FEMALES x NYC

Occasionally you meet someone at just the right time. You both are available and ready to sink your teeth into something truly meaningful. This is not one of those times. This all started as a distraction - let's have some fun until one of us stops having fun. Then it happens, you reach a crossroad and walk across it together. Then you reach another crossroad, again, and again. Suddenly six months have passed and it appears you're in a relationship. 

Since September of last year my life has been fairly shitty. I was laid off, dumped, and my new roommates turned out to be giant C-U-Next-Tuesdays. If it wasn't one thing it was another. Every time I thought I caught a break it would fall through. I was floundering. Was I gonna make it through this? I mean, I wasn't going to kill myself or anything but leaving New York and being shipped back home felt alike. This wasn't gonna be easily but I realized that if I could make it through this ruff patch it would be a real test of my spirit.

Thought Catalog, your go-to-source for over emotional articles that you can't help but identify with 80% of the time but aren't willing to admit, published this gem today. It's essentially someone's intermal discussion with someone special, confessing that they won't tell them how they feel romantically for fear of ruining what may or may not be there. 

One part in particular that stuck out was: 

Look, I will want to say. This could be something. We could be something. We haven’t tried this yet, so why not try?

I will want to ask those and more uncomfortable questions. I will want to ask questions I don’t have a right to ask, questions you don’t want to answer honestly, even to yourself. Questions like: Do you love her? Do you have to love her? On a scale of one to buried in adjacent coffins, how much do you love her?

I will want to know what you’re feeling without actually asking what you’re feeling because I am worried the answer is nothing.

But it could also be something.

But who am I to disturb the water on your thread?

Here's the deal, though. I'm in a very similar boat, but I'm ready to jump ship, take the dive and confess what's up. I've never done this before with someone who's meant so much and where I have so much to lose. This person is my favorite person ever, the person I want to go on grand adventures with or watch Mad Men with. But, I can't really take it anymore. This weird, seeming (un)complicated emotional connection, that leaves me feeling completely vulnerable at the mercy of his hands (or phone call, text message, IM, Facebook chat), has become too much. I literally cannot bear the anxiety that one day he'll tire of me. Get bored. Find someone new. Prettier, probably.

I wish I could say that I'd rather risk the friendship than endure the anxiety, but the truth is, I wouldn't. Just a sliver of his presence no matter how diluted would suffice; it would be worth it, I trick myself into thinking.   

The knots in my stomach have continue to wind, the lump in my throat grows larger, and salty tear are an almost daily occurrence.

1. Hang with rad friends

2. Have a Sunday fun-day

3. Walk across one of the Brooklyn Bridges

4. Smoke pot on 4/20

5. Ride on the handle bars of someone's bike while shooting a vine video and instagram-ing 

6. Have a cocktail, or two

7. Eat amazing food

8. Make new, awesome friends

9. Have uncomfortable conversations about facing demons

10. Pack because you're subletting your room to travel for three months 

11. Get a tattoo

12. Dance

13. Make the right choice

14. Do yoga and workout on a NYC rooftop 

15. Book a gorilla trekking trip

16. Eat brunch with friends

17. Purge old clothes

18. Play Cards Against Humanity 

19. Drink bourbon

20. Drink tequila

21. Listen to Chinese proverbs

22. Read a book 

23. Watch "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" on Netflix 

24. Scream menacingly at your ex-boyfriend's apartment while doing a monkey dance 

25. Play jenga

26. Touch tongues with a stranger

27. Laugh so hard from making obscene hand gestures 

28. Skype the parents

29. Sleep

30.  Spend the day in Williamsburg

Sometimes I do that angsty 15-year-old girl thing where you look up the lyrics of your current favorite song and swear to yourself that it was written to reflect current situation. 

Thankfully for me, there's songmeanings.net to quench my unrelenting desire to find the answer/meaning/outlet to these feelings that are stuck inside my chest, not sure where to go or what to do with them. 

The minute I heard this version of Rihanna's "Stay" I fell in love with it (yes, despite the autotune). I quickly pointed my browser to songmeanings.net (I just love typing that: .net) where I found 35 comments, giving their point of view on the song. Because this is a free country, I picked the interperation I liked the most, and I'm going to run with it, particularly because IT IS BASICALLY MY LIFE. 

Commenter jteeter says in regards to the lyrics: 

I think it's about two people struggling with intimacy and the sense of vulnerability that comes from realizing you need the other person as well as how fear can cause you to sabotage something you want so badly. That fear is causing her to distance herself out of an unneeded sense of protecting herself and he's calling her on it, reminding her that she needs to be open to receiving love and living life:  "It's not much of a life you're living It's not just something you take, it's given" And she's admitting that even though she's still struggling with the fear: "Not really sure how to feel about it Something in the way you move Makes me feel like I can't live without you It takes me all the way I want you to stay" Her need for him has outweighed that fear of vulnerability: "Oh the reason I hold on Oh 'cause I need this hole gone"

I'm not sure that I'm scared of losing someone, per say, but the thought of them not being a part of my life is devastating enough to make me sabotage, ruin, dismiss any and all of it before anything even starts. 

