I’m watching Bridezillas on the WE network and wondering how the hell these women get a man to marry them. I mean really. They are screaming at the top of their lungs and making their husbands suffer incessantly. For that matter, how can their friends stand to be around them? I can’t imagine having the gal to throw the tirades I’ve seen these women throw over wedding cakes, fat bridesmaids, and any number of trivial facts.
Where’s the love? One woman told her husband that he would have to fall back in love with her after the wedding was over. Good luck getting him to the altar.
I don’t mean to imply that I want to be married today or even next year. That’s a bit like putting the cart before the horse considering I haven’t found a groom yet. However, this program does make me think, Where in God’s green earth are these people finding each other?
I understand how bitchy women end up with men for a night or a few weeks, but how can people propose to them? Even if she’s the most beautiful woman you’ve ever seen, it’s the rest of your life. Find someone just a bit more mellow. The sex could be magnificent but if you can’t hold a conversation, then you’re not going to make it very long. Call a spade a spade and hold out for what you want instead of caving to what that harpy is nagging you for. Grow a pair guys! Come on!
Coming off of the train wreck I call the end of my last relationship, I’m having a hard time getting out there again. I don’t like going out to bars and clubs. I stand by my belief that you’re not going to be in the right condition to meet anyone of substance in that situation. Plus I get nervous and sweaty and start using comedy as a defense mechanism. People have been known to call me a “female Jack Black.”
So where do you go when you’re a young actress living in NYC? Some people meet at work, but most of the guys I work with are gay, so where does that leave me? If they are straight they’re taken. Plus, I wouldn’t want to have anything happen to the chemistry of a professional ensemble due to sexual exploits and their occasional post coital awkwardness.
Once upon a time, I had a close friend tell me that men probably didn’t find me attractive because I’m assertive and funny.
“Men want someone they can take care of,” he said.
I’ve spent so much of my life haunted by that sentence. At first I was saddened and hurt by it. I obsessed over how unfeminine he must have thought I was. Now that I’ve matured I’m angered by this sentence. What’s wrong with a self assured woman? Just because you’re confident doesn’t mean you’re not a woman. This is 2009.
There has to be somewhere for the modern woman looking for a meaningful relationship to go. I’m not starting a manhunt or anything, but clearly I’m not doing any of the right things. I’ve heard that you don’t look for love and that it finds you, but sitting in my apartment certainly doesn’t do any good.
A friend of mine wants to go speed dating, but I’m not quite sure it’s for me. I don’t like the idea of paying a company to set me up on dates. I just wish love was natural instead of the “industry” it has become.
I wish I knew when I started to need someone in my life, romantically speaking. I can’t remember when the seed was planted, but I do know the period over which it bloomed, seeping into the hidden places in my heart and winding a web of silver spider silk around my mind, binding it up forever.
I didn’t see it coming, this immense, mind-boggling loss. I never expected to still be feeling pain when an unexpected song comes on the radio or as I lie in bed during the calm before sleep comes to call. Sometimes I really think I must be a sucker for pain. I almost enjoy the chills down my spine when I utter his name in secret.
I never thought of myself as a dependent person. I’ve always been someone who was unafraid to forge into the unknown, accepting all challenges with no regrets. I left home for boarding school when I was fourteen and now I’m doing my best to make my way in New York City. People would tell you I’m a rather self sufficient gal.
These days, I’m not so sure they would be right.
“I don’t know why you’re even giving him a second more of your time. Don’t waste anything else on him,” my Mom said to me over the phone.
A lump rose in my throat.
“I. Yeah, its not that easy. I can’t just erase someone from my life.”
There’s something about the process of leaving your first love that changes you forever. When you are left reeling from your last words as a couple, you don’t have the tools to mend yourself. The blunt, round pegs of friendly advice don’t fit in your newly formed square abyss. You are ill equipped to handle the personal tragedy.
