The end?

Today ends the six months of Rules. And my twenties. Perhaps I will describe my final shenanigans at my birthday party and at a wedding where I was the maid of honor another time. But for now:

Conclusions?

The first that springs to mind is that if I try to do the Rules in an extreme form, I will eventually go insane from the struggle of it all and run in the opposite direction from the Rules, surpassing even my pre-Rules limits. Yes, even Rulebreaker had some of her own rules before the Rules, even though this realization occurred as a result of seeing the full set of rules and Rules in a shattered heap on the ground.

Even so, there were some Rules that I never once broke, even though they were not intuitive to me pre-experiment. Specifically, I never asked a guy out, and I never initiated phone or e-mail contact with a guy (ok - one exception when I sent a guy a link right after I had replied to an e-mail from him). I also never initiated a conversation about "us" or the relationship beyond telling texting guy what I would and would not do physically outside of one. I never accepted a "free for drinks tomorrow?" date. I never accepted a Saturday night date after a Wednesday. I didn't facebook friend a guy. And all of these Rules inactions generally felt right to me, as opposed to frustrating.

So what drove me insane? The guilt. The Rules made me feel like a CUAO-Fail. I felt constant guilt for being funny and outgoing, for exuding any hint of flirtatiousness, for starting conversation or including topics of my own choosing in conversation, for encouraging guys to go to events I was promoting. When first dates failed, as they did often, I blamed my inability to maintain demureness. I felt bad about myself. I felt that I should be more of a lady and less of a funny girl or else no man would ever love me in that elusive Rules-marriage way. I felt this regardless of the man who didn't love me in that particular instance; I became unable to evaluate the merits of the man, caring only about why he rejected me. This would undoubtedly come across as interest in the man himself, despite not ever really having reached that inquiry. Any interest I exuded would have undermined the entire goal of the Rules.

Simply put, trying hard to be a CUAO as defined by the Rules threw me back in the pit of low self-esteem that I was trying to climb out of when I started this thing.

Reading back over my first CUAO post, I come to the same question I stopped just short of asking in that entry:

How can one be a Creature Unlike Any Other by applying a uniform set of mannerisms and expressions devised by someone else?

Forgetting the Rules's ironic definition of CUAO for a moment, I think most people who have spent time with me would describe me as a creature unlike any other. But the so-called Rules "CUAO" I was trying to be was not me. And by trying to be that CUAO, and trying very very hard to like that CUAO, I tricked myself into not liking me, or at least into doubting the desirability of my personality in a way I had never before. Frankly, I didn't even succeed in liking the CUAO version of me either, so this was a lose-lose result.

At the same time, the Rules experience (including the CUAO part) undeniably increased my independence as a person. I obsess over men less, I get over my obsessions more quickly, I am far more fulfilled by my man-less existence than I ever imagined I could be.

So, what next?

Drop the CUAO act. From here on out, I'm unapologetically Rulebreaker. I will, however, try to be the least annoying version of myself.

Keep the main Rules that worked, but as guidelines. I'm not going to ask guys out. I'm not going to be available at the drop of a hat because, in reality, I'm not. I'm not going to run around friending guys or flirting with guys or making possible interest in them apparent. Indeed, I am going to try not to be interested.

Find some sort of additional experiment to justify continued blogging despite that nobody comments here anymore. I've actually already thought of one, but I have to think it through a bit more.

Stay tuned,

A few hours shy of 30-year-old Rulebreaker