Yes or No. There is no Maybe.

“How do you know when the yes is coming?”

This question was posed by the lovely Addison Montgomery on the most recent episode of Private Practice. At first I just wanted to kill her, because seriously, who would turn her down?

But for us mere mortals left here in the wake of what Hollywood has created, we can ask, “How do you know?”

Is it just human nature to say no? And how do you know when someone means it? Rape advocates tell us all, “No means no.” which in the case of that, yes true. Okay. But what about the more complex questions when it comes to relationships?

I know that I’ve told people no, and I’ve really meant it. Either I just wasn’t attracted to them, or they had cut up a screen with a box cutter a week before Prom (true story, by the way) but in any case, it was like rape. No means no.

But sometimes it’s not so cut and dry. Sometimes it’s for the greater good. Or something that even I don’t know why I’m saying no. Which seems so much easier.

But hearing no from someone else, that’s the most heartbreaking thing in the world. Unrequited love is why the Lifetime Movie Network can stay afloat. Once, years ago must be at least 8 years by now, I asked my cousin what the most attractive quality was in a woman. He pondered for a minute, and I was expecting something like brains or loyalty or something, and instead his answer was “persistence.”

Was his answer just setting me up to fail? But with that, I am persistent. Maybe too much so. I always tell myself that the right guy won’t mind that I don’t let up. In fact, it’ll be the thing he likes about me the most. But I have to fight my way through a lot of dragons first.

And the real question is, how do you know the yes is coming? When do you give up on someone? When can you know that someone’s answer for saying no is concrete or are they just pretending? Too scared, or too something to say yes?

We all need to learn to say what we mean. If you mean no, then you mean no. People move on. They eat ice cream, or go running or kill themselves. Something that eventually makes it go away. But it’s the maybe. Or the no that doesn’t have any kind of reason behind it that drags on.

If you think for even a second that it might be yes, then you should go for it. Tell that person. Because the only thing that keeps truckers awake is cocaine. And sooner or later, they’re going to OD and hit you head on, effectively ending your life. Do you really want to be killed by a trucker and not ever have said yes?

The Ubiquitous Man- A Love Story

While we were growing up and watching Wiley Coyote chase the Road Runner and then get an anvil dropped on his head, I’m not sure why we weren’t more confused. What even was a Road Runner? I’ve never seen one. I’ve also never seen an anvil. We don’t have many blacksmiths in suburbia.

Yet we nodded along, laughing like we knew what was going on. But when we toured a historic town and saw a real anvil, did we recognize it from all those cartoons? If you were out west, would you recognize a roadrunner?

It’s the same with the men of Chick flicks. They’re a dime a dozen. Every one has an equation. There is very little differentiation between them. They’re all impulsive, loving, passionate, and ‘different’. They are set-apart men.

And like we always picture the purple plumage on the roadrunner, we always think of set-apart dreamers when we look for men.

Men don’t realize we’ve been waiting all our lives for them. It’s no one’s fault but Hollywood. No story is complete without a love story in it. The Hunger Games couldn’t only be about 24 children fighting to the death and an uprising, there had to be a love triangle. Star Wars couldn’t only be about light vs. dark, Han Solo and Princess Leia had to fall in love. Hollywood tells us that as great as our story is, it won’t end happily ever after unless we’ve found a partner.

So we wait. We wait for the man that Hollywood says is everywhere.  So ubiquitous that they have a movie released every Friday. Yet we can’t seem to find them anywhere. No wonder men think we’re crazy.

This is why women wear Yoga pants with thongs and fitted tops when we work out, our sleek hair pulled back into ponytails with completely dysfunctional yet stylish headbands. The perfect man could be anywhere, even at the gym.

We dream that someday we will have someone to break up our morning jog. That the ubiquitous man will be waiting at a halfway point with a cup of coffee. So we dress for them. Who knows when one might crop up? We stare straight ahead, hawk-eyed, not wanting to miss them.

We wear bras and cute clothes to bed. Because how often does the Hollywood ubiquitous man knock on the window in the middle of the night? We wouldn’t want to be caught with our glasses on and out retainers in. So we wait, on silk bed sheets with our hair down, eyes closed, but listening…

We’re ready at all times because there never is a set up. The ubiquitous man always comes by serendipity.

