This Party Sucks

Can we just take a minute, please, to talk about all the things that have been in my vagina in the past few years? And before you think I've finally lost it, can we also acknowledge the fact that the vagina is just another body part, specifically, in my opinion, one that the conversation about needs to be normalized? And lastly, can you just calm down? Because when I say things that have been in my vagina, I'm not talking about for fun.

About a month ago when I was in Tampa, I overheard a conversation between two men. One of the men said that he had a strange night the night before, that he'd gone running and then just sat in a park, drenched with sweat, and waited until he was completely dry. Of course he did, I thought, because he doesn't have a vagina. If I sat around in soaking wet workout clothes, I'd have a yeast infection the next day, and I thought about the time when I was at Universal Studios with a group of friends a few years ago--all boys except me--and got so drenched on one of the water rides that I went back to the hotel to shower and change while they stayed a couple more hours hanging out because I was afraid of that very thing.

I also thought, when I heard that guy talk about sitting in his own juices for a lengthy amount of time, about how my friends who have vaginas and I always talk about the unfairness of the vagina and how, no matter how you look at it, we got the short end of the stick. If you look at it from a religious point of view and believe God was doling out the genitalia, like, dude, what the fuck? Men were given something that's basically wash and go while women got what? Their own personal ecosystem with a delicate balance of good and bad bacteria that happens to be maybe an inch away from the home of some of the worst bacteria there is? Flora that's thrown into a tizzy from panty hose or stockings, tight pants or jeans, non-cotton undies or a thong? Far be it for me to be the one to accuse God of misogyny, but how could I not? How more religious women aren't in an uproar over this, I'll never understand. If, on the other hand, you're not religious but believe in science instead, often marveling at the perfect creation of different forms of life, you especially have to wonder what was going on when the vagina came about. What biological sense is there in the vagina having a ph of 4 to 4.5 while semen has a ph between 7.1 and 8? Of all the things that should interfere with a healthy vagina, semen should be the last. Sure, an argument could be made for where saliva does or doesn't biologically belong with its ph of over 6, but semen? Semen and the vagina are literally MFEO.

And yet...

all those things that have been in my vagina in the past few years?

Let's talk cause and effect.

A few years ago I got an IUD and can you say why doesn't a warning come with this thing? Okay, fine, a warning does come with this thing, but not about ph. Intermittent bleeding? Warning. Acne? Warning. Mood swings? Warning. Uterine wall perforation? Warning. Ph issues causing bv nearly every time a woman has sex? A lot of searching had to be done before finding the lawsuits about that, and I don't know what they're brainwashing doctors with because despite the lawsuits and numerous accounts online, both my gynecologist and nurse practitioner I see at the gynecologist still are acting like a connection doesn't exist.

Admittedly, I've been lucky. I didn't think so at first, but once I started doing research--and when I tell you I've done research, baby, I have done Research, and that capital R is no mistake. At this point, I probably know more about vaginal flora, ph, bv, and bv treatment than my nurse practitioner, and actually, that's a fact because the last time I was in and told her about the promising studies using vitamin C, she had no idea. Also, those ph numbers above? From the top of my head. You want to know what color a vaginal ph strip turns at varying ph levels? Drop me a comment and we'll have a chat--I found out how lucky I am.

First, I'm lucky because a woman doesn't have to have an IUD to get bv, but I didn't ever get it until I got mine put in. Some women have it pretty much their entire lives, IUD or not. Second, I'm lucky because when I said something about ph levels being thrown out of whack nearly every time a woman has sex, I wasn't exaggerating; in fact, that was an understatement because for some women, it's not nearly, it's every because if the ph of the semen doesn't do it, the condom they use as a precaution may. When I started researching bv three years ago when I got it for the first time, I felt like I stepped into a horror magazine. Click after click led me to account after account of woman after woman who got bv and then couldn't shake it no matter what she did. These women would be on perpetual cycles of treatment, first an antibiotic to get rid of the bv and then something to get rid of the resulting yeast infection (because of course the vagina, annoying cunt that she is, develops a yeast infection almost any time a woman takes antibiotics because thanks to a misogynistic god/failure of nature, we can't even take fucking medicine without adverse effects) for years, and the bv would just come back as soon as they had sex or were tired and run down or used soap on their vagina instead of treating it like the self-cleaning entity that it is, and the stuff I read about when the bv would come back? The symptoms?

