September 11, 2023

Sometimes I think my entire personality is just a series of quotes from Gilmore Girls. For the uninitiated, Gilmore Girls was a show that ran in the early 2000’s about a single mother and her daughter who are incredibly close. It’s set in quintessential New England (a fictional town called Stars Hollow in Connecticut), so the entire show gives off “cozy fall” vibes. The characters in the show are quirky and they talk fast – resulting in some very silly quotes that don’t make much sense out of context. I think a significant portion of the pie chart that represents my personality is one slice labeled “Gilmore Girls Nonsense”. Every single time I do my makeup, I think about Lorelei Gilmore telling her daughter, Rory “You have skin like a baby’s ass, hit yourself in the face with a giant powder puff and let’s go.” That one becomes funnier and funnier to me as I get older and my skin becomes less and less like a baby’s ass. I once heard a teammate at work explaining to someone that the plural form of “cul-de-sac” is “culs-de-sac” and I shouted “YOU GOT THAT FROM RORY.” There’s one scene in the show where Emily Gilmore (the grandmother) calls Rory and makes a passive aggressive comment, “I was going to wait until you called me, but my life isn’t as long as yours”. I use that one when I’m getting impatient with people at work (frequently). Every time I eat a slice of pie, I think to myself “I’m attracted to pie, but I don’t feel the need to date pie.” I can’t even remember the context for that one, but I entertain myself with it.

I think I’ve written about the Gilmore Girls before in this blog. I don’t remember exactly what I wrote (and would rather die than go back and read it now) but I probably regaled you with tales of how I’ve been identifying more and more with Lorelai than with Rory recently – something I thought would never happen. When the show originally aired, I was the same age as the teenage/young adult daughter on the show, Rory, so naturally I felt compelled by her exciting young adult problems. SHE GOT KISSED BY A BOY IN A GROCERY STORE?! THERE WAS A NAKED MAN OUTSIDE OF HER DORM ROOM (Marty, the one man party)?! LOGAN FINALLY CALLED HER HIS GIRLFRIEND?! WEEEEEEEEEE. You get it. Of course, now I’m the same age that Lorelai (the mother) was in Season 1. Okay, okay…Season 2. Lorelai gave birth to Rory when she was sixteen, and the show kicked off when Rory had just turned 16 herself. Throughout the seven season run, Lorelai was moving from man to man in search of her forever person. She had a lot of bad dates, some serious relationships that ended dramatically, and two on-again-off-again relationships with Christopher (Rory’s dad) and Luke (the charming diner owner in town). But she was doing all of this while also trying to make big moves in her career in the hotel industry, trying to maintain friendships and a tricky relationship with her own mother and father, and raising a kid. Obviously I can’t relate to all of this – my parents are living saints and I am sans child. But I am trying to make all of my dreams come true while keeping my young dogter, Maudie on the right path. Close enough. Oh! I also go on dates and have a fabulous wardrobe similar to (and inspired by) Lorelai.

As much as I believe that I’ve moved significantly toward team Lorelai, sometimes I find myself still feeling like Rory. I was thinking about her today. There’s one episode in particular that always stuck with me. Rory is in college and she has been on several dates with a very handsome, intelligent (and rich) young man named Logan Huntsburger. They even had a cute little adventure where the jumped off of a tower holding parasols while shouting “In Omnia Paratus!” (Latin: ready for all things). Anyway, you don’t need to know that. All you need to know is that she’s been on dates with him and is a smitten little kitten. In this episode, she hasn’t heard from Logan lately, and decides to take a trip home from Yale to see her mother for the weekend to take her mind off of him. She is followed home by her roommate, a very abrasive girl named Paris. Rory, Paris and Lane (Rory’s hometown bestie) end up going to the opening of a museum in Stars Hollow – where one of the town matriarchs, Miss Patty is serving up “leftover Founders’ Day punch”. Apparently this punch packs a…punch, as it is spiked with alcohol. The underage girls skip the museum visit and find themselves standing outside, indulging in Founders’ Day punch all afternoon, while each agonizing over the men in their lives and imploring each other to leave their cell phones (flip phones!) in their pockets.

By the end of the episode, Rory is drunk and crying on the bathroom floor of Lorelai’s house. Her mom comes to check on her and Rory puts her head in her lap and asks through sobs, “Why doesn’t he like me?” I honestly think about this moment all the time. I wonder if there’s a woman alive who hasn’t looked desperately at a friend, a sister or her mom and asked this question. If you’ve ever been on the other side of this question, you know it’s a powerless position to be in – kind of how I imagine a mother feels when her child is sick with a stomach bug, knowing there’s nothing she can do and no medicine or comfort she can offer. You don’t know the answer and the man in question probably doesn’t know the answer either. That’s because there is no clear answer and there is also nothing you can say that will help. We all logically know that. But personally, I know that knowledge doesn’t stop me from getting in a bad place and pleading with someone across from me to just tell me why. Tell me what I’m doing wrong, tell me what I can fix about myself so that I never have to feel like this again. Why doesn’t he like me? On the proverbial (or literal) bathroom floor again, begging my mom/sister/friend to help me figure it out.

In the next episode, Lorelai revisits the bathroom floor situation while talking to Rory on the phone.

Lorelai: Rory, two days ago you were on the bathroom floor crying about why he won’t call you. Why doesn’t he like you, what did you do.
Rory: I was drunk. I was sick.
Lorelai: You, my beautiful, brainy, fabulous daughter, were lying on the floor of the bathroom, wondering what you had done wrong! Which is disturbing to me on several levels, including the fact that I can’t remember the last time I cleaned the floor of the bathroom.

That’s another Gilmore-ism I have used before. I literally cried on the bathroom floor over a marine named Chris once, and I told my own mother that the really scary part about that was how dirty my bathroom floor was. It made her laugh. But I swear to you, I’ve had the above conversation with myself a million times. I had it today. Walking from the parking lot into my office after realizing it’s been 4 days since the man I had been seeing briefly has acknowledged my existence, I found myself thinking “It’s okay, babe. He is the one who is missing out. You ARE brainy and fabulous, and he’s not worth crying over. You’re not going to beg anyone to like you ever again. Don’t you dare text him. HE IS PRACTICALLY HOMELESS!” Note that I DO call myself babe sometimes. The brilliant, pretty, confident, successful Lorelai inside of me tries to speak logic to the insecure, young, and hurt Rory inside of me that just wants to fall apart and ask the universe what I’m doing wrong.

I think people get exasperated with me, and I get exasperated with myself too, over how bad I feel about being single sometimes. I joke about being a walking Cathy comic – like I’m the most single person on the planet. I once had a friend kind of yell at me “IT’S ALL YOU EVER TALK ABOUT.” Maybe that’s so. Maybe I obsess over it and keep trying to figure out what I’m doing wrong and why I haven’t found my person yet. Maybe my friend doesn’t know what it’s like to be 33 years old and thinking about child-bearing years slipping away. Maybe he does. Maybe I talk about it a lot because it’s the only real interesting part of my life – without funny dating stories, what else is there for me to tell you about? The generative adversarial network I’m building at work? The pricing negotiation I’m writing tonight? How Maudie’s poop looked this morning? Maybe I’m looking for someone to just tell me “yeah, I’m struggling with that too.” I don’t know. All I know is that sometimes my Lorelai life is a little hard – I come home after a long day of chasing my dreams in my fabulous clothes, and I wish I had someone to sit down with me at dinner time to talk about it. And sometimes my inner-Lorelai turns into a Rory, and I end up on that bathroom floor again. Luckily, I’m always there to get myself back up.

September 9, 2023

I’ve had the same bottle of perfume since 2011. It probably cost me $6.99 at Bath and Body Works or maybe even less if I got it on sale at Christmas time. It’s called “Country Chic” and I honestly couldn’t tell you what it actually smells like. It smells like Fall to me…but like, not in any way I can identify. I don’t wear perfume very often (hence the longevity of my single 12 oz bottle), but it seems that every time I do, someone comments on how nice my Country Chic smells. I can remember sitting outside at Coastal Flats (a very mediocre Great American Restaurant in Fairfax County that has an excellent cosmopolitan martini) on a third or fourth date with my ex and the waitress commented on how lovely my perfume was. I felt really proud. I had a fake boyfriend in graduate school who thought my perfume had a stupid name and loved to call it “Country Chick”. When I was getting ready to go out, he’d lower his voice and say “I GOTTA HAVE MY COUNTRY CHICK” and I would giggle and giggle. Honestly, it was a good 7 dollar purchase….notably back when 7 dollars was a lot of money to me on my $14,000 per year graduate school stipend. Back then, I lived in a nice little apartment that had yellow appliances from the 90’s and was infested with giant wolf spiders – who became my loving companions in that home. I had a $299 couch that I bought on credit from the Lexington Overstock Warehouse – and as life is, I’ve spent my adult life searching heaven and earth (with a much more generous budget) for a couch that is as soft and comfy as the bargain sofa I had back then. I was so proud of my little one bedroom apartment in a quiet spot just past Richmond Road (just outside of New Circle, for my Lexington homies) and I had my first kiss EVER from a man named Brent on that warehouse sofa. Adult shit. Country chic.

I had a man over for dinner the other night (please don’t worry, he has since lost interest and I’ll never see him again), and he smelled good. I told him so and he launched into a very long monologue about his cologne collection. He has a clean, crisp scent that he wears at work and a bolder, more “saucy” scent for dates and nights out at the club. He apparently has friends who seek his counsel for cologne purchases – it’s his thing. I get it, we all have our things that we care about. My thing is earrings. I pride myself on my fun and vast earring collection, and like to tell myself that I have absolutely flawless taste when it comes to ear decor.

