Since the New Year began, I’ve been preoccupied with thoughts about love. Last night, inspired by my trusty Sara Bareilles CD and three glasses of wine, I removed my carefully-placed Twitter filter and let out a stream of conscious about how love has presented itself in my life. When I say stream of conscious, I mean I posted every scattered, borderline non-sensical thought in my brain. Some hours later, I found myself awake at an unreasonable hour of the morning, trying to reconcile my ideas on the L-word into a cohesive blog post, but in true Libra fashion, my mind was all over the place.
Then I remembered that it’s Friday. Skinny Bits day. The home of my random, scrambled thoughts. So the theme of today’s Skinny Bits is, you guessed it, L-O-V-E.
The Silent Generation and Disney did us a huge disservice in their depictions of love and relationships as simple boy meets girl and lives happily ever after equations. Love has always been a messy affair. Someone’s grandmother was a woman on the side. Or knew of a woman and family on the side with whom she shared her husand and rode it out with your grandfather anyway. Someone’s grandfather could have “stolen” their grandmother from another man at the onset of their relationship. Our grandparents stuck it out because they had to, and kept quiet about their transgressions for fear of embarassment. We love to wax poetic about love that lasts forever and images of Percy and Louise holding wrinkled hands on the park bench, but we don’t know how many times Louise put Percy out of the house over the years, or how often she entertained the idea of lacing his mashed potatoes with arsenic. We’re so quick to look at certain relationships as “undesirable” with no context of what goes on behind the scenes in relationships we put on a pedestal as “ideal.” When you see two people stare at each other with that light in their eyes, don’t worry about how they found each other or how long it’ll last. Just nod in appreciation of love at work. White knights and princesses were creations of Disney. Real life is more like Grimm’s.
“I’m unusually…hard to hold on to…” I used to feel like singing this line of Sara Bareilles’ “Love Song” was a lie. After all, I clung to CJ like he was a block of ice floating around the Titanic. People saw that and thought, “Wow. She’s really the dedicated type,” but the more I think about it, the more I see that my love for him was an exception and not a rule. I’m actually not easy to hold on to.
When or if love finds me again, it will have to blindsight me. I’m far too stubborn and unorthodox to march willingly into that place.
That’s why I hate the idea of “courting.” I’d rather trip and fall into love while I’m just hanging out, talking shit, and having mind-blowing sex.
I have two friends that are a Charlotte and a Miranda. Word’s still out about where or if I fall into an SATC character, but I will say The Boy was pretty damn Aidan-ish and well, we saw how that went.
As conservative as Charlotte was, she ultimately found her happily ever after with Harry because before she fell in love with him, he put down some of the best sex she’d ever had.
To quote a dear friend of mine, “Dope D— changes lives.” I’m betting Dope D is why Angelina just bought Brad Pitt a waterfall. I can’t imagine mediocre peen inspiring that gift.
Now that I’ve said all of this, perhaps I can get back to my happy single girl agenda of school, writing, going out with friends, and decorating my bachelorette pad.
Fin.
