April 10, 2022
“Every man I date has a cat, and I don’t know what that says about me. Sometimes I think they don’t have a cat, and then I show up at their house and realize there’s a surprise cat. “
Most of my day-to-day conversations fluctuate between general nerd speak (“The principal component analysis function in our pipeline is throwing an error”) and sarcastic, goofy jokes and stories that I tell to anyone who will listen because I think I’m HILARIOUS. I have little bits that I do – maybe ‘catch phrases’ is a better way to describe them, but I’m always saying things that are a little bit silly trying to make other people (but mostly myself) laugh. Sometimes I’m reciting things that I stole from movies or tv. For instance, I like to tell my boss “I’m starting to hyperventilate and I’m not wearing a stretchy fabric” (a Gilmore Girls quote) whenever I’m having trouble getting data to query. I also think that the moment when Happy Gilmore screams “SUCK MY WHITE ASS, BALL” at a golf ball is one of the funniest moments in movie history, and I love to yell adapted versions of it in my every day life (“Suck my white ass, Pikachu!” during a round of Smash Bros, for instance). Sometimes I’m telling jokes that make me chuckle mostly because they make other people uncomfortable. When my free covid19 tests from the government came in the mail, I started asking my friends when they thought the suicide kits would ship out. Most of the time, I’m just poking fun at myself. I make fun of myself for being afraid of the “rich lady taxes” that I seem to owe every year. Last week I had the worst heartburn of my life and was walking around very conspicuously with a huge bottle of Alka Seltzer making comments about how “this is 32”. By the time Friday rolled around, my boss would ask me to do something and I’d say “But Steve, my heartburn…and these rich lady taxes…”
Most of the time, I’m just telling stories from my own life that I think are funny. Self-depreciation is a bad habit of mine, but I’ve found that if I can take every awful, painful experience and turn it into a funny story, then I have control over the way it makes me feel. I make fun of my dating life – and in turn, the people around me make fun of it too. I was telling my coworker about my Pikachu Halloween costume from last year and said “my boyfriend at the time dressed up as a Pokemon catcher” and without missing a beat, he said “and now we know why he dumped you.” Zing! I was so proud. This happened at the very same happy hour that I tried to explain to some new work friends why I’m trying to find a man who doesn’t have have a cat, which evolved into discussion of one guy’s pet turtle that he left with his parents when he moved to DC, and how he’s a deadbeat turtle dad who doesn’t pay turtle support. It is so disarming to me when people make fun of themselves, and will laugh at my expense as well. I probably need to unpack that in therapy, but here we are. That happy hour was one of the most joyful evenings I’ve had this year, and it was all because I laughed until my cheeks were sore, mostly at my own expense.
The last six months have been hard for me. It’s no secret that I got my heart broken last year and I’ve been in this seemingly never-ending grieving process. I have really good days and really bad days, but overall I’m doing okay. I’m focused on running a half marathon at the end of this month, and hopefully getting promoted at work over the next year or two. I have goals. I can sleep through the night now, sometimes without needing a podcast to drown out the silence when I’m falling asleep. I know, it sounds like I’m talking about a newborn baby – “She is sleeping through the night already!” But overall, I’m doing a lot better than the last time I wrote in this blog.
If you follow me on Facebook or Instagram, you know that I passed my ex-boyfriend while I was running last week. I took a little selfie and made a joke about how I hoped he got “a good long look at my ass”, and it’s true that I ran by him with my head held high. But I also cried in the shower. Later, I talked to my therapist about it with with a hint of panic in my voice as I tearfully described “I’m just worried that I’m never going to get over it.” She was really helpful and talked to me about the grieving process. She told me that grief is like a rubber ball inside of a box, and at the bottom of the box, there’s a panic button. When you lose someone or something, the ball is really big and as it bounces around the box, that panic button gets pressed all the time. So in November when I couldn’t make it through the day without crying and relied on podcasts or New Girl playing in the background to make me feel less alone, my grief ball was really big. Now that time has passed, my ball is much smaller, but it’s still in the box bouncing around, and sometimes that panic button still gets hit by my grief ball.
This was the first time I ever thought about grief that way, and I started thinking through the things I can do to make my grief ball smaller. I’ve been on a few dates, but my dating efforts have been really half-assed, so I decided I would “put myself out there a bit more” and maybe my grief ball would shrink. This is what led me to the terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad date I experienced last night. It was a dinner date in Arlington, and it was the shortest date I’ve ever been on. This poor guy could not carry a conversation to save his life, and would not smile or laugh at anything I said. And I think we established above that I’m HILARIOUS. It’s so hard to describe in words why this was such a bad experience – he didn’t insult me like the guy who told me I looked 15 lbs heavier than in my pictures, he didn’t insult my dog or lecture me on my water heater. It was just the type of awkward interaction that makes you want to crawl under the table. I was working so hard to carry the conversation. I fell back on a tried and true tension killer- “tell me about some of your bad dates” and got crickets. So I just started telling my own stories and found myself laughing and smiling at my own antics – which I think signaled to him that I was having a wonderful time. When the check finally came, I paid it (one of the only things the man verbalized to me was that he’s broke) and he asked me if I was having as much fun as he was. I gave him an honest answer “No, it was nice to meet you but I don’t think we should meet up again” and scurried as quickly as my new tan pumps would carry me to the sweet solitude of my 4Runner.
I felt terrible. It never feels good to tell someone you aren’t interested in them. But if you saw me after my date last night, you would never have known how terrible I felt, because as soon as I left the parking lot, I fell into a fit of uncontrollable laughter. I called my best friend and we laughed together for like ten minutes, and then I called my mom and dad and we all laughed some more. It is NOT a funny story, but the cumulative circumstances of my dating life paired with this poor Eeyore of a man tickled my funny bone so much that I had tears in my eyes from laughing. I was laughing over how awkward I felt and the relief I felt to be alone at the end of the night, and how for just a split second in time I felt so grateful to be going home to my empty house. I was laughing about how this guy with no money, no sense of humor, no plans for the future, with nothing interesting to say thought he had a chance at a second date with me. Then I was laughing because that’s the first time I’ve ever walked away from a date feeling like I was out of someone’s league or too good for them. I have to be honest, that feeling doesn’t suck. I haven’t laughed that hard in months, and I think my grief ball shrank some just from all of that laughter.
I know it sounds like I’m cackling at this poor guy’s expense. Okay, yes. I am. But he did get a free dinner out of the deal. I realized that the reason he missed the signal that I was having a terrible time on the date, was that I was doing the same thing I’ve been doing to survive the last few months – I was being silly and funny, and trying to use good humor to power my way through a difficult situation. I thought about it, and I really was smiling and laughing for almost the entire date, and it was simply because I was entertaining myself. None of that came from him, it was all internal. It sounds weird, but that’s…pretty freakin’ cool. It’s cool that I still managed to have fun enjoying my own company and that I was able to laugh about a situation that sucked and cost me 50 dollars plus gas.
Some day I’m going to meet someone who thinks I’m adorable and awesome and hilarious, and he’s going to make me laugh and smile. But until then I’ll try my best to think all those things about myself and continue making myself laugh uncontrollably.
Cluelessness is the Mother of Invention 