Anyway, the conversation turned toward me and he asked me what kind of perfume I wear. I told him about my Country Chic and he threw his head back with laughter. I stared at him, my fork frozen in front of my mouth (Shake n’ Bake porkchop floating midair like a little delicious drone). He shook his head, “I’m sorry to laugh, I just thought someone who makes as much money as I assume you do would have a nice perfume collection.” I told him about my attachment to the little bottle that has traveled with me to 4 new homes over the last decade and about all of the compliments. “Yeah you always smell very nice, but like…what would happen if you tried something different?”

Shit. He’s right. My therapist says this to me all the time. If you read my last blog post, you saw what a tizzy I was in when I had to go see a new hairdresser. I walked away from my appointment with Sabrina, who was so so lovely, initially believing that I really did not enjoy my visit with her. After some reflection, I realized that I actually enjoyed my visit immensely while simultaneously lamenting the fact that is was different. Her hands felt so different from Liz’s when she was shampooing my head…but not…bad different. Just different. My blowout looked different when I walked out…but it was so pretty. CHANGE IS SO ANNOYING AND AWESOME.

Anyway, that’s how I ended up in Ulta, trying out every fancy perfume they had. It was an agonizing experience. It was like I walked into the store with $100 earmarked for “try something different”. I kept thinking about all the times I’ve been nauseated in elevators and Ubers by perfumes and colognes that overpowered the air around me. I threw up once on the steps of Ford’s Theatre in DC because of the combination of one bad headache and one Uber driver who had bathed in cologne before he left his house. I’m sure people saw me wretching on the street in my fancy dress, and thought “what a shame that the young lady mixed tequila and whiskey so early on a Tuesday evening.” I don’t want to be that person who leaves a smell behind in creaky elevators in old government buildings. I don’t want to make people vomit in front of National landmarks.

Okay, so I may have been overthinking it. I finally bought a nice bottle of perfume. I won’t tell you the name of it here because this is HASHTAG: NOT AN AD. I really like putting it on before work. Something about the ritual is nice – the deliberate way I apply it carefully to the spots that google instructed me, careful to avoid over application makes me feel elevated and fancy for the work day. I almost understand why my date was dribbling on and on about his cologne (she said un-ironically as she dribbled on and on in her blog). But honestly, I woke up this morning and curled my hair for a day out at breweries with my friend and reached for my tried and true Bath and Body Works bottle. I guess you can take the girl out of the country but you can’t take Country Chic out of the girl.

September 5, 2023

I saw a new hairdresser today. Or…new to me anyway. I think she’s been doing hair for a few years, but today she touched these locks of mine for the first time. Momentous, I know. Most women (and some men, I’m sure) can relate to the stress of trying out a new hairdresser. Your hair is such a big part of your look and trusting someone to wave scissors around back there can be difficult. About 2 years ago (Friday September 3, 2021 to be exact) I walked into the Eclips salon in South Riding and had my very first appointment with Elle. I later learned that Elle’s real name was Elizabeth (Lizzie, Liz) but the salon called her “Elle” in their online booking system to avoid confusion with all of the other Elizabeths at the salon. I sat down in her chair and looked at myself in the mirror. The person I saw in the reflection was someone who had been up all night crying, had struggled through a half-day at work, and then took the afternoon off for a last minute appointment.

When I had scheduled the appointment the day before, I was planning on asking Elle/Liz for a trim and maybe a root touchup of the single-process brown color I used to hide all three of my gray hairs. But the evening before I met Liz, I had spent all afternoon cooking and baking for a date I had with my then boyfriend. We had an amazing dinner, some drinks, dessert, and one big fight at the end of the night. I cried and asked him to stay the night and he said no and left. I woke up the next morning knowing for sure that it was over. When I sat down in Liz’s chair I asked her to cut six inches off of my hair and dye it as dark as it would go…so much for that trim and touchup. Crisis hair.

Chopping off all of your hair is such an exciting mistake. The hairdresser cuts it all off and fluffs and shines it until you look like Emma Watson, post-Harry-Potter. They use the fancy hair products that make you smell way nicer than your normal self. You’re surrounded by other women who are getting their heads massaged and shampooed in the sink. Everyone is talking about life – kids, men, men with kids. You know, gossip. The best kind of gossip – stories about people you’ll never meet who made bad decisions or got screwed over. You treat your stylist like your own personal therapist, telling her things you wouldn’t even tell a friend or your own sister. The scissors glide across your hair and as the excess falls to the floor, your head literally feels lighter. Cooler. Bouncy. You feel bouncy. You’ve gotten all of your pain off of your chest and all of the dead-split-ends off of your head. The grays are gone. You look at yourself in the mirror and see change. And the change makes you feel like other parts of your life could also change and maybe feel as painless and intentional as a haircut.

Unfortunately, you get home, and realize that Liz isn’t in your bathroom to help you style the damn bob every morning. You also learn that you can’t hide a bad hair day with a ponytail or a messy bun, and that the slightest change in humidity or the way you sleep or Mercury going in and out of retrograde can alter your hair’s behavior. Your morning routine becomes a struggle and you curse yourself for subjecting your hair straightener to this much strain. What did that Chi do to deserve this?

Change is a real pain in the ass. We love it and hate it. It feels so good when you buy those new sheets and comforter on sale at Target and shake up the look of your entire bedroom. That is, until you realize the new sheets are itchy and the comforter clashes with the dog (Seriously, an apricot colored dog on a rose colored bedspread? Puke.) That brand new car is a real treat until the first monthly payment hits your account and you also realize that you’re still as messy as ever and your new car looks disgusting just like your old one did in record time. We all come back from the dentist with shiny clean teeth, plaque-free and we tell ourselves that this time will be different. This time we will floss every day and the dental hygienist will be sooooo impressed with our healthy gums. Yeah. Right. You get your stupid Ipsy glam bag for August and dare to try the new night cream they sent you. The next day, your face looks like you spent the evening running away from the Children of the Corn. Change is really difficult, and when you can pull it off, it can still feel like a horrible mistake.

Do you remember the part in “Remember the Titans” where the coach makes Sunshine cut his hair? If not, I guess you don’t remember the Titans after all…heh heh heh. Anyway, Sunshine sits in front of the mirror in the locker room, rubbing his fingers through his soccer-mom hair and Petey Jones (the running back, THE running back, y’all) says “Hey now, all that rubbin’ ain’t gonna make them golden locks grow back no faster.” Isn’t that the truth? I’ve never had a crisis haircut that I didn’t regret within just a few days, but at that point, it’s done. All I can do is wait for it to grow back. I wake up and use that straightener until it quacks from distress (seriously, a worn out Chi sounds just like a duck with a hernia) and days go by, and hair grows back little by little. The crisis passes and the only evidence that it ever happened is…well, 8 million pictures on social media, including a few in the pages of this blog. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t waste a little time running my fingers through it, wishing I were a Kardashian who could afford to have a different hairstyle every day. Shut up, Petey Jones – I know dwelling doesn’t help, but I can’t help dwelling.

I was in so much pain as I sat in Liz’s chair for the first time, but it’s one of my favorite memories. I was desperate for a friend that day, and the universe delivered one. I needed someone to listen to me and be on my side and she was there. I needed a change, I needed to walk out of that salon feeling lighter and different and she gave me that. She catalyzed the season of change that I was about to endure. That night, I went home and got dumped by someone I loved and thus began a really long journey of trying to feel like myself again – trying to get back to some equilibrium…trying to move on…trying to get my hair to be long enough to put in a damn ponytail.

Two years have passed and a lot has changed. Liz has taken me from dark brown to blonde and every shade in between. She’s fluffed my hair and my ego at the same time, calling me beautiful and telling me I’m hilarious. She listens, she hugs me when I leave. I’m not saying correlation equals causation, but I’ve had 4 GREAT (not good, but great) dates in the two years since I’ve been single, and they all happened on days Liz did my hair. The guys obviously didn’t stick around for very long, but hey, she’s a hair stylist, not a magician. And now, she’s moving far far away from me. I’m going to miss my friend. I’m going to miss sitting in her chair. I’m going to miss the controlled change that she has helped me achieve when control was the one thing I felt I could never have. I’m going to miss her encouragement and her light. But I can’t help but think that there are some women in Texas who are about to come to her for their own crisis haircuts and that she will be there for them in their time of need. And for me, I’ll be over here begrudgingly accepting change once again. Starting with my new hairdresser.

December 18, 2022

Warning: Potential spoilers for Love is Blind Season 3 ahead. Ye be warned.

One of the things that got me through the first few weeks of the pandemic was Netflix’s entrance into the “trashy reality tv” market. They kept releasing these ridiculous reality shows like The Circle, which was a social media simulation where they brought people to live in an apartment complex and interact with their neighbors through a Facebook-esque platform. That show was particularly appropriate for the time because contestants lived in complete isolation, with only their “friends” in their tiny social media world to provide relief from loneliness – which really mirrored my real life as I was quarantined in my studio apartment in Pentagon City. Then there was the even-trashier show, Too Hot to Handle. The premise of that one was that several really attractive people were sent to live on an island and were promised that after their time on the island, they would get to take home a big chunk of money. They thought they were going to spend a couple weeks in paradise, drinking unlimited cocktails and banging other hot people in the shower every night and also take home a shit load of money for their trouble. The plot twist was that there was no hanky panky allowed on the island, and each time they kissed, cuddled, held hands with, or boinked one of their fellow contestants, the entire group paid a monetary penalty. I watched this entire season on a series of virtual dates with a guy I met on Tinder through the magic of a “Netflix party”, and we each ordered ridiculous food on Uber Eats (Oreo cheesecake from the Cheesecake Factory stands out in my mind) while we tried to navigate being single in a world where you couldn’t go on dates or touch other people for fear of a penalty. I guess that show was also appropriate for the time.

The best show was Love is Blind. The premise of this one was that contestants went on dates in “pods” where they couldn’t see their date. The two daters were separated by a wall, and they tried to make real connections without physical attraction playing a role. Contestants went on dates with all of the members of the opposite sex and started trying to narrow down the playing field based on making strong emotional connections. The only way to make it past the “pod” level of the game was to get engaged to someone. Engaged to be MARRIED. Once someone popped the question, the couple would get to meet face to face for the first time and start the process of reconciling an emotional bond with a physical being. Then they got four weeks to live together and decide if they were going to actually say “I do” at the altar, or part ways. The game was further complicated by interactions with the other engaged couples (meaning you could possibly be hanging out with your fiancé and an ex from the pods who didn’t make your final cut). In season 1, we saw a love triangle, a man who was rejected by a nut named Jessica for being too short, a really beautiful couple that needed to be protected at all costs, a telenovela star who told her fiancé that the sex was bad, and a square named Kenny. The whole thing was a good time.

Recently, Netflix dropped Season 3 of Love is Blind, and I couldn’t resist tuning in. The show is a mix of compelling and depressing for a single gal like me, because so many of the conversations they have on the show, both in the pods and outside of the pods are the same conversations you have over and over when you’re dating until you meet someone who likes you, or you die – whichever comes first. The pod part of the season lasts about 3 episodes and you get to watch some of the awkward dates that lead to no where, and you also get to start seeing the “connections” form through these blind dates.

Here are some things people “connect” over in the pods (and on dating apps):

1. Food. Omg you love food?! I love food too, I can’t believe it! Let’s debate pineapple on pizza. “I’m a foodie” is not a personality trait, but we love to treat it like it is. Everyone loves tacos, I don’t know why we need to say that.
2. Fitness. This is a way to cheat the Love is Blind system. Even though your dates can’t see you, if you talk about how you’re super into fitness, people already start imagining how smoking hot your body is. Bartise and Raven from season 3 spent most of their time together talking about fitness, and they even did a little yoga ball workout together. It was actually pretty cute.
3. Traveling. Personally I think listening to other people talk about their travel stories is usually super boring, but people love to connect over shared love for traveling. One of the contestants this season was chronicling his travels, talking about having transcendental sex in Mali or something like that. It was like Eat, Pray, Love but even more gross and pretentious. I’ve been on some dates before where the guy was judging me a lot for never traveling out of the country and very proud of having been to 20 plus countries or whatever. Look, not everyone has had the time or the money to travel that much, and I just don’t think it makes you less interesting or attractive if you haven’t. I would love to start planning some trips though – what a great thing to look forward to with a partner!
4. The Office. Ugh. You could put all kinds of entertainment into this bucket – sports teams, theater, favorite tv shows, board games, video games. But my experience on the dating apps has proven that The Office is very, very important to 27-40-year-old men in the DC area.
5. Hiking. Apparently we all love to hike.
6. Trauma. This is the main thing the couples seem to connect over in this show. I think a lot of people call it trauma-bonding. You tell your date something that you’re insecure about, or some traumatic event from your past and POOF you’re in love.

These little lightning rods of connection make the contestants giddy and excited at first. But ultimately, in the pods and outside of them, the contestants have to face dealbreakers. As their “connection” with a potential partner grows, they start to learn more about each other’s values and goals. Sometimes values and goals are different in ways that are less consequential. Other differences can’t be overlooked. Here are some common dealbreakers:

1. Religion or lack thereof. I get this, because this is becoming more and more of a dealbreaker for me. I was dumped for “not being Jewish” several months ago. Having different religious views can either set you up to be a disappointment to your partner and their family from day 1, or it can be used as a really convenient exit ramp.
2. Desire for children/family values. My favorite character of this season, Nancy wants 10 children and made sure every man she dated in the pods knew that. My answer when someone asks me if I want children is: “I’ve always thought that if I met the right person and he wanted a child AND I thought he would be a good dad, I would have one. But I’m not going to force it or bring a kid into the world with someone who isn’t into it or cut out for it.”
3. Lifestyle. I think this term encompasses a number of things, but the thing that comes to my mind is active vs. inactive. Many people are super outdoorsy, or very focused on fitness and nutrition, and they often can’t fathom sharing a life with someone whose lifestyle doesn’t align. I think cleanliness can fall into this category too. One of the contestants on LIB season 3 walked into her fiancé’s apartment to find that he was a huge slob. He had flies in his toilet and the camera person zoomed in on the flies like it was the Amityville Horror in there. If you’re going to lose your shit over messes and dirty towels on the floor, this can be a dealbreaker for sure.
4. Monogamy. One of the things I’ve noticed on dating apps is that many people are practicing non-monogamy. You’ll see couples on the apps trying to find people to connect with as a pair. You’ll see men who put “ENM” on their profile, which means they practice ethical non-monogamy and their partner knows they are dating other people. I matched with a man once who told me he was married and looking to cheat on his wife to get back at her for cheating on him. This was definitely a dealbreaker for me. My point is, if monogamy is or isn’t important to you, it can be a filter.
5. Politics. I’ve found that I can get along with people across the political spectrum, but I definitely think it makes things difficult. I’ve found myself in positions of having to defend some of my partner’s ugly political values to my friends and it was embarrassing. I regret a lot of those interactions.
6. Height. This is non-issue for me because I’m 5’0”. There are a lot of women who refuse to date men who aren’t taller. Some even have a 6’ or taller requirement. This one isn’t fair, but it’s the world we live in.
7. Must love dogs. If someone can’t get on board with your pets (or desire not to have any), you have to keep moving.
8. Finances. One thing the LIB show really addresses well is finances among the contestants. More than once, a couple has gotten engaged only for one partner to find out that their love-interest is deep in credit card debt, or has no desire to work, or has expectations for a lifestyle they can’t afford. Other times partners are pleasantly surprised to learn that they chose people with lots of savings and badass careers. Division of labor in the household and workforce expectations (stay at home mom/dad, workaholic behavior, etc.) also belong here.
9. Smoking/drinking/drugs. I made out with a smoker one time and it was something I personally couldn’t get over.
10. Sex. People have different preferences, cadences, and desires in the bedroom. Being on the same page as a potential partner can be a dealbreaker.

There are others, but I think these are the big categories that dealbreakers fall into. People do sometimes have weird ones that are less applicable to the general population. I got unmatched on an app once because I said I didn’t like to climb trees. Another time, a guy ghosted me when I told him I like to eat hush puppies. Once I made the mistake of telling a man I didn’t like to cuddle at bedtime. I wonder what he’s doing now.

If you make it past the connection stage and dodge all of the dealbreaker questions, the rest all comes down to physical chemistry and the way you treat each other. In three seasons of Love in Blind, the one thing that is categorically true across the board is that love is NOT blind. In every season there has been a couple who met in person and didn’t connect physically. Jessica from season 1 couldn’t get over how short and not-Barnett her partner was (Barnett was another contestant on the show who rejected her). Shake from season 2 said the lovely Deepti looked like his aunt. In season 3, Bartise couldn’t help but compare the beautiful and spunky Nancy to Raven “the smoke show”. Looks matter, and physical connection matters. I can’t demonize these people for their feelings on the matter – I CAN judge them for the tactless and hurtful way they conveyed these feelings on tv. I’ve been on dates before with people who were perfectly lovely in pictures, and for whatever reason, meeting them in person caused my body to be like “that’s not the one.” It doesn’t mean they aren’t perfectly lovely in reality, but something about the chemistry between us wasn’t right. Love has never been blind in this way – if it were, life would be so much better though.

Season 3 of LIB also shed a little light on how much love can be affected by how YOU feel about your body and yourself in general. One of the most stressful couples on the show was Cole and Zanab. They connected over religion in the pods, met in real life and seemed to really be into each other. But when Cole met another contestant, Colleen who had also been at the top of his list in the pods, he was really taken by her cute ballerina body. He made comments to Zanab about how he was physically attracted to Colleen, but emotionally connected to Zanab. He really stepped in it by saying this and had an awful moment of flirtation with Colleen at a pool party. 25-year-olds, man. What didn’t help was the fact that Zanab was incredibly insecure about her looks. She’s the type of girl who won’t swim at the beach for fear of messing up her makeup, and she was constantly making little digs at herself for her looks and how she looks like a different person without makeup on. It was also really clear that she had some food issues. I recognize all of this in her because I’ve lived it.

At the finale of the show, after Zanab left Cole at the altar and made a really scathing speech about how awful he treated her, she spoke about Cole constantly making remarks about her body and weight. She brought up a story about some cuties where Cole allegedly criticized her for eating too many clementines before dinner, as if worried about her calorie consumption. Cole sat on the stage, absolutely stunned with a big dumb look on his face as if she was speaking German. At the end of the show, they aired the footage from “cutie-gate” and it became clear that her description of the event, while not untrue, was told through the lens of someone who was extremely insecure and misunderstanding intend behind someone’s words. While Cole did ask her about the cuties, the context was that he was apparently taking her to a big dinner at 7 and was telling her that she should save her “appetito” because they were going to go to town on some steak or whatever at the restaurant. But what she heard was “stop eating, fatass!”

I wish I could talk to her, because I know what that’s like – to view the world through the colored-glasses that come with bad body image and disordered eating. It destroys your self worth, but it also creeps into your relationships and interactions and affects them in ways that you can’t see unless you’re on the outside looking in. Reality television gets a bad reputation, and I’m not saying it isn’t trash. But sometimes you can see yourself in the hot messes on the screen, or really relate to all the obstacles of dating and relationships, or motherhood, or “Fill-in-the-blank”. I can’t wait for season 4. I also heard they are filming a season in DC soon, so maybe I’ll be married and instagram famous by this time next year – hopefully hated by the masses for being a true reality tv villain.