I wanted to cry.

Luckily, though--oh, so luckily--I got/get almost none of them. Other than a feeling that something just isn't right, my slightly high ph causes pretty much no issues at all; still, that doesn't do anything to assuage the fear that one day it might, that one day I might face the horrors that one in four women of reproductive age face. Also luckily, I don't get bv every time I have sex, and that really is luckily because I'd probably die by suicide if I did. I have no explanation for why my body is a fan of some people's chemistry and not others', but my body loved C and loves LDG (who it turns out isn't so much a thing of the past which really shouldn't surprise anybody at this point) while it passionately despised The Korean and is undecided about how it feels about M: sometimes it's a fan, sometimes it isn't (I, on the other hand, am always a fan. Probably his biggest).

And that, people who know way too much about my life, brings me to the reason why my vagina has been home to so many things that normally the vagina isn't home to in the last three years.

I don't like medication or drugs. At all. When I had major surgery a year and a half ago and was cut in half, I didn't take one of the pain pills I was prescribed, and I'd much rather let a sickness run its course than take anything that ends in cillan or cycline or whatever other ending antibiotics have that I wouldn't know because I don't take them. Plus, the medical treatment for bv has all sorts of adverse effects, all pretty much for nothing because the bv just ends up coming back. So while I did take the recommended course of treatment the first time around, I stockpiled my prescriptions and turned to alternative methods. Because bv is such a huge problem--because vaginas are the most poorly constructed body parts that exist--because if there is a god, he's apparently a man, and if there's not, the universe is just inherently anti-women--there's no shortage of sites with homeopathic, natural, and alternative remedies for bv, many that seem to work much better than the standard medical thing.

Plain, no-sugar-added, yogurt-covered tampon? It's been there. Tea tree oil? Yep. Hydrogen peroxide? Only once, but si. Garlic? It's a natural antibacterial, so, um...yeah. I have, in fact, had a clove of garlic inside my vagina. Vitamin C pills? Six nights in a row while I sleep, two out of six months down, in an attempt to change the biofilm that exists (funny story about when at first I bought a pill that didn't dissolve. I woke up the morning after inserting it, checked to make sure it was gone, and lo and behold, I still had an entire pill shoved all the way against my cervix, and let me tell you, I was terrified I'd have to go to my nurse practitioner, mortified, and have her fish it out because although I could feel it with the tip of my finger, I just couldn't make the grab. It turned out, however, my pelvic floor muscles are stronger than I thought, and thank the fucking lord, I was able to push that baby out). Oral probiotics double dutying as vaginal suppositories? Do I even have to say yes?

Pretty much the only thing I haven't tried is the widely accepted boric acid route, which is one capsule inserted for I believe it's 14 to 16 nights, and I'm hoping I won't have to because next week I'm finally getting rid of this IUD. Well, trying to anyway. Because I'm me--the me whose gym literally fucking blew up one day after I wrote how much consistently working out has changed my life--the doctor who inserted it put it up too far and cut the string too short. My nurse practitioner, who I've been seeing so long, she delivered Keifer, who turned 18 today, said I need twilight anesthesia and a special instrument to take it out, but the gynecologist she works underneath? Well, he's a man. He insists on trying without those things.

M says I have an extremely high threshold for pain. I guess we're going to see.

Everything's Magic

This is a really, really hard post for me to write. If you know me in person or if you've read my blogs in the past, you'll know why as soon as I say what I'm about to say, but despite how I've tried to not write it, no matter how hard I've tried to not say it, I just no longer have a choice because god motherfucking dammit, this thing is inside of me and it won't leave me alone until it comes out:

I'm happy.

Like, happy happy. Like, dance-around-the-house, dance-on-my-butt-in-the-car, dance-on-the-elliptical, can't-stop-smiling-like-a-weirdo-no-matter-where-I-am-or-what-I'm-doing happy. In fact, I'm so the poster girl for happy right now that if you were to look up happy right this very second, this is most likely what you'd find

Now is that the face of feliz or what?

Okay, I know. I can't tell you I'm ridiculously happy without telling you why, so let me give you a little bit of the sitch. No, not all the details, you salivating pack of yentas, but some.

