The Real Perks of Being Single

Tonight I came across an article entitled, "20 Things to Love About Being Single". I clicked eagerly, hoping for some encouragement on this new, rocky adventure I embarked on about a month ago, when I broke up for good with my on-and-off-again boyfriend of two years.

The article contained a picture slideshow of the very best things about being single, replete with exclamation points. Not shaving your legs! Having the remote all to yourself! Sleeping in the middle of the bed! Flirting with attractive people and nobody getting jealous! Basically all the bliss of getting to do whatever you want when you want to! 

Let me take a second to clarify what I'm about to say.

These are all great perks, but I mean, 

NONE OF THEM ARE F***ING WORTH IT.

That's right, no amount of remotes, flirting, hairy legs and getting to fart and snore without pissing anyone off is worth the BONE-CRUSHING, SOUL-CORRODING LONELINESS of being all alone when you're really dying to be with someone, have someone to LOVE, someone to hold, someone to cook candlelit dinners with and many, many nights of SEX.

Truthfully, life holds few pleasures greater than those experienced in a happy relationship, and they're mostly limited to adopting orphans or saving kittens from fires, things that can't be experienced on a daily basis. 

The trouble is, I share the fate of every divorced person on the planet facing a deficit of dating potential. When I was first divorced, I made my way through my single male acquaintances like a determined little wrecking ball, only to become so hopeless at the lack of relationship possibility, I wrapped myself around the first man who seemed to have a shred of it, and refused to let go.

Now that I've unwrapped myself, I'm feeling the simultaneous joy and pain of letting go of the wrong relationship. During the loneliest nights, my mind goes back to the time I thought this guy could actually be the One, before I knew what I know now. Wasn't that one of the most blissful times of my life? Newly divorced, my life fallen to pieces, but falling in love with this brand new person who promised to build an entirely new life with me? 

And now I'm single. And I'm slowly but surely starting to enjoy it. It's not because I don't have to be on a diet now, or I can stumble into the house at 4 AM after a night out, or my legs have remained unshaven for two months. It's because being free of the wrong relationship is worth it, no matter how good it felt to be with someone. Being free of the constant questioning of remaining in something that feels wrong, the insecurity of knowing the other person is questioning it too, the all-consuming dread that they'll move on while you're still holding on. 

What are the perks of singleness that really are better than the perks of a relationship? 

For me, it's the freedom to embrace a new journey toward happiness, that doesn't depend on anyone but myself. The freedom to honestly face what I feel, and change the circumstances that need changing without waiting on someone else to work with me. When I walk or drive, I'm no longer stuck in that cluttered mental space, going over the same negative thoughts. I can see the world around me again, and it's looking brighter than it did a month ago. 

Being in love is a beautiful thing. Meeting new people with that all-elusive potential is an exciting thing.

But not having any of that, yet watching the unthinkable happen - watching your powers of self-given happiness growing, and watching your heart and mind evolving into a muscled-up version of themselves - that's also a beautiful, exciting thing. 

Comedy hiatus

Let it be known that this blog is no longer a comedy blog, but will henceforth be a blog about great drama and tragedy.

For lo, I am having PMS, and EVERYTHING IS SO VERY TERRIBLE.

On a sombre night.

Tonight I walked the same neighborhood I've walked approximately 5,000 times in the past five years. My neighborhood, full of the mismatched bungalows and hundred-year-old trees covered in ivy and soaring into the sky. Walking is my escape when I can't bear to be in my house anymore. Things get intense, the stress builds, I put on my shoes, and I walk out that front door and just keep walking.

When I'm by myself, I walk out of loneliness, or to think the thoughts that need open spaces to formulate. When I'm embroiled in a toxic relationship, I walk out of loneliness, desperation, and despair. I'm suffocated, and I have to just get out.

When I got to the end of my street tonight, I quite literally thought about walking and not stopping until I reached the Pacific Ocean. Deciding this was, perhaps, just a tad foolhardy, I contemplated up and leaving - leaving my dogs, books, piano, bed, clothes; packing whatever I could fit in my car and just going. I'd lose everything I owned, but I'd gain freedom from the man in my house, the boyfriend who stole into my life when I was at my most vulnerable last year, and who I can't get rid of even though he causes me incessant, soul-searing unhappiness. Because I'm simply too weak.

I walked down the familiar paths. But unlike the other 5,000 nights, tonight I heard something that caught my ear. Well, technically something caught my eye first: I saw a guy standing under a streetlamp, and he was tall and vaguely good-looking, and I'm still so goddamn vulnerable I was immediately interested. I saw he was talking to a group of people, and I passed by.

But halfway down the street, I thought about going up to this little group of humans and seeing if I could join them. Even if just for a moment. I was so lonely, the yearning to interact with any person at all was intoxicating. But the thought filled me with terror. I'm a social creature - when I'm dolled up, have drunk myself into believing I'm beautiful, and have backup by way of friends. Tonight I was in baggy shorts and a tee, wearing dirty pink sneakers, my hair pulled back to reveal a truly magnificent zit. I don't walk up to strangers in groups, ever - especially not when I look like hell.

So I hovered in a little group of trees, where I could observe unseen. I hovered, and I listened, and that's when the woman's voice caught my ear. "I'm just in pain. So much pain, and my only options bring more pain." She couldn't have said anything more fitting to my life right now. I wanted to plop myself on the steps beside her, take a drag of her cigarette, and commiserate.

I stood there for several minutes, trying to get up the gumption to walk over there and ask what this group was. A year ago, I never would have. But tonight, I found myself walking toward them without even meaning to. I introduced myself and asked what the group was, and exchanged smiles with the tall, vaguely good-looking guy under the streetlamp.

Up close, he was shorter than me and hardly good-looking, but his eyes lit up with kindness as he explained this was a 12-step recovery program for alcoholics, and they'd love for me to come to a meeting and see what the group is about.

As I walked away, I whispered gleefully, "I did it!" This was courage, to me - the ability to walk up to a group of humans, uninvited, when I was smack in the middle of ugliness and pain. It's strange the things that become courageous to us when we've lost everything, and are rebuilding our lives out of the rubble.

The Cougar Problem

Firstly, I'm in my late twenties. TWENTIES. I am not a cougar. I am not old enough to be a cougar, and even if I was, I'm telling you, I would NOT be luring in the jackassian fuckwits in my current dating pool. I'd be going for a sixty-year-old richer-than-God doctor so I could soothe lack of physical attraction with a man too old to be unfaithful, and hefty portions of cash.

So why is it that I went to a house party last night and was suddenly accosted by an 18-year-old child who was so lavish in his attentions, my best friend gave me a look and said, "Rawr"? And he's not the only one. Last summer a 17-year-old senior in highschool decided he was in love with me, followed by a 16-year-old (an effervescent baby! my god!), followed by a variety of similarly-aged not-quite-manchildren who decided to offer themselves up as my very own Ashton Kutcher, 20 Years Earlier.

Let's reflect on that 16-year-old. I was in a musical with him, and he was exactly six inches shorter than me and half my body weight (his CALVES were the SIZE of my ARMS.) Although every pretty, perky teenage girl was in love with him, he chose me. For a solid month he followed me around the dressing room and appeared at key moments backstage, having donned a diminutive wifebeater, one arm leaning against the wall, whispering seductive things as I passed by like, "Gorgeous maturity", "Amazonian goddess", and "My own Meryl Streep". I felt like an involuntary pedophile.

One 17-year-old came to me with a sad story: he was going to college, and he had never kissed an Older Mature Woman. Would I please just give him one kiss so that he might have a story with which to impress all his college friends? So I took him into a utility closet and gave him a peck on the lips. He shivered in excitement, and when we exited the closet, went down to one knee and shouted "Yasss!!"

I didn't hear from him again until spring break, when he came home (to his mommy's house) and sent an influx of Facebook messages saying he just knew an Older Mature Woman could show him a thing or two about sex, and would I be interested in hooking up?

So last night when this latest toddler had me cornered in the hallway, and was waxing poetic about all the ways he would treat a lady, I looked him square in the face and said, very slowly,

" I  a m  t w e n t y - s e v e n.  Y o u  a r e  f i v e . " 

He turned away and offered to at least mow my lawn in exchange for alcohol.

When we left the party, my gay best friend told me the story of his mother and stepfather, who met when she was 30 and he was 18. The stepfather is 45 now and they're still together. They have two children, and he's been faithful the entire time. When asked if he wished he'd found someone younger or spent more time exploring outside the confines of a relationship, he gives a resounding no. He says he knew what he wanted, and when he saw her, she was it.

