How to love her

Kiss her neck

Hold her hand

Let hugging her turn into holding her

Be patient when she's at her worst

Tell her when she's at her best

Be unconditional

Unwavering

Show passion

Take pictures of her

Whisper in her ear

Answer when she calls

Listen to her feelings

Be around for the small things

Make sure she knows you want her around

Forgive

Understand

Make her laugh

Don't magnify her weaknesses. She knows what they are. She's far more aware of them than you are. You see them, you deal with them, she owns them. She carries them. She lives them.

Love those parts too. 

The Good Parts

I've never been particularly great at being happy.

I'm the girl with abandonment issues. I'm the girl who is always waiting for it to all fall apart.

One thing I've tried hard to get better at though, is recognizing when something good just happened, and letting myself play it over and over in my head, as many times as I want.

See, when you come from shit, when you experience trauma on a regular basis, you learn to play that shit over and over in your head. 

It's easier to believe than the good things.

It's easier to recognize. 

It's unfortunately, a hell of a lot more reliable in your experience.

So I never knew how to notice a good moment when it was happening, but lately I've been trying to lock that shit down.

When you order soup at Wildflower and they put it in a bread bowl without charging you the extra $1.99, so you don't have to dig a little soup moat into the roll they give you.

When you live in Arizona and it's a perfect 75 and breezy, during a month that's usually 98 and hell.

When your favorite rap song comes on the radio while someone who has yet to experience your dope rap skills is in the car with you, and you nail that shit and obviously impress the shit out of them.

When you ask the person you love what they're thinking, and they pull you in a little closer and say that they love you. That they love you a lot. That they'll love you forever and ever.

And then some.

That's the shit I've been trying to teach myself to savor.

To replay.

To memorize.

And it's so goddamn sweet, I wish I could bottle it.

I wish I could record it and play it in the car.

I wish I could box it up, and live inside it whenever I want to.

It's nice, to know all the words to a good moment, and let yourself rely on there being more of them.

The Little Things

When I was younger my friends and I were always making lists of qualities and attributes that our dream man would possess. 

We included things like "romantic, funny, honest, smart", sometimes even getting as detailed as "brown hair, green eyes, 6'3 - oh and drives a convertible.

Convertibles were the shit in the 90's.

As I've gotten older though, I've learned that those things almost never matter as much as you think they will.

It's the little things that make you fall in love.

By the time you make it to 25 - or more conservatively 30 - there are very few women in the world who can say that they've never met a man who was the perfect guy on paper: loyal, honest, handsome, stable, everything you're supposed to want, that they just never were able to fall in love with.

A man that is perfect in so many ways it's infuriating, but for whatever reason, they never become more than a relationship that almost happened, but didn't.

  Instead we fall in love with people who on paper probably look all wrong for us. People who don't look very much like that ideal man we'd built in our heads with bullet point requirements and the perfect inseam length. All because of a bunch of little, unexpected things.

The way that you haven't had to tell them how you like your coffee since the very first time they ever asked.

The way they reach for your hand when they're driving.

The nickname they gave you on your third date that feels more like your name now than your legal one.

The little things that they do for you that seem to anyone else as completely inconsequential, but ultimately show you how much they truly understand you at your core.

The love of my life was 17 years older than me, and took 3 years to tell me he loved me.
We had an almost insurmountable number of obstacles, but he was the first guy who ever held my hand in the car. He had a dead-pan sense of humor, and even when I was super pissed, he could make me laugh. When we slept he wrapped his entire body around mine like a ladle, and even though he thought he was a terrible dancer, he danced with me. In clubs, in the living room, at concerts.
I loved that.

And that's how love happens.
Unexpectedly, out of nowhere, and with someone you might never have imagined for yourself.

You don't always fall for the cookie cutter definition of perfect.

More often than not, you love the one who drives you fucking crazy, someone a little broken, someone unexpected. Maybe you bicker with them more often than you planned, or you don't love that they're a bartender with a law degree they don't use and no plans to ever change that, but you love how they tickle your back and kiss your neck, and that weird little patch of hair on their lower back, right above their ass.

Bottom line is: they have a way of catching your heart in their hands like a frantic bird, and calming it.

