She, like everyone else I’ve seen in the last week, doesn’t believe that I really mean it when I say I’m okay.
No, I’m not okay. I’m great.
They keep waiting for the waterworks to start again, the way they did last Thursday when every inquiry into what was wrong started a lip quiver. Like all good things, a relationship that seemed to be going in a good direction ended. Perhaps, more abruptly than we would have liked, but sometimes, when it isn’t love, you just have to rip the bandaid off and get it over with.
Break-ups suck, even the good ones. Each has its own recovery path and time. Sometimes, there’s the shock of the loss to overcome. Every one is has its mourning period where you remember the good times and come to terms with the fact there won’t be any more. Then there comes the anger – at the ex, at the “system.” Next, you press the restart button and begin your make-over as you prepare yourself for the road ahead.
Being emotional after a breakup gets you pity drinks from friends. Being rational gets you nothing but a “thata girl!”
Sometimes I wish I was more emotional and less rational. Being emotional gets you out of work early and earns you pity drinks from friends. Rational gets you to the restart period faster — 3 days later and I’m already several ab workouts, a manicure, and a date with my stylist in. I don’t think I’m going to cry again.
This break-up came with an unusual stroke of clarity. I’ve decided that the hurt or pain following the end of relationship is the less daunting challenge to overcome – harder to conquer is the fear of the “what’s next.”
For every end of a significant relationship, a significant question lingers.
After the one that got away: Will I ever love someone that much again? So far, No.
After the one I left behind: Will someone ever love me as much as he did? So far, No.
After this last one: Will I ever be as comfortable being myself as I was with him? So far, TBD.
The path to finding love ever lasting is an uphill marathon
The feeling that something’s missing, or that something you had can’t be replicated with someone new — that’s what gets ya down and keeps you there for a while. Makes you swear off falling again. Or lowers your bar for the next person. Or adds another layer of bricks and mortar to the wall around your heart.
Endings are supposed to be new beginnings, but the truth is, new beginnings are hard. First dates are fun and easy. But getting to 4th, 5th and 6th dates — when you start the uphill slog towards trust and a committed relationship — that’s the most testing part of the cross-country marathon that is finding everlasting love.
For now, I’m on the bench for a while. It’s time to treat the wounds and seek the trainer. The course ahead is a long and tricky one. I need to be ready before I get back in the race.
I was in the middle of my whiskey phase. Mad Men had nothing to do with it.
It was late on a November Saturday night in 2012 when I sauntered into my favorite cocktail lounge with an unusually high spring in my step. I nodded with a chirpy hello to the bouncer whose scarred eyebrow and barrel-sized biceps hinted at the fact his day job was cage-fighting coach. I slipped into my favorite corner seat at the bar and leaned across to give the bartender, Kay, my best girl friend’s boyfriend, a warm hello.
He looked at me puzzled. She had called him earlier to warn him I might be coming from a rough night — I’d need taking care of, she suggested. The chipper red-haired girl in the tangerine top didn’t look like she needed taking care of.
“Something strong?” Kay asked.
“Yes, please! I’ll have a Manhattan.”
Seconds later, he slid a martini glass under my nose, a rich copper-hued drink sloshed but didn’t jump over the edges. I was in the of what can only be labeled a Whiskey-phase. Mad Men had nothing to do with it. The Manhattan had replaced the Tanqueray10 martini as my go-to night out indulgence and a Jameson on the rocks was my new dive bar safe bet. All it took was one sip and I knew this was the best Manhattan I’d ever had, was ever going to have. Liquid gold. When he slide a small carafe with the “leftovers” from the shaker (the equivalent of a second drink), I figured I was satisfyingly set for the night.
I was alone on a Saturday night, drinking a whiskey drink and content. Sitting next to me was another loner, and apparently, another regular. Kay introduced the robust and somewhat rotund young man to me as Joe, and since I was already onto the carafe, I was in a mood to chat… and over share.
I was newly single. So I let the Tony Soparno look alike buy me a 3rd and 4th drink… mistake.
