Mrs. Highway's Thinking About the Present

"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."

"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.

"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."

"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"

"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

                                                                 -Margery Williams, The Velveteen Rabbit

On the first day of 2022, I tweeted one of those the-energy-I'm-coming-into-the-new-year-with pics, and this was the pic:

That tweet was a year and a half before Jonathan and I broke up, but if I had to pinpoint a beginning to our end, that was it. Clearly when he not only neither liked nor acknowledged the tweet but, once pressed, admitted it made him feel uncomfortable, I should have known that things weren't right because what kind of guy in an almost-two-year relationship is uncomfortable because his girlfriend tweeted a picture like the one above? It's not like I was spread eagle on the bed with "for Jonathan" written in lipstick on my inner thigh. I'd say as far as quote-unquote sexy photos go, and if you want to talk uncomfortable, you can't imagine how very uncomfortable it makes me to publicly call it that, this photo is extremely tame. It shows my shoulders and collarbones and nothing else (and lest you think he was uncomfortable because there's more to the photo than this - or less, if you know what I mean - that's also not the case). So, again, I ask you - what kind of guy in an almost-two-year relationship is uncomfortable because his girlfriend tweeted a photo like the one above? A guy who's uncomfortable with the relationship, that's what kind, or at least a guy who's uncomfortable with certain people on Twitter seeing evidence of it. 

But I digress. I digress because none of this matters anymore. 2022 was three years ago, Jonathan is not only no longer my boyfriend but also no longer my friend, not even like the kind you talk to every once in a while and no matter how long you go in between, they'll always be a part of your life (go ahead, ask me all about how I completely ignored the happy-birthday, he-hopes-I-have-an-amazing-day-:) birthday tweet he sent me at 7:33 in the morning on January 17), and the point of this very late New Year's post has nothing to do with Jonathan at all despite how what I've written so far may make it seem and, well, also what I'm about to write next, which is that

retrospective realizations aside, that photo (you know, the one my then boyfriend of a-year-and-a-half completely ignored and was made uncomfortable by) really was an accurate depiction of the way I felt. Do you see how happy I looked? That's not pretend. Do you see what it says on my chest? Not exaggeration. Every bit and piece of me belonged to Jonathan; people who read my blog, you think I've been so focused on him because of our breakup and everything that went along with it, but for three years I was entirely focused on him; Jonathan was, quite simply, my sun, and I was happy with that. Actually, scratch happy. Jesus, Mary, and the wee donkey, I was fucking thrilled. 

But that was then and - fucking duh - this is now, so let's stop looking behind us and look at the present or at least the much-more-recent past, a bridge to the present if you will, or better yet, a stepping stone, since we're about to go back a mere thirty-one days to New Year's Eve. 

When I tell you I came into 2025 on my ass and on my knees, that I scooted and hobbled and crawled my way toward the beginning of this year not only figuratively, but literally, I tell no tales. The Vegan Picadillo Debacle of '24 reinforced the tone that was set forth not only by the Sobbing-on-the-Kitchen-Floor Incident of New Year's Eve '23 but also by the new reality of having my mother living nearby, cemented by the more than six months of bathroom-and-bathroom-related fiascos so unbelievable, if the chain of events were depicted in fiction, the book would be criticized for being too unrealistic - that many horrible things couldn't possibly happen to one person! people would say to which I'd say, yeah, right (as I thought to myself that the possibility that I'd soon be standing in the ocean and washing myself with a live fish was seeming more and more likely) - and maintained through a work schedule so rigorous, I'm pretty sure I could stack up all the papers I graded last semester and take a nap on them Princess-and-the-Pea style if I had the time (which I don't because who has the time to stack two hundred thousand papers when they're busy grading them?)

and so (!!), if I were I to have tweeted one of those the-energy-I'm-coming-into-the-new-year-with pics on the first day of 2025, this would have been the pic:

However horrible you think I look in that photo, however exhausted, however beaten, battered, and just plain miserable you think I look, trust that I feel worse. 

I won't go into the story because it's getting a post of its very own, but I will say that that photo, taken at 1:42 pm on December 31, is the aftermath of an 8.5-mile run with a pulled calf muscle in the scorching sun, a run so brutally painful, I had to scoot up the stairs on my butt when I got home, RICE for two days, and for almost a week, I could barely walk. I'll also say that as I was hobbling along on that run, refusing to quit, nearly crying from pain, I thought to myself that this was the perfect way to end the year, the culmination of everything I'd experienced throughout the year, the physical manifestation of the anguish I'd felt, still felt, and as bad as that pain felt, it felt justified, it felt right, like the way sometimes I really want to go to a show just to get pushed around. 

In the same vein that if my life were a novel, people would say it's not realistic, if my life were a novel, I'd be writing right now that after that run, after the turning of the calendar that midnight, I woke up a new person, ready to move on, to finally leave my past in the past. Poetic as that would be, it wouldn't be true. What is true is that I woke up just as miserable as I'd been waking up, maybe even more miserable since two-and-a-half weeks down the line I had to go on a trip I no longer wanted to go on that I'd scheduled months earlier both so I could run in a new state and also so I could run away, albeit briefly, from my life. 

