Tag Archives: life

Season Three, Episode Three: That Goddamn Metaphorical Horse

Posted in Comedy, Humor, Random, Relationships, Society, Uncategorized by

So I’m going to take a moment to state the obvious.

Why thank you, Captain.

Why thank you, Captain.

Breaking up sucks.  A lot.

I mean…there’s a lot of shit that happens in a relationship that is pretty wonderful.  You become best friends with your partner.  You guys have cute moments together.  You can do stupid stuff around them and know that they don’t find you weird because they think you are pretty.  And hey, that’s nice.  There’s a certain amount of comfort in a relationship.  You know their quirks and even though you think it’s weird that they turn the water off when they brush their teeth and that they like to wear Crocs with socks, you don’t judge them because they could easily judge you pretty hardcore for snorting when you laugh really hard and that squirrels freak you out more than the average person.  You don’t feel the need to wear pants or mascara when you are with them.  You’re comfortable.  And that’s nice.

It’s nice.

But then you break up, and…it’s not nice.  It’s pretty fucking horrendous.  You go from loving that person and wanting to spend every moment with them to hating their guts and hoping they fall off a cliff, Mayan sacrifice style.  One person generally doesn’t really care about the way things ended, and the other person finds themselves underneath a desk, crying and drinking from a bottle of merlot.

crying under desk

And then comes the whole grieving and healing process, which inevitably leads to the moving on part.  One of you typically moves on faster than the other, spurring the other one (who hates relationships and love and dating in general at the moment because their heart has been ripped out and soaked in cheap wine) to jump on the metaphorical horse.

Fuck.  That.  Horse.

I don’t particularly like horses anyway.  I rode one once at Girl Scout camp, and I was not a fan of the experience.  They are okay if I don’t have to climb up on one and ride it.  But anyway…jumping on the metaphorical horse.  It sucks.  That person feels like they have to half ass their attempt just enough so that people don’t think that they are crazy and just enough to convince themselves that they aren’t going to grow old alone and die without anyone finding their body for weeks.  So you kind of dip your foot in the shallow end of the kiddie pool.  Kind of like how I wanted said horse to be a Shetland pony and was promptly told that no, the metaphorical horse of dating is a noble steed.  (I can’t exactly jump up on a noble steed seeing as I’m only 5’1″.  Maybe I can climb up if someone puts a step stool next to it.)  You do what you have to do to shut people up.  And hey, maybe you make it just weird enough so that they will quit bugging you to start dating.

Because you aren’t ready and you want to stay under that desk and cry a little bit longer, damn it.

So I tried, just to shut everyone up.  I started actually doing my makeup when I went to work and smiled, because nothing makes you look like you are back on the market like eyeliner and a smile.  Jesus.  I tilted my head and laughed at the appropriate moments in conversations with attractive men.  But I’m not particularly feeling it.  So I have my moments of angst circa 1997 Dawson’s Creek and pout and feel sad because damn it, I’m sad.  I’m allowed to be sad.  But society wants me to get over it and there are more fish in the sea and you’re gonna make it after all because that’s life.  I made an eHarmony profile.  I feel embarrassed.  Maybe there isn’t a social stigma attached to online dating, but I still feel like it’s for the weird lame people who can’t carry on a face to face conversation with a person.

I hate it.  I suck at dating to begin with, I hate the whole process and feel incredibly awkward–I would much rather just bypass that shit and go right to being in a relationship, but it doesn’t work that way.  I discovered that I am too shallow for online dating.  I want a man with a pretty face.  I met a guy and it seemed okay, we talked on the site’s messenger thing, but he suddenly stopped talking and I am past that point in my life where I am going to try to pursue a guy who will not initiate conversation.  I’m 28.  I’m too old for that shit.  So I brushed it off and had a moment of oh my god I’m going to die alone and the mailman will find my body.  I went out for my birthday.  Seized the night and all that glamorous glitter.  I posted a picture of myself from my soiree on eHarmony just because I wanted to see if there are any hot guys on there, and the non-initiater of conversations looked at my picture (because their news feed is kind of on the creepy stalker side and shows you whenever they go to your page).  I don’t blame him.  I looked good.  Much like Ron Burgundy in a suit.

I was rocking that dress :)

I was rocking that dress 🙂

So I was like well okay, maybe I’ll give this guy another go.  We started chatting it up again and exchanged numbers and started texting.  It was all good for a few days until he did the same thing as before.  I refuse to chase another man.  Nope.  So I have decided that I am going to be single and wallow until I’m damn good and ready.  Screw you society and your norms.  I will eat Reese’s cups and read Girls in White Dresses over and over until I’ve had enough of witty chick lit and peanut butter paired with milk chocolate.  Judge away.  I don’t care.

And as for that stupid horse?  I think I’ll walk.

Season Three, Episode Two: Auld Lang Syne

Posted in Relationships, Uncategorized, Writing by

I have been trying to figure out for weeks a suitable post to tie up all the frayed and broken ends of 2013 and usher in 2014, but I have had the worst case of writer’s block.

I blame it on 2013 itself.