After I broke up with my first love, I almost wanted to wallow in the loss. My relationship ended due to stress from being “long distance” and it killed me that I wouldn’t be able to get closure or make any new memories of us together. I wasn’t going to run into him at the grocery store and remember warm feelings. There was a good chance I might never see him again in person. The only way I could continue to have a relationship with him was to have a relationship with my loss. I became addicted to the pain. Every time I felt myself going numb, I would summon up some vision or sense of his presence lying beside me, arm draped over my waist. I would mash my eyes closed until I could remember every detail.
I was asking for the pain, worshiping it as the only resource I could salvage from the ship I lost at sea. I was holding onto every memory and every word, wrapping myself up in them to keep myself warm because I feared I would never find anything that compared to the depth of my over-dramatic, self-inflicted woe.
The first time I realized I had an paralyzing addiction to this relationship was when my ex and I decided we had to stop saying “I love you” and “I miss you.” I remember the conversation coming to a natural end, followed by a painful burdened silence.
“Yup.” He said.
“Yeah. Well. Uh. Ok.” I said.
“So… I’ll talk to you later then.” Click. The call ended.
I cried and cried, squirming in my bed. I cried till my eye lids hurt. I cried till my pillow looked like a Rorschach test.
Then there’s the question of whether or not you still talk after that point. Is there any reason to risk the pain crushing you repeatedly? Maybe it’s the masochist in me, but when I saw his number flashing on my phone and playing that familiar siren’s song, I had an Pavlovian response.
“Heya.” I would take a deep breath and try to sound busy and important on my end of the line. “What’s up?”
“Nothin’. Nothin’.”
That always drove me crazy. Why do we call each other to say essentially “nothing” is going on unless it’s to fill a need, that emptiness. I wanted him to say he needed me, admit his pain and his struggle. I wanted to know for sure that he was no better off than I was.
We spent the rest of those stilted phone calls working arduously to make conversation, lifting the brick of each topic until we had an unsteady step pyramid. Every time we spoke, I wished we hadn’t, but I couldn’t pull myself away. Every time I thought I could move on, he would call and I would answer. I hated myself immediately afterward. Worse, in low moments I would pick up the phone and call him, hating myself afterwords for voluntarily opening those old comfortable wounds.
I’ve talked to a lot of friends about losing their first serious relationship. There is a sort of camaraderie that comes with the territory. When you’re going through this endless pool of loss, it’s very easy to think of yourself as the only person in the world who could feel or understand such intense pain, but really, when you start talking to other people, you find out you’re just like everyone else.
This phenomena makes me feel two ways. One: It’s comforting to know other people feel the same way you do. Two: It’s disheartening to reduce the lingering magic and longing of your break-up to a right of passage when it’s all you think you have left. It’s never fun to not feel special.
I want to believe that what I had was extraordinary, that this sumptuous affliction actually means something, but I have to wonder if it really does. What if it’s just a bridge everyone crosses at some point?
Everyone says, “You’ll heal eventually.”
I don’t think that’s true. I think everyone just somehow learns to operate under new given circumstances, like an amputee victim learning to walk without a limb. I don’t think the loss of virginity is when you lose your innocence. The loss of innocence occurs when you realize you have to deal with life under unexpected and seemingly unendurable terms.
I’m tired of wading through my antiquated romance. I don’t know how, but like most things, the first step is to accept this new recess in your life, this tiny, bottomless well lodged between your ribs. It’s a fact. It’s not going any place, but that shouldn’t stop you from going anywhere you please. Perhaps you won’t get over it, but you can get on with it, wresting and contending with your life as you take baby steps out your front door and into the real world, learning to live with your phantom limb.
[The following video is from So You Think You Can Dance. It is an especially moving performance by Kupono and Kayla, choreographed by Mia Michaels. This piece is what pushed me to write this article.]
I’m watching Bridezillas on the WE network and wondering how the hell these women get a man to marry them. I mean really. They are screaming at the top of their lungs and making their husbands suffer incessantly. For that matter, how can their friends stand to be around them? I can’t imagine having the gal to throw the tirades I’ve seen these women throw over wedding cakes, fat bridesmaids, and any number of trivial facts.