Ex-boyfriends tout a comfort that can’t be reckoned with.  Or maybe it’s only that you think it can’t be reckoned with and in reality ALWAYS needs to be challenged.  I recently fell into what I wouldn’t call a one-way trip to the abyss, but maybe a stumble (or fall) over that beautiful tree root growing out of the sidewalk.  You know, you’re walking along, no big deal, confident, cool, collected, HOT, and, HOLY HELL, a fucking tree root that you didn’t see sends you to the cement.  One always  prays to HOPEFULLY escape these happenings, but instead, it's like you watch your life slow-mo materialize in front of a big, fat, reality checking, gawking, audience. 

Yay.

Let’s back up before we replay the night. 

The, oh-so-epic night began with dinner, and tickets to Radiohead.  I KNOW!  RADIOHEAD.  Like, my all time, can’t live without band, and would do anything like hang out with an ex-boyfriend, band, even go out of town to an old town, band.  Yep.  I went there.  I mean I didn’t exactly plan the trip around it, but let me tell you, I fit it in to my plans.  DUH.

One week before, I received a confused, weird, text message saying, “there’s only one caveat.”  My heart dropped, my head spun, and I could only imagine that he was taking his other ex-girlfriend or some fresh, blonde, tarte (I’m also blonde, but whatever) in my stead.  I iPhone-tapped, “Eh, I hate caveats.”  He said, “Our texts crossed and it’s actually a Deftones’ concert.” 

(Scooby Doo sound) “OH!  Ok.  You had me scared.  I mean don’t get me wrong I love the Deftones, but, yeah.”

Deftones it is.  But, really?  REALLY.  I only blabbed about how Radiohead was my all time favorite band, but I ignored the obvious scheme that had played out without me knowing.  

We went, laughed, had a great time watching the idiots mosh around, and he drove me home. 

So what did I get?  What can only be described as an awkward goodbye hug, and him feeling so comfortable that he kissed/licked/violated the inside of my nostril with his tongue (duplicate previous Scooby-Doo sound here). 

Yep, that’s right.  THE INSIDE OF MY NOSTRIL, PEOPLE.  I was so stunned by this unexpected, indescribable action, that I sat up, gathered my stuff, and word-vomited, “Are you so bored and comfortable that you needed to explore the one orifice you hadn’t licked before?”  TMI, I know, but you’re all adults (at least you should be).  He was obviously horrified and squawked, "I don't know?? I panicked!" How did I get here, again, I groaned in my brain?

We laughed, weirdly.  I left.  And, sigh, immediately started day-dreaming about the man of my dreams that I met 3 days before, with the meh girlfriend.  (See prior blog posts).

Two points:

Never settle; and

Oh Alanis, your lyrics, “It’s like meeting the man of my dreams, and then meeting his beeeeaauuutiful wife” will forever resonate; words that bounce around while ricocheting off my brain and life, haunting me forever.

 So, we’ve all faced it-or at least I have-just this once. But, how about, meeting the man of your dreams and then meeting his not-so-perfect-5-out-of-10 girlfriend and their not-even-mediocre relationship.  What do you do?  Do you sabotage (man, I wish creepy laughs translated through the internet)?  Stalk?  Wait patiently by your Facebook to see if he breaks the ice and acknowledges the epically stellar connection you both shared that weekend in the sticks?  Give up?  Call him incessantly (wait, who calls anyone anymore?), or text him like a fiend until he realizes your can’t-be-lived-without-qualities?

 Ugh.  Or.  OR.  Or?  Do you go out on a limb, tell him how you feel, pray that he doesn’t mention it to his sub-par less-than-half other half, and hope for the best?  Everyone (and by everyone I mean my friends that give sagely advice) says, “let it be, and if it’s meant to be, it will be”.  What is all this “be” crap?  It’s also been said that if you don’t “throw enough horse hockey (shit) on the wall, nothing will stick.”   (Ok, so that one might have been my mom, but true nonetheless.  I am still trying to figure out why you'd want to throw shit on a wall.  Lack of paint?)

Don’t we live in a world of “do” now? “Make your life” and “don’t wait for things to happen” and “destiny only gets you so far” is now part of the USA everyday lingo.  But, BUT, often the best thing to do, is to do nothing and let it work itself out on its own.  “Don’t seem to eager!” says the best friend.  “He’ll never like you then.” 

Well shit. What now?  

What do you do when you are a stylish, single, NY woman and your shacked up bestie back home wants you to wear this dress in there wedding in turquoise. Of course you send them a check and willingly wear it with a smile on your face, BUT how do you proceed if they want your feedback? What I'd like to say is, "I wouldn't touch that dress with a ten foot pole."

I suppose I don't understand the concept of a bridesmaid dress. Aren't you friends with all these different people because they are unique? I would want my favorite ladies to showcase their personal style curated through the filter of my wedding concept. I guess everyone's wedding is an expression of them but I just wish their vision wasn't from a cookie cutter.

My response to my friend's photo of her and her husband beautifying their new yard: