Oops

Is it TMI to talk about the fact that I orgasmed and then immediately after walked into my kitchen and ate a slice of cold pizza while watching the D train roll by my apartment? If so, oops.

A bad time for a sad song

When you are baking bread and “Storms” by Fleetwood Mac comes on. You are alone in your apartment so it is okay that when Stevie sings “Not a prayer in the world could save us” at the exact moment you realize your yeast is bad and your bread will not be rising, because no one got to see you bury your face into the palms of your flour-dusted hands.

You really gotta stop listening to that song.

This doesn’t count

“Your time will come, Teresa. Your time will come. I promise. Just keep writing, ugh why do you stop writing for months at a time? That story is not going to write itself”, I sing-song to myself as I pour my second glass of red wine and try not to spill it on my iPhone/down my shirt/on this first and only draft/all over my life.

I can say this now with some authority

I can say now with some authority, after spending a good chunk of my 20s learning and re-learning exactly this, that it is significantly heartbreaking to forget, even just for a little while, what it is you want to do, and who it is you want to be while in the dizzying and powerful process of falling for someone else.

Do not ever do that shit.

Earlier tonight I was sitting in a Starbucks doing work when I got a text message that kind of made me feel like what I imagine getting stabbed in the chest must feel like.

About four employees were running around the store, digging into boxes strewn about, setting up the Christmas displays all around me. One guy wore a Santa hat. Another employee said “excuse me” as she hung a window display next to the table I was sitting at. After she’d secured the decoration, it was just me and Rudolph at the table.I double-checked my phone to see if he (a man, not Rudolph) had replied to my last message. He hadn’t so I left before the room started to spin, or I got visibly upset in public for the thousandth time in my life, but not before “Jingle Bell Rock” came on.

It was extremely fucking surreal.

Peggy from Mad Men, or me

“She’d dated mostly smart, sensitive types (who made her smart sensitivity seem redundant), and a couple of slick industry types (whose ambition was like a second dick)….”

Let it burn

If I let you get too close, you’ll set your spell on me/So, darling I just wanna say/just in case I don’t come through/I was onto every play/I just wanted you. It’s so evil, my love/The way you’ve no reverence to my concern/So, I’ll be sure to stay wary of you, love/To save the pain of once my flame and twice my burn.

I was only vaguely familiar with the feelings that resonate with this Fiona Apple song when I first heard it in 1997. I was 13 years old and in the 7th grade. I had already lived through adolescent crushes that were only mildly life-shattering, as opposed to romantic relationships that burn or soothe and leave their mark, shaping the person I would eventually become. Those relationships would happen later.

It’s like when you first discover that fire burns: You are more careful the next time you are around an open flame.

I have masculine energy. I am not, in any way, a damsel in distress. Yet, all of the men I have attracted to me want a woman who needs to be rescued. They want someone submissive. This is a problem. I don’t need to be saved. I have saved my own self, countless times I now do it with my eyes shut.

I am so tired of men telling me to relax (a woman, save for my own mother, has never, ever told me to “calm down”) when I am actually being extremely reasonable and only a little confrontational. I am so tired of men attempting to excuse their shitty behavior with “what do you expect from me? I’m a man.”

I am just so tired of it all. I am tired of men who feel fine looking me in the eyes, telling me they care about me, then the next day act as if I do not exist. I’m tired of being lied to in the evening and completely ignored in the morning. I’m tired of the actors. The ones who put on a great show, a memorable performance but never let me see what goes on behind the curtain. Remember the time I had a great date with a seemingly intelligent, funny man only to later find out he was already in a relationship? I DO.

How do I reconcile that? How do I make that okay in my mind and heart? It’s come down to avoidance. I no longer have the mental or emotional willingness to be vulnerable with a man. I have compartmentalized that suffering in a part of my brain that is marked “Unfortunate Thing I Can Do Nothing About.” I’ve become excellent at pretending people have disappeared off the face of the earth…

I know a defense mechanism when I see one. I realize that this is not a long term solution. It’s a short term answer to a thing that has traveled with me for a long time. I won’t be like this forever. One day I’ll be strong enough to be vulnerable again. Ironic, how that works out.

Last night I met a 41 year old writer who has lived in New York for a short time. She sort of made a beeline for me upon entering the bar, and we talked for a good two hours. About men, and writing, and aging. I’m lonely, she told me. Give yourself more time to find your NYC family, I told her.

“I’m just unafraid to suffer,” I told her. “I’ve lived through so much shit that hasn’t killed me.” But, there is a line. A boundary. There is only so much the heart can take before it needs a break from the things that have the capacity to fuck it up.

If I let you get too close/You’ll set your spell on me.

I never know when or how badly I will get burned next time. I realize that risk is part of the game and is just a part of the way love can be. But, I’m tired. I’m unwilling to go there, and I only want to stay wary.

All that shit

I’m excited to get back.

This sounds odd, but I’m looking forward to sleeping those three hours/night because of homework and knowing that working that hard means that I’m earning my shit. Real excited to wait up for the GrubHub delivery guy to bring me tempura vegetables or a burger and a milkshake at 2am just because I CAN. The subway, oh god, the subway. You maneuver your body in awkward positions around straphangers and baby strollers, and the times you do get a seat, you’re sometimes confronted with a stranger’s ass, crotch, or tits in your face. But, there are times on the subway, usually during mid-day or late at night when the train car is slightly empty and you’ll get a window seat or a corner seat and Billie Holiday will come your iPod and it’ll be just you and your city. You remember where you are in a stupidly romantic way and maybe even WHO you are and why you did this one crazy thing that led to so many other countless beautiful things. I know that I will more than likely get embarrassingly drunk in Chelsea/Harlem/Times Square/West Village/ETC in front of people who will relive the horror with me the next morning via text or the next weekend when we do it all over again. I’m excited for all the stories I’ll get to tell.

I’m so excited to do all that shit I’ll eventually complain about and all the things I’ll take for granted one second, then literally in the next moment remember why it is all so important. Why I did it all in the first place.

Dating vs Netflix

We came to the conclusion that balance is key and that when I get back to New York, I have to go on a date with a nice boy. (I should probably stop calling them boys. That might be part of the problem.)

But seriously, how amazing is that Cold Case Files show? I want Bill Curtis to narrate my life.

Glinda is a cunt

In The Wizard of Oz, Glinda says to Dorothy after the Wicked Witch of the West threatens her about the ruby slippers: “Keep tight inside of them — their magic must be very powerful or she wouldn’t want them so badly.” 

Later after the witch has gone, Glinda tells her, “I’m afraid you’ve made a rather bad enemy of the witch.”

Bitch, the only reason why Dorothy kept those shoes on was because you told her to! You made the witch hate her! I think Glinda is one sneaky little cunt and I’m going to explore this thought further.