So we wait. Dreaming that Hollywood wasn’t lying this time, that the right adjective to describe the leading man really is ubiquitous, that they’re everywhere and we’ll recognize them when we see them.  

But sometimes the roadrunner doesn’t have the fantastic plumage. Sometimes they are just brown and dusty and we don’t recognize them. And sometimes the man isn’t waiting for you halfway or knocking on your window for a nighttime stroll. Sometimes he’s just getting his mail. Or sleeping while we wait. You’re supposed to be everywhere, did you get lost along the way?

Yet even though we know the roadrunner is brown, not purple and even though we know that not all of you will be searching for us, we still keep our heads up, hoping you’re just lost. Our eyes are focused forward, looking for your plumage. 

People Are People and Sometimes It Doesn't Work Out.

Sometimes people let you down.

And it’s time that we let them go.

As a packrat, I have so many things that I just don’t need. My room in Syracuse is littered with things that I just can’t throw away. T shirts from every event I’ve ever been to that I won’t even wear to the gym, triple copies of every article I’ve ever published just in case a job interview wants hard copies and plenty of pictures that star someone’s wrist or a blurred action shot that I’m not even sure why they were developed.

I hold onto things because I don’t ever want to forget.

But sometimes you need to forget.  Sometimes friends forget the inside jokes you had, or your secret handshakes. Sometimes first loves get married, and that effectively ends a chapter in your book. Maybe it was one that you had thought closed long ago, but really it wasn’t over until the epilogue.

But sometimes it’s a present thing.

There are too many negative forces in the world, especially for someone like me. As a dreamer, my thoughts wander to every thing that is possible. I want to visit every country in the whole entire world. I know there are over 200 of them, but I still want to. Plenty of people have raised their eyebrows, lips pursed around their judgment.

Going out to clubs, people don’t need to tell me that I’m not the ideal specimen for a scene like that. When men’s eyes graze over me onto the next girl at the bar, it takes me back to middle school, when I used to grease my hair, or leave my shoes untied, desperately trying to fit in, finding I just stuck out more.

Too many people say no, shake their heads and get frustrated with the way I live my life. I can’t say that they don’t effect me. I can’t say that I study the LSATs because I want to be a lawyer. Or that I work out because it makes me feel good. But it makes them more comfortable, being able to say I’m a work in progress. 

Which I am. But not for them.

There’s no room for poison in our lives. No room for haters, as my students would tell you.

Trim the fat in your life. Find your thesis statement, and live by it. Examine your relationships. What do they add?

People think I have so few friends because I have no choice.

Please.

Who wouldn’t want to be my friend?

I don’t have very many because I don’t want them. I would rather have a few friends who support and love me and whom I know completely. I’m not overwhelmingly fond of surprises. I like to know people as well as I can. It makes winning Apples to Apples so much easier.

Sometimes that means letting people go, even ones you never thought you would.

I have to hope that it’s the right thing to do, even if all I want to do as you’re walking away is scream for you to come back.

A cry that never emerges is somewhere inside you too, one that you thought was for me, but turns out isn’t. Turns out I didn’t matter as much as you thought either.

We will someday, just not to each other. 

I'm Not A Girl, Not Yet A Woman

I’m not a girl, not yet a woman.

In theory, just a Britney Spears song. One that was premiered at the end of a roughly written, yet a guilty pleasure of a movie, which chronicles the road trip to California we all hope to take someday.

While some may scoff at Britney, she’s a rock. The ultimate comeback kid and one of the few Hollywood Divas who can rock being bald. After her brief aneurysm that can also be referred to as Kevin Federline, she managed to pull herself out of the coma that threatens all of us after a marriage ends. Or any relationship for that matter.

But the most complex relationship that she pinpoints is the internal struggle of females. And she does it simply- I’m not a girl, not yet a woman.

One could argue that a girl becomes a woman when she turns 18. That’s how the government views them anyway. All it takes is the tick of a clock to take me from adolescent to adult.

However, the only change I felt on my 18^th birthday was massive discomfort as my mother dragged me to an adult bookstore to celebrate “because we could.” I guess it could have been worse. She could have made me fight for my country or get married. Anyway, basically just another day.

