, trying to find a way to cope with the idea of being alone forever without getting sucked into the pit of despair. Usually, denial works quite well, but that false hope just lets the longing grow to an unsustainable size, before collapsing and dragging me back towards despair.
I hate writing about this. I'm committing some mortal sin by merely acknowledging that I think about relationships, thereby discrediting the excuse that I'm just oblivious and uninterested, let alone fully admitting the depths of my social ineptitude.
I have the same longing for a real friend, too, though, and confiding in this blog is the closest I've ever got. Is friendship just as impossible a wish, do you think? Or could that be a slightly more sustainable longing?