Yes, I know. We established in this post that chasing happiness doesn't work. I wasn't exactly doing that - chasing happiness - when I scheduled the trip, just hoping to avoid what I knew decidedly would not be happiness, and that, people who read my blog, was spending the weekend of my fiftieth birthday in this house. For months leading up to it, starting right after Jonathan's birthday, really, because I had become used to shifting from Jonathan's-birthday-is-approaching mode to a now-my-birthday-is-coming-up frame of mind when we were together, and as you're aware, that didn't end when we broke up, I was dreading it. I wasn't dreading it because I was dreading turning fifty; I was dreading it because I was turning fifty and my life is my life. As a result, at some point in October, I decided I'd take a break from it; I'd get away from this place where I knew I'd spend my birthday sitting around feeling sorry for myself thinking about ghosts. 

I decided to plan a trip. I made a list of all the states I hadn't run and started doing research. Since my birthday is in the middle of January, it couldn't be somewhere with freezing cold winters which left three states: Hawaii, Arizona, and New Mexico. Although I almost ended up going to Hawaii, after looking up a lot a lot a lot of things from vegan food options to official runs to coffee shops and taking travel time versus the amount of time I'd get to spend wherever I ended up into consideration, I ended up choosing Arizona. I then invited some people to go, got the yeses I was looking for, and thought I'd achieved what I set out to achieve. Something big. Something fun. Something that would make me forget that I was turning fifty by myself. 

Well. One of my favorite sayings isn't about the best laid plans of mice and men for nothing; alas, the big, fun trip I planned was turning out to be the opposite. We'll skip all the details of what went wrong with the trip in the months leading up to it, why I was dreading it, and what went wrong on it (although maybe we'll revisit it later) because I'm really not in the mood to go into it. What we'll talk about instead is the psychic.

So there was this psychic. There's a little bit more to the story that maybe one day I'll go into if I ever feel like talking about the whole Arizona thing, but for now, what's relevant is that there was this psychic but when I say there was this psychic, what I mean is there were two psychics because they, they being the psychics my friend found, worked in a pair. My sister, my friend, and I talked to these psychics for an hour, but since it was my birthday trip, they mostly focused on me. While we sat with them eating the blandest Thai food known to man, trying to avoid the twenty-seven degree weather on the coldest day in Sedona (did I mention I chose Arizona to avoid the cold?), many things were said, but the three most important were that I had a fear monger on me, which they removed, that my ex-boyfriend's mother had done some dark stuff to me, which they did as much as they could to remove but weren't completely able (this is where the fish-as-soap comes in), and that while my friend and my sister each had their soul, spirit, and heart, I didn't have my spirit or my soul, both of which they restored. 

Now, I don't know how valid these psychics were, and I'm sure some of you are thinking, I know how valid, but valid psychics or not, they gave some really good advice, and if anything, I got $220 worth of pretty helpful therapy. Also, valid psychics or not, I don't question their validity because whether through power of suggestion/ placebo effect, that hour of counsel, or something else, the things they said and the things they did worked. 

Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying I went from Angelus to Angel once my spirit and soul were "restored," but since my trip - my miserable, miserable trip - I feel different. I feel less lonely, and I feel less lovelorn, and I feel like I'm finally seeing things with a clarity that for so long I'd been unable to achieve. I also, and God, it's so embarrassing to admit this but you know me - it's all humiliation all the time around these parts - haven't looked at any of their socials since that night (except when I had to a few days ago when I blocked their Instagram accounts). This might not sound like a big deal to you, but to say I had a sick fascination with their accounts - especially the puta's - that's mild. 

That psychic session was on a Monday (January 20). Afterward, I felt exactly the same. Sad, frustrated, lonely; agitated about my trip. The next morning, too. Agitation abounded. The day after I got back, though, that was a Wednesday, and Wednesday means run club. It was drizzly and cold, I was exhausted from traveling and from the time change, and for the first time ever, I didn't want to go. But I did. 

The drizzle turned to rain as I ran, and as hackneyed and dramatic as it sounds, when I ran through that cold rain, it felt like a baptism, the cleansing rivulets ushering in a rebirth (and a horrible chest cold, but we won't talk about that). I smiled and I laughed as I bounded down the street (I bounded slowly because of my calf, but I would still say I bounded instead of ran). It was a spiritual experience, and for this girl who has regularly eschewed spirituality, even saying that says a lot). And now? Now, post-baptism run? Post-psychic meeting? Post-the blocking of the socials? Now, if I were to tweet a the-energy-I'm-coming-into-the-second-month-of-the-new-year-with pic?  This would be the pic:

Maybe I'm not elated or ready to jump for joy like I was in 2022, but I'm also not battered and broken. For the first time in a long time, instead of bits and pieces of the one I used to be, I feel like an entire  human being. A vastly different human being than I used to be, for sure, but complete - a little older, a little rougher, a little more worn. A little more velveteen rabbit. And I suppose I can live with that. 