It was, for the most part, a terrible year. My boyfriend finally moved here, which I thought would be awesome and fantastic, something I wanted for an entire year…but we broke up. He’s currently working things out with his ex-wife, and I’m still nursing a broken heart and how I must be Good Luck Chuck for divorced guys (this is the second time this has happened to me…the first was with my son’s dad). I’ve been having a hard time healing. I’m not going to go into it.

My son had a rough year too. We discovered he has ADHD and quite possibly dyslexia. Add that to the stress of the previous paragraph…and I think I’m struggling with a touch of depression. I won’t go into specifics, but yeah…I think I have depression. Just a little.

Hence the writer’s block. But I came upon this Tweet from Khloé Kardashian, not particularly known as being a wellspring of philosophical knowledge, and it was perfect.

20140102-235607.jpg

I know that based on the hashtags, she was referring to fitness, but to me…it sums up everything. 2013 was garbage. I’m a vastly different person than I was in 2012. Broken. Cried out. Still in love with someone who doesn’t want me…Still reeling from losing someone who was my best friend and the love of my life. But 2014 shows I’m a slightly different person than 2013 left me. Am I still ravaged? Definitely. But I’m hopeful. My heart will heal eventually, even though I don’t want it to. I don’t want to say goodbye, but I have to. I have to swallow the pain and unanswered questions and bury the love that I have because it’s over. Unfortunately. And I’m sure I’ll go through this all over again. And again. And each time it will hurt just as bad as the last because life doesn’t get easier…you just get stronger. And I guess that’s life.

So fuck you, 2013.

2014…please just be better.

Season Two, Episode Eight: Untitled Beauty

20130627-005921.jpg

It’s been two months since I last posted. I’m finally kind of all settled into my house, I’m liking this living on my own thing…I have been neglectful of this blog because I keep forgetting to buy a modem so I can get Internet. Life has settled into a pleasant enough routine, although there are some parts I wish I could change. I’m attempting to change some of it now, but things have a way of happening on their time and not mine.

The picture I took of this rose reminds me that even in the most vicious of rainstorms, there is beauty.

Season Two, Episode Five: Of Quarterlife Crises and New Starts

Posted in Random, Society, Uncategorized, Writing by

I turned 27 this past December.  At the end of the year, I will be 28.

And in 2015, I will be 30.

I know it sounds stupid, but the thought of turning 30 never really was one that I entertained myself with.  I was always busy with the hopes and dreams that I had in my teens and early twenties, always thinking of where I would be by 30.  It seemed like a magical age that I’d reach in what seemed like decades–at 17, 30 seemed like light years away.  I had so many things that I wanted to do and see “when I grew up”…I’ll share a few with you:

*Graduate from college

*Have a fabulous career where I make lots of money and am happy

*Become a singer on the side and become famous

*Fall in love with someone who loves me for me

*Get married and stay married

*Have kids

*Travel the world

*Move to NYC and live a wonderfully trendy and fabulous life that everyone back in Cleveland would be envious of

*Write a novel and get it published and have it sell very successfully…and hopefully write a few more that have the same success

*Buy a beautiful house to live in with my husband and kids

*Be happy and content

High school Me, the end of sophomore year, 2002.

High school Me, the end of sophomore year, 2002.

I guess I’ve attained a few of those things, but for the most part I have not.  I’m not married.  I don’t live in NYC.  I rent a house with my beautiful and funny son.  I’ve traveled to a few places, but certainly not the world–more or less the eastern half of the United States and a bit of Canada.  I have never finished a single story I have written, so I very well haven’t had a novel published.  I haven’t even finished my freshman year of college…or become a famous singer.  I suppose I have a lot of time to achieve these goals and dreams, but all this dreaming of the future all these years reminds me of a quote from one of my favorite novels, Looking for Alaska:

“Jesus, I’m not going to be one of those people who sits around talking about what they’re gonna do.  I’m just going to do it.  Imagining the future is a kind of nostalgia…You spend your whole life stuck in the labyrinth, thinking about how you’ll escape it one day, and how awesome it will be, and imagining that future keeps you going, but you never do it.  You just use the future to escape the present.”

Alaska was so right.  You spend all of your teenage years dreaming about what you’re going to do after high school, and then you spend your college years thinking about what you are going to do after college…and then when plans don’t go the way you wanted them to, you think up a new future to try to strive toward, but you actually never achieve all the things you’ve planned.  You spend so much time dreaming about what you are going to do/be when you grow up that when you actually grow up, all your expectations don’t get met the way you planned and your dream life is yanked out from under you.  I think that usually you start to realize that life isn’t going to be everything you hoped when you are in your mid-twenties.  You aren’t going to achieve all your dreams and holy shit, you’re an actual fucking adult.  It’s weird to think of myself as an adult.  I’ve never really thought about that until recently.  I mean…I know that I’m an adult.  I became a legal adult at 18.  But in the actual physical/mental sense…it’s weird.