December 13, 2022

I was driving down Loudoun County Parkway after work this afternoon trying to get to Walmart to buy scotch tape and hot sauce, as one does on a Tuesday. Am I the only one who buys scotch tape once a year to wrap three presents, only to store it in a drawer somewhere, and forget which drawer I chose – then one year later, I go to use the ample amount of scotch tape I bought the year before, and can’t find it? It can’t just be me. Anyway, I’m on my way to Walmart and the car behind me honks while I’m waiting for some kids to cross an intersection. I instinctively throw up my middle finger and start grumbling about how “I should just run over these kids because the prick behind me in the Prius is in a hurry.” Then I pull into my parking spot at the store and hear another, identical honking sound. Then it hits me. The podcast I’m listening to is playing honking sounds for some godforsaken reason and I flipped off that nice man in a Prius for no goddamn reason. Because I’m the asshole.

I tell you all a lot of story about the abuses I suffer in the DC dating scene (which is a lot), but to be fair, sometimes I’m the asshole. Last night, a guy asked me for my personality type and sign and I told him I’m a Pisces, and before I could stop myself, I said “But I don’t believe in that shit.” He said “You’re a little guarded, which is ok because life is traumatic. But the stars can heal you.” Again, before I could stop myself, I said “You’re not going to like me, man.” Because I’m the asshole. I know I’m the asshole, because I had already unmatched this poor guy once before. He asked me why I did that, and I honestly didn’t remember. I think he was a victim of a meltdown I had on Thanksgiving where a guy I’d been chatting with all day asked me for some of my turn ons and I said “Men who plan nice dates, men who go to therapy, and kisses that taste like beer.” He immediately unmatched me, and I started crying very quietly, because my two-year old nephew was asleep in his crib just a few feet away, and proceeded to unmatch with every man on the app. Fast forward three weeks later, and I desperately want to unmatch this man who thinks the stars will tell him anything meaningful about me, but I can’t. Because I’m the asshole.

The last time I went on a date was in early November and I felt like the asshole in that scenario too. We had a nice first date on Halloween – niceish I would say. He did tell me that I had red flags and that my suggestion that I like to cook dinner for the second or third date was super sexist. We also went to the worst restaurant I’ve ever been to in my life – everything there was made of kale. What I’m saying is that my standards are in hell, so by my standards, it was a nice date. And he was super into it, so I agreed to date number two. He put in a lot of effort for this one. He bought tickets to some surprise event in DC and told me to dress nice. I made a big deal of it and got my hair blown out and wore a really stunning dress. We ended up going to see the Madrid Opera do flamenco dancing, which was divine. It was a totally wonderful evening…except…I wasn’t really enjoying myself. I kept trying to be funny and tell stories, and he would just nod as if unamused. I would talk about my family and no follow-up questions would be asked. He held my hand in the car, which freaked me out because my personal opinion is that holding someone’s hand is wayyyyyy more intimate than kissing or even sex (maybe I do have red flags). Anyway, I just wasn’t comfy. So on the way home, I had to tell him that I wasn’t feeling a very strong connection – only I did this way too soon in the ride and we ended up driving down the never-ending ramps of his parking garage in total silence. He had to awkwardly let go of my hand that he was holding when I broke the news to him, and his face just fell. I also reallllllly had to pee, so this poor guy had to walk my little ass up to his apartment – the one where I’m sure he had been convinced that he was getting lucky that evening just ten minutes earlier – so I could pee before my 50 minute drive back to Aldie. I’m the asshole.

Our saga didn’t end there. A few days later, I was doing some reckless swiping on Bumble. I have this rule that I always swipe right on people I know, because it’s just polite, ya know? So I saw his profile and instinctively swiped right. A couple hours later, I got a notification that he matched with me. Fuck. So I got a text from him. “What are you doing?” I literally thought he was asking me what I was doing, so I told him I was trying to learn how to use my Cricut machine to make ear warmers for my little running team. He said “no, on Bumble?” I told him about my always swipe right on friends rule, and he said “Don’t fuck around with me. If you want to go on a date, go for the throat. Life is too short to fuck around.” And I didn’t know what to say, because I absolutely didn’t want to go on a date, so I just said “I’m sorry.” Now, I’m definitely the asshole here. But I’d like like to point out that the only way that he should have known that I swiped right on him was if he swiped right on me, so technically he was mad at me for doing the same thing he did. You know, like when your little brother would tell on you for opening your eyes during the dinner prayer, and you’d be like “your eyes were open too if you saw me looking, jackass”? You get it. Anyway, I’m still the asshole.

I haven’t been on a date since that one because I hate being in that position – the position of doing the hurting. I cried the whole drive home and had to call my parents for a pep talk. I caught my dad in a funny mood because the Assholes (oops, the Astros) had just won the world series and he kept telling me to Venmo him a chicken sandwich because he was hungry. But for the next few days I was just as depressed as I have been so many times when Taylor, John, Dan, Kyle, Gannon, Chris, Brent, Evan, Jarred, Nate, Andrew, Cory, Joshua, Ryan, et. al. have rejected me. I hate being the asshole. It’s the worst part of dating – way worse than the ghosting and getting stood up, and wasting money and energy and crippling low self esteem that comes from all of the rejection. Hurting people sucks. Not only that, but making a choice for yourself that a perfectly lovely, thoughtful, kind human with beautiful white teeth and huge traps is just not a match for you is incredibly difficult, because you have to make a decision that you are worthy of finding exactly what you want. Not almost what you want, or sort-of what you want, but exactly what you want. In addition to feeling like an asshole for walking away from a perfectly nice person, you also let all that rejection from your past get into your head and whisper “Are you really in a position to be picky here? Maybe you could get used to him not laughing at your jokes. Did you see the traps?”

Anyway, I don’t really have an uplifting moral to this story. I’ve been walking around a little Grinchy this holiday season because I don’t want to be alone, and I don’t want to hear about your Christmas outings and all the cute stuff you bought for your girlfriend. Because I’m the asshole. I’ve done a good deed here and there, and got the scotch tape and drank some hot chocolate, so I’m doing my best-ish. I am convinced that most of us are Scrooge from time to time and that’s okay, and maybe it’s fine to be the asshole every now and then so you can empathize with all the other assholes and try not to take it too hard when you have to deal with them. Idk. Bah.

For real though, Happy Holidays from one asshole to another.

October 1, 2022

I woke up early this morning and just couldn’t get out of bed. Some combination of the gloomy weather and my mood, and some pain in my head and neck put me in this state I don’t like to be in. I like to wake up and hit the ground running (sometimes literally, running) on most days. I like to clean a few things up, take a bath, put on clothes and makeup, take some selfies if I’m feeling good about myself, and take Maudie for a stroll. I do my best to face the day head-on, as if I woke up on purpose. This morning, though, I put on some socks and a sweatshirt and crawled back into my absurd king-sized bed, and stayed there until Maudie thanked me to know it was time to go outside. While she was still snoozing, I turned on The Haunting of Hill House and stayed in bed for several hours, watching the end of the heartbreaking, heartwarming, scary show about a family. The show chronicles a family’s past – their grief, their internal drama and tension, their love and forgiveness, their struggles with mental health – plus ghosts. It’s a lot like that show This Is Us, but with ghouls and monsters. I tried to watch that show once, This Is Us. I made it through a few episodes but had to stop watching because I felt so affected by it. All of that grief and pain, beautifully portrayed on the screen was too much for me to handle. Isn’t that odd? I can watch scary movies full of gore and suspense and horror without flinching, but sometimes shows with too much emotion and hurt can drive me out of the room, the same way scary movies used to affect me when I was in my 20’s. I remember walking in on my college roommate once, and I think she was watching The Exorcist or something like that, and I practically ran out of the room. But now I find myself watching this show that’s pretty damn scary, and the stuff that’s bothering me is all of the other non-paranormal stuff. The normal stuff like grief and death and love and love lost- that’s what is getting to me.

I’ve been writing a lot lately – you may have noticed. It’s definitely a coping mechanism. One of my fears in writing so much here – in taking so much of myself and recording it on the page – is that you might read it and think I’m some sort of self-centered monster. You might think that all I ever concern myself with is my own pain, as if I’m under this assumption that I have a monopoly on heartache or rejection or loneliness or grief. Or worse yet, you might think I’m trying to draw on my own experiences to help you. I fear that you think I’m trying to pretend like I’ve got things figured out and that you can learn things from the tiny droplet in the universe that is my life. I hope you know that’s not the case, but this is a criticism that I’ve often thrown at writers. I look at the work of Rachel Hollis and others like her in the “self-help” section of the bookstore and want to ask them: Why are you writing about a sample size of 1 and calling it rules for life? How can you presume that your own experiences are so hefty – so impactful, unique and important – that you can write them down and use them as universal lessons that we should all take to heart? Why aren’t you zooming out to help people make impacts in their communities, in their families, or in the world? All of this self-stuff, it’s too specific and requires too many assumptions about an individual’s circumstances and resources to truly be helpful. I think it should be called self-help, only because the act of writing it all down- organizing your stories and memories and feelings in some structure that makes sense to you – can be really helpful to you as the writer. It’s a great way to help yourself.

