grace in small things: twenty three

5. girlfriends.
4. going out with girlfriends.
3. baking for girlfriends.
2. dinner with girlfriends
1. Really appreciating the fact that they love you, and they probably won’t ever leave you.

your highness, bitches.

I hate your boyfriend. And yours.

If your friends hate him, and your mother thinks you could do better, he has got to go.

Be a woman and dump the loser.

***disclaimer: understandably easier said than done.

Tailspin

So my girlfriends from college and I post regularly to a website in order to stay in touch, and most of the time I post something I have written here or retell a new story.

Today, said this:

AND I have a boyfriend, I think. Which means I am feeling
CLAUSTROPHOBIC as we speak and contemplate breaking up with him
everyday. Do you have to break up with a guy that you weren’t sure you
were dating? And then my sister friended him on fb and ohmygod CAN YOU
FEEL THE WORLD CLOSING IN ON ME? It is getting dark. Quick. Where is
my secret escape hatch?
How did this happen? How do I stop it? and when did I become such a
freak?

Can I just say that I threw them all into a tailspin even though I was kind of kidding. I am not being smothered, but rather being confronted with the idea of having to let someone care about me again, and over here: THIS IS ME SHAKING IN MY SHOES.

Silently, of course. We hang out all normal and I’m not so scared when Refuses is around. But, holy hell, do I over analyze everything.

It is nice to know I am so cared for by them though. They don’t want to see me hurt, they want to see me flee at the first sign of trouble, but I can’t do that. I am here to test my limits. My limits mean that I need to try. I need to throw myself in it. I need to not be scared or I will be just as scared for every man that comes along.

I am ready to do this. I wish they had just heard my laughing, joking voice through the Interwebs. I was being dramatic.

Oh, and I really liked being single. I was fun and free and loved every little morsel of my own little life.
I am just scared that part of that love will get transferred into loving him and that is not okay with me. I worked hard for that solid, dependable part of me.

Let’s not eff it up!

grace in small things: three

5. Gilmore Girls in syndication. Pretty much my heroin.
4. Urban Outfitters.com for still stocking the scarf I was given as an xmas gift by my brother- and then promptly lost the first time I wore it.
3. Friends of all sorts, for letting me have too many plans this weekend, and for continually providing reasons for me to ignore the growing piles of clothes on my bedroom floor.
2. Optimism, for letting me think, even for a second, that I could teach myself dreamweaver.
1. Eating tortilla chips for breakfast.

Hope & a Handgun

I am hoping for your sake that you are happy. I am not sure I would be in your situation, but then again, I am not you. I know you didn’t get to choose, and you made a commitment, but please know that sometimes you get to consider what you need to be happy. Would you be there now if you had known then?

If you took making him happy, because it makes you happy out of the equation, is there anything that he does that makes you happy? And if you could choose to live without all of those qualities, would you choose the ones that he displays the most?

Is he everything that you wanted him to be? As you move to stand on your own, and he gets bigger and stronger and more hateful by the day, will your stance make him move? Will he wince in pain, or cause you hurt? Are you strong enough to let him go?

Can you tell me if you need me? Can I let you go if you don’t? I will be here as you blossom, but remain tethered to him. Does it feel like life, or does it feel like letdown? Are you in there, alive and well? Or are you pushing things aside, day by day, hoping they will go away?

Please, close your eyes, and think of the life you would have. You would be you, living your own stories instead of his. Running, your way. Loving, your way. Caring for others, aloud and in the open. Will you cry with me when it doesn’t work out?

Can you leave the pain and the hate? Does it look like that to you?

Or does it just look like marriage?

A fire inside

My roomie opened up to me tonight. After 8 months of living together, she finally told me why her parents didn’t like her bf, and she finally hinted at the fact that she may in fact be over him.

She came alive a few weekends ago after we went out one night. He was out of town. The contrast was like night and day.

She is not oppressed or controlled, but simply bored with the relationship, bored with him.

In the past two weeks alone, she has been more alive and more outgoing than I have ever seen her.

I am really proud of her- Proud to see her step up to her own expectations.

I know she is fighting an inner battle that she struggles with daily, but I know that she sees in herself what her family sees. She sees who she can be without compromise.

She will find the courage and strength to power through, and I look forward to watching the light that comes from within guide her on her way.

Juxtaposed

Two friend outings this weekend could not have been more different.

The first featured my two best friends, one’s (practically married) bf, and Amy- whom I adore.

We went out to dinner for a friend’s birthday party and it could not have been more blah. We were at a hip pizza and beer joint, we looked great, and we were blah. I can’t bring enough fabulous for everyone (kidding).

Dinner started at 8, and I was home watching Private Practice on my computer by 10:30- and I live a half-hour away!

Where did all our mojo go?  The level of fun could easily have been upped, but the gatherings with that group are so forced. It is almost to say “I guess we are best friends, we should probably go to dinner,” except that no one is really there to be with the other people. And dinner-Well, we do dinner because we wouldn’t know what else to do.