First and foremost, I'm going to shatter every notion of me you have because I know you think I'm happy because of a boy, and I'm here to tell you that I'm not although, fine, in my full disclosure way, I suppose I do have to tell you that maybe it's possible that some boys are a part of this new and improved happy version of me but they're really a byproduct of my happiness more than a cause. Okay, maybe that's not entirely true. Maybe they're a tiny bit of the cause, like an itty bitty little part, but that's not exactly true. If anything, the boys/happiness thing is sort of--I don't know if symbiotic is the right word but it feels right--no, wait, the word that keeps coming to mind is cyclical and that probably doesn't make sense to you so let me explain in, of course, a roundabout way because we all know I can never just get to the point

which, of course, is that I'm happy, and, well, I'm happy because I am. Since it's summer and I have time, I've been going to the gym a lot, running a lot more than I do during the school year and ellipting on my running days off, doing intervals and really pushing myself, and happy always comes as a result of that, not just because of the endorphins that are released when I work hard or the exercise-inducing growth of nerve cells in the brain that relieves depression but because of the sense of accomplishment and fulfillment I get every time I meet a workout goal or think to myself that my resting heart rate is 58 or I weigh 136 or I imagine the minutes on the treadmill being like little Pac-Man pellets that give me energy and strength only instead of giving me the energy and strength to chase ghosts, they give me the energy and strength to do, um, other things

and while we're on this subject, fulfillment, another reason I'm happy is that I've been taking time out of my life to be mindful and appreciate the good that I have. I've been thanking the Earth and the Moon and the goddesses and the gods for the peace and the gifts they've bestowed upon me and acknowledging and understanding that the entire universe works as one. What I'm about to tell you is absolutely insane, so insane that it's weird for me to even type, but I was on a date last week and the guy and I were talking about organized religion and beliefs and things of that sort, and he said he could tell that I'm a spiritual person. At first I was all like, wait, what? (even if only in my head) because never in my life have I thought of myself as a spiritual person--and I thought right--but now? Well, that would no longer be right. At some point I've undergone a paradigm shift, and it's sort of changed my life

and speaking of change, can we take a minute to talk about how I've been setting crystals with intentions to help me accept it and to break out of old patterns as well and how it's been working and how that's a huge component of the happy girl that I am? Not only am I happy because of the specific changes, but I'm also happy because I'm allowing them to happen at all. I'm happy because I've always been terrified of new and for the first time in my life, I'm not

and not that I've ever been remotely terrified of talking about sex but I do hate for everything to go back to it; regardless, I have to mention that sex, like exercise, makes happier people. It lowers cortisol, which is obviously a muy malo thing; increases personal satisfaction; and elevates oxytoin, dopamine, and endorphins. The more sex people have and the more intimacy they share, the happier they feel. We'll leave that one there

and actually go back to the change I've been open to because one of the changes I've been asking for is the ability to be less anxious and to just let life unfold because let's face it: it's going to, like it or not. I've been working on having no expectation and being Miss Go With The Flow, and let me tell you, that's another thing that's changed my fucking life. Being happy with what I have and not wanting more? Finding the beauty in that which I possess and not obsessing about what something will become? Fucking life changing

which, look at that, brings me back to boys (like everything else in my life) and the possibly symbiotic/probably cyclical nature of them and my happiness as of late. I think it's no secret that while boys have had the ability to make me ecstatic, they more often have made me morose; as a result of my happiness, though, my relationships with boys have been better which in turn has produced more happiness which in turn has produced more of the better which in turn has produced more of the happier which in turn which in turn which in turn, and I think you understand

and I think you also may be wondering why I'm telling you any of this at all when I've professed to you before that I hate acknowledging good things because it always makes them disappear, why I decided to write this post. Well, for one, I already told you it was forcing it's way out, but for another, two days ago on my way home from the gym, I had a realization in the car