Joe was a well-manner Jerseyite who could easily have passed for an extra on The Sopranos — perhaps even a younger Tony Soprano, in the right over sized golf shirt. We talked about the Yankees and our favorite restaurants. Even though his waistline was evident of a life spent mostly eating out and watching sports rather than playing them, Joe was a top-shelf kind of guy, which roughly translates into my kind of person.
“Are you always such good company?” Joe asked, as I neared the end of my drink and in theory, the end of my night.
“I broke up with my boyfriend an hour and a half ago.”
In my head, that answered the question. Isn’t every girl extra charming and cheery after she breaks up with the guy who sent her flowers on her birthday and talked about spending the rest of his life with her?
“Shouldn’t you be crying with your girlfriends, or something? You’re in an awfully good mood.”
I shrugged and took the final slug of my drink (technically, my second, though I had convinced myself otherwise.)
“It’s a relief, to be honest. That it’s all over. I wanted to throw up the whole day before it happened. Now, I couldn’t be in a better mood.”
Wait. The irony is coming.
“You’re not leaving yet are you?” Joe chripped as I began to fumble for my wallet — a perfunctory motion as I knew tonight’s $15 beverage was likely on the house. “You’re newly single. Let me buy you another.”
I looked at my watch — I’d already missed my train and my rule is to never let strangers buy me drinks. But, really, what harm would another drink do? I was newly single, after all. Joe fancied himself a cocktail connoisseur and ordered me what I vaguely recall him calling a Manhattan Perfect. I could be totally wrong, but it seemed to fit because drinks 3 and 4 (Kay and his damn carafe!) were perfectly toxic.
The Burberry trench coat fell victim to one Manhattan too many, but recovered in time for a trip to Prague.
I wobbled out an hour later, convinced I was totally sober and even a little proud for being able to hold down so much whiskey. But as I stood on the subway platform, I realized I was in for it. When I vomited all over my Burberry trench coat and silk jersey tangerine Theory top, I knew I had just been taught a lesson. There is such thing as too much whiskey.
And I had just become that girl who throws up on the last train out of Grand Central.
I vomited two more times — once on the sidewalk at my home station and once again in the trashcan next to my bed — before finally falling asleep. In the morning, the only reminder of the previous night’s break-up and excess was my tangerine top, soaking in the sink, a few bits of undigested orechette and broccoli floating beside it. I might have been sloppy, but at least I clean up after myself.
The purging of my stomach contents so soon after finishing my last sip might have saved me from a hangover, but it also killed my taste for whiskey. And that favorite tangerine top, while the stains are long gone, will always be that shirt I threw up on the night I broke up with the Admiral. At work on Monday, I was greeted with an email from Joe asking to take me out for dinner somewhere I could never afford on an non-profit employee’s salary. Apparently, I had given him my business card. I had been back on the market for less than 24 hours and already I had a suitor. I politely declined.
Last night, I poured a heavy draw of McMallan 12, figuring it was a perfect companion drink on a cold winter’s night dedicated to writing a curatorial essay. With a new boyfriend at my side and the past year behind me, I figured I could handle my first whiskey in over a year. One sip and the room began to spin and my stomach began to turn. Apparently, at least for this girl, it’s easier to recover from a relationship gone wrong than from a bad night of drinking.
This kitty is never drinking Whiskey again…. Tanqueray is still on the table, however.
If only good girls keep diaries, then I must be a very good girl.
“When did I ever have time to write this much?” I said to myself when, in another rainy-day induced fit of house cleaning, I uncovered over a decade’s worth of journals and diaries. Most are thick enough to be worthy of the label “tome.” Few contain content worthy of any label besides “meaningless nonsense.”
I can’t remember ever not having a book to write stuff down in. In my tween and early teen years I keep “diaries.” While most kids would sneak a flashlight under their covers to read Treasure Island (or US Weekly?) I’d make a tent and take an erasable pen to a notebook. Each entry began with the ceremonious “Dear Diary.” (I know. Right? Gag me with a spoon.)
At 16, with a driver’s license pending, college nearing, and hormones raging, I decided daily happenings in my life might become significant enough to start treating my “personal” notebooks more seriously.
Good-bye, diary. Hello journal.
Good-bye faux letters that droned on and on about the boy who threw crayons at me in art class. Hello mini faux essays with an imposed sense of the profound… about the boy who studied with me before each calculus exam.
