We are uninspired and irrelevant to the world. We will never be the subjects of beautiful photographs hanging framed on New England walls. We seek anonymity not because we shun attention, but because it’s so much easier to fail when no one notices. We are shit bags and the only way we’ll admit it is 10 drinks deep after our paychecks deposit and before the rent checks clear. We are the lost generation. And we will never grow up.
I want to live by the docks of Belfast. Marry a fisherman who loves beef wellington but doesn’t dare tell his friends his wife is a vegetarian.
We’ll have black hair, violet-eyed twin Irish babies. We’ll wait for him at the dock to come in. Take a walk along the coast with the stroller and discuss who will watch our babes while we bar hop on Saturday.
He’ll tell me how much he loves me and I’ll tell him how I can’t imagine life without him. I’ll cook him dinner every night and read Faulkner until we both fall asleep. He promises he’ll never leave me. I remind him he can’t.
We all love each other and never let the bad parts in. This is my ultimate fantasy.
Dearest MY EX BOYFRIEND,
You were the only man I loved for more than 3 years. That’s an accomplishment, by leaps and bounds. In my life today, it would be hard to hold my attention for a mere week. But that’s not saying much. And it’s not like you really held my attention. You ultimately were a reason to stop looking and stay in the safety zone of human relationships. It was easy to just stay with you and not examine the idea that you weren’t meant for me in any way.
But here I am. Two months since you’ve left me for Colorado. Since I decided that i’d rather rot alone than let you bring me down to your depressingly innate level. You were the burden, not me. But I can’t admit that it doesn’t hurt to think about you. Especially thinking about you not here, next to me. And it fucking kills me to think of you with someone else.
For four years, you were my world. You were everything I knew. I didn’t make an important decision without consulting you first. Fuck, let’s be honest. I didn’t make any decision without your input. What color sheets for our bed? What color hair dye should I buy? What about the shampoo…should I go generic or stay with Tresemme?
We were a team. A couple that completely loved each other and depended on our opionions of each decision making. But that was our downfall. Because unlike healthy couples, you never made the healthy decision. Should I drink tonight? Yes, let me go to the store. Should I smoke? Of course, i’ll go buy cigarettes.
You should have stopped me. You should have stopped me many times over. You, as the man that loved me and wanted me to thrive, should have stopped me from doing a lot of things to myself. But you were too worried about losing me, that you’d let me kill myself before you’d ever speak up.
You let me set the couch on fire when my aunt died. It almost burnt our entire building down.
You let me tear up all of the newspapers in tiny strips while crying when I couldn’t see her before she died. I was numb for days.
I cried uncontrollably when she finally called me on her death bed. The ONE person I ever cared about died and I couldn’t be with her when she was in pain. Those were dark times for me. You let me fully experience that darkness in the form of endless bottles of wine.
That’s why I had to walk away. You’d never better my life. You’d only bring me down. Down to my level, which let’s be honest is fucked beyond reason. I need someone who isn’ t going to sleep an entire day away because he can. I need someone who isn’t going to buy me wine when I’m stressed and tell me it’s ok to get drunk on Tuesday because Wednesday will suck regardless. You were my ultimate enabler. You encouraged me not to wake up in the mornings. You encouraged me to stop living. And for a while, I thought you had the right idea.
And now that you are gone, I’m forced to face myself. To face the fact that I’m the enabler now. It’s not easier to say no to myself, but it’s a lot more difficult than asking you to run my bitch errands. It’s a step closer to recovery. Recovery. Listen to me now. I act as if I’m in rehab. If only.
You just weren’t right for me. And as much as I wish you were in bed next to me, making jokes while you record my hiccups to our lame puns, I’m glad that you are so far, far away. The idea of seeing you makes me want to go back to old ways. Drink heavily, turn up the music, and make bad decisions.
The point of this was to say that I am glad you are not in my life and I hope you see why. I need you to be ok though. That is my only fear. That you won’t take this breakup as a wakeup call and you’ll get back into your destructive ways. Once a heroin junkie, always a heroin junkie? Prove me wrong babe.
Love Always,
Megan
I can hear it now. It’s late and the wind is picking up. It’s not usually this windy in Spring, but the pollen is itching to spread across the pavement of my Wednesday commute. Only to prove that I am nothing but a vulnerable creature within my setting of nature. We can build as many high rises and curved exit loops as we want, the natural world will only overcompensate for our engineered arrogance.
I’ve been listening to a lot of songs from my past lately. Music from when I was young and free and my only thought was how to break curfew without getting in trouble. When factors like taxes and allergies didn’t even cross my mind. Is this really going to be the fucking theme of my life? Nostalgia? How pathetic. But it makes sense. It’s easier to pretend I peaked at 16 than to realize that I haven’t even begun to live life. It is scary. It’s frightening to think about actual responsibilities. Marriage. Children. And the fact that, despite trying to convince myself otherwise, I want both. I have spent 24 years convincing myself that I was a tumbleweed. But now I wake up hoping that someone will put a ring on it and buy me pickles and peanut butter at midnight. A patriarchal wet dream. Poetic injustice.
Maybe I’ve watched too many movies. Maybe I’m just too lonely. Maybe I’m not being honest. Maybe I am a goddamn sociopath and enjoys the sport of hurting people. Does any of it really matter as long as I say “I do”?