Anyway, I was watching this show and there were some parts that made my heart beat really fast. I realized the reaction had nothing to do with the scary parts of the show. I watched this show for the first time last year with my ex and re-experiencing certain parts of it brought me right back to the brown couch I have on my first floor where we snuggled up under a blanket with the lights off and watched together. We binged about half of the season in one dreary afternoon right before we loaded up the cute Lego table I had made for his nephew’s birthday to take over to his brother’s house. As we were watching, the windy weather outside kept making the ‘Welcome’ sign that hangs on my front door smack against the glass, causing us to jump a bit more often from the startling sound. A few days earlier, he had come over on a ‘school night’ to help me build a little (disproportionate) Lego town for the little one. While carrying the Lego table to the car, I dropped the little spare tire we had placed in the back of the Lego pick-up truck that Josh built while we were watching the Legend of Sleepy Hollow. We brought the table to the birthday boy and watched as he and his sister tore it apart in glee. I got a text the next morning that the kids ran straight to that Lego table as soon as they woke up the next morning and I felt really happy. I felt like I was part of a family.

Three days later, everything fell apart. I fell apart. Some things that felt important to me at that time were stripped away from me – the man I loved, the pseudo-family I had nearby, the kids I loved to spoil who reminded me so much of my own niece and nephew, my scary movie buddy, dreary October afternoons spent with someone instead of missing someone. I had gained all of these things in the Fall and lost them all in the Fall, and something about the weather and spooky signs and pumpkin-spiced mania keeps giving me flashbacks to the beginning and the end. I keep reliving the high-highs and the lowest of lows. I think about the October afternoon we spent building Marvel Legos in my living room and he was looking for a certain Lego and said “Am I blind?” and I said “No, darlin’ you’re just stupid” and we giggled about that for the rest of the weekend. I think about the time I gave him strep throat with a smooch in the parking lot of a Wendys just a couple weeks before Thanksgiving, the time we drove around Northern Virginia looking at Fall leaves, the time I visited my family for a week over Halloween and came home to someone who couldn’t wait to see me when I got back and surprised me with Super Mario themed refrigerator magnets. Then I think about the trip we never took to Oktoberfest at Busch Gardens, which I had planned meticulously in a state of optimism and denial. I think about the Halloween costumes I bought that we still wore even though my Pikachu makeup was ruined by break-up tears by the end of the night, and the time I went on a run to try to keep my sanity and found that Lego spare tire on the street – and the way I cried on a stoop just staring at it in the palm of my hand. I think about how much courage it took for me to finish watching the rest of The Haunting of Hill House by myself after he left, and how I felt sad 100% percent of the time and scared 0% of the time. I think about how the time we delivered that Lego table to the kids was the last time I’ll ever see them.

It’s like this time in my life was bookended by two Fall seasons – the happiest one and the saddest one – and I’m haunted by both of them right now. In between the two bookends was a short lived romance in which I spent a lot of time wondering if my partner even liked me and knowing for sure that he didn’t love me. I kept trying to be someone worth being loved by him. I kept trying to be the best girlfriend ever. I never gave up on it until he made me give up on it. I know everything in between my two Fall bookends wasn’t great, and I’m way better off now that the story has ended. I wish the entire story really was something sitting on a shelf – novels in between bookends that I could scoop up and toss into a donation box. I wish I could take them to the used bookstore or the Goodwill and place them somewhere where they can still exist but be far away from me – far enough away that they won’t haunt me anymore. Maybe that’s what I’m trying to do with this writing. Maybe I’m trying to take these stories and offload them from my own bookshelf and onto yours, so you can enjoy them and I can declutter my head at the same time. Maybe you can soak them in and I can stop being haunted by them. And one day when I’m ready, I can find the new shelf that my stories sit on and read them again without pain or regret. Does that make sense? I want all of these ghosts to go away (the good ones and the bad ones) but I don’t want a Ghostbusters situation where they end up in one of those traps forever. They are memories worth having and I don’t have any regrets. I just wish I could take a break from them.

I guess there’s nothing unique here. It’s pretty common for people to have feelings of grief or miss someone during the Holidays. I was listening to a podcast the other day and one of the ladies hosting said that Halloween is millennial Christmas. In my case, I feel like that might be true. I’ve always thought Halloween is like the Friday afternoon of the Holiday season. Friday afternoon is when the work week is winding down and everything feels good and tingly because you know you’re only hours away from enjoying the weekend. The rest of the weekend just doesn’t feel as good. Saturday you realize that the weekend is halfway over already, Sunday you start to dread the start of the new week. Friday afternoon is really the only part of the weekend that feels like stress-free relief and anticipation. Halloween is like that – it’s the signal that wonderful things are coming and that you better pay attention and enjoy it, because you’ll blink and it will be another gray January.

So yeah. I’m at the best part of the Holiday season and I’m missing someone – or maybe the idea of someone, and memories are making me feel things. I’m also recognizing that this Holiday season will be another lonely one for me. No one is coming and I’ll be putting my tree up by myself again, and watching Christmas movies and the Holiday Baking Championship on the Food Network alone, and counting the days until I can load up the 4runner to retreat to my family in Kentucky for a few days. For a couple of weeks, it’s been a little difficult to get into the spirit because of that. I was hoping I’d be visited by three actual ghosts in A Christmas Carol form – the ghosts of Halloween Past, Halloween Present, and Halloween Future – to teach me how to keep Halloween in my heart all year, but they haven’t arrived yet (and Roseanne already did that bit in the 90’s). The only cure for memories that haunt (other than writing them down) is to try to take back the places and times that hold those memories and paint new memories over top of them. Now my job is to take the wonderful memories of Fall 2020 and the ugly ones from Fall 2021, and forge shiny new ones over top of them. Maudie and I have Halloween costumes in the mail as we speak, and I’m planning to take her to pick a pumpkin soon. We’ll watch Casper and Hocus Pocus and I’ll carve a pumpkin while she stares at me and begs me for food. Step by step, we’ll exorcize the ghosts of Falls past right out of this house, and before long the memories will haunt me no more.

October 13, 2022

If you’ve never been a single lady of a certain age, you may not be aware of one of life’s most basic principles. Most men in heterosexual relationships can’t be friends with women who are not their girlfriend. I know you’re all about to argue with me and say “Rebecca! My husband has 20 lady friends.” No Margaret, those are YOUR 20 lady friends that you let him talk to at social events or possibly the wives/girlfriends of his own buddies. I’m sure some of you are in sophisticated, cool relationships where your husbands/boyfriends have a ton of lady friends from all walks of life and it doesn’t bother you because “the trust is there.” I was in one of those relationships once, and my boyfriend at the time had such a great gal pal in his life that he told me “she’s a lot like you, but nice to me” and I think he might be married to her now. My point is – I’ve been on both sides of that mess: the girlfriend sitting at home feeling like garbage while her man drinks scotch on the roof with his best “buddy” with the double D’s, and the actual-real-life-no-shit lady friend who has known a man for years with no hanky panky involved and STILL gets blocked on all platforms when his girlfriend won’t stop screaming about that time the two of you spoke on Facebook messenger about an upcoming half marathon or some fish you fried together 8 years ago. The former has only happened to me once, but the latter has happened many times before. Something about this social media world and rampant infidelity has put people on edge, and trust is eroding. And I’ve seen some of the messages I receive from men who are married or in relationships – the online flirtation and boundary crossing is real – and real life platonic friendships are suffering because of it.

If you are a single woman, and as attractive as a mailbox, then you will not be allowed to keep some of your man friends who are in relationships with women. One of my best friends from high school found himself a girlfriend during sophomore year of college and told me she had banned him from talking to me and that was the end. We haven’t spoken since. I doubt this is much of a loss in my life, but still. That situation ended up being the first incident in a series of unfortunate identical incidents. It’s annoying. Anyway, I could rant about this forever and give you a ton of examples. But I brought it up to tell you a different story so I can bitch about something else. Here goes. Many weeks ago, a friend of mine told me that he was going through a break up. I tried to comfort him. I told him about mine from last year and told him everything was going to get better – the good is going to come back around, I said. One day I was in the city and I was about to text him to see if he wanted to get a drink after my volleyball game, and I noticed that my message wasn’t going through. I hopped on Snapchat and saw that he wasn’t my friend on there any more. I got on Instagram and saw that he unfollowed me. I messaged him on there and said “What’s going on? Why are you removing me from your life?” He replied with a few pseudo-code sentences: “Getting back together. Have to. Sorry.”

It took me a couple of minutes of staring at the non-sensical reply for me to realize he meant that he and his ex were getting back together and that I had to be the collateral damage to make that happen. Me and probably every other single woman of a certain age in his contacts. I got really angry. Like really angry. I said “HOW WONDERFUL FOR YOU, F**KING ASSHOLE. I’M SURE THIS WILL WORK OUT”. Guys, I was so mad and then I was also really baffled by my reaction. I usually don’t do the angry texting thing. My face got hot in the back of my Uber ride back to my car (because momma only drives in DC when she’s getting paid for it) and I thought about it for my entire drive back to my house. I’m smart enough to put the pieces together. This guy had been dumped as the result of some sort of infidelity or online flirtation and she had agreed to take him back with a couple of contingencies in place – one of them being that his single lady friends had to disappear. And once I pieced that together, I realized that my anger wasn’t driven by the fact that a friend was nuking me from his phone – it was driven by jealousy. I was jealous that he was getting a second chance and I didn’t.

A few weeks later, he unblocked me and reached out. It turns out that relationships that have to operate with one person in chains while the other is still carrying around resentment for crimes of the past aren’t long lived. Forgive me, I’m making a ton of assumptions about this scenario and I don’t actually have all the facts – this is just the way it went down in my imagination. Anyway, I forgave him with very few questions asked and we moved on with the surface level friendship we had before. He thanked me for being forgiving and my response to him was “I get it. If my ex would give me a second chance, I’d nuke just about every man I know out of my phone.”