which came right after I had a particularly happy, dancy session on the elliptical during which I sang and I laughed and I smiled like an absolute nut. In the car, I was listening to I don't remember what, but I was singing and dancing on my butt maybe even with a little shoulders and waist movement thrown in, throwing around my hair because now that I'm like Rapunzel I can do that, absolutely giddy, thinking that I can't believe how much I just absolutely love everything when I had a thought: I could never live like this my entire life. Happiness on the level I've been feeling it lately, I realized, isn't sustainable, and I concluded, surprisingly, that that's all right. That that's not real life. I mean, it's my real life right now, and it's the life of many other people, I'm sure, but it's just too much. Not only do I think if I felt the kind of euphoria I've been feeling lately all the time I would surely die, but I also think I would grow to expect it more, and appreciate it less. I think I'd lose the sense of wonder I somehow managed to not yet have lost, and that's something I never ever want to do

and so, readers whom I love so much, now you know. I'm happy because everything is magic, and because everything is magic, there's isn't anything that I don't love

which means before I go to bed I have just one last thing to say:

I Don't Have Roses in the Closet, but I've Got Pictures in a Drawer

A couple weeks ago when I was in bed with M, the subject of nostalgia came up. I don't miss people, he said and then proceeded to tell me that he's only ever missed one person. God, I said. Not me. I miss every single person I've ever met in my life. 

I haven't really thought about that conversation since we had it, but two days ago while I was walking off a lemon bar, a caramel apple square, and a salad drenched in enough honey mustard for me to have taken a bath in--okay, fine, plus the two mini chocolate pretzel bars my roommate gave me and the two Reese's Peanut Butter cups and  mini mr. Goodbar I pilfered from her stash of table leader candy--on the boardwalk behind my hotel, I passed a family that made it come back. The family consisted of a mom, a dad with a little boy who looked to be somewhere around three on his shoulders, and another little boy who seemed to be about the same age walking next to the mom and a stroller. I can't be sure if there was another sibling in the stroller, maybe a baby asleep, or if the stroller belonged to one of the little boys; I could, however, be sure that after a few seconds of looking at what appeared to be a family of four but could have been five, the family I saw wasn't that one in front of me comprised of strangers, but the one that used to be mine.

That used to be us, I thought. I thought it, and I saw: Glenn, young, hair short and spiky--and dark, way darker than his norm because his hair looks so much darker when it's short and hasn't been lightened by the sun--with Griffin on his shoulders and Keifer by my side. Griffin had short straight hair and a blue Spider-Man shirt, and Keifer's shirt was striped, the same shirt he's wearing in a photo I have of him walking Christopher, our beloved Swedish Vallhund, while he holds his brother's hand. My hair is long and dark, pulled back in a ponytail, and I'm wearing Glenn's FSU shirt, the one I wore so much it's now threadbare, really a shirt barely there. I saw it and I felt it and I missed it and then I thought of that conversation I had in bed, and I realized I was wrong. It's not that I miss everyone I've ever met, it's that I miss different versions of people I've known--still know--throughout my life. I miss people who aren't even gone.

Let's take Griffin, for instance. There's absolutely no logical reason for me to miss him one little bit, and I don't, or at least not the Griffin of present time. He lives in Orlando, yes, but I think I talk to him more now than I did when he lived at home. To say we're close would be the underest understatement I ever did make. Still, when I think of Griffin at various stages of little boy, I do--miss him, I mean--and it's not because I don't like who he's become and wish he were that little boy again. Griffin is everything I could ever want him to be. He's just not the Griffins he at different times has been.

Things are admittedly a little different with Kei, who also no longer lives at home, but who, unlike Griffin, I don't talk to nearly as much as I did when we were in the same house. Him, I miss very much, not only the version of him from Keifer past but also the version of him who exists on this plane. (That's not nostalgia, though, so it's the kind of relevance to this post that's not.)

***

Because I'm in Tampa scoring AP essays this week and far busier than I am in my normal life, this is my third day writing this post. Every night I write a tiny bit more, and during the day I kind of think about it a little, a combination which has resulted in my realizing that I was wrong in the point I set out to make, in what I originally thought. Originally, I was thinking that what I miss is specific versions of people from specific times, but it's not--or well, maybe it partially is because I'm thinking of a very specific instance of Griffin-Keifer interaction I would go back to if I could--but it's mainly the interactions I had with those people at those times, and when I say interactions, that's exactly what I mean, and not necessarily anything more. I remember certain moments, certain conversations, certain places, and honestly, I miss them so much, and I don't miss them because things are now worse, I just miss them because they no longer are.

