Marry Him

Apparently I’m a little cray cray. You know, completely fucking whackadoo. There was a moment on Sunday, a very raw and vulnerable moment that I am not proud of in which I wrote this:

This is not happening. This is not happening to me right now on THIS DAY after LAST NIGHT. NO. NO! I refuse to believe that this is actually happening.

Do you know what I realized yesterday around, oh, noon as my mom was being admitted to the hospital for some nasty, weakening, puke-fest disease? Do you know what I realized after a week of taking care of her at my house and six hours of sitting with her in the ER the day before, for which I had to cancel plans with this boy I've been dating for a month (yes, a MONTH!), while my sister flitted about in a state of ecstasy, partying and whatnot, and while my aunt stayed home with her controlling and emotionally abusive husband because he gets mad when she goes out when he is home? Do you know what I figured out as I was getting ready to go meet this boy, THIS BOY WHO I HAVE BEEN DATING FOR A MONTH, to go to a nice dinner with and spend the night with and, oh, I don't know, maybe have sex with because FUCK dangling participles right about FUCKING NOW, OK? I realized that, in all my of my FUCKING life, I have never had a Valentine's Day.

NEVER.

NOT A SINGLE ONE.

So you know what I did? I called my aunt and told her I couldn't take my mom to the hospital because I had plans. And I felt terrible. And I cried. And I knelt by my mother's bedside in a very melodramatic way and told her that I felt terrible and guilty and she put her hand on my head in some sort of blessing and said, "No, 104. You already do too much. You should go." (I mean, really, it was a moment.)

But I fucking left. I put my dog in the kitchen, and I packed an overnight bag with a sexy dress and my black pumps and CONDOMS and my VIBRATOR and I LEFT.

And then this morning I left Nine's apartment at 8am to go spend the day at the hospital with my mom for twelve hours, and I kissed him goodbye and he told me to text him later to let him know how my mom was doing and I locked the door behind me and got into my car and thought, "I did it."

I did everything right this time. I waited a month. We had a serious conversation in which discussed past partners and being tested and monogamy and abortion.

I waited. I was good. I did everything right. He was nice and thoughtful and sweet and smart.

EVERYTHING.

And now it's midnight. On Valentine's Day. I've texted him twice. I called him once, which in his defense he did answer and have a 5-10 minute phone conversation for the last bit of his drive to his friend's house. But he never responded to my texts. He never called like he said he would.

So I am saying this publicly: IF HE DOES NOT CALL ME OR TEXT ME OR CONTACT ME I AM NEVER HAVING SEX AGAIN.

THAT'S RIGHT! I'M RECLAIMING MY FUCKING VIRGINITY IN ALL ITS FUCKING GLORY AND I'M CLOSING THE FUCKING DOORS.

And OF COURSE I came home tonight at MIDNIGHT to a FREEZING COLD HOUSE because my FURNACE is BROKEN. AGAIN!

I can't believe this is happening again. All of it.

Happy FUCKING Valentine's Day.

I even posted it. I’m sure most of you missed it because I took it down about 27 minutes later when he CALLED and said that he had been TEXTING me all day with no response and I had been MISSING all of them because the hospital totally FUCKS with cell phone reception.

Yeah. I told you. Completely fucking nuts. But the problem since then has been all the vulnerability and all the fear and whack crackers that something like that creates have yet to subside. And since then, our communication has been limited to a few minutes when he gets home from work, a few more minutes before he goes to sleep two hours later and that’s it.

This puts me in a bad place mentally, perpetually convinced that he is about to end it. It’s not a pleasant place to be, but I’m keeping it to myself, trying my best to not let him see it. And then yesterday I was telling my mom about our lack of communication, and she said,

“Didn’t you say he’s working really long hours this week?”

“So?”

“And didn’t you say that he apologized for being so tired all the time but that it was his crazy work schedule?”

“So?”

“So, how many hours is he working this week?” I looked at the ceiling and calculated. Twelve hour shifts for five days a week and then a thirty-hour shift on Saturday for the next month.

“Like… ninety?”

“104!”

“What?”

“You don’t think that is why he is tired and has less time to talk to you in the evenings?”

“No. I think it’s me. I think he isn’t into me.”

“You’re nuts,” she said and went back to watching the Olympics. Ok, so maybe she had a point. The first being that I’m nuts, and the second that it wasn’t about me.

There’s something very dangerous about the He’s Just Not That Into You argument. There’s something very all or nothing. Something very selfish. Something very “I deserve the best all the time and forever and if not then you’re not really into me and I deserve better.”