As a scholar, journals accounted for a third of my resources on any research project. At times it was a tedious process — reading the day-to-day accounts and musings of someone with whom I had no direct personal relationship, hoping to find gem of a detail that would prove a revelation in the history of art… Mostly, I learned what my subject liked to eat for breakfast…
In my own life, I make it a habit to sit down and read the pages of my most current journal. In doing so, I mostly discovered that meaningless nonsense is surprisingly revealing — there are life lessons to be gleaned from your unpublished, unedited, unmediated autobiography. Mistakes I made in dealing with challenging situations, mistakes I made in love, right life decisions, questionable life decisions — it was all there, laid out in my own words. My journal was my own handwritten guide to” what not to do.”
There are many reasons to keep a journal — for the sake of having memories, as a place to vent — but perhaps the best reason to have a journal is to have reminder that you’re constantly moving forward.
If it wasn’t for Cam and a re-run of “Modern Family,” I would probably have no idea what a “meet-cute” actually is.
In romantic comedies and Disney movies, the protagonists tend to meet in the most adorable of ways
Cameron Tucker: You know, if this were a romantic comedy, this would be our meet cute. We’d spend the rest of the afternoon drinking wine, eating food, flying a kite… you know, montage-y stuff.
Mitchell: Am I in this movie of yours?
Cam: Yeah. You’re the gay best friend.
Cue laugh track and google search.
From our friends at wikipedia: “A meet-cute is a term sometimes used to describe a situation in film, television, etc. in which a future romantic couple meets for the first time in a way that is considered adorable, entertaining, or amusing.”
Considering how many friends I have who attempted to make a go of it as screen writers, and considering how many romantic comedies I consumed growing up a teenage girl, the fact I have to urban dictionary and wikipedia “meet-cute” feels like a major personal failure.
Then again, this might also be because the romantic comedy that is my life is a narrative based on the “meet-expected” and the “meet-lame.” Thank you, online dating for taking the serendipity out of new love.
My parents have a meet-cute. It involved an elevator and an oddball question that is quintessentially my mother:
“You have a very Dutch nose. Are you Dutch?”
I always imagine my parents’ meeting happened in black and white. This is largely because they met in 1961 and I associate the story with the opening scenes of The Apartment for no real reason other than the elevators.
Meanwhile, the closest thing I have to a meet-cute in my romantic past involves a college reunion. A male friend of a girl friend sauntered up to our table to join us. I turned to her and whispered: “Every girl’s crazy bout a sharp dressed man.”
Like Cam fantasized, we spent the rest of the night drinking wine, eating food and flying a kite. When we walked off campus holding hands to the song I had designated as my wedding song, we decided our meeting was fated.
But life isn’t a romantic comedy. In real life, the wind dies down and kites fall out of the sky, making one think there’s sometimes something to be said for the meet lame and the meet expected.
Sometimes the kite stays up forever. Other times, the wind dies down…
There are some nights I’m pretty sure I’ve gone out looking like this…
I am notoriously dangerous with eye-liner. Don’t hand me anything in liquid form because I’m likely to end up with a comma shaped black blob that transverses an entire side of my face. Despite an otherwise steady hand, pencils have been known to temporarily blind me. I’ll confess, thanks to a single brush and some guidance from the professionals at Laura Mercier, I’ve come a long way over the last two years. But that doesn’t mean there haven’t been nights were I everybody calls me “Left-Eye.”
“No, I didn’t get socked by an artist at a studio visit. I just had a fight with my eye-liner… it won.”
I started wearing makeup in the 8th grade. Like most adolescent females, hormones were kicking in and wreaking havoc with my complexion. Boys no longer had cooties. We had graduated out of training bras (this is where I’m clearly dating myself, because I’m pretty sure Pink makes padded bras for 10 year-olds nowadays). We were finding our identities and expressing them in outlandish nail polish shades while learning the subtle benefits of foundation and mascara.