Happy(ish) Holiday, You Bastard! 2024

2024, where have you gone? It's not quite the end of the year yet, but blink and it will be, and how? How is it the end of November? How is it time for the writing of this somewhat-problematic post, the one I have to dig deep to write, so deep I might as well call it an excavation because that's really what it is, the attempted unearthing of my former self or at least what's left of her (and I have to be honest with you, it's not very much. A bone here, a tooth there, a faint desire to maybe possibly get close to another human being again at some point before I die)? How did this year pass me by? Like always when time is involved, I just don't understand, but understand or not, here we are, Thanksgiving 2024, and before this post goes completely awry while I discuss time - and in effect, life - passing, let me get to what I came here for, which as you know is 

Things That I'm Thankful For, 2024

1. It doesn't really feel like something to be thankful for since I'm still so not in a good place, but I don't cry every day anymore, so I suppose I'm thankful for that. I mentioned in one of my last posts, maybe even my actual last, that I pulled up my big girl pants, and I'm happy to report that I haven't taken them off. I cry sometimes, sure (and just to be clear, we're talking about Jonathan-related crying. I cry all the time about everything else), but the tears come much farther between and are far fewer when they do.

2. To add to that, I guess what I'll say is despite how far I still have to go, over the last year, I've come a long, long way. I don't want this to turn into a Jonathan blog, so number two is the last I'll mention in regard to him, but after my birthday debacle when he came here, got into bed with me "to cuddle" for the second time in a few weeks, told me to do whatever I wanted to him, stuck his face between my legs, and burst out crying about a minute in because, and with changes for fluency, I quote, he never did this to me when we were together (although I would argue that what he did to me was much worse than what he did to a "girlfriend" he hadn't even yet French kissed after having been her "boyfriend" for six months), things started to shift, and while I can't say they've completely shifted to where they should be (whatever that means) and have to admit they might not ever, they've admittedly shifted to a much better place.

3. Okay, so I know I said this last year, but I'd be remiss to not mention being thankful for the results of all the hard work I put into my physical self. I cannot express how thankful I am to look like this 

 

instead of like this 

 

and before anyone gets up in arms about how I'm not nice or says it's what's on the inside that counts, I'd like to point out that setting your sights on the life partner of someone else is as douchy and cunty as it gets, and therefore, this (albeit possibly formerly) frigid bitch is getting nothing less than she deserves. Also, the idea that people are supposed to be nice is really nothing more than a way to keep people in line, particularly women, so fuck that noise up its misogynistic ass. 

4. We're going backward a little, back up to number three where I mentioned the hard work I've put into my physical self, but that's because I have to express gratitude for what it does for not just the way I look but also for my actual physical health. My father's death could easily have been avoided if he'd eaten better and been more physically active, and my mother is, without exaggeration, probably in the worst physical and mental shape out of anybody I've ever met, and her deterioration - if you could call it that since she's never, ever been in good shape - is self-inflicted, one-hundred percent. I look at my parents and the price of neglecting health, and I'm thankful that I have the drive and determination to be as healthy as I possibly can, and well, not to milk this workout thing, but that brings me to number

5. because not only does my hard work equal looking good and feeling good physically, I couldn't possibly overstate how much it helps my mental health, something for which I'm thankful for all the time.

6. My 28:04 5k PR and along with that

7. the realization that my limitations are my limitations only because I believe them to be so. I am capable of so much more than I've realized. 

8. Crystal. As you may know from a recent post, this summer I went to eight states to run. I almost didn't, though, because I didn't want to go by myself hence why I'm thankful for Crystal. Crystal is a former student, a formerly extremely good friend, someone I've probably written about in the past, and although we rarely talk anymore for no reason other than life, I follow her Instagram. At some point this year, she posted a story about how she flew to London by herself to go see Adele, and she posted highlights of all the things she did by herself on her trip. Now, I'm no stranger to doing things alone, but traveling alone is something I hadn't really done. After seeing Crystal's post, though, I decided I wasn't going to let being by myself stop me from going places I wanted to go. If Crystal could go to England alone, I told myself, I could go to New England and the Midwest, and, with that in mind, I bought plane tickets, rented cars, booked hotels, and did a whole lot of things I otherwise wouldn't have done. 

9. My bathroom. Praise God, hallelujah, I have a whole bathroom in my house! It seems like an odd thing to be thankful for, I know, but this August I started getting my bathroom remodeled, and what was supposed to be a simple remodel became an utter fiasco, taking three months. What that means is from the second week of August until about two weeks ago, I had no shower in my house, and no, I didn't have a bathtub, either. I had a half bath downstairs and nothing more. For almost three months - three months! - I had to wake up every weekday at 5 am to go to the gym to take a shower before work and also, of course, take a shower there on the weekends. There are still some odds and ends that have to be taken care of, but let me tell you something: being able to take a shower in my own house is something I took for granted and never thought I'd be thankful for, but holy shit, I fucking am. 

(Also, my bathroom might just be the prettiest bathroom I've ever seen, and after all the stress, depression, and anxiety this bathroom has caused me, I'm extremely thankful for that.) 

 

10. Sour beer that somehow also is sweet

11. and stouts

12. Thinking about it now, I suppose that in light of the whole bathroom thing, I'm also grateful for the gym because what the fuck would I have done if I didn't have that? Where would I have showered for those three months? 

