Category Archives: Step 9

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Not-So-Instant Gratification

At 1 p.m. today, unshowered, covered in dust from our old floors, my clothes spread out about my bed as I haphazardly packed for my trip with Mr. Possibility, I no longer could ignore my hunger pains and decided it was time to eat. I scrounged our kitchen, attempting to put something together that would resemble a meal, but I couldn’t find anything that fit my fancy.

I was still pretty full from an evening with my good friend M, where we drowned ourselves in a family-size $10 bottle of Merlot, a hunk of Brie cheese, cheap (and gross) crackers, oranges, and icing. The icing, though, only came until later, when frosting the cake we made, realizing we had far too much décor and not enough cake. But eating icing with your fingers sounds reallllly good when you’re had far too much wine.

Glad I didn’t have a hangover, I considered ordering in sushi when I saw a carton of eggs. And suddenly, I decided it was time for me to learn how to poach an egg. Since I moved to NYC, I discovered brunch which means I discovered Eggs Benedict and Eggs Florentine, which means I now officially love poached eggs instead of scrambled.

As anyone my age or generation does, I Googled “how to poach an egg” and found an easy step-by-step guide. I looked around to make sure it was the best way and to verify the methods with other sources and then when at it. Within ten minutes, I had two poached eggs, a piece of toast, glass of orange juice and Hulu cued up to watch the ANTM Season 16 I missed.

Excuse me for being overly cliché (isn’t the first time, won’t be the last), but to play off Staples: that was easy. And often, doing what I want to do, learning what I need to learn, and getting to where I want to go is really that simple. Mainly because of Google.

Intrigued by Google’s effect on my life, I went back through my search history and found the following:

“The Vow” movie, was it first a book?

How many calories in Brie cheese?

Cheap vacation packages to Greece

John Edwards indictment

NYC restaurant week 2011

Airline checked baggage dimensions

“My Hearts Will Go On” lyrics

Elephant necklaces on Etsy

Asheville Nature Center

How long do you let a cake cool before frosting?

Women and vitamins

Submissions for New York magazine

Now, these terms are only from the last 24ish hours and don’t include what I’ve searched for at work. Basically, anything I’m interested in, anything I’m curious about, anything that I need to know, or advice I want to read – I use Google. I have a few trusted resources/website that I will always come back to but the majority of my Google traffic is just random. Whatever pops in my head, I type it, find what I need to know, and move on.

It’s instant gratification. And I’m used to it. So why would I think in a relationship, in dating, I’d want anything other than that? Or maybe the better question is, why would I think instant gratification is realistic when you’re in love?

I don’t think it could be any further from the truth, actually. Sure, when you first meet someone or you go on a few dates, the tension is high and the chemistry is brewing. But unlike a computer that does as you say, gives you what you want when you want it, people aren’t like that. You can’t push a button or say a phrase and get the response you want. And maybe, you can change the terms you use or ways to approach the question and see if you’ll craft a new response, but most of the time, you’ll just end up irritating the person who already answered you once.

Too often we search for what we want to hear with guys. We throw out lines, we try to bait them into saying the words we think we need to hear, and we hope they’ll be everything we them to be. But men aren’t Google. They don’t give us a collection of personalities and we pick the one that’s best for us. Instead, they are one person and though they may change, if you can’t accept them and what they think for who and what they are, then you’ll find yourself going in circles, searching and searching for something you’ll never find.

And instant gratification isn’t what it’s cracked up to be in love. Sometimes, actually, the dial-up speed gives you the chance to really get to know someone. And months down the road, you may discover you are satisfied, you are in fact happy, even if it wasn’t gratification at sight.

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They Make Me Feel Alive

Last night in midtown, I sat outside in a flowered cotton summer dress, my hair blowing in the blissful breeze between buildings, captivated by what was in front of me. Over margaritas and burgers, I looked around my table of ten friends laughing and boozing, enjoying the company of the person to their left and their right.

I had met this endearing group in all different ways: K volunteers with me at Ed2010.com but we met at an event for Proactiv. M and I went to college together, though were never good friends until she moved into my old apartment, chasing her dream as I once did. Mr. Hitch and I met because of a feature I wrote on him and because he’s quite charming (as his job requires him to be). K and C, I met through Young Authors Club in Chelsea. A is my new roommate and friend, courtesy of the randomly-helpful Craigslist. K and I met through my co-worker J. And L through MeetUp.

Collectively, the list of our meet-cutes is vast. But all of these women and one man have become part of my life, part of my happiness in the city. And as I watched them get along and enjoy the afternoon, gradually becoming pals and ultimately trading numbers at the end of the night, it occurred to me that maybe, just maybe, New York had finally become what I wanted it to be.

Someone once told me that the friends you make out of college are the family you create for yourself. These people have no obligation to be welcoming to you – you’re not in class together, you’re not in the same sorority, you don’t have mothers who have been best friend for years and years. No, these individuals are people you decide to be friends with, those you purposefully seek out as your companions.

I never imagined when I moved that it would be difficult to make friends. I’m naturally an out-going, bubbly, magnetic person who tends to easily attract like-minded people. I didn’t have trouble transitioning from middle school to high school or from high school to college – I quickly developed new friendships, many of which I still have today. But New York was a different playing field. As I described in an earlier post, there are so many she-fishes in New York’s sea, but for a while, it didn’t seem like any of them were the friends for me.

Much like dating, the way to meet girls who could be your girlfriends is to put yourself out there. I tried joining groups and becoming an active participant in organizations that mattered to me, banking that shared interests would equate to the ability to easily get along and click. Luckily for me, I was right. Within a year or so, I became a leader of two things I cared about and worked up enough gumption to tackle the creepiness that’s sometimes associated with Meetup. (Though after using it, I think it’s a fabulous idea.)

Slowly but surely, I found my footing and more importantly, I found my girlies.

It’s only been until recently – maybe even in that exact Louie Armstrong moment – that I realized that the pieces of New York are starting to fall together. That all I wanted the city to be, apart from jump-starting my career and giving me a coffee shop on every block, it’s starting to be. I actually have a life here, I’m not just a newbie, I’m a girl with actual friends, actual things to do, actual comings-and-goings that people depend on me for.

Love may make the world go ‘round, but too often we confuse love for candlelight and engagement rings, kisses on doorsteps and steamy sex. Some of the best, strongest and most enduring love there is has nothing to do with falling in or making it. Rather, it has everything to do with bonding with a person who at first is just a stranger, but within a few hours of chatting, becomes a friend.

And without those friends, nothing else would work: not our relationships, not our careers, not our minds – because it’s the family we make for ourselves that make us…happy. That make us feel like a city we weren’t born in is home.

New York is a tangled web of buildings and noise, writing is something I’ll do until the day I die, and many men may capture my heart for periods of time, but my friends? They’re the ones who make me feel alive.

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Patience is a Virgin

I really feel sorry for my Facebook friends. Truly. I spam the hell out of my page – with posts from WordPress, Tumblr, and my own random thoughts/updates of the day. I disconnected Twitter because I didn’t want the people I actually know and I’m actually friends with to get completely irritated with me. Now, when I add a new friend that I actually talk to, I warn them of my overly