But I’m 21 now, a senior in college and have successfully lived in 3 different cities. I should be a woman by now. I can keep myself alive, cook a meal, vote and shoot whiskey (legally).

Yet, why is it that I always feel like I’m still a teenager? That when I have to make an appointment for myself or wear ‘business casual’ attire I feel like a little girl playing dress-up?

Maybe it’s my complete lack of direction. Sometimes I feel like I have my words and nowhere to put them. Perhaps all it would take is a call from the New York Times for me to feel like I’m a woman. Career direction, financial stability, all things that my parents can discuss in their respective operating rooms during the rudimentary ‘let’s see whose kid wins today’ talk.

Maybe it’s being single. This I feel like should be zapped off because any psychiatrist worth their salt will tell you that how others view you isn’t important. Yet, there’s no time when a woman feels more powerful that when a man finds them beautiful. This is the secret no one knows, no men anyway. The one we women keep a secret, hidden away so no one can get to it. Maybe a man makes a woman, no matter how much we don’t want to admit it.

Or is it something else?

Is it okay that I sometimes feel like a girl? In discussions of life and love with my family, I constantly hear “you’re an adult now” or “you can make your own decisions, after all you’re 21.”

 Ironically, it’s the times that they say this that I feel the youngest of all. Like I may as well be sucking my thumb while we discuss my tuition bill or internship opportunities.

Maybe it’s forever a state of being, this in-between stage. Maybe girls never fully reach womanhood.

Men can hold on to their childhood abandon in the love they give to their favorite sports teams and my mother and her friends became 16 again when Davy Jones died.

Maybe limbo is where we all live forever.

I just hope the taxes are reasonable. 

The Zombie of Emotion

As another unsuccessful night at the bars draw to a close, I remain unconvinced that people really meet at them. At least not for more than a few hours.

Really, a night out is exhausting. You need to shower. And usually blow dry. Possibly moisturize. And you have to put something together that is cute, shows enough skin to keep people looking, but not enough that you freeze to death because, hello stupid girls at the club with halters and no coat, it’s Chicago. You have to wrestle with Spanx and boots and eyelash curlers and stupid things and that’s even before you get to the club.

You need to find a place, a good one, with good “prospects”. But really, what is a good “prospect”? Basically a guy with hair and a decent shirt who makes eye contact sometimes. That’s the definition of a prospect? In the light of day, that wouldn’t be enough. Ironically, the light of day is when I have on leggings and a hoodie, yet apparently I’m pickiest.

And then there are the girls. There are always girls that are hotter than you, better dancers than you, with shorter skirts than you.  You have to compete with them, trying to dance even with the complex they give you. 

They probably can’t string a sentence together, but it’s a club, who cares?

And if against all odds, you manage to start dancing with a guy, or talking to one, what are they really after? They’re there for the same reason you are. They objectify you, and you spent 2 hours looking good for their objectification. 

You really can’t be mad at them when you aided and abetted them.

It’s times like these when I look at my couple friends nestled at home and think that they are missing out on a social ritual that I really wish I could.

There are the stupid token couple friends that we all have that met at a bar or a club that really ruin things for us. We think that if it worked for them, it can work for us.

Fuck those friends, they’re the exception. Be happy for them, but get over it.

When you end a night of bar hopping at a bar which is having its Salute to Country Night with a desperate soprano singing lead, you wonder if the 5 dollar beer in your hand is worth the stare down of the bearded man across the room. How bad would pizza and a movie have been?

What keeps us trying again and again when every night ends with “never again”?

Hope is the fucking zombie of emotion. It never goes away, no matter how many times it’s killed.

So we keep putting heels on. We keep spending our weekends crammed like sardines in pulsating clubs meeting less than stellar people.

Because who knows? Maybe this time it will be different. 

The Cheese Stands Alone

People really fall in love.

I mean some people. Not me.

Well, I fall in love, but other people don’t. Not with me anyway.

Sometimes I wonder if the whole thing is some cosmological joke. Like people find each other and that’s that. There are 6 billion people on the planet. I may be more right-brained, but even I can figure out that finding someone you can deal with the rest of your life is difficult.

