Wine x Pizza Boxes
I hope I never give the impression that my Single Gal life is always painless and easy. I guarantee it is not. Whether you date and mate for thrills or for forever, you will always run into moments that throw you off your game. Moments that find you at your laptop on a Saturday night with a box of pizza and a six pack of Woodchuck Hard Cider contemplating the weight of your decisions.
Moments much like the one I’m having right now.
When you reside in those grey spaces between like and lust it’s important to pay attention to the walls around you. You never know when small scribbles that will eventually be large, red-painted capital letters will start to show up. Little indications that it may be time for you to take your chips off the table before you end up broke.
When you do what I do, you’re not in the game to go for broke. If you were, you’d get a boyfriend.
Here’s the ugly part. The part that all the tweets and relationship blogs warn you about. See? Told you that ambiguous shit never works out. Had you just stopped trying to be hard all the time and opened your heart to someone, you wouldn’t be feeling this…this unidentifiable whatever that has you scarfing down a small bacon and mushroom pizza and chugging alcohol.
If you’d just get your shit together and be a girl…
My methods for coping with silent, indirect rejection have been normal single girl fare. I’ve been holed up in my apartment distracting myself with television. Thursday night I watched Scandal and wanted nothing more than to suffer the Olivia Pope way: quietly, with wine and my couch. I didn’t want to spin it. Didn’t want to remind myself that I’d gotten exactly what I signed up for. I just wanted to feel shitty about it for a minute. That’s the beauty in my Zen practice. It’s easier to admit when things suck because I’ve learned that feelings, like everything else, are impermanent. Sucky today doesn’t mean sucky forever. Just sucky right now.
What was bugging me was that I couldn’t figure out why I was angry or sad or whatever odd mix of both.
Logically, there was no future in the situation and I knew that, despite how often all my girls gushed at seeing me enjoy myself and tried to fill my head with possibilities of Happily Ever After. So what was this? A broken heart? Mourning the loss of quality penis? Had I secretly wanted more and just lied to myself the whole time?
The answer came to me while I drove down Detroit Avenue in search of takeout for the night.
I have a bruised ego.
Cuz like…regardless of my commitment-phobias, I’m so cute and witty and charismatic and cool and decent in bed and all around dazzling that my reluctance to settle down shouldn’t have mattered. How dare anyone not wanna gamble their hearts for all this awesomeness?
How dare anyone decide they don’t want me anymore?
So when I walked into Hungry Howie’s Pizza and found two chunky white men behind the counter dancing to Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive,” I had to laugh. The Universe was telling me to chill out. A bruised ego? I wouldn’t even need my trusty Amy Winehouse playlist to get over that.
I’m writing this because see? I’m not an unfeeling ice queen. I haven’t figured out some magical method to avoid feeling crappy at the hands of dealing with a man.
I’ve just found a brand of pain I can live with.