I guess I was forced to become an adult when I had Nicky at 19, but even though I worked full time to support him as a single mom, I wasn’t an actual real adult, in the sense of the word.  I still lived at home, still relied on my parents for a ton of things.  But one could also argue that living on your own doesn’t make you an adult either.  I think it’s just the sum of the parts that you experience over time that become the whole…like the heartache and the growing pains and the separation anxiety and the ripping off of the metaphorical Band-Aid of Life and the new beginnings and the jobs you love and the jobs you hate and the friends you make and the ones you leave behind and falling in love and just every little thing that you go through that shapes you into who you are that makes you an adult.  You are constantly always growing up.  I think that becoming an adult is a life-long, ever-changing process–you are never fully “grown up”.  You never fully stop experiencing life until the day you die.

I’ve also realized that I am growing older.  I’m aging.  I will one day die.  It’s a scary thing to think of…it’s scary to think that this body that has carried me through 27 years of bumps and scrapes and fabulous memories is slowly falling apart.  I looked in the mirror the other day and noticed that I am beginning to get fine lines under my eyes.  I have a sunspot from my many years of disregarding the use of sunscreen as a youth…I always read about sun damage as a teenager and wasn’t worried because that happened to “old people”.  Well, Stupid Teenage Lashawn, I am not old and I’ve had this stupid sunspot since I was 25.  I’ve been trying to lighten it with over the counter stuff, but I think I will eventually get Fraxel to remove it.  I’m starting to pay for the sins that I made out of ignorance as a teenager.  I’m getting a few gray hairs.  I get tired more easily than I did when I was 17.  I’m beginning to realize that I am not invincible, I am not immortal.  I don’t get a “do over”.  There is no reset button.  I can’t rewind back and try to change the things I did, the mistakes I made.  I’m realizing that my parents are getting older.  My dad will be 70 next year, my mom 50.  They won’t be around forever.  It’s terrifying to think of them growing old.  I can’t imagine them dying, and I know that it is a reality that I will face in the next quarter century, possibly sooner.  There’s nothing I can do to stop any of this from happening.  I can’t press pause and slow life down.  Time goes forward, constantly pressing onward, with or without me.

But even through all of the fears and where the hell am I going and what the hell am I doing, there is happiness.  My son is growing up.  We live on our own.  I’ve fallen on my face and gotten back up again.  I’ve had my heart broken by men who didn’t deserve it, and it made me stronger.  I’ve felt incredibly lonely.  I’ve been surrounded by my family.  I have loved with all my heart and made friends with people who I truly care about.  I have a job I enjoy.  I am happy with my small successes.  I am still hopeful that I will make some kind of positive impact on the world, even if it is just a small one.

But I still don’t know what I want or where exactly I’m going or what I intend to do with the rest of my life.  I don’t have any of the answers.  Ask me again when I’m 30.  Maybe I’ll have an idea then.

“I rent a room and I fill the spaces with / Wood in places to make it feel like home / But all I feel’s alone / It might be a quarter life crisis / Or just the stirring in my soul / Either way I wonder sometimes / About the outcome / Of a still verdictless life

Am I living it right? / Am I living it right? / Am I living it right? / Why, why, Georgia, why?”

                                                                                                          –“Why Georgia”, John Mayer

Season One, Episode Twenty-One: Pursuing That Next Chapter

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“You can’t start the next chapter of your life if you keep re-reading the last one.”

How true.  I’ve been through a tumult of changes over the past few weeks that I hope will lead to a better, brighter Lashawn.  I’m feeling pretty introspective and energized 🙂

First off, I lost my job Saturday.  It is what it is, I’m not going to go into specifics as to who, what, when, where, why, and/or how.  I just think it’s pretty cathartic to be gone from the dealership because I was honestly miserable there and I feel so much better now that I’m, for lack of a better description, free.  I feel amazing.  I’m sure I really shouldn’t, since I no longer have a regular paycheck or whatever, but I feel like the weight of the world has been lifted off my shoulders.  It’s been a long time since I felt legitimately happy…no more migraines, no more popping ibuprofen just to get through my work day, no more sick feeling in my stomach…It’s great.  I already applied for unemployment and filed my taxes, so I’ll be okay financially for a while.

Which leads me to another broken string no longer holding me down to a miserable world.

Another reason I’m not exactly freaking out about my current lack of employment is that I sorta have something to fall back on.  They’re opening a casino here in Cleveland in a few months, and I applied to be a dealer…I made it through my interview and orientation, and now I’m in the gaming academy to become a blackjack dealer.  It’s a pretty cool process, and I’ve learned a lot since early December and have met some really awesome people along the way.  I did my audition last night, and apart from a few minor snags, I don’t see myself not doing well.  I find out how I did tomorrow, and I’m slightly nervous, but I figure that if this doesn’t work out, I’ll figure something else out.  I think this job would open so many doors for me, and it will honestly be the start of a better life for me and Nicky.

I’m also going to take this newfound free time and use it to spend with Nicky and my friends and a few of those amazing people that I’ve met along the way down the road less travelled.  I also think I’m going to try to attempt some of the things that I wanted to do while I was working at the dealership, but was unable to do due to my work schedule.  You can’t really accomplish too much when you work in the middle of the day during the week and all day on the weekends with one day off.  It was rough, so I’m gonna view this as a vacation of sorts and enjoy myself!