With them, I feel like I am holding onto the past. It feels like none of us are really there, but rather the shells of our former self, yet we rely on those shells to connect us. And we go, because some of us need the friends more than others.

What group of 5 23-year-olds go out on a Friday and are back home before the news? Not I, said the fly.

Contrast that to the birthday party I went to on Saturday night: 30 year olds, some babies, mostly married, and I definitely had a blast. I didn’t even know most of the people there, and I hardly drank. We rocked out to Rock Band (I can’t drum worth shit!), watched some Ultimate Fighting (major blood spewage- gross!) on cable, and simply hung out.

It was so much fun, in fact, that I woke up the next morning and went to brunch with a bunch of people I had met the night before.

It was just so easy that it made friendship seem a little less like work, and a lot more like fun.

Slow Motion: Part 1

Last night happened in slow motion. Everything went that way, and I think everything went my way.

Hoff and I are slow. We don’t move quickly about anything, mostly because it’s not his style, and I am too nervous about making him nervous, that I move slow too.

We hung out in the same group of friends in college, except I liked his college roommate. Too bad his college roommate didn’t even look twice in my direction. I started hanging out with Hoff more as we made a habit out of watching football at a restaurant near campus with great pitcher specials. Hoff and his roommate made great pizza and beer buddies. Not to mention, we shared an affinity for the San Diego Chargers, so we always found ourselves cheering for the same team.

I studied abroad somewhere in the middle and returned home with only 4 days of college left. I spent them with my friends, Hoff and his college roommate. We played drinking games and went to Study Hall. We drank and partied and knew it would the last time we would see eachother for a while. We tapped a keg one night, and rallied a group of six to finish it off the next. I ended up on the bathroom floor, and Hoff’s roommate was nice enough to move me to a pile of laundry because our beds were already packed away.

The next night we played King’s Cup on the floor of a friend’s apartment and we tried to stay up as late as possible. None of us wanted it to end, so Hoff and I shared an air mattress and we had a true-to-form slumber party, all of us talking to each other in the dark.

Hoff and I stayed in touch (meaning we have had two or three AWKWARD conversations on the phone about life), and I pestered him to come visit me in between boyfriends.

We never talked about who we were dating, and still don’t bring it up. I don’t think either of us care to know.

I never knew I liked him, until I would get a call from him or a facebook comment and be a little excited he was thinking of me. I flirted with him, but he never flirted back, so I left it at that. I metioned him to Bails, who always looked at me and said, “Ya, cuz you like him.” I looked at her quizzically and said, “How do you know?’ and ever since he has been a crush of sorts.

dirrrtty knees

Seriously, my knee is bleeding. Get the Neosporin, stat.

No, have no fear C. is not back in the picture, and we did not reunite against the cold concrete walls of a bathroom in a club, downtown (oh sorry, my fantasy, not yours).

I love my kickball team. I love that they adopted me as one of them. They are such an awesome bunch of people, I am currently having a hard time grasping the fact that more people don’t get out there and be social. My life isn’t all that boring (and when it is, I stir up plenty of drama) but I merely invested one night a week, and I think I have found people that I will be content hanging out with for years.

It’s simple. Tonight, the game was close. They scored, we scored, and hey, I even caught the ball. I injured my knee after over-running second base, and had to crawl back to the base after my legs failed me.

A few beers after a win, however, seems to ward off the stinging feeling that accompanies both past loses and a scraped knee. Go team!

besties*

Purge part 2:

My roommate’s best friend came to stay with us last week. It was perfect- just like all occasions are with best friends. They painted each other’s toe nails and shopped. They drank wine and discussed relationships, parents and jobs. I excused myself when the conversation got too personal and let them have their moments.

As a result, I couldn’t wait to have mine with my best friend. So I met my her in San Francisco and we reveled in the fact that we were reunited. We ran in the Bay to Breakers race dressed as Flintstones, and drank 2 bottles of wine over a baguette and cheese in the Ferry Plaza. We caught up on past episodes of Grey’s and dissected my love life over another bottle of wine later in the weekend. We talked pregnancy, Brazilian waxes and marriage with a former roommate from college and her brand new boyfriend (yes, I think we officially scarred him for life). We skipped to Loehmann’s slightly buzzed in search of discounted designer jeans and cocktail dresses. We squeezed every girlie moment out of the weekend.

I miss her, but somehow we stay connected. We get the stresses in each other’s lives and we flawlessly pick up right where we left off.

Monday morning, I returned to SD rejuvenated.

And then my car died in the parking lot of a Taco Bell (don’t ask what I was doing there), and a bunch of crack addicits walking around suburbia in bikinis helped me jump start my car. All that was accomplished Monday was unsuccessfully channeling the feeling I had at the wine bar, sitting across from my her, toasting to friendship.

*”besties” kind of makes me gag, so I thought it appropriate.