13. Curt. For at least a year, this poor man patiently listened to me sob, cry, and whine nonstop, sometimes for hours in one phone call. He never once complained or asked me to stop, something I completely (read: selfishly) took for granted but now realize is rare, even among close friends. 

14. Zoom. I have a pretty good friend - my oldest friend - who lives in Oregon, which is pretty much as far away as you could get from me and still be in this country. Thanks to Zoom, which I guess is really sort of thanks to Covid because if it weren't for Covid, Zoom wold barely be a thing, she and I meet virtually every few weeks to hang out and have a drink which has been really nice.

15. Solitude. After I got out of that sort-of relationship I found myself in with that guy this summer, I deleted all my dating apps and stayed completely away from guys, and talk about something doing wonders. I had no business being on those apps when I was still so desperately in love with Jonathan and so emotionally fragile, and deleting them was the best thing I could have done not only for myself but also for any guy who might have come along (like the guy I accidentally found myself seeing). 

16. And in a complete contrast to solitude, run club. I know I mentioned run club last year, but when I tell you it's run club for the win, jumping Jesus on a pogo stick is it run club for the win. Between the time of my ex-Glenn and Jonathan, I found that I'd somehow exhausted all of my (local) friends and spent a lot of time being lonely. A lot. While with Jonathan, I had him and pretty much no one else, so when we broke up, I found myself alone. For so long, I wanted to make friends, both before, during, and after Jonathan, but didn't know how. Enter run club. What started out as just weekly runs and an awkward after-run drink has become a place where I've found friends, like actual ones, not just running related, and a place where I feel like I belong. I won't go so far as to say run club saved my life because I'd never kill myself (although I did think seriously about not wanting to be alive this year a lot), but it saved something that really needed to be saved, that's for sure. 

And, with that, I think I'll end. Sixteen is more than halfway to my pre-Jonathan list of thirty, after all, and with my recent past, I'm honestly surprised I'm thankful for as many things as I am (although since one of them might be a little mean spirited, maybe not). Before I disappear to make an ungodly amount of food for just Keifer and me, I bid a Happy Thanksgiving to you, people who read my blog, and as always, a day, a year, a life of love and peace. 

And I Want It So Bad, I'd Shoot the Sunshine Into My Veins

When Jonathan and I first broke up, I wanted to be sad. Actually, that's not true. It wasn't just when Jonathan and I first broke up that I wanted to be sad; I wanted to be sad for a long time after we broke up, too. To me, going on with my life and not being sad anymore would be normalizing the loss of the person I'd been closer to than anyone, the person I'd loved more than anyone I'd ever known; it would be conceding that that version of my life was over; it would be moving on. I've written in the past about how heart wrenching I find the end of relationships, romantic or otherwise; how weird and unsettling - how unfathomable, how disturbing - I find it that people who once shared everything, people who at a point in time both literally and figuratively touched every single centimeter of one another, could revert to strangers, and I wanted no part of it at all. When Jonathan and I ended, I wanted to be sad until the end of time. I just couldn't bear the thought of a Jonathan-free life, but if I had to live one, I vowed to never be happy again.

Well, that changed. Actually, wait. Lest you misunderstand, let me clarify what I mean by that. The part about me not being able to bear the thought of a Jonathan-free life, that part didn't change - it still hasn't - and the part about me being happy again, that part didn't change either, but the part about me wanting to be sad, that's the that that changed. One day not so long ago I was standing in the shower thinking about Jonathan since the shower was pretty much his favorite place, and it's impossible for me not to think about Jonathan when I'm showering, and as I've been wont to do, I began to cry, but instead of sobbing like I'm also wont to do, I made myself stop. One second I was staring down at the bottom of the tub having just uttered fusion while pressing an old bar of Dove onto a new one, lips quivering and eyes tearing up, and the next minute, I was like No, Kelly, no; this has got to stop, and I pulled up my big-girl pants (except I didn't really because who the fuck wears pants in the shower?), and I did. It's time, I told myself, and I went about trying to happy up my life. 

This revelation, this decision to purposefully move away from sadness, was a few weeks into summer. Before that, I had done a few here-and-there things that should have made me happy, that should have been analgesics, as my former therapist put it, snippets of good things that would make me feel temporarily better and then, eventually, after having done enough of them, the temporary would go away rendering me cured from the all-consuming sadness that had become my life. 

My half-marathon, I suppose, was one of those things although I didn't do it in an attempt to make myself happy so much as I did it because, like one of the many random guys I've gone out with in the last year said after asking me why I was doing it and I mentioned my break up, I needed a win. 

(And did I? Get a win? Did the analgesic do its thing? Well, I ran the half-marathon and beat my goal time which was all well and good, but when I finished the race, there was nobody waiting for me at the finish line; I stood all alone watching people participating in the post-run celebration while I waited for my sister to come pick me up and bring me back to her apartment where I'd left my car; I drove home thinking about how alone I was; and then I spent the rest of the day by myself in my house with nobody to even acknowledge what I'd done, so no. The analgesic did not do it's thing; if anything, successfully running the half-marathon made me feel worse. There's nothing like having nobody to share a major accomplishment with you to make you realize you're utterly alone.) 