And in a world full of potentially "better" options, you feel like they're the only perfect option for you.

On Sex and Being Naked

When I was growing up, I always seemed to be surrounded by people who assigned this huge, heavy, weight and meaning to sex. 

Whether it was for religious reasons or personal upbringing, there was an idea going around that taking off your clothes, allowing someone to see your physical self completely, and putting your two naked bodies together was the highest form of intimacy two people could share, and it was not to be taken lightly.

For a while, I went along with this in a half assed sort of way. 

While I did go ahead and take the plunge into sexual experience at the tender age of 15, I remained convinced that it was this huge deal. I prided myself on only having slept with one person for the two years that that number remained the same, and I would tell anyone who would listen that sex was not something to be taken lightly.

Cheating, in my opinion at the time, was unforgiveable.

Sex was this big, grand, monumnetous and important thing! It was special! It was a gift you give somebody! It was the highest form of intimacy for fucks sake! For someone to offer that to another person outside of their two person union {in other words cheat}, they must not care for their partner at all! They must be callous and horrible and completely out of love with their person - not to mention now probably in love with this hussy they cheated with! - because I also believed that since cheating didn't happen in the presence of love, sex didn't happen without it.

I had somehow almost entirely forgotten - or chosen to overlook - the indesputable fact that sex happens all the time without love, respect, or even really liking each other. It was something any asshole with working genitalia had the basic ability to do. Something we were all, regardless of nearly anything else that was true about us, able to do.

Something that we all had a natural and instinctive drive and desire to do, since long before we began experiencing any romantic feelings for people.

Still, even though I knew this, I insisted it was the biggest thing two people could share.

To take off their clothes, part their legs {if they're female}, and wrap around each other, moving together usually in the dark, where no one can see them and they don't really even have to see each other.

What I've learned as I've gotten older though, is that that's the easy part.

The stripping and the panting and the blind feeling.

People do it all the time.

But opening up your soul to someone?

Letting them in, past the well lit paths and things that are easy to share, all the way into the darker and more fragile parts of ourselves; sharing our hopes and dreams and fears and secrets....letting them not just inside your body, but into your spirit - into your heart?

That's being naked.

And it's not something that everyone is capable of doing.

It's not even remotely as easy as having sex.

Truth.

Did you ever play truth or dare as a kid?

At sleep overs, all your friends sitting in a circle, an empty soda bottle in the center, the building anxiety over who it would land on next, trying to decide ahead of time - just in case it landed on you - if you'd pick truth or dare.

When we were little, we all picked dare.

It was exciting, being dared to do something crazy. Run outside with no pants on and scream "I LOVE BUTTER!" at the top of your lungs. Put an ice cube in your bra and keep it there for 30 seconds. Call the boy you have a crush on and ask him something weird, or worse: tell him you like him.

Hearts pounding, hands sweating, hoping our friends would be kind and not make us do anything truly awful {which they never were}, we always picked dare.

I mean, what great truths did we have to reveal when we were 10 anyway?

I wet the bed once?

I steal cookies?

Sometimes I wonder if 5th grade is all it was cracked up to be?

No.

We had nothing.

As I got older, the game was still played, but usually between me and a girlfriend who was staying over, laying in bed in the dark talking until we fell asleep. And we always picked truth,

Maybe we played to pass the time.

Maybe we played because it was a good veil under which we could ask personal questions without being nosy.

Maybe we played because we had questions we secretly wanted to be asked. Truths we secretly wanted to share, but didn't know how.

So we opened the door. The rules were, after all, that they could ask anything and you had to answer honestly.

It's like what psychiatrists always say about having a journal: you're writing it because you want someone to read it. You want it to be found, read through and known about. You want to share yourself, you just don't know how to come out and do it.

Playing truth or dare did it for us.

Want to hear my truth?

Sometimes I don't know what I'm doing, here. I worry about how I'm raising the kids, if I'm doing a good enough job, what I'll be dealing with when they're 18. What issues they'll have that I know will be my fault. I don't know if I'm enough.

Sometimes I'm equal parts scared of, excited about and apathetic toward the future. It's very confusing.