When I was in bed with M, he said if he were nostalgic, he couldn't be there with me, which obviously isn't true. More likely he meant he couldn't be present, the way I couldn't be present with the guy I went out with a couple weeks ago because every second he was kissing me at the beach, I was thinking about someone else spitting in my mouth (yes, I'm a horrific person, can we please move along?). Nostalgia isn't like that for me, though--something that keeps me from the present. When I was thinking about M spitting in my mouth (can I just take a minute to longingly sigh?), it obviously wasn't because I was nostalgic for it because how could someone be nostalgic for someone or something that just happened the prior week?

Nostalgia for me is just something that's there--that's often there--an intrinsic part of my life. Even if I don't actively miss it every second of the day, I always miss when I used to call Keifer my dolly just like I always miss the Glenn-Griffin-Keifer-Kelly-Christopher family bed and the five years of coffee on Friday afternoons with Griffin and my Crystal-Jeffrey-Adrian-Jordan seventh period planning in 2014-15 and the time I had the nerve to ask a customer at Denny's if he'd call me if I gave him my phone number and he ended up being my boyfriend for a year and going to Louie's house on days off of school and Buddy being a part of our house and finally meeting Geoff for the first time after making up stories and fake scenarios about him for five years and going to that Led Zeppelin laser light show with Chris that time when we weren't in our right minds and a car full of boys almost tipped my Fiat while we laughed like fools and pretty literally everything that's ever happened in my life. I don't miss them because I want them to happen again, I just miss them because they once were but no longer are.

Except

I don't exactly believe that's true.

(The part about no longer are)

It's my personal belief that time isn't straight. It's my personal belief that everything that's ever happened to everybody everywhere is happening to everybody everywhere all the time. Right here where I'm sitting at the Marriott Waterside in Tampa? Right under my chair? Cuban fishermen are hanging out smoking cigars; Hernando de Soto is slaughtering Native Americans; Andrew Jackson, in typical Andrew Jackson style, is starting the First Seminole War. It's all happening, over and over and over again, and it doesn't stop. I believe that of everything (one day I'll tell you about when I used to think Keifer from 2017 was living in his room, crossing over to now), which means all those memories that mean so much? They're not memories so much as happening on a different plane.

Someplane (can we make that a word?), I'm laughing hysterically on the playground with my high school boyfriend after having gotten something questionable in my eye; someplane, I'm standing with Adam Shoji having a conversation about how he remembers meeting me the last time Seaway played; someplane I'm at Urbis Orbis in Chicago with Chris meeting the cutest boy we had ever met; someplane, my dolly and my doggie and my Griffy and, yes, even my Glennjamin are lying under a yellow comforter with blue flowers ready to wake up and live the rest of our lives.

And somehow, that makes me much happier than it makes me sad. 

It Was Just How He Looked in the Light

Recent events in my life--and when I say recent, I'm talking since around January, but really some of these events go back to last summer--have forced me to be even more introspective than I usually am, and I think I've finally figured something out, or at least if I didn't figure something out, I'm on my way to figuring it out, and, well, what better place is there to explore something deeply personal than right here in a public forum?

It's about sex (I know, you guys are utterly shocked).

Well, maybe it's not about sex. Maybe it's about love.

Okay, actually it's about both sex and love and what the intersection of the two means to me.  Wait, no, that's wrong--you know what? Since I need practice with this, let's not label it. Let's just see what happens and let it play out.

I'm trying to decide where to start. Despite the fact that I could probably make this a multivolume series, I'm pretty sure that's not what you want. I'm just going to write under the assumption everyone here has been reading my blog for years and knows absolutely everything about me but, fine, in case you don't, here's a super quick cheat sheet because I'm considerate like that.

(Okay, so that cheat sheet actually wasn't super quick. I hope you can read it. I recommend zooming in.)

The first thing I'm going to tell you is that despite my professions in the past, I did not, in fact, love La Dispute Guy, and I swear that's not sour grapes. It turns out now that I've had actual distance from him instead of just pretend distance during which we still messaged and talked about super hot things like desecration and pain, I'm realizing what I really was in love with was our sex. La Dispute Guy? Not so much.