Not long after the half-marathon I went after, and achieved, another longtime goal of mine, something I'd been half-heartedly trying to do for years but honestly thought I'd never be able to do. You know what, just for fun, let's take a look

and while, yes, doing that chin up did genuinely make me happy - happy enough that I immediately text Jonathan to tell him about it because old habits die hard - the happiness was pretty short lived. Like the half-marathon, it - it being consistent, grueling exercise and meticulous macros counting - also wasn't done as a direct attempt to make myself happy but because, one, I really had nothing to do with myself after Jonathan and I broke up, and, two, if stupid, fat Carla was going to be living my new life, fuck if I wasn't at least going to look a million times better than her while she was doing it. 

Anyway.

While those things, the half-marathon and the chin up, were byproducts of my break up, once I got a few weeks deep into summer and had that moment of clarity in the bathtub, I decided I had to chase happy any way I could, that I couldn't spend my whole life waiting to live, so live live live I did. And how did I live live live? Well, first I flew to Iowa and did this

and then the next day I drove to Nebraska where I did not only this

but also this

and the next morning I woke up super early, dropped my friend off at the airport, and drove to South Dakota to do this

and the day after that, I flew to Texas so I could do this

and when I got home from that super fast whirlwind trip, I saw another one of my super good friends and we did a lot of this

but I was miserable still, so right after he left, I flew to Connecticut to

drove to a little town on the border of New Hampshire and Vermont and

made my way up to Maine where I 

and then meandered down US-1 all the way to Boston so I could

And you know what? I was still sad. Just as sad, if not sadder, than before I left. Going to all those places mostly alone, places Jonathan and I were supposed to go together over Christmas break a year-and-a-half earlier but ended up changing our plans last minute because I didn't want to run in the cold, just emphasized the chasm between my former and my current life. 

Another chasm emphasizer? I somehow found myself in an accidentally burgeoning relationship with a persistent guy I couldn't shake, a guy who, after our fifth date, sent me a text that said he'd been with chaste women before but it'd been a long time, so when he kissed me, he didn't know what to do with his hands, and well, I'm pretty sure you know that when chaste and me are mentioned in the same sentence, something is amiss (I'm also pretty sure you know what that is). He and I aren't seeing each other anymore - I had to text him a Dear John when he told me he missed me one morning after having picked me up from the airport maybe thirty hours earlier - but the brief time we spent with each other bordered on brutal if I'm entirely honest. Every time he kissed me with so much force I had to fight to keep my head upright and my neck from opening up like a Pez dispenser (and I don't mean that in a good way like ooh, he kissed me passionately and commandingly, I mean it in a bad way like eww, he kissed me awkwardly and clumsily), the chasm got wider and wider until it was so large, I'm surprised I didn't plummet into its depths, lost forever in the space between what once was and what I don't want to ever be although now that I think about it, maybe I did. Maybe I fell so far, so deep, the side I fell from so far behind me, it's like it was never even there, the equidistant side in front of me so far away, I can't even tell if it truly exists. 

***

About a week after my second trip, I was listening to The Wonder Years for the first time in a while when I heard it, the lyric I used as my beginning-of-the-year weekly quote several years in a row: It's not about forcing happiness, it's about not letting sadness win, and it hit me. I'd been going about things all wrong. In my decision to not be sad, I was trying to force something that couldn't be, and in trying to force something that couldn't be, I'd made myself feel even worse. 

As it turns out, there's no flying away from, no outrunning my own life. Fuck an analgesic. It doesn't matter how many goals I achieve, how many friends I see, how many drinks I drink. Happiness can't be forced, but maybe, just maybe, I can do what Soupy sings and not let sadness win. 

I've Been Digging Graves for You and Me

For the past couple days I was away for a training in Tampa, a two-and-a-half-day trip that coincidentally spanned an extremely pivotal date. Since I was going to be holed up in a hotel with no distractions after 3:30 two days in a row, I fully intended to write a blog; alas, I did not. Instead I went to Angry Chair where I discovered the most delicious beers known to man which rendered me a little too not-in-a-writing state of mind to blog yet just enough in a rambling state of mind to vlog, so for your viewing (dis)pleasure(?), I present to you, my first ever vlog.  

*Btw, rebel and resist both share the prefix re- "against" (you'll soon understand).

(God, this is so cringe; I can't look. Also, warning: a skilled extemporaneous speaker I am not.)

And Does Your Wifey Know the Way that the Sunshine Gleams from Your Wedding Band?

Can we please, just for a second, talk about the grossness of men? 

And to do that, can we use some props? And then after, can I talk about something that's been on my mind a lot? Like a lot a lot? 

Yes, yes, and yes? 

Cool, cool. Onward with 

The Plot

Last night after I'd just finished running, I was watching Gilmore Girls, lazing about, when I noticed a notification on my phone. I'd tell you what it said, but instead I'll just show you what I saw. 

Gross, right? Wait until I show you 

The Background

Last year while I was doing who knows what since how the hell am I supposed to remember exactly what I was doing at a random moment a year ago, I got a message on Instagram. I'd tell you what it said, but instead I'll just show you what I saw. 

