Twenty-five. It is the age of the make or break. The line in the sand. The moment of final desperation. It's the marrying age in Baton Rouge.

OK, if you've been following along with me for the past year, you'll know that I've only been a Red Sticker for a full calendar year now. With that time has come a great deal of knowledge, pain, and revelation. I've been denied sex by an otherwise normal man, disappointed in bed, and left to crave, and now I have (hopefully) begun seeing someone truly extraordinary. Throughout all of this, one theme has resonated with me as I heard it echoed in each conversation: If you aren't married by the age of 25 in Baton Rouge, there must be something seriously wrong with you.

How can that be? Why is that the cut-off date? Who really believes this?

OK, let’s be honest. I missed deadline. After a solid week of getting tipsy by myself every night in an attempt to get the creative juices flowing, I still had nothing.

I don’t have bad date stories. I don’t remember the last time I had a real date. I don’t have relationship rhetoric, because I haven’t seen the sweet insides of a relationship for almost a year now. I’ve forgotten what it feels like to get regularly scheduled nookie from a steady sex partner. Actually, I’m beginning to forget what it feels like to even have sex. (OK, maybe that is an exaggeration.)

That’s right. This is a call to action. Stand up. Take a deep breath. And grow a pair.

It’s been a while since I’ve had something to rant about: bad sex, no sex, whatever. But I’ve finally got a new chip on my shoulder. It isn’t that my heart has been broken or all the men I meet are losers. Instead, it is just that all the men I meet seem to be lacking the quintessential additive that makes them men. That’s right, I’m talking about balls – big, little…whatever size, shape, etc. Just grow a pair.

The only action I’ve gotten on Valentine’s Day for roughly a quarter of a century has been powered by batteries – and I’ve only had that toy since college. While I was probably too young during most of that time to really need a serious love interest on V-Day, it does leave me with about a decade of prime time, watching prime time, surrounded by boxes of bonbons, in an empty bed. Wow, that’s a mouthful. No, seriously, read it out loud. (Insert seductive wink.)

Have you taken a close look at the writing on the wall of your favorite watering hole lately? No, seriously, think about this for a second. You’re only in there for a few minutes, doing, you know, whatever it is you do in the bathroom at the bar (pee, blow, whatever), and all around you are some of the most ridiculous inscriptions you will ever encounter.

The other woman has a bad reputation. She’s the one that sneaks in at night and steals the dedicated, loving boyfriend. That’s what you think, right? Big, fake breasts and dirty, little panties. You find her fake blonde hairs on the collar of his jacket. He smells of her perfume when he walks in late at night.

Breaking up is hard to do. It’s painful, sometimes bitter, and sometimes bittersweet. Failed love turns into angry text messages at 3am from outside Cadillac Cafe. It morphs into you sitting alone in the dark, recalling every little detail about your ex while blubbering into a box of tissues. But no matter how it ends, it is how you recover that seems to matter the most.

I sat in bed next to Sean, cringing. Seriously? I waited all this time for that? The sex was awful. I mean awful.

Maybe I should start at the beginning. A friend hooked up Sean and me on a blind date. When he walked into the bar and our eyes met for the first time, I knew it wasn’t magic. But he was sweet, polite, and oh-so-adorable. So we dated.

We all deserve blueberry pancakes. Wait, before your mind wanders to dirty places, I’m not talking about a weird new sexual practice. I’m talkin’ real, warm and gooey, hot-off-the-pan blueberry pancakes. Let me explain.

Fatal error: that’s the message my old laptop gave me just before it crashed. Physical memory dumps were par for the course, but this crash shook my world. In the blink of an eye, everything was gone: every dirty little poem, every half-written novel…all gone.