I’m reading a book that is changing my life. Well, that’s kind of questionable, but it is changing the way I view dating and the He’s Just Not That Into You philosophy that I’ve come to live by since circa 2005. The problem with HJNTIY is that it leads to women believing that they deserve all the attention, all the love, all the affection, all the perfection all the time. It does not account for a man who works more than twice the number of hours she does in a week. It does not account for a man who is in a bad mood because he put on a few pounds. It does not account for men being just as human and flawed and temperamental as women are. If women were expected to be doting and perfect girlfriends/fiancées/wives all the time or forget it, there would be an outcry of raging feminists. I’d be one of them. It’s a double standard. We think we deserve perfect men who love us perfectly when we are not perfect ourselves, when we have fat days and act like complete bitches (um, last Friday for me, I don’t know about you) and when we don’t fucking feel like giving another fucking blow job for fuck’s sake.

I had a conversation with my best friend yesterday that went something like this:

BF: How are things with the boy?
104: Good.
BF: Just good?!
104: Yeah.
BF: WHAT? You’re so wonderful! You’re so AMAZING! You deserve someone who is stunning! YOU DESERVE THE BEST!

Here’s where we get into trouble, according to Lori Gottlieb. Here is where we pass up the 8’s for the 10’s because we think that we are perfect and we deserve perfection. Here are the facts: I am not a 10. I’m probably more like a 7, and that’s only because I have my life together and have a pretty face. If we were going on looks alone, my body fat percentage would easily knock me down to a 6, if not a 5. It depends on whom you ask. So let’s say that, during all of my viable dating years, I’d pass up the 8’s in search of a 10, who BY THE WAY DOES NOT EXIST, so I’ll be searching forever for an impossibly perfect man and then I’ll be 41 and single and the only thing I can get with my shriveled up uterus is a 5. A divorced guy with kids and an evil ex-wife, or, even worse, a guy in his forties who has never been married. :::SHUDDER::: Should have stuck with the 8, right? The point is that what I DESERVE is a good boyfriend. Not a perfect boyfriend. After all, I’m not a perfect girlfriend (see above). I deserve a good man who is intellectually stimulating and a good communicator and shares my same desire for a family. (Lori asks us to separate our wants from our needs when looking for a match, and then throw out your wants because things like being tall don’t say anything about what kind of man he is, and then narrow your needs down to three. Those are my three.) Of course I don’t yet know if Nine fits the bill. I don’t yet know if, when push comes to shove, I’ll feel heard and respected when an issue arises. We’ll see.

This passage best sums it up:

"In America," she said, "when a potter makes a pot, they put a glaze on it and put it in the kiln and know exactly what it's supposed to look like when it comes out. But when the Japanese make a pot, they put it in a wood-fire kiln that could be any temperature, and when they take the pot out, it's not always exactly like they thought it was supposed to look like. And they say, 'Oh, wow, this is what the fire did to the pot and it's gorgeous!' They believe that there's no beauty in perfection.

"So instead of knowing what the person across from you is supposed to be like, ask yourself the pot question, 'But what is it, and is it beautiful?' rather than thinking, 'It's not this and it should look like this.' The question you have to ask is, 'Do I like it?' instead of 'How does it compare to what I thought I wanted?' People can surprise you." (267-268)

The point is that I’m trying to not specifically LOOK for the bad in him, which, oh hey, it turns out I ALWAYS DO. So last night when he called, sounding completely exhausted after a thirteen hour shift because apparently all the babies in the world are sick, poor things, I tried to be understanding. I tried to think about how I would act if I weren’t looking for all the bad things about him like how he doesn’t respond to my text messages or how he doesn’t talk to me on the phone for long enough lately, and I tried to think about how I would act if I were appreciating him for all of his good qualities. You know what I did? I stopped acting like a total fucking fruit basket and started acting like a supportive girlfriend. (NOT THAT I’M HIS GIRLFRIEND! OH MY GOD! MY LIFE JUST FLASHED BEFORE MY EYES!)

Instead of getting angry and waiting for him to say something about whether or not we’d be seeing each other this weekend, instead of assuming that he was seconds away from ending things, instead of being bitter and holding out for him to come visit ME this time because I visited HIM last time, I breathed in and out and pretended like I was normal. And I said, “I’m sorry your schedule sucks so much this month. Is there anything I can do to make it more bearable?”

And I waited for him to say no, that he just wanted to stay home and sleep all of Sunday and then I would find out that he really went to his friend’s to play video games or go to a strip club or concoct ways to end things with me without it seeming like he used me for sex because OF COURSE he is using me for sex!

But instead he said, “You could come over.”

And I melted.

So I’m going over to his place on Sunday after his thirty-hour shift. He wants to take a nap and stay in, but he wants me there with him while he does. So I’m going to go over there and be supportive and a little more generous and not so fucking demanding of perfection all the goddamn time, because sometimes, every so often, it’s not all about me.

I know. I’m just as surprised as you are.