Normally I'd insert some sort of commentary here, but I think that's unnecessary; the conversation speaks for itself. For the next few months, I got a spate of heart eyes responses to my stories along with the occasional flame, some so deliciouses, and a lil snack. Nothing super noteworthy until January 25 when I got

I realize, yes, that those January 25 messages may not seem particularly noteworthy; that's because what's noteworthy is what's now gone. After that last message on January 25, this dude messaged me like mad. Like mad! He was leaving his wife, he told me. It was over, he said. It was over for so many reasons, and she was fully aware. The dude went on and on, sending messages and then taking them back and then sending reworded ones. I went to bed while this was still going on, and the next morning when I woke up, all the messages were gone. Later that night, he sent the message offering an explanation, which I didn't respond to, along with his phone number, which I didn't use. 

You'd think that would have stopped the messages from coming. You'd think wrong. 

After that last message, I got a few more heart eyes responses to stories, and then last night,

The Creme de la Creme

Now, I repeat: Can we please, just for a second, talk about the grossness of men?

I refrained from the commentary like I said I would, but I do feel the need to add that I'm friends with this guy on Facebook, and he posts photos of himself with his wife a lot. If the two of them have a bad marriage - well, obviously they have a bad marriage, so let me rephrase that - the fact that the two of them have a bad marriage? She doesn't know. This poor lady has no earthly idea. None. 

This poor lady is sitting here living her life, loving her husband, thinking everything is just fucking fine while he's been busy messaging me for over a year, telling me not just that he wants to hook up which would be bad in itself but that he loves me - that he loves me! - and that he'll leave her for me. 

Fucking what? 

I just - 

Could we just, for a second, Idk, explore? Talk this out? Bear with me while I think on screen.

Let's pretend I could potentially have any interest in this comepinga at all. He seriously thinks that pursuing me while he has a wife is the way to go? That I would ever ever ever in a million years cross a boundary like that?

Who am I, the goth version of Miss Piggy who posted a photo of herself talking about wanting what's forbidden the night she had her friend repeatedly text my then boyfriend because she so desperately wanted him? 

In case you didn't get that that was a rhetorical question, the answer is no, I am in no way, shape - especially in shape - or form the Miss-Piggy-looking puta who, at least in photos, doesn't seem to know how to close her mouth, and if ever there was a time that I was, maybe when I was super young and insecure, like before I was even twenty years old and a gordita myself (what is it with gorditas? Why does being a fat girl cause such shitty behavior?), it's not something I ever would have done in my entire adult life, and it's certainly not something I would do after the events of the last few years. 

El Wray himself could knock on my door, and because of Cherry Darling, I'd leave it closed. 

El Wray!

And this motherfucker thinks what? He's going to win me over by telling me he loves me and offering to leave his wife? The same way that six months into our relationship, Jonathan was telling some girl on Twitter to rail him; two years into it, he was messaging the puta in the morning before sending his daily Good-morning-baby-I-love-you text to me; and six months into his new relationship with her, he was in my bed with his face between my thighs?

God, I'm tired. 

I'm so fucking tired. 

I'm tired of it, and I'm tired of them, so please, for just one little second, can we talk about 

The Fucking Grossness of Men? 

Your Little Blogs Are Getting Way Too Literal. How About Some Goddamn Subtlety for a Change?

It occurred to me two nights ago while I was running that I haven't told you about my toilet situation, a perfectly natural thing to not write about what with everything else that's been going on in my life. Over the course of the last week, though, when my longtime toilet issue graduated first from mild annoyance to major inconvenience and then from major inconvenience to life lesson, I realized it was high time for the toilet to be discussed. To discuss it, though, we have to go back to the start.

The Start

January 17, 1975, twelve days after the day I was due - wait, no, not that beginning. While I'm sure you'd love to hear the story of my birth, let's flash forward forty-eight-and-a-half years to last June when my toilet woes began. The toilet upstairs, which is the only toilet upstairs, had been running intermittently for a while, but in the middle of June, it started running more and more. A handyman who was at my house doing some other stuff tried to fix it but couldn't, so I looked on Yelp and called a plumber, like a real live actual one. He came, did whatever it is a plumber does, said he fixed it, and left. 

A little while after the plumber left, I went upstairs to go to the bathroom and noticed that when I flushed the toilet, the flush was off. What I mean by this is when I flushed the toilet, it didn't feel like the handle was quite connecting with whatever it was supposed to connect with inside. The sound and feel was, I don't know, hollow? I'm not sure if that makes sense, but that's the best word I can come up with to describe how it felt. Not only did the flush feel hollow - if that had been the only issue, who would have given a fuck? Not me, that's for sure - but upon flushing the toilet, the water didn't fill up the bowl; instead, it just barely covered the little hole. In order to make it fill more, I had to stand there and hold the handle down because going to the bathroom in a toilet with such a small amount of water would have led to nothing but a dirty toilet bowl and things that are gross. 