Sometimes I wish mistakes were more easily forgotten. I wish that at some point people stopped seeing your poor choices when they looked at you. Like every day when we woke up, we forgot all the sins of the day before, and we only remembered what was good, what was real, what was intentional.

I fucking hate mopping.

I un-friended someone on Facebook the other day for posting too many political statuses and pictures of Obama. Judge me, I don't care. I don't feel bad about it at all. 

When I was little, I used to break the candy bars that are in those metal racks in the check out line. I wouldn't break the wrapper, so nobody would know until they bought it and opened it and saw their candy bar was fatally decapitated. I don't know why I did it. I'd just stand there and squeeze them until they snapped in half, then I'd move on to another one, seeing how many I could break before we were done checking out and paying for our groceries.

I still feel bad for all the people who got broken candy bars.

Anyway, your turn. Truth or Dare?

20 Ways to Ruin Your Own Life Post Break Up

1. Forget to go grocery shopping. Then just put it off altogether. Do this for weeks until the take out boxes have piled up and you can no longer see your waist line.

2. Tell your friends repeatedly that you'd love to hang out. Blow them off repeatedly to see your boyfriend. Call them crying when he breaks up with you and expect them to be there for you.

3. Accidentally send a text you meant to send to your ex, to your dad.

4. Go to the grocery store in your pajamas without showering for a couple days, in the same shirt you've been wearing since Friday. Discover that several people you work with shop at the same store.

5. Go to a bar by yourself and spend the entire time on your phone so no one can talk to you. Wonder afterward why nobody talked to you.

6. Load your instant queue on Netflix with movies you know you shouldn't be watching. The Notebook. Sleepless in Seattle. We Don't Live Here Anymore. Call your ex 6 times whilst crying-after each movie. Wonder why he isn't holding up his end of the "let's be friends" deal.

7. Briefly consider the idea of arranged marriages and mail order husbands.

8. Yell at the guy at BevMo because he made a mean comment about his fiance and even though you don't know him you're pretty sure he's damn lucky to have her, and why do men always take good women for granted?! Don't resist when the police come.

9. Tell your girlfriend at work who just started seeing a new guy that relationships are pointless and life is empty and meaningless so why the hell bother? This makes for great lunch time conversation over the giant plate of nachos you're eating by yourself.

10. Blog obsessively about your breakup.

11. Facebook every emotion you have. Poeple want you to overshare. You're interesting and fascinating.

12. Come up with any plan ever at all that you think will win back your ex. Tell people about it like you really believe you're not insane.

13. Cry in front of your boss.

14. Cry in front of strangers.

15. Cry from the moment you wake up until you go to sleep and don't even try to hide it.

16. Actually look into mail order husbands and arranged marriages. Back out when you remember that you'll actually have to sleep with your purchased husband.

17. Put your headphones on at work and get really into a Celine Dion song. Start singing it out loud without realizing it. Loudly. On repeat.

18. Stop wearing make up, doing your hair trying at all.

19. Look at your ex's facebook.

20. Decide that you're pretty sure he's going to come back, and start turning down dates, asking your friends not to set you up, and even continuing to talk about him like you're still together. After all, good comes to those who wait, right?

Wrong.



Notes from the Newly Single: Dating Again

So, apologies for not providing a detailed update to all of you, but in the short version, I'm going to say I'm back to being single. 

Holy wow. 

For the first time in three in a half years, I actually have to start thinking about what I want in a boyfriend or partner or whatever the term is now. I have to start thinking about what I'm looking for from square one again. It's weird. I was in love with Bill for so long, and he fit the mold almost exactly of everything I knew I wanted, and he also showed me a great deal of things I never thought were important to me, but I realized while being with him that they are. Things he did, or characteristics about him that I don't want to go on living without now that I know how awesome they are. I also learned a few things I always thought were important to me, really aren't as much at the end of the day. 

All that considered, you'd think I'd have the blue prints for my soulmate all mapped out in my mind, but I don't. I have to start from the ground up, start with the littlest things. What should they look like? I was instantly attracted to Bill, and haven't really had to look at any other man and decide if I was truly attracted to him enough to date him in a long time. What do I want them to do for fun? Is it a deal breaker if they hike a lot and I hate hiking? Is it a big deal if they don't like to go to the movies, or the only movies they watch have Vin Diesel in them? {read: stupid movies} How important is there religion to me? Would I date someone that was like really into his dog? You know those guys who are like "It's me and my dog, man, package deal!" and they almost act like their dog is their life partner and you're the mistress? Actually, I already know the answer to that. 

