"Mom, dad, I'm going to Greece tomorrow."

The clink of the cutlery being put down was audible. My mother gave my father a sideways glance. "But why ever so darhling, you hate Greek food?"

"I'm not going for the food, I'm going to try and find my biological father."

More looks were exchanged around the table, it was as if they didn't know what to say to me. Which was a pretty common response to me.

"I don't expect you guys to understand this, but I need to go."

My mother nodded slowly, as if she was trying to take in this information. "Isn't it horrifically hot there? You know how you get in the sun."

"Mom–"

"Not to mention that it's a long flight and you know how much your feet swell."

"And what about your patients? Who will handle those?" My dad finally spoke. He was a man of few words, and when he did have any to say, it usually pertained to work or golf.

"I've already spoken to Amy and she said she can fit them in."

"Well..." My mother said loudly. "If your mind is made up then you should pack lots of sun cream and hats and get a wax. And for heavens sake get a Pedi before you put your feet into a pair of sandals. Please could someone pass the asparagus?"

"You should go to that new salon on 4th Ave," one of my sisters piped up. "I got one there the other day.... Amazing."

"Amazing." The other one echoed.

"Really?" My mother leaned in excitedly and she and my sisters began discussing the pros and cons of gel nails versus normal ones.

Who the hell are these people? They're just all so different from me. They all seem to be on the same page. I seem to exist in an entirely separate book. That one lonely, dusty, neglected book at the bottom of the shelf that the cat uses as a plaything.

My mother enjoys lazy, champagne laced days at the country club. Trips to the spa for the latest breakthrough in cellulite treatment, wrinkle decreasing, hair de-frizzing, lip-upsizing and lash extending. Her greatest ambitions in life are to have the eyelids of a newborn baby and Madonna's upper arms. She spends an inordinate amount of energy either trying to look at least two decades younger, or meddling in my life. And when I say meddling, well, imagine a well -intentioned tick latching onto you and never letting go.

Being an ex-beauty queen, she places a lot of importance on outward appearances. She still has an old photo of herself winning Miss Johannesburg 1983. Despite the helmet-sized perm, blue eye shadow, and shoulder pads you could land a helicopter on she did look beautiful.

"Boobs out, back straight, stomach in, and smile. That's the only way you're all get rich husbands." That was my mother's mantra to us growing up. (She's still obsessed with trying to find me a husband, by the way.)

But no matter how hard I tried; she despaired at my posture, held her head at my ungainly manner of walking, and recoiled at my overbite. She was practically heartbroken the day she discovered that my eyebrows were migrating towards each other. Some of that could be fixed, and I was shipped off to an orthodontist and waxologist tout suit. I'm actually grateful for that really, because my teeth are perfectly straight now and I've discovered the joys, in my case, necessity of regular hair removal.

It seems that these days having body hair is about as sinful as letting your six-year-old smoke a cigarette while poaching rhinos'. Everyone is obsessed with removing as much of it as possible. I made this shocking discovery a few months back during a regular de-fuzz session when the waxologist very crassly asked me if I wanted and anal wax – just like that. She also very kindly educated me on the new trends in male grooming... crack and sack. "Even the men are doing it these days." Of course, I declined politely.

But hair could be removed and teeth could be fixed. What couldn't be fixed, though, was how much I let my mother's 'constructive criticism and helpful suggestions' break down my self-esteem.

And to make matters worse, male admirers were pretty scarce on the ground, just confirming my suspicious about myself, and fueling my mothers relentless interference in my love-life, or lack there of.

During my almost twenty -five years on this planet I have had exactly two sort-of, almost, borderline boyfriends. Neither went well.

The first one was the kind of guy whose secretive nature gave me images of bunny boiling or a creepy serial killer wall covered in voyeuristic photos. Turns out, though, that his general strange sneakiness was due to the fact that he had girlfriend back at home. The embarrassing scene that transpired outside my apartment one night confirmed that. The scene then went from embarrassing to crushingly humiliating when she screamed, "he says you're shit in bed anyway!" Unfortunately, some of the neighbors had already gathered so that little nugget of news became public knowledge. I moved out the following week.

As for number two, the guy was obsessed with Star Trek. His claim to fame was that he could speak in both Klingon and Ferengi. I suspected it wasn't going to work when he met my friends for the first time and greeted them with the Vulcan finger salute. My suspicious were only solidified when during sex, that I really wouldn't write anywhere about, let alone home, he grunted into my ear...

"HISlaH, HISlaH, HISlaH." (Translation from Klingon: "Yes, yes, yes.")

No. No. No. Naturally the relationship did not 'live long and prosper.'

And when a vaguely normal guy does pay me any kind of attention, my crippling shyness kicks in – leading to many embarrassing, and less than desirable responses on my part. The last time a guy tried to kiss me I told him that the adult mouth contains 5,000 to 10,000 different types of bacteria. Needless to say, we didn't swap any.

It would be very accurate to conclude that my love life has been a rather lackluster affair to date. My heart is probably the most underutilized organ in my body, even less so than my appendix which seems to serve no medical function at all. It's not that I don't like guys and sex, I like them very, very much. They just don't seem to like me as much as I like them.

So, at the age of almost 25, I know absolutely nothing about love. I've heard it's supposed to make the world go round, it conquers all and apparently it finds a way and is blind...

It wouldn't really matter if it were also deaf with bad skin and a limp, because I won't be finding it anytime soon. Correction, it's probably not finding me. Love got lost years ago and clearly doesn't have a GPS. I've kind of resigned myself to a future life of spinsterdom. I'll probably become one of those crazy old ladies that collects porcelain figurines and decorative spoons that do nothing other than gather dust.

"You just need to meet more guys!' My friend Lilly is always telling me.

But the only time I meet men is when I have a white mask on and am wielding a sharp needle that I'm about to plunge into their gums – not exactly conducive to romance. I did get a marriage proposal once, although he did make it when the laughing gas and tranquilizers had kicked in.

And let's be honest, everybody hates the dentist! As a person with already naturally low self-esteem, this job doesn't exactly boost it.

But becoming a dentist just seemed like the right thing to do. I'd practically grown up in my dad's practice. While my sociable sisters where being rushed around to extra murals in the afternoons, I sat in my dad's office diligently doing my homework and reading the Guinness book of records.

But did I even want to be a dentist?

Well, that's what my whole nervous breakdown was all about. I didn't know who I really was, were the hell I came from, and I had no idea who I should become.

All I knew for sure was that there was only one place on earth I would all these answers.

Greece.