I called the plumber back as soon as I noticed the issue, he came back the next day, he spent about four hours in my bathroom, and unable to fix it, he gave me my money back in exchange for my promise to not leave him a review on Yelp. As he left, he commented on how I really made out because I didn't have to pay anything, but he fixed the issue that I originally called him about. Well, you know what? Fuck that guy because no, he certainly did not. While before I called him back, yes, my toilet had stopped running, when he came back to fix whatever it was he broke, he made my toilet run again.

A couple days later, my ex-Glenn, who was a plumber's apprentice about a million years ago, came over to fix the toilet. Apparently fixing my toilet is some sort of impossible task, though, because he couldn't fix it, either. He got it to flush the right way, at least, but as for the running? It didn't stop. I decided I had enough going on in my life to worry about a running toilet and moved on.

Okay, so that was July (the plumber dude came in June, Glenn in the middle of July). I lived with the running toilet; it got more and more frequent but whatever. I had things to do, things like cry and stalk and belittle, go back and forth with an ex-boyfriend who had as hard a time letting me go as I had letting go of him. In the meantime, though, while I focused on the falling apart of my internal world, my external world was doing the same, and come January, my toilet tank stopped filling up.

Here's what would happen: Nothing. Like, literally nothing. I'd flush my toilet, and nothing. Well, that's not true. The toilet would flush, and then the nothing would come, nothing being no water coming into the bowl or into the tank. I tried playing with the handle, and I tried working with the chain, but the only thing that would make the toilet fill up was taking the top off and pulling up what I'm pretty sure is called the canister flush valve. I'd pull that thing up, the toilet would fill up, and I'd put the top back on. 

For about a month and a half, maybe two, I did that every time I went to the bathroom: took the top of the toilet off, set it down on the bathmat, pulled up the top of the canister thing, waited for the water to fill up, and put the top back on. I loved doing that two or three times a day. It was awesome. Actually, in retrospect, it was awesome. I wish I could still do it, but alas, I cannot, for one day, pulling up the canister valve thing no longer worked. I pulled it up, but instead of going back flush with the bottom part where the little seal is when I let it go, the water instead trickled out. It would stop when I pushed down on it, but once I stopped pushing and, in effect, the pressure stopped, the trickling began. At that point, I had no choice but to turn the toilet water off. 

Now, the toilet water was turned off, yes, but that didn't mean I no longer used it. What I did was use the toilet downstairs during the day and the one upstairs, the broken one, the only other one in the house, in the middle of the night and in the morning when I woke up. When I went in the middle of the night, I wouldn't flush, and then when I went in the morning, I'd turn the water valve on, let the toilet fill up, flush the toilet, and then turn the water off. Barely an inconvenience. In fact, not only was it barely an inconvenience, it was better than what I'd been dealing with in the past. The toilet was no longer running practically nonstop, and I didn't have to keep taking the tank top on and off and playing with my toilet's insides. I even thought to myself that I was dumb not to have turned the toilet water off sooner. 

Well, I'll tell you what was dumb, and that's thinking I outsmarted my diabolical toilet whose mission, it's become clear, is to defeat me. At this point in my story, the point when I started turning the toilet off and on every day, it was, I believe, the middle of March. And I know what you're thinking. I know! Kelly, you're thinking, you crazy bitch, why the fuck didn't you call a plumber? Well, mean people who read my blog, I did that once, and it didn't work. Excuse me for being a little wary. My best course of action, I decided, would be getting a whole new toilet, but I plan to redo my bathroom this summer, so getting a new one just a few months before the entire bathroom is ripped apart seemed dumb and like an unnecessary expense. The way I looked at it, I'd been dealing with toilet problems for so long, how big a deal was it to turn it off and on every day for a few months? 

lol

I'll tell you how big a deal it is. A few weeks in, I started noticing that the floor was a tiny bit wet under the valve. Just a few drops, though, so I didn't think much of it. A couple weeks after that - we're now up to last week - I woke up in the morning, peed, turned the valve on, flushed the toilet, and turned the valve off. I then got in the shower, and while in there I kept hearing an intermittent noise. Wondering what it was, I turned off the water only to hear nothing. Turning the water back on, I finished my shower, got out, dried off, and began to brush my teeth. Again, the noise. I turned my toothbrush off. This time the noise didn't stop. My toilet - my toilet with the water valve turned off - was running, and it was running a lot. 

After playing with the valve for a few minutes, I grabbed my phone. I Googled. I YouTubed. I wanted to cry. Apparently there's this screw in the valve, and after the valve gets turned off and on enough times, it starts to loosen. Grabbing a screwdriver from my handy dandy Ikea toolkit, I tried doing what the YouTube video instructed me to do, but it didn't quite work. I was, however, able to mostly control the running so that now, a few days later, I sometimes hear an itty bitty trickle but it's nothing compared to what previously had been a nearly constant gush. 

Those good old days of waking up and turning my toilet water off and on? Those are over now because fuck if I'm going to tempt fate by turning the water on again. This happened Thursday, so for the past three nights, I've had to trek downstairs to pee in the middle of the night which let me tell you, is the opposite of fun, and as for the mornings? Well, the very first thing I do when I wake up is pee, and on the weekends, that's followed immediately by applying sunscreen, waiting fifteen minutes, and then walking my dogs. Yesterday and today being weekend days, and me not wanting to rile up my dogs by going downstairs, I did the only thing I could. I sat on the edge of my bathtub, let my butt hang over the inside, and Jesus God I can't believe I'm about to type this, I peed. In my bathtub, and yes, I'm well aware I brought this on myself.