But alas, I’ll take my Zyrtec-D in the morning, wonder why he never proposed in Orlando like he promised, brush my teeth, and sit in my cubicle for 8 hours. And then I’ll spend my afternoons convincing myself that if I move back to Florida at the end of the year I won’t get caught up in drugs and alcohol poisoning,
But at least the allergies in Arlington are consistent and I know tomorrow I’ll have a new sinus infection <3 And I know that Nadine will be a bitch, Amber will rule, Fred will freak out, and Tim will treat me like the daughter he never had. Team Tatitlek, forever and true.
I really have no excuses, I just don’t find the truth very flattering of my character. But that’s my problem and I’m too chicken shit to admit I carry such a flawed characteristic. I could blame my actions on daddy issues or low self-esteem caused by schoolyard bullies…but I’ve never had any because I’m well liked by everyone. I have been granted the gift of manipulation. Shape-shifter.
I can be what you want and need. This statement applies to everyone.
I listen intently to every word that drips from your self-obsessed lips. I live in between your weaknesses and strengths, waiting for the signal. Is your guard up or are you vulnerable? Do I compliment or simply give the gesture that “I understand” and “i’ll always be here to talk”? Everyone thinks they’re coy and clever. They’ll never get manipulated by a girl…especially this pretty one. I mean, she’s so damaged. She lacks the confidence to even convince herself that she’s good enough.
And there it is. Just like that. You’re already emotionally involved and you don’t realize it. All I had to do was make a passing comment about wanting to lose weight, my dad not being nice, my parent’s divorce, fuck! I could make up anything. And I usually do. But now you think you have the upper hand and feel bad for me.
But that’s all I need…a connection of emotion. It’s easy from this point on. Like a game of chess and I’m always living five moves ahead of your best guess. If I’m really interested in playing, I’ll research. Favorites. Dislikes. Past relationships. Get a bigger picture of the trophy deer I’m hunting.
That’s all any of you are to me. Trophies. Something tangible to prove I’m wanted. Desired. Pined over. And like I said earlier…I could blame it on daddy issues or whatever cliche situation that supposedly defines a female’s flaws. But I have no excuses. I know what I’m doing is wrong. I’m in it for the sport of the game.
I originally meant to put this story in this particular blog…but whatevs. I’ll copy and paste like old school.
When I was probably 8 years old I went to the Strawberry Festival with my family in Plant City, Florida. I played one of those carnival games where you throw the ring around the neck of a bottle to win. Well I won because, naturally, I rule at life. My trophy was a goldfish in a water-filled plastic bag. I carried the new pet around with me for the remaining of the festival until we went home later at night. Once I got home, I put the goldfish in a tank of tap water and he loved it. Problem was, we didn’t have fish food and all of the stores were closed. So he’d just have to wait until tomorrow.
The next morning he was still swimming, maybe a little slower than usual…but I had school so I didn’t really care. I wanted to brag to everyone about my new pet fish. When I arrived home, mind you I’m a latchkey kid, the fish was floating at the top of the tank. Fuck. It was totally dead but I was in denial. I just sat and poked at it for hours. My mom came home with fish food, took one look at the floater, and said “you know it’s dead, right?” I was heartbroken.
So I did what every sane kid would do. Instead of flushing the dead goldfish down the toilet like my mother asked, I put him the front pocket of my jeans. I carried this goldfish in my pocket for days. I would pull it out and show the other neighborhood children my new “pet”. The scales eventually started to come off after the first day. They were like glitter on my hands and pockets. I would carry it to school and pet it during class. I had to eventually throw it away because this decaying fish began to smell. To this day I still wish that fish were in my pocket. And for as much as I loved that dead animal, I never gave it a proper name.
The neighborhood kids never looked at me in the same light after this. I never told my parents. This is a very true story of my childhood. And a metaphor for my life.
When you grow up, your weekends get super fucking lame at times. Or maybe it’s because I’m too lazy to go outside of my apartment. Or that I’m afraid of real rejection …I’d rather read about it.
From pipe dreams to pitfalls, we all know what it’s like to want something better but know it’ll only happen when we truly fail. Until we hit the fucking rockiest of bottoms and look at our lives and realize, this is fucking it. I have to grow up. Staying a child is no longer an option. No longer viable. From this point on, I will be forever different. And it sucks. You go from worrying if you have enough money in your bank account, which still has overdraft protection to your parent’s savings, to buy booze and condoms….to worrying about how much you should contribute to your 401k and still have enough money left over to buy that overpriced, but totally worth it, blender. I mean, juicing really is the way to go if you want radiant skin. And now that you’re older and the dewey glow of just being alive is diminishing by every cigarette break you sneak in between meetings, you only care about that one thing….maintaining what’s left. It’s all about ab crunches, drinking water, and counting calories. You’re 25 and you use your calorie-counting smartphone app more than Angry Birds and Paper Toss combined. Fighting is futile, and yet it adds such beauty of routine and structure to your day that you find it comforting to know that the one thing you can actually control is what you put in your mouth. Yep. You’ve gone from worrying about sucking cock to worrying about sodium content.
So ladies and gentlemen, and really everyone who wishes it was still 1996: Welcome. Today is that fucking day that you fail miserably at life and realize that you have become a real-life, mouth-breathing, scared-of-commitment ADULT.
<3