I’ve been thinking about that statement a lot. It was a nonsensical hypothetical for a couple of reasons. For one thing, a second chance with him wouldn’t require any kind of non-cheating condition because I’m not a cheater and have never strayed outside of the boundaries of faithfulness. Also, and more importantly, he’s not coming back ever. I have to repeat that to myself about once a day to keep making it a truth that I understand. He is not coming back and no amount of wishing or crying or praying to a god I don’t even believe in will ever change that. This is not Pride and Prejudice and he won’t be walking through a field of fog on a crisp fall morning to tell me “You have bewitched me, body and soul and I love, I love, I love you. I never wish to be parted from you from this day on.” I’m of course talking about the 2005 Kiera Knightly movie version – he didn’t say that shit in the book. My point being, this is not Jane Austen’s universe, and he’s not coming back. That’s actually a huge theme in a lot of Jane Austen’s writing – men coming back for more- and I can’t relate at all.

I also get stuck on this idea of being given a second chance and the implications of it. It seems to mostly be used to describe situations where you screwed up and are undeserving of something – whether it be more time with a partner, or dessert after dinner or that big account at work – but someone is being charitable enough to offer it to you anyway in hopes that you’ll rise to the occasion. It’s an opportunity to try something again after failing. It’s like the time I got a C on my recitation of “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost in 11th grade English class, and the teacher let me go home and practice some more to try again. That’s the thing – in a lot of scenarios, you get second chances, but you also get a little bit of feedback to help you be more likely to succeed when you try again. My teacher gave me my C grade with some notes about how I needed to make more eye contact and be expressive. I knew what I needed to practice at home so I could come in the next day and get my A.

I guess that’s why a second chance in my situation never would have made sense – there was no actionable feedback or suggested improvement that came out of that relationship failure, because the things that were wrong had nothing to do with me. I didn’t fail at anything. I didn’t do anything to let anyone down. That’s another thing that I’ve been repeating to myself daily. I didn’t do anything wrong and “more” from me wouldn’t have changed the outcome because he didn’t need “more” – he needed “different”. Even if he showed up tomorrow and gave me a second chance, things would probably still end the same way they did before because I’m still me and he’s still him.

Personally, I have given out a lot of second chances in my life. I actually think our ability to forgive is one of the most beautiful parts of human relationships. It’s one of the things we have in common with dogs. No matter how often I screw up being Maudie’s mom, she still loves me more than anything and greets me the next morning like nothing happened. I think most people I know are very forgiving and that’s a lovely and vital part of the human condition – because a few of life’s certainties are death, taxes and people making mistakes. I’ve given some second chances to people who have burned me for doing so, but I’ve also had some people really surprise me. I’ve also been given some second chances from friends that I’m really grateful for and know I didn’t deserve them. I’m really forgiving because I honestly know what a little shit I can be and I want to extend the same grace I hope people will give me.

I wish I hadn’t gotten so angry with my friend. I wish I had been able to recognize in that moment that he was trying to rise to the occasion. This girl was kind enough and loved him enough to let him try to be the man she needed, and it seems like he was willing to do just about anything to try. Some people don’t forgive and some people don’t try, and I wish I had been able to appreciate being collateral damage in the middle of two people forgiving and trying at that time. She gave him a bad grade and some comments in red ink, and he went home to try to fix them. In the end it might not have been enough, but it’s actually still a lovely story if you zoom out and ignore some of the nonsense.

October 19, 2022

Once upon a time, in a land far, far, away called NOVA (Northern Virginia) there was a girl (32-year-old-woman) who lived high up in a tall tower (4 floors of a suburban town home). In her tower, she waited patiently for her Prince Charming (any man with cute face, a 401k and a dark sense of humor) to come and rescue her from her tower to take her on grand adventures (wineries in the country, plays in the City, the Olive Garden). While she waited in her tower, she watched reruns of Sister Wives on TLC, wrote in her diary (blog), sent postcards (Snapchats) to friends in far away lands and scoured local wanted ads (dating apps) for men in need of a beautiful princess (moderately attractive data scientist) to take to balls (weddings and hockey games). One night after a long evening of reading (scrolling and swiping), she retired to her bed chamber (king-sized bed with the unicorn pillow) looking forward to a long slumber (4 hours like Bill Clinton in the 90’s, interrupted by pee breaks every 2 hours). In the night, however, she was stirred by a sound – the sound came from her cell phone and it sounded like a text! Her face was illuminated in the dark room (thanks to black out curtains from Bed, Bath and Beyond) by the light of the cellular contraption. Her glowing face showed signs of confusion, followed by comprehension and finally horror as she realized THE TEXT WAS AN AD FOR ALLBIRDS SNEAKERS INSTEAD OF A FLIRTY MESSAGE FROM RYAN THE ACCOUNTANT WHO TOOK HER FOR ICE CREAM IN THE VILLAGE LAST WEEK. *scary horror movie sounds*. It was then that the maiden realized that her phone was HAUNTED by Ryan’s ghost (and the ghosts of many, many other young men).

Okay that’s not exactly Jane Eyre (which is a terrific ghost story to read in October, btw), but I needed a cute introduction to my prose on ghosting. You know by now that I complain about ghosting all the time. For those who don’t know, ghosting is the act of simply not responding to someone’s attempt at communication with you – either by ignoring phone calls and texts, or blocking phone numbers and social media accounts. It is the single most bothersome part of dating for me because I think it’s the most hurtful thing you can do to a person who has been vulnerable enough to go on a date with you. Someone has taken time out of their schedule to give both of you a chance to make a connection and has tried to present their authentic self to you for the sole purpose of your judgement – like a beauty pageant from hell with harder interview questions – and your response to that is to disappear. You ignore their texts, pretend that you don’t know who they are, or that you fell off of a cliff as soon as you walked away from the date. That’s sooooo shitty. It’s not just shitty, it’s cowardly and wasteful – it’s your way of saying to someone “I was so not attracted to you that I have no interest in treating you like a human that I have met before, or being your friend, or even putting you out of your misery while you wait for me to call. I have enough friends and aquaintances in this life of quiet desperation, and I have no room on my roster for you.”

Ghosting is a despicable act (in my humble opinion) that 1) is usually motivated by good-ish intentions and 2) has been normalized in society so much that people don’t feel guilty over it very often. I think people ghost because they don’t want to have an awkward conversation. I’ve written about this in previous posts – giving someone negative feedback or simply saying “I’m not interested” is one of the hardest things to do. Most people don’t want to say things to you that may hurt your feelings or may make you feel insecure or upset. So instead of doing that, they say nothing. The nothing is so deafening though. You ever do something bad when you were a kid and your mom was so mad or exasperated with you that she didn’t even yell? She just walked away from you and said nothing? That’s how ghosting feels to me. It feels like I was such a bad date for you that you can’t even thank me for my time or ask me to be your friend, or tell me “thanks but no thanks” – like you’re so disgusted by the whole ordeal that you just want to walk away and pretend it didn’t happen. Which is almost certainly not how the other person is feeling – at least not every time. I’ve been ghosted after really good dates where we laughed the whole time and kissed at the end of the night. I’ve been ghosted after sex. I’ve been ghosted after seeing a person for weeks. I’ve been ghosted twice by the same person in one decade after he swore to me he was sorry and that the first time was a youthful mistake. It happens all the time, and most of the time, I have no idea why.

It hurts me so much that I keep myself accountable to a strict moral code when it comes to ghosting. If you’ve never online dated, you may not know what it’s like. Basically you are on an app and you have many texting conversations going at one time, but most of them go absolutely no where. It’s basically impossible to avoid ghosting to some extent – if a conversation is fizzling, it’s easier for both of you to just stop replying than to have some conversation about how it isn’t going to work. My ghosting rules kick in when I meet someone face-to-face. If I have a date with someone or I talk to them on a video chat, I insist on keeping a promise to myself that I will not ghost them without communicating my feelings first.

So far, I have stayed true to this promise. Things did get a little shaky for me last week though. I met this really nice guy on an app. He was good looking, seemed to have a good job, wasn’t married to my knowledge – check, check, check. He is one of these people who insists on having a video chat conversation before a date. Not my preference, but ok. He kind of cold called me one evening after work, like he was trying to catch me at my ugliest or something – but I answered and talked to him. The conversation was just uncomfortable. He kept telling me how gorgeous I was but was interrupting me to tell me that. I’d be mid-sentence talking about Maudie or my job and he’d insert “Rebecca you’re so gorgeous” into the conversation. We got off the phone and I thought “well that wasn’t great but maybe he was nervous.” A couple nights later, he cold called me again. I happened to be wearing the same oversized house shirt I had on when we last spoke, and he commented on it. I joked “Plot twist, this is the only shirt I own.” His face fell and he said “Oh I’m sorry I didn’t realize.” Ah, so sarcasm, not his thing. Got it. Then he noticed my earrings and told me they were gorgeous. We chatted for a few more minutes and he brought up the earrings three more times and asked me where I got them. At the end he said “I’m so interested in you, Rebecca.” The vibe made me want to crawl out of my skin, and even now I’m having a hard time describing the cause of the alarm bells that went off in my head.

I know what you’re going to say. Gee, Rebecca, sounds like the guy was being super nice to you and you’re so used to jerks that you can’t handle it. But I’m telling you, this was not nice. I felt like I was being worked over by some professional who has learned to tell women what they want to hear. He complimented my eyebrows, for Christ’s sake. Red flags started popping up in my perifiery and my whole body and soul told me to run. I wanted to block his number and never live though another conversation like that again. Like I said, I can barely articulate why, but I knew I couldn’t go out on my date with him. As with most situations in my life, a phone call with my best friend Kristin gave me the courage I needed to keep my own promise to myself, and I called this guy and told him the truth – well a piece of the truth anyway – that I didn’t think our personalities were meshing well. He took it so well and was really kind about the whole thing. I was glad I told him. But to be honest, he called me past midnight twice this week and I am starting to regret not hitting that “block” button.

Oddly enough, the night after I went through this to-ghost-or-not-to-ghost ordeal (Macbeth! Another great ghost story for your spooky October!) I got a text from a man who ghosted me in August. He stood me up at a restaurant for date 1, actually showed up for date 2, kissed me goodnight and asked me out for date 3, and then got hit by a bus…or so I thought. Out of the blue, he texted me to apologize for not communicating. Just a simple text, saying hey I’m sorry for being a little shit head. Here’s a picture of me making fun of him with a friend, and you can tell by my reaction to her, I was kind of having an “Is that you, God?!” moment – a bit in awe of the coincidence. I made fun of him, but in truth, I appreciated that I was on whatever little list of amends he was running down that day. You always experience these little paper cuts in dating, small rejections that compound over time like the interest on your mortgage, and you kind of walk through that pain assuming that the culprits don’t even realize that their actions are wrong or hurtful. Some people don’t apologize or try to make things right, and I have a lot of respect for people who do. But I really think this could be an example of putting good into the universe and watching that good come back around. Anyway, I responded to let him know I was glad he enjoyed his vacations and to let me know if he ever needs a friend.

Anyway that’s my ghost story – the story of how I didn’t allow myself to turn into a ghost (*yet*, there’s still plenty of time in this life for me to act like a shit head too) and got visited by Casper (the friendly ghost). The true hero of this story is Nala the pitbull who is “loving the cooler temps with less bugs, by the way.” Maudie agrees with that statement.

September 29, 2022

I took a break from my regular trashy reality tv circuit this week to watch a scary series on Netflix. It’s called The Haunting of Hill House, and it’s based on a book with the same title by my favorite author, Shirley Jackson. ‘Based’ is a strong word – the story in the Netflix series is quite different from the story in the book, but many of the characters have the same names as those in the book and there are all kinds of little Easter eggs in the series that point back to the novel. Almost every day after work this week, I’ve found myself in my Lovesac snuggled under a fuzzy blanket, with all the lights off in my house, watching the horror unfold in this series. I’ve seen the series before, so some of the intensity is somewhat diminished by that, but the re-watch has gotten me into spooker-mood. Spookers – my word for scary movies, scary books, scary video games, haunting documentaries about serial killers, etc. – make this time of year fun. Who doesn’t love a good monster, afterall?

I read The Haunting of Hill House for the first time last year, and I’m certain that it’s one of those books I will read every Halloween from now on. I do this with Pride and Prejudice at Christmastime, not because that book is remotely related to Christmas in any way, but because the experience is a gift to myself. If you haven’t read The Haunting of Hill House yet, I really recommend it. It’s a quick ~300 page read and very scary, but still chock full of that wholesome charm of the 50’s (collars, poodle skirts, leather jackets, phrases like “jeepers creepers” and “chock full”- I don’t know, I wasn’t actually there). I love the book for a myriad of reasons, one being that the main character’s name is Eleanor, and I’ve always wanted to have a little girl named Eleanor and call her Ellie. In the book, Eleanor (Nell, Nellie) is a young woman who finds herself taking part in a scientific experiment with several strangers.  She sets out on this adventure to escape the monsters of her past (an ailing and abusive mother, a resentful sister), but she finds herself confronted by new monsters when she enters the walls of Hill House. Those familiar with Hill House believe it is haunted, and Nell and her compatriots soon discover that the house quite literally has a mind of its own. This book is marvelous fiction. Please read it. If you don’t want to buy a copy, shoot me your address and I’ll mail you one of mine.

Without spoiling anything, I’ll tell you that the horrifying part of The Haunting of Hill House is that you read the entire book and learn all about the history of the old house and the people who lived there, yet you never uncover the answers to the questions at the heart of the book. Is the house haunted or are the people inside the house haunted? Was the house evil upon creation or did it become evil over time due to the people who lived and died inside? Is Eleanor being haunted by the house or is she being haunted by her own mind? Or is the house saving her from the monsters inside of her mind and bringing her home? At the end of the day, I think the monsters that are the most frightening are those that we can’t understand – the ones that are shrouded in mysteries that can’t be solved with logic or investigation. In The Haunting of Hill House, you never even ‘see’ a ghost or demon or monster- you simply feel the reactions from the people living there. Your mind does these little acrobatic moves to try to fill in those blanks, though. You start using what you know about the history of the house and the people who have lived there over the years, and you start trying to draw your own conclusions. Then you get to page 300 or whatever and realize – Shirley isn’t going to tell you what’s going on. She’s not going to connect the dots for you because she knows that you’ve already done that yourself inside that sick, twisted little head of yours and your version of the truth is way scarier than anything she could write for you.

There’s one monster from the 80’s and early 90’s that everyone has been buzzing about lately. Like many of you, I watched all ten episodes of the Jeffrey Dahmer series on Netflix last weekend and then thought “I should eat something and go outside”. If you haven’t watched it, I guess you have a decision to make. It’s not the sort of thing I would recommend to anyone because it’s just not a pleasant experience. *I have to reiterate that I DO recommend The Haunting of Hill House because I know it is absolutely lovely, scary fiction that you’ll enjoy and will make you think in constructive ways. You will be happy that you read it.* The Dahmer shit…I just don’t know. I’ve done a lot of thinking about it this week, but I’m unsure how constructive or enlightening it has been. It is mostly just sad because it’s not a charming fictional tale. It’s a true story about a very disturbed man who murdered 17 people and mutilated and consumed their corpses all in the name of control. My understanding is that his basic motivation for his crimes was that his sexual partners always wanted to leave eventually after hanging out and he really just wanted them to stay with him. On one hand, you can view that as a depraved desire for control, which it absolutely is. But you can also view it as a result of extreme isolation and desire for cuddles. I mentioned that I’d been in my Lovesac watching scary tv this week – I have to say, I’ve thought to myself a few times “Man I would kill to have someone to snuggle right now… *then when Maudie looks at me confused, I clarify* …preferably a handsome human man.” But like, not literally, ya know? I wouldn’t literally kill for cuddles. But I understand how much we want them. When the actor playing Dahmer in the show presses play on The Exorcist III and reassures his victims that they are just going to have a casual night in – a scary movie, cuddles, beers, some nice, consensual sex – I hear that and think “yeah perfect October evening”. But he just wasn’t capable of enduring the truth that people don’t have to stay with you forever if they don’t want to. Snuggles have to end and that meant a lot of innocent young men would die.

The reason Dahmer scares us all so much is because we don’t understand him. People have studied his crimes and confessions for decades and have tried to figure out the details and circumstances of his life that created this Dahmer concoction that resulted in all the horror he created. No one has figured it out. His father wrote an excellent book in the 90’s called A Father’s Story. In heartbreaking detail, he describes what it was like to juxtapose his own memories of the sweet, shy little boy he raised with the gruesome crimes of the adult that little boy grew up to become. Lionel Dahmer was a PhD chemist, and spends a lot of real estate in his book trying to analyze his own decisions and actions as a father that may have contributed to Jeffrey’s crimes. It’s an incredibly well-written and introspective take on the matter, but of course, like everyone else who has studied Dahmer, he too sort of shrugs his shoulders at the end and says we’ll never know.

We’ll never know all of the environmental and genetic factors and moments and words that combined to brew the Dahmer serial killer potion. That drives us crazy, because we want to be able to prevent people like him from becoming killers in the future. We want to look at our own children and know for certain that they won’t grow up to commit atrocities. We want to send our children out into the world as adults one day and know that they can watch a scary movie with someone they are attracted to without winding up in pieces in a vat of acid. But we can’t know those things for sure – so we start creating what-if’s and hypotheticals in our mind. What if my neighbor, my best friend, my son, my mother…were to become a killer? What if my husband kills me some day? What if my wife kills my children? What if that stranger on the train is a killer? That’s the imagination we all have, and that’s what makes serial killers that have been dead for decades stick out in our minds as monsters. They are dead, they can’t hurt us now. But humans are capable of doing what they did and we don’t know why or how. We are living among monsters that we may never see and we can’t do anything to find them until it’s too late.

I’ve often felt like a lot of the monsters in my head are the direct result of an overactive imagination. I was on a date once, and the guy I was with casually mentioned a girl had recently made him watch Hamilton on Disney+. I asked the right questions (or wrong ones depending on how you look at it) and found out that he slept with her on Hamilton night and was in fact dating both of us at the same time. The difference being that I had asked him to go watch a musical with me once and he said “I don’t like musicals”. My brain started racing with this new information. Rather than just being upset about the very obvious and clear-cut “he’s dating you both at the same time, get out” fact, I fixated on the fact that he was willing to watch a musical with her and not with me. And just like that, a new monster was created in my head – one I referred to in my mind as “Hamilton Girl”. Long after I realized things were not going to work out with this dude and moved on to other possibilities, I kept thinking about her. I bet Hamilton Girl never gets stood up. I bet Hamilton Girl would have gotten a good night kiss. I bet Hamilton Girl never has to go to the bathroom and cry at work. Hamilton Girl has perfect skin. Hamilton Girl is probably in good enough shape to run the Army Ten Miler next weekend. This girl who I know nothing about (other than we have the same taste in men and great musicals) has become this representation of my every insecurity or bad feeling about myself. She’s probably really nice, and would also probably look at my life and feel envious about some parts of it. But my imagination has made her into a monster that I’ll never see. I learned one thing about her and my mind did all the work to connect those dots.

A lot of the fear in my life comes from this tendency to imagine the worst. My boss looks at me the wrong way, and suddenly I’m thinking he hates me now and I’ll soon get moved to another project. I imagine myself going to my favorite used bookstore for the first time in over a year and then wonder what will happen if I run into my ex while I’m there. And what if he’s with another girl, taking her to pick out books that they’ll read together? BUT THAT WAS OUR THING! What if I see them and run away? What if I go to the doctor and they tell me something is wrong with me? What if it’s cancer? Instead of assuming that things will be fine, as they almost always are (I’m a statistician, I should understand this better), I imagine the worst case scenario and sometimes those little scenarios create little monsters in my head that I have to face. Mundane activities become hurdles to jump. Maybe that’s why I like Halloween so much. Just as Christmas is the season for giving and November is a time for gratitude, Halloween is the time for facing your fears head on. It’s about watching the scary movie in the dark with or without cuddles. It’s about wearing the goofy costume without caring what anyone else thinks. It’s about telling Hamilton Girl to get out of your head because you’re awesome too and wonderful company at musicals. It’s about letting the stories about serial killers and abductors and aliens and ghosts scare you for as long as you want them to, but then tuning them out when it’s inconvenient for you to be afraid. I guess it’s all about experiencing fear in a controlled environment so you can try to handle it a little better for the rest of the year. Hamilton Girl and most of the other monsters out there (at least all the fake ones in my head) are all just a bunch of hocus pocus, after all.

I hope you’re having a nice start to your spooker season. If you read The Haunting of Hill House, let me know and we can talk about it.

September 25, 2022

I get migraines a lot. If you’ve ever had one, you know that it’s like a headache, but the kind of headache that can be debilitating and derail an entire day (or three). The pain can sit right on top of one side your forehead, but can also wrap around to the back of your head, down your neck and back. It makes it difficult to think, difficult to eat because of nausea…hell, just being up right in a room with the lights on can feel like it might kill you. It’s not a fun time, and I typically get about one bad one each month. I’ve tried to figure them out over the years – talking to doctors about birth control options that might help, eating habits I can change, preventative medication. A dentist hypothesized that my overbite might contribute to them, so I did Invisalign a few years ago. I’ve had eye exams and glasses prescriptions, I swore off red and white wine years ago, I’ve kept food diaries and tried to pinpoint foods that are correlated – so far I’ve had no luck in this battle, and it seems like they are just something I have to live with. Luckily, they make some pretty heavy duty medication I can take when one comes on. It’s expensive and my instructions from the doctor were to “use sparingly”. Usually I tough these migraines out and try not to miss any work because of them – once I was scheduled to brief the head-bitch-in-charge of my sector and didn’t hesitate to break that emergency glass and take a nice dose of meds that day. You do what you gotta do.

The great thing about migraines is that they always end. The migraine is one of those annoying life afflictions that can make you feel like you’re going to die, but simultaneously you know you won’t die from it, so there’s not a lot of stress involved. Only suffering. And that’s how I prefer to take my suffering – with little to no stress and a lot of sugar. There is this period after the migraine has abated that I like to call the “migraine hangover”. I took my emergency meds or slept it off and I wake up the next morning with no pain – but I have this fuzzy feeling in my head that’s like the ghost of migraines past. And I treat that fuzzy feeling as my body’s warning sign – listen, lady, you’re feeling better now but one wrong move and you’ll be on your ass again, understand? So I end up kind of babying myself the whole day, working really hard to appease the migraine gods. I take a hot shower and make sure I wear my hair down. I eat a real breakfast (not just a cup of those baller-shot-caller pumpkin spice Cheerios, but like an actual meal). I try to lay low at work if I can and avoid headphones. I drink a Coca-Cola because that’s what Mamaw always said would fix a headache, and I go to bed early. Basically I spend a couple of days walking on eggshells around my own body to keep from triggering another migraine – because the thought of having to live through another one so soon after recovering is too scary to take any risks. I’m feeling all better, I’m good to go. If the head of the SID (super important division) at work walks up to me and says he needs all the Bernoulli reports on his desk by noon, I’m ready to rock n’ roll. But if nothing like that comes up, then I lay low and am super careful to avoid unecessary stress. And after a day or so of this hangover feeling, I can move on and forget all about it until about a month later.

One of my friends at work is going through a tough breakup right now asked me the other day if I feel like I’m completely better after mine last year. This little migraine story is what I told him, because that’s the best way to describe where I am. I’m definitely better. I’m happy. I’m appreciating all the great things that are happening in my life and all the possibilities I have in front of me. I’m hanging out with my Maudie dog and keeping my house clean and my laundry all caught up and cooking good food for myself. I’m doing a great job at work and really focused on getting to the next level there. I’ve made some friends. I can sleep through most nights and don’t cry much anymore. I’m open to the next chapter – I know for certain that if I meet someone tomorrow who wants to be in the Rebecca-Business, I’m in a good spot to give that person the best of me without baggage or reservation. I’m good to go. I know it sounds like I’m gassing myself up over being a normal, functioning member of society, but that’s been my focus and it’s working. I took the whole thing really hard and went through a tough time, but like with my migraines, I knew the pain would subside eventually. That’s what I told him in hopes that he’ll take heart and keep moving forward.

But maybe I’m a little bit hungover still – walking around in that fuzzy space with a little bit of worry that I can make a wrong move and end up sliding back into pain. I can feel myself being really cautious. I haven’t been on a first date since July because I went through this series of small let downs that made me nervous. Dating can cause tiny amounts of sadness to start to compound over time. I start making that list of rejections in my head and inventing reasons that things aren’t working out. Maybe I look a certain way, I talk a certain way, I am a certain way that makes people keep me at arm’s length. Maybe my ex was the one person on the planet who was chemically, mentally and emotionally designed to be attracted to the whole package that is me and now that things didn’t work out with him, there’s no one else. Maybe I’ll never feel that way again, maybe I’ll never really move on. See that spiral there? That’s how quickly my hangover can push me right back into the pain zone. So I treat it the same way I treat my migraine hangover. I take a break. I take it easy and lay low. I protect myself a little more than I normally would.

This weekend, I’ve been laying low by deep cleaning my house and listening to country music. Every now and then, I start feeling some kind of way and crank up the “Today’s Country” playlist on Apple music so I can hear all the latest country music. From what I’m hearing, there are a few basic categories of country these days:

• Songs about loving country music. It’s not just a country thing, because “I Love Rock n’ Roll” and “Rock n’ Roll ain’t noise pollution”, but man I don’t know if Kane Brown singing about the Hoochie Coochie is doing it for me.
• Songs about loving country music that are just Jo Dee Messina’s “Heads Carolina, Tails California” but with different words about hitting on a girl at a bar who is trying to have fun with her friends. Cledus T Judd tried to make it big doing something like this in the 90’s and no one took him seriously. But apparently it’s cool now.

• Songs that slap from Jon Pardi and Luke Combs. Honestly, both of them can get it. Luke Combs is the kind of man who will take you out for a steak dinner every Saturday and I think Jon Pardi’s kisses probably taste like Miller Lite. Not that I’ve been thinking about it. Shut up, I don’t want to talk about it anymore.
• Whatever the hell Maddie and Tae are doing.
• Songs about trucks. Wait in the truck (while I kill this guy for you?? wtf??) My heart is like a truck. I need a new truck. Heaven’s in a blue Tacoma. I drive your truck. That ain’t my truck in her drive.
• Songs about whiskey, tequila, beer, moonshine and Muscadine wine. Tequila makes my clothes fall off. I’m not worth the whiskey. Half of me wants a cold beer. Write me a song about a jalapeño margarita and I’ll love you forever (I’m looking at you, Luke and Jon).
• Really disturbing songs about “her daddy”. Ok there’s this song at the top of the charts right now that starts off “Girl, I hope your daddy doesn’t own a gun. If he does, then I’m done from the things that you’re doing to me.” Sir. How old is this girl? What is she doing to you that her daddy doesn’t like? If your girlfriend is still worried about what her daddy thinks about about her sex life OR if her daddy is in any way invested in her sex life (so invested and also informed that a gun may come out?)- she’s too young for you, bro. This song literally made my stomach hurt, I won’t be listening to it again.
• Sad songs that absolutely gut me. I already wrote about my girl Carly’s song. There’s another one that I listened to today that made me cry for a second and have a bad dream during my afternoon nap (heh, I told you I’m laying low). It’s from someone called Shaylen, and it’s called “What If I Don’t”. It goes: “What if I’m not as strong as I think?…What if my heart never unbreaks? People move on, people let go. What if you do? What if I don’t?” Then at the end she just keeps singing “I want to move on” over and over. I love this song and I feel her sentiment. I want to move on. I want it more than anything. Laying low feels like the right thing right now, but I know I can’t do it forever. And the longer it takes me to really move on, the more I worry that it will never happen. But it will. I will.

Side note: This is why country music will always be my favorite genre- as much as I love running to Eminem’s “Shake That”, it doesn’t make me feel anything or reflect on my life at all. Country music does that for me (when it’s not making me worry about sex crimes and alcoholism).

I guess that’s the thing about the migraine hangover. You can’t sit in that spot for long. Life has to go on, work has to get done, and you can’t live your whole life trying to avoid pain when you don’t even know exactly what causes it. I don’t know if my stupid ritual of drinking coke and eating potatoes for breakfast even prevents my migraines from returning, but I do it to feel like I’m doing something to protect myself – and I think that’s pretty smart and healthy. At some point, the opportunity cost that comes with that cautious behavior (missing my pumpkin flavored Cheerios, for example) becomes too high to continue. The fuzzy hangover feeling fades into the background of all of the other things life throws at me, and life moves on. Which is great because I want to move on. I want to move on. I want to move on. I wanna move onnnnnnnnnn…