The second thing I'm going to tell you is that absolutely, positively, unequivocally, the best sex I've had in my life was with three of the four last people I slept with which is bringing us back to when La Dispute Guy and I met in July (and not that it matters or to be overly exact, especially since I don't owe an explanation about the people I've slept with to anyone, but one of those four people is someone I've been sleeping with for a few years, so really it's like I've slept with three people in the last 10 months because old people don't count*). I know that's kind of--maybe?--too much information, but it's what brought me to the realization(s) I'm writing about now.

And what is that realization? Well, we have to go back way further than July. Not long after C and I started having sex, one of the trillion times that we stopped seeing each other, I mentioned something about it to a coworker, something about how good our sex was and how I didn't know how he could just so easily stop having sex with someone he liked having it with so much. She basically told me that was ridiculous, that people can have good sex with anyone, an assertion at which I balked. I also, in my now-defunct secret blog that I've been kicking around the idea of starting again now that I have secret things I want to write, wrote about how I didn't understand how someone could just throw the kind of sex we had away. In my experience up until that point, which you know if you've studied my cheat sheet, good sex was pretty rare. Louie and I had it, so I knew it existed, but up until C, I never really had it again.

I'm not blaming the people I slept with. I want to make that clear. I dated Louie for two years in high school, from fifteen to seventeen, and started dating Glenn when I was nineteen. The majority of other people I had sex with up to the point of C when I was 34 were people I'd slept with mostly once, maybe twice, and first and second time sex usually isn't the best. Also, I, myself wasn't entirely comfortable, something that, especially for a girl, is pretty important. And regarding Glenn, well, a couple things: one, it's not like we never had good sex (he did get a combination of two and three hearts!). It's just that having good sex--and sex at all--was pretty infrequent. Also, that thing about not being comfortable with the people pre-Glenn? That includes Glenn, actually. Some people just don't mesh. I'm not blaming him (not for everything anyway). It's just the way it was.

So going back to the original point--I think? To be honest, I've been writing this post for a while, and I don't even remember the original point--until a few years after I was divorced, I labored under the belief that good sex was an anomaly, and it was because of that "anomalous" good sex that I held onto C for so long. After I got divorced, I had lovers here and there, but none of them was anything special--yet C still was. He could make me feel things that besides Louie in high school, nobody else could until La Dispute Guy came along, and it made me look at him--at both hims, actually--with dopamine eyes. Now, I won't purport that I was never in love with C and it was all because of sex like with La Dispute Guy because that's obviously ludicrous, but I will say sex was a big part in my not wanting to let my feelings go even though they had so obviously surpassed their expiration date, and the fact that it had devolved to nothing but sex is a big part of why once I did start having the kind of sex I recently started having, I was finally able to let go of whatever lingered. I hate to say it like this, but he was replaced. And, well, I guess La Dispute Guy was, too, because omg, don't even get me started with the sex I've had post-La Dispute Guy (even though I really want to start. Or better yet, can you say sing from the rooftops? Because that's what I really want to do), sex that's totally made me all like, La Dispute Guy who? but that totally didn't make me all like, omg, I'm so in love because lessons!

Lessons, people, lessons! Realizations! Epiphanies!

I'm learning!

And what have I learned? Well, I hate to be heavy handed here, but I learned that good sex, amazing sex, even fuck-me-every-second-for-the-rest-of-my-life sex comes along more than I thought, and I also learned that I don't have to get all starry eyed when it does. I've always been aware that sex doesn't equal love, and for the most part that's never been a problem for me, but fuck-me-every-second-for-the-rest-of-my-life sex? That's harder for me to differentiate if for no other reason than that I want that person to be around all the time for reasons that should be obvious, but in case it's not obvious, it's because when you want someone to fuck you every second, that person being around is kind of a necessity.

I also learned I need to listen to myself more and let go of things when it's time even though in actuality I totally already knew that, but you know, knowing and doing are way different things and plus the listen to myself more part of it is really is new. Real Friends has this lyric, you're still in my mind but not in my chest, and I have to tell you, if ever something encapsulates my feelings for C over the past year and a half or so, it's that line. Despite not feeling the feelings, longing the longings, experiencing the pangs, despite knowing what I felt was over, I convinced myself he was still relevant, but that was only in my head, a vestige of a love I didn't want to leave. To a much lesser extent, that happened with La Dispute Guy, too. Even after I knew I didn't feel what I (misguidedly thought I) felt anymore, I convinced myself I felt it.