This was all so romantic I nearly turned right around and told the boy to screw adolescence, I'd give him a chance to take me out. He actually seemed like the best guy I've met in a long time, he makes more than three of my ex-boyfriends, and DAMN that boy has MUSCLES. Mmmm. I mean, guys my age go after much younger, hotter girls all the time, why can't I?

Two words: Mothering Instincts. I'd want to feed him things and send him off to school with lunchables and little notes in his pockets about being mindful of his upbringing.

Confession Thursdays

I've decided to implement something for this blog (originally I typed "blob", which is likely going to become a more apt description for it, once my thoughts and feelings are strewn all over the place)...

Confession Thursdays.

I'm not Catholic. But every Thursday, I'm going to write anything and everything that's on my mind, using no filter. See, normally I think most of us have a filter, which publicly is part of our politeness, but privately gets in the way of things just pouring out and being cleansed, colonic-style, from our brains. Some of us like to write, and some of us like to talk, but all people need a way to get it out there, lest we bottle it all up and implode from the inside out. For me, I'm naturally more the quiet sort, and I attract friends who like to talk so much I usually don't have the opportunity to get my own thoughts out there, so my release is writing.

It becomes funny when particularly verbose friends, who never hear me talk, stumble on some of my writing and realize I'm actually a proverbial chatterbox with an opinion on everything. To them I say, at least I'm not a yapper.

That aside, my first confession:

Yesterday I broke up with my boyfriend. This marks the fourth man I've broken up with in the space of 10 months. See, there was the husband of five years who I decided to divorce (he was cheating), then there was the realllllllly good looking guy who helped me get my mind off the cheating husband (only he was cheating too), then there was the sort-of good looking guy who was supposed to help me get my mind off the cheaters (only he was totally self-obsessed so it didn't work.)

When I had that third break up and found myself suddenly alone for the first time in my entire 20's, I felt like this:

Yep. I felt like a tiny, tiny kitten who fell into a lake and now had huge traumatized eyes and just needed a large human hand to hold it and make it purr again.

So I waited exactly one day post-break up with Guy #3, and then met up with a guy I'd been texting from a dating website. I knew instantly that he was the opposite of everything I wanted, but we got along extremely well. We hung out occasionally, then I went to the West Coast for awhile, and when I got back he was the first person I wanted to see, and after that we never left each other's side. He was my Large Human Hand, and I was his Kitten. I think the thing that catapulted us into the relationship was that we just got along so damn well, and we were so damn lonely. We weren't even that attracted to each other at first, although the attraction grew on my end, simply due to an extraordinary amount of time spent looking at his face, mesmerized that a human male was being kind to me. Our desires, beliefs, and ways of life were 100% polar opposite of each other, so we knew it probably wasn't going to work, but the loneliness propelled us into trying it anyway.

 And then I found out that, like with my ex husband, and the two exes after that, his kindness was all verbal and his actions were really quite cruel. He lied a lot about stuff that was really important to me, like giving up other girls and dating just me. I tried to forgive him, but he lied more, and then it all fell to hell.

Here's my confession. I miss him. I've known him for only seven months, been positive we would have to break up for four, and I've had to make out with three men, one woman, develop a fleeting crush on a small military man and go drunk-dancing countless times with my gay best friend to get him out of my head, and it still hasn't worked. He's lodged firmly there. It's like I ate waaaaay too much dairy for the past few months and now it's all conglomerated together and is sitting there, rotting, putting up little flags on the walls of my intestines and declaring the land conquered. 

At least for that there's laxatives. Women need a Man-Laxative. A Maxative, if you will. Something that, once the initial pleasure is over, and he starts to sit there and rot us from the inside out, we can take to speed up the elimination process. Can someone get on this? Do you have any idea how RICH you'd be?!

Introductory Post

I'm Lizzi. I'm a 20-something female, I have my pretty days and my ugly days, my fat days and my skinny days, I like men but secretly wonder if I could be a lesbian, I'm a playwright, writer, and all around teller of stories, a bit of a transcendentalist, and when slightly intoxicated I like to flail about wildly on a dance floor and pretend I am Very Sexy (although anyone watching would tell you otherwise).

I'm divorced after a 5-year marriage. All told we were together for six years. It was nasty. It was horrible. It was traumatizing. And now I'm starting all over again, and this is the place I'm going to record all the Grand Adventures.