And so the moral of my story? The epiphany I had while I was running, the life lesson I learned? When something is wrong, you can ignore it at first because maybe it's not that big a deal, a minor annoyance is all, and then when you can't quite ignore it anymore, you can find ways to sort of patch it up - jerry rig it as Jonathan used to call it, a much nicer and more acceptable term than the one I grew up hearing - and just go on as if everything is fine, hoping the issue will disappear, but problems don't go away on their own. If you don't actually address what's wrong, what's really wrong, before you know it, there you are, sitting naked on the edge of your bathtub, butt suspended in thin air, peeing and praying you've scooted far enough back that you don't accidentally pee on your bathroom floor. 

Nobody Wants to See Me Blog About Tragedy

Last week I was talking to Griffin, who, one day earlier, had gone to the gym for the first time in two or three years. When I asked him what he did there, he told me that among other things, he ran. Naturally, the next things out of my mouth were how far and how fast. He answered that he put the treadmill on an incline of five, started out at 5 mph and went back and forth between 5 mph and varying speeds for a mile, 7 being the highest.  

Wow, that's really good! I've been running for years, and I work out all the time, and I can't run at 7 mph, I responded. 

A couple days after that conversation, I went to the gym instead of running outside for the first time in months. Because it was Saturday and Sundays are my long run, my plan was to run two easy miles like I usually do. Onto the treadmill I stepped and began my 5.5 mph slog. And I started thinking about Griffin.

I started thinking about how Griffin had run 7 mph, Griffin who had run for the first time in years, Griffin who didn't work out at all, and I thought to myself, if Griffin can run 7 mph, I can run 7 mph! I'm in way better than shape than Griffin! 

And you know what I did next?

Wrong! You were going to say I ran at 7 mph, weren't you? (I know you were. Don't pretend.)

What I did was set the treadmill at 6.5 and run at that pace for about a minute. You know, give a faster pace than I was used to a whirl. I then went back to 5.5 where I ran for a minute before moving up to 6.6 for another minute and then back down to 5.5. Then I did the same thing for 6.7; 6.8; 6.9; and yes, finally, 7.

7!

There I was, running at 7 mph, faster than I'd ever set the treadmill to in my entire life, and you know what happened? 

I didn't die!

I didn't die, I didn't fly off, I didn't get hurt. I didn't even get abnormally out of breath. 

You know what I did do, though?

I felt fucking thrilled. 

I felt fucking thrilled, and even it was only for two minutes, I felt super proud of running at an 8:34 mile pace, the fastest I'd ever run, and I text Griffin, all excited, as soon as I got home.

You inspired me to put the treadmill up to 7 mph today

I was like, Griffin does't even run

If he can do it

And I could!

And then, once I finished texting, I asked myself why I was always so afraid to do anything, so cautious about everything.

For so long I've told myself this story, this story about what I can't and can do. This story about how I'm built, about my limitations, about my ineptitude.

I'm not built for running.

I've got these wide Greek-Italian hips. 

The Venus of Willendorf and I may as well be twins.

I mean, I've been injured before, yes. I've hurt my IT band, I've hurt my Achilles tendon, I wore custom orthotics, I wore a boot. 

But you know what else I did? I ran a half-marathon in January, my first since the half-marathon debacle of 2007 that left me incapacitated and nearly crippled for weeks, and not only did I do it half an hour faster than the average first half-marathon time for women between 20 and 50 years old, but I was totally fine when I was done; I recently took more than two minutes off last year's 5k times, running a sub 30-minute 5k three times in the last two months; and I started running 9:35 miles at my run club on Wednesday nights - and, yet, despite these accomplishments, when someone at my run club commented a couple weeks ago that I've gotten fast, I immediately corrected him. I've gotten faster, I said, emphasis on the er. 

People who read my blog, the point?

That story I tell myself; that's all it is: the story I tell myself. I'm _______. I say it all the time, forget about running but about so many things. You know what, though? I think it might be possible that I'm only those things because I think I'm those things, and well, if I think I'm those things, and it makes me those things, doesn't that mean I can just think - and, therefore, become - other things?

***

A few days ago, so I guess about four days after I ran at 7 mph, Griffin called me.

Hello?

Hey, I'm on my way home from they gym and can't talk, but I just wanted to call you to tell you that you inspired me.

Goddammit, Griffin! I replied, laughing.

He laughed. I thought to myself, If my mom could run at 7 mph . . . 

I interrupted him. How fast?

He continued as if I hadn't said a word. And I'm a man -

Griffin!

Then surely I can run faster.

Griffin! Just tell me!

And would you believe that fucking kid/man ran at 8.5 mph?

Motherfucker! I said. 8.5?  

8.5, he answered. 

Yeah, well, I'll see your 8.5, I replied. 

And I actually think I can.