I just had a conversation with this girl I work with at the axe bar I work at on Saturday nights--didn't know I work at an axe bar on Saturday nights? Now you do! Come have a beer with the cutest blogger you know--and it fit so perfectly into this post and my life, it was kind of eerie. Pain is inevitable, she said, but suffering isn't.

Classroom-learning-into-real-life-application-mode engage:

I guess we'll see.

*Official Kismetism

Match & Tinder

A few weeks ago I matched with this guy on bumble date who was not at all my type. Not only was he not particularly cute, but also he looked much more straightlaced and clean cut (read: bland) than the guys I'm attracted to and was way more professional that what I like. You know the best way to put it? He was a normie, and normies are totally not my thing. I know, you're wondering, probably, why I matched with this not-particularly-cute, professional-looking, normie guy at all. Well, behold, readers, the following screenshot, and you'll see:

Three lines down, did you see?

The lure of anything Chicago related is just impossible for me to resist. 

Since there's no point in my making up a fake name for this guy as is my usual thing seeing as it's right there for you to see, we'll just call him by his real name. Darren and I talked minimally for a couple weeks, probably ten messages between the two of us in all, maybe fifteen, mainly about Chicago and what would possess him to leave the greatest city on Earth to come to this nightmare of a place. A week or so into the conversation, he asked me if I wanted to grab lunch one day, and a few days after that, he asked if I wanted a relationship or just a friend to which I said yes and yes, that if a relationship happens, that's fine, but I could always use more friends (I'd provide a screenshot but we're not matched anymore; luckily I had the foresight to screenshot his little bio last week). Days went by after my response, and then one day I got a message from him that, again I wish I could provide word for word, but went something like this:

I'm trying to make the biggest network of young working professionals and would personally like to invite you to join. Click here. And then a link was provided, which out of annoyance I didn't open for a few days, but when I did, I found led to this:

After looking around a little, I clicked on his profile picture, which led to what right this second I'm finding is a now-deleted photo of, I believe it said his queen but maybe it was his reason for being, and what I'll call his longtime, live-in girlfriend. For your viewing pleasure, this is a still-remaining photo of the million-dollar couple here:

(See what I mean about the bland?)

Now, before I go any further, I want to make it clear that I don't think Darren was trying to cheat (but of course, I have terrible judgment and am often so far off, it's-almost-comical wrong). He never said anything remotely suggestive, and other than asking me to a lunch which we never had, he never expressed any desire to meet. What I think instead is that Darren is turning something into a platform that's not meant to be a platform at all. I think he's an opportunist who, while not quite preying on women, is absolutely playing with women, manipulating a system and hope and trust and, oftentimes, naïvete´, and to be honest, I think that's much worse than your garden-variety cheat or at least, for whatever reason we're not going to unpack in this specific post, it is to me. 

I don't want to use the term conmanning because that's way too strong, but there should definitely be a term for what Darren is doing; in fact, I suspect that in the day and age of ghosting, breadcrumbing, zombieing, submarining, and benching, there probably is a term because he can't be the only one, he's just the only one I've seen, and if there isn't yet a term, I'm sure there's soon going to be. For now, though, since either there's no official term or I don't know what it is, we'll just go with asshole.

I'm pretty sure that one works. 

It's All Love Now

Today is my birthday, and before I say anything about that, if you've been sitting on the edge of your seat since my last post wondering whether I'm somebody's girlfriend or not, let me just put your mind at ease and tell you that I'm not. I am now, and for the foreseeable, and to be honest, probably also the unforeseeable, future--like I'm talking the forever future--as single as they come.

I'd like to follow that statement up with something like, and that's just fine, and while sometimes it totally is, it's also sometimes totally not. But I've been over this subject a million and two times and feel like it's pretty much done. Like, do people who read my blog even care about that? Is my dating life even something people are interested in? (That's a rhetorical question, but if you are, you should totally follow me on Snapchat where almost all I do is talk about boys. Warning, though: More often than not, I'm in my undies, so if you're offended by near nudity or extremely long stories that may veer toward the taboo, my Snapchat is not for you.)