When you've been with someone you had all those little things in common with for so long, someone that got your sense of humor, understood your moods, liked the same shit you liked and took the time to pay attention to all the little details of things that made you happy, it's super unnerving to imagine going out and trying other people on for size. 

The ways in which they can disappoint you seem endless.

It feels like job hunting.

This one is a perfect role, but I hate the hours.

This one is right by my house but doesn't pay enough.

This one is great but doesn't provide benefits.

This one looked good until I met my future boss, or my potential co-workers.

This one doesn't even provide coffee in the breakroom.

I hate the idea of getting through the first 3 or 4 or 5 dates, only to realize that they shoot bunnies in their free time or don't hold the door open for me or blow their nose at the dinner table, and have to start all over at square one.

It sounds so exhausting.

But a little exciting at the same time.

First dates, first time holding hands, first kisses. All the little things you do have in common that you start off with. Like painting by numbers, and starting with the greens. The little place holders we put in to keep us feeling like we're right for each other, until the bigger moments can come along and hopefully slide into their place.

I guess it's when they don't that you have to start all over again, but still getting to know people is always kind of fun.

Delighting at the fact that you both love Charlotte's Web over dinner where you accidentally order the same thing, and you laugh and go "Oh we have so much in common"

It might be a fiery train wreck at the end, but at least the appetizers were good. 

Stuck

I am stuck somewhere between wanting to blog every thought and feeling I have, and not wanting to sound like an obsessive, depressive basket case.

I am also stuck somewhere between writing some of the best pieces I've written in months {depression makes me talented} and again, not wanting to sound like an obsessive, depressive basket case.

Sure I could say that I'm "writing it all for me", but when you know everyone in your life as well as everyone in the life of the person you're writing about reads what you're posting, it's hard not to feel like you're putting all your shit on blast, even if it isn't intended that way. 

It's hard not to feel like you're being that pathetic girl who is sending out passive aggressive please for a second chance, or trying to subtly make the guy who hurt her feel like an asshole by parading around how hurt she is.

Ugh. 

There's no good answer. 

And I fucking hate journaling.

And seriously, some of the shit I've been writing is really good.

Maybe I'll post it all later when everything isn't raw and fresh, and then it will be taken as well written creative writing pieces, and not sad eulogies for a dead relationship.

Or maybe I'll just care less about what anybody thinks after a little time.

Who knows. 

In the meantime, I may be publishing on another site here soon, if all goes well. 

I don't want to go into details yet because over sharing is bad luck in my life, but I promise if it all pans out I'll tell you everything. And yes, I'll still keep the blog, and I'll link up whenever I contribute to the other site.

I'm not leaving this blessed domain of free speech to live exclusively in the land of freelance.

I will always treasure a place where I can post what I want without someone editing my spelling and grammar or asking me not to say fuck so much.

Fuckers.

The Fear

I tend to make friends with older ladies when it comes to who I converse with in the workplace. For instance, right now my best work friend is a 46 year old paralegal who curses more than I do and is always talking about working out her "obliques" in her spare time. This kind of senseless bragging makes me want to kick her in the neck, but I'm too fat to kick that high, so....touche I guess.

Anyway, I don't know why this happens, honestly, because outside of work, despite my pension for dating charming and handsome older men, I have always had friends that were pretty much in my age range. But at work you can undoubtedly find me sitting at the old ladies lunch table listening to stories about their grown kids money problems or watching videos of their lame ass cat's birthday party.

Don't get me wrong though, it's not all bad. 

Sometimes they bring me candy and little cakes or pies they made because they miss having people to cook for other than their ungrateful as shit pets, and a lot of times they give fucking spectacular advice. 

Especially if they're older ladies with a lot of sass, which are my kind of older ladies. {trust me there was absolutely no way to make that statement without sounding porny as all get out}

One of the drawbacks to this nonsexual hetero Harold and Maude friendship, is that old women can be bitter as fuck, and inevitably they always give me The Fear.