Yet everyone is hurrying around, desperate to grab into someone before graduation. Apparently we have an expiration date, and it comes with tassels and a gown.

North Park offers B.A.’s and some M.A.’s but so many come and leave with their MRS. Degree. Is that really the only thing that you want to take away from college? Can we logically believe that everyone is really right here? I mean, how convenient. You barely had to break a sweat on that one.

I can’t seem to watch a show, or have coffee with a friend or even walk through the library without being blasted with loneliness for all the people around me.

I left for 5 months and everyone paired off.

And the cheese stands alone.

But it’s not even like I’m Brie that people pretend to like even though they get really frustrated with my rind or even a Kraft single that everyone loves but only kids are comfortable enough to admit it.

No, I’m the smelly cheese that sits alone at Whole Foods with a half off sticker on it and still nobody wants to come near it. No one would eat me if they paid them.

Okay, maybe if they got paid and that’s how shows like Fear Factor get made.

And that’s why prostitutes have jobs.

The point is people don’t need a relationship to be happy. So why can’t the world just let me be single and fine with it?

I believe in love. I do. And it changes people. It makes you see every day differently. So does cocaine. And like cocaine, you want everyone else to try it too. That’s why junkies are always friends.

I appreciate that my friends want me to have what they have. I do too.

But I want it at my own time.

I promise that if there’s someone I’m meant to be with, God will help me find him. Because really, he’s the ultimate wingman.

To that end, let’s just be patient.

Let your friends be single. Some weird Frenchman will come and yell “Sacrebleu!” and grab the smelly cheese because they alone appreciate it. There’s someone for everyone.

Even stinky cheeses. 

Dream a Little Dream of Me

I was talking about Facebook friends today, and a friend commented that someone had a lot of them. I was thinking about my list of friends, and if I really am “friends” with so many of them.

I’ve been pretty blessed so far in my life with experience. I have plenty of circles. High school friends. Youth group friends. Hospital friends. 3 summers of camp friends. Job friends. College friends. Disney friends. All people that come and go in your life. All people that show up on your Facebook. People that you like thinking about.

But what controls your thoughts? The most honest time of the day is when you lay your head down and you reflect. First your day, and if you’re a dreamer like me, usually to your life. Is it everything that you wanted it to be?

Facebook is an excellent tool to let someone know that you’re thinking about them. It connects old friends and helps foster new ones. But it’s those relationships that you think about late at night, ones that don’t necessarily make their way onto the web that I find most intriguing. What relationships are so prominent that when you think you’ve long forgotten them, your brain still has their pathways?

My brain goes to people I have long thought I had left. Sometimes a lecture will make me think of a camper I had. One whose face is clear, but name is foggy. A camper who may have not really garnered much of my attention that week. But something about a homeless Dickens orphan will remind me of them. What did my subconscious catch that my over-alert counselor brain missed?

Most recently, an assignment for an education class made me think back to high school. What it was like to be one of three thousand. Does anyone really remember me?

I used to think it was safe to assume not. But in one well placed Episode of the Facts of Life and a jockey, hockey-playing husband to Tootie’s aunt brings me back instantly to a giddy schoolgirl crush on a scissor-kicking, lacrosse-playing gym teacher my last semester of high school. Who would guess he’s who I’m thinking about tonight? I can tell you he doesn’t remember me.

 But I remember him.

We make impressions on people. They may seem like impressions in wet grass, sure that if we looked back, they had filled in with new soil, proving that we never really were there to begin with.

But once in a while, the wind comes, and hardens you there, and it isn’t until someone trips over it and gets jolted that they remember you.

It’s safe to say that someone is thinking about right now. It could be someone as normal as your mother, wondering what else they could possible riddle you with long after they should be in bed. It might be your roommate, wondering why you’re taking so long in the bathroom.

But sometimes, it’s someone you may not remember. Someone that sat in the back of the classroom, waiting for you to walk by them every day, just hoping you’d look at them. But you never did.

 Maybe it was someone you saw drop their books one time, and you can’t get their image out of your head.

Maybe it’s the same person you’re thinking of.

I wonder who’s thinking of me tonight.