What I do want to talk about, which coincidentally I'm texting about right now with a boy I just went on a date with on Tuesday night, is my birthday and how I thought it was going to be a sad disaster of a day but was totally wrong. As you know, Griffin is in Orlando; as you don't know, Keifer is out of town with his girlfriend; and my sister is out of town, too, and those three are pretty much my go-to's. Because my go-to's are gone, in the days leading up to my birthday, I was completely distraught, and not just in my typical I'm-getting-older type of way but in the way of I have nobody and have to spend my birthday all alone.

Only I didn't and I do.

I mean, I'm alone right now, like in a physical way, but despite my negative-Nelly expectations and pessimistic take on the fiasco that is my life, I have to admit I'm not really alone at all.

I went into today preparing for the worst, and seriously--it was the opposite of that. As much as I feel like I have nobody, I have people who love me--good, amazing, caring people--and who I love back, people who did everything they could to make me feel happy--I'm talking cooking! And cake! Cake!--because they knew how down I felt about being home alone, and on top of that, once I was home, I wasn't even alone. I mean, again, physically, sure, but people haven't left me alone all afternoon and night, and I actually feel how much they care, and I'm realizing that contrary to the staunch belief I've held onto for so long, I'm not alone just because nobody is here.

Is it the not kind of alone I was used to after being married for over fifteen years? Of course not, but that had a different kind of aloneness in itself, a kind of aloneness that if you were to ask me if it was better or worse, my answer would depend on the day. Is it the not kind of alone I ever imagined I'd have the day I turned 44? No husband or significant other and no kids, just an empty house? Of course not to that, too, but what I'm learning in my ever-increasing age is that sometimes we have to learn to let go of what we thought would be in order to be happy with what actually is,

which is

me.

After the Party

I know. I know! I told you I'd tell you about the night I kind of got dumped and never did. The truth is, there's not very much to tell. The day before Thanksgiving I sent La Dispute Guy a sort of dramatic, extremely long message pretty much telling him everything that was wrong with us--or more specifically, him--and at the end of his very patient, very thorough response, he said he thought it would be best if we made a conscious decision to stop doing whatever it is we were doing. There's been debate among people who have read the messages whether he ended things or I did since I sent the initial message, but it doesn't matter because either way the result is the same: he's my noyfriend no more.

To say I didn't take it well would be a gross understatement. I moped; I wallowed; I went on and on about it to everyone I know; I, um, for reasons that make no sense at all, even to me, stalked all of his ex-wife's social media which did nothing but make me feel worse than ever because, omg, the woman is perfect. She's smart and gorgeous, a good person and a good mom; she's a writer (she even published a fucking book); she runs. I'll tell you what she is, people who read my blog: she's a better version of me. No wonder LDG didn't love me. If I were him, I'd probably never love anybody else ever again. I know my limitations, and let me tell you, I am no competition for that. It was silly of me to even try.

But, Silly, well, that's my middle name. So is Tenacious... and Obtuse...and Doesn't Know When to Stop (my full name is extremely long).

I'm finally coming to my senses, though, finally making my way to the other side, and shock of all shocks, lying on the other side, waiting for me to finish my journey is something I totally didn't foresee:

somebody wants me to be his girlfriend.

You're shocked, right? Like completely blown the fuck away, all, How did that even happen? and Where did this guy even come from? I completely understand because I, too, was pretty fucking shocked, and while I don't know if I feel comfortable telling you who he is just yet--okay, I do know, and I don't--it's somebody you've heard of, one of the guys I dated post divorce, one of the few who I didn't lose interest in at all. We stayed friends, and well, I guess he finally came to his senses and realized how awesome I am--as most people eventually do--because last week he extended a "formal proposal" for me to be his girlfriend.

And, yeah. I'm pretty scared.

Like I told him, I haven't been anybody's significant other in over four years. For more than four years, I've done whatever I want with whomever I want without giving my actions a second thought, and I'm not just talking stuff that has to do with sex. I haven't had to check in with anyone when I'm out, tell someone where I'm going, make up excuses for staying out late; I could plan road trips across the country and not have to run it by anyone, fly out on a whim. I could live absolutely, completely, utterly for me.

Being someone's girlfriend? I don't know if I remember how--for example, this post? Probably a faux pas--but suddenly it seems plausible that I'm--we're all--going to find out.