This a caboodle, the girl’s equivalent of a tacklebox
It was the 90s, and the caboodle was the girl’s equivalent of a tackle box — a feminine-toned, and often glittered, plastic case with little trays that folded out and mirrors that popped up. We filled it with all the tools of our trade: foundation, loose powder, eyeliner in every shade under the rainbow, eye shadow tones that complimented or clashed with our eye color, Tinkerbell brand blush, and lip glosses that tasted like cotton candy. We’d tote the box to sleep overs. A mini version lived in our lockers.
A few make-up consultations later and armed with lessons gleamed from manuals by Bobbie Brown and Kevyn Aucoin, I reconsidered my approach to “putting on my face.” I gave the caboodle the boot.
Here’s where I begin to make a leap into life’s more significant realizations…
There comes a point when you stop experimenting and settle on a signature style. I’m a black eye line and bold lipstick kind of gal
If in our teen years, we’re finding ourselves, in part through colorful experimentation, then eventually, there comes a time when we stop experimenting. Like learning to edit down word counts for papers and grants, we learn what we really need to make an impression. We find our perfect shade, our go-to routine and that’s who we are.
When it comes to bars, I have one simple rule: if its featured drinks are rainbow colored-shot flights, find another bar.
I’d come looking for a drink. I found rainbow shots…
Sitting in the hookah-scented Graffiti Cafe, I saw a list of drinks I hadn’t seen since that college spring break on Playa del Carmen. I folded the menu and walked into a hotel lobby, scanned the scene and wandered into a restaurant. I ordered a bowl of cucumber-yogurt soup and a glass of rakia and made some notes.
I’m in Bulgaria.
Varna, Bulgaria, to be exact — a city perched on the Black Sea with a history older (and more complicated) than any other in the world.
No, seriously. It’s mad old.
Varna is know for it’s spot on the Black Sea, and its 4km-long beach party
But that’s not the point — my interest, for the purpose of this post is in Varna today. Namely, in Varna as the party city of the Black Sea. Where dance clubs and open-air bars stretch for 4 kilometers across the beach, creeping up to the water’s very edge. It’s a city you go to to misbehave — a summer long spring break town where the drinks come in fanciful (unnatural) colors and the music blasts from every door opening (you never really know what euro-pop techno tune is playing in your club; it could just as easily be coming from next door.)
My first morning in Varna started lazily — I rolled out of bed at 9:15 and stumbled to get dressed, still “hungover” from the 2 days of travel it took me to get here. By the time I had my shoelaces properly (and safely) secured, I had 20 minutes left to grab my free Bulgarian breakfast.
Varna is a colorful city, to be sure
I scurried down the hall, trying to ignore the South African-sounding man standing in nothing but his skivvies seeking direction on how to work his TV remote from the poor receptionist who had obviously accepted his demand for help unaware of what was awaiting him.
The hotel, an art nouveau gem, was reportedly full the night before, but joining us for yogurt and coffee were only a group of 50-something-ish British gents. Mr. Boxer Briefs joined them a few moments later.
“They’re Americans,” I heard one of them say, when they noticed I was laughing at their request for “brown bread” (meaning properly-toasted white toast).
“Yes, we are. I’m sorry.”
I learned the group of 10 burly British gents were on a weekend-long holiday. A sort of “let’s pick somewhere in the world to go and go” adventure.
The exchange was short. I immediately began to fill in the missing pieces and write the screenplay…
I imagine it to be a sort of Hangover, Britainized, with a cast that includs Colin Firth, Hugh Grant and Ciarán Hinds (expected, I know, but easy sell). They come to Varna hoping for a taste of the Orient and the semi debauched, only to find they’ve hit it at the start of the off-season. Very few people understand any English. The only open bar on the beach is an underground gay dance club. The city that doesn’t have a wet season is all of a sudden hit with a weekend long monsoon. They go go-karting and discover the go-karts are decommissioned Cold War era military vehicles you push.
Hilarity ensues. They rediscover themselves. etc.
In short, it’s kinda like a Hangover meets Saw, but without the blood and sudden toddler cast member.
Obviously, I still need to flush this whole thing out, but if there’s one thing I have figured out it’s that Varna is a perfect backdrop for a Hugh Grant movie. Trust me. I’ll see you at the Golden Globes…
They Told Me to Find a Rich Husband 