At some point, regardless of their actual age, if they're over 30 and/or have been with their current partner more than 5 years, they end up giving me The Fear.

What is The Fear, you ask?

The Fear is the overwhelming terror that overcomes me when I listen to stories from other women describing how they basically could care less about sex anymore/their partners wouldn't notice at this point if they stripped naked and did the merengue anyway.

I say "over 30 and/or have been with their partner more than 5 years" because I hear this kind of crazy talk from women still in their 20's! In fact just yesterday I heard a girl {27 years old!!!} at work talking about how one day she got all dressed up to go out with some friends, but her plans fell through, so there she was in the kitchen making dinner in a miniskirt and stilettos, bent over pulling a beautiful roast out of the oven, when her boyfriend of 7 years came in and didn't even notice. Just walked past her and started talking about stupid bullshit, until she announced casually that she was going to change into her pajamas, at which point he finally actually looked at her and simply said "How do you cook in shoes like that? Aren't you scared you'll fall when you're carrying something hot?" AND THIS WAS NO BIG DEAL TO HER! She quite literally said to me "Once you've been together that long, sex is something you can more or less take or leave." To help prove her point {and try to make the look of terror on my face go away} another woman told a story about how her husband turned down sex because it was late and he had just gotten all ready to clean the oven.....CLEAN THE OVEN.

How are these women not hurt by this? How do they not care?! How can sex become something so casual and unimportant between two people, that it's something you talk about maybe doing after you load the dishwasher if you're not too tired?!

Is this really what happens in normal relationships? Is this really what happens to all women as we get older? And in that case, what is it more related to, age or how long you've been with your current partner? And does the desire kind of leave you altogether, or do you just stop finding that one person as desirable, but your sex drive is still just as high?  

Basically what I'm asking is HOW DOES IT ALL WORK AND DOES THIS HAVE TO HAPPEN TO ME?!

Maybe it's because I'm only 24, or because Bill and I have only been "officially" together a few months, I don't know, but I would be crushed if I was all slutted up and making dinner for Bill like something out of a Skinamax movie, and he didn't even NOTICE. I would be seriously depressed if I offered him sexy time and cleaning the oven took priority. And I would be calling every guru, psychic and relationship counselor in the state if I felt like I could simply take or leave sex with him....

The Fear is that I don't want our relationship to become....that. Whatever that is, good, bad or indifferent, and I'm just terrified that maybe there's no avoiding it.

But as long as I'm shit scared of it maybe I can put it off a while longer, right?

RIGHT?!

When I panicked and made Bill promise he would never chose to clean the oven instead of having sexy time with me, he agreed almost too quickly.
At first I felt relieved, and then I realized that he probably just hates cleaning the oven, and if it made me feel "special" for him to abandon that chore in favor of playing "hide the saltine" with me, then that works out swell for him.
Well played, Bill. Well played.

Jealousy

So, let's talk for a minute about jealousy.

It's such a shitty feeling emotion, especially when it's completely unfounded and without basis,  and I am unfortunately terrible at controlling it.

I have a past, I have exboyfriends, in fact I am pretty sure I have more exboyfriends than Bill has exgirlfriends. I have a history, I've made mistakes and I've probably done more to damage the fragile trust between Bill and I than he ever has. 

But still. 

Jealousy flares up and takes me over and I become that girl who starts mentally tire slashing every girl that her boyfriend has ever even looked at, so much as dated or kissed or.....etc.

And it's not even the girls in his past, it's the medical tech at his vet's office that liked his car and made a harmless comment about it, it's any girl that he becomes friends with on Facebook until I find out she's his cousin or the wife of one of his friends, or something like that. And it would definitely be any girls number I found in his phone if I went through it, which is exactly why I never have. 

I trust him, I know he would never be with someone else while we were together, but if I went rifling through his texts and emails, even harmless innocent small talk with another human who happened to have a vagina would make me pouty and sulky and all kinds of green eyed monstery. 

Why is jealousy an issue if we love someone truly, and believe with all our hearts that they love us back? Why does jealousy still arise if we trust the person that we're with immensely? If we have faith in our relationship, if we're blissfully happy? 

Is it insecurity? Possessiveness? Or fail safe built into us that keeps us from getting too comfortable in a relationship, keeps us from taking our loves for granted, reminds us that there are other people out there they could be with, and that we should always keep doing the little things to make them feel loved and special?

Whatever it is, jealousy embarrasses me. It makes me feel childish, whiny and clingy. I want to be that awesomely cool girl who totally doesn't care if my boyfriend has 20 million female friends, or if girls hit on him all the time, or if he's still friends with his ex's. But I'm not. I would never ask a guy to stop being friends with a girl he was good friends with before we started dating, just for the sake of my ego, but I wouldn't find it particularly awesome if Bill was all of a sudden BFF's with some chick who wanted to have movie nights all the time at her house....wow I just got a little pissed off thinking about that completely hypothetical scenario....

SEE?! 

Ugh, I can be such a jealous asshole.

But like the picture above says, I am holding myself to the standard of grace, not perfection.

Which means I may not be able to help the fact that I am a jealous asshole, but I can do my best not to let it drive a wedge between me and Bill by flying off the handle when a girl {who's more attractive than I consider prudent} friends him on Facebook, and make him think I don't trust him at all.

But it does also mean I might sheepishly ask who she is, hoping she's his functionally retarded 3rd cousin who drools and walks with a gimp.

A girl can dream. 

Perfectly Imperfect

I've been thinking a lot about love and relationships, and how those dynamics all work for different people. What works for one couple, would be disasterous for another. What's normal for one couple would drive another crazy, and so on and so on.

Being in the "blog world", I've started to notice that pretty much every blog written by a woman, has a link to her and her beau's love story. The creeper inside me loves this, because if I find a blog I like, I always like it more when I can get to know the writer more intimately. And the curious side of me loves this, because I get to wander through the world of "other people's relationships" and study what makes other relationships tick.

In a love story I read recently, the writer said she loved her husband because he wasn't perfect for her. She said she'd had perfect before, and she couldn't handle it. She needed to work at a relationship, and if it's perfect, there's no work. I found that so interesting, because one of the things that I love most about Bill and I, is that he is perfect for me.  Could I probably be OK in a relationship with someone who wasn't perfect for me? Sure. Could I maybe even be happy, if in this hypothetical life I had never met Bill? Probably. But the way I see it, there is enough mediocre shit in this world, love shouldn't be one part of it. I don't want to be OK, I want to live my life with my best friend, my soulmate, and the love of my life, who is perfect for me, regardless of how imperfect of a person he is.

And now I have everything I could have ever asked for, and more.

I have a boyfriend who continually surprises me, even in small ways, with sweet gestures or kind words, or weekend trips, or unexpected adventures. I have a boyfriend who surprises me by always having more layers of himself for me to discover, explore and learn about, and then fall in love with. I have a boyfriend who calls me on my shit, even when I don't want him to, because I need him to, and he gets that. He says things that are true, even if it doesn't feel good to say it or for me to hear it, because he tries to communicate openly with me, which is something I desperately need in my relationships. I have a boyfriend who works hard, and tries hard, and puts everyone else first, and makes the best plans for the future.

He is perfect for me, but he's not perfect, if that makes sense, and that is what I need. I can't handle being around perfect people. They intimidate me. Bill is flawed, and he's pretty open about that. But for me, he loves me just right, and gets me so well, and gives me so much to look forward to and be thankful about.

I'm not saying it isn't ever hard, of course it's hard! But it's what I've been waiting for since I first ventured into the world of intimate relationships with men.

It's so interesting to me that two people can work so well together, for any number of reasons, but paired up with someone else, it just doesn't work.

I know a couple who has the "never go to bed angry policy" and that works for them. I know a couple who has a "always go to bed angry, sleep it off and apologize over breakfast" policy, and that works for them.

Bill and I are still learning what works for us, but I'm sure it's very different than other couples. At the end of the day, it all comes down to love though, doesn't it? The ties that bond, and the blissful feeling of connecting with another human being in just the right way, in the midst of all the busy, crazy, lonely noise of this big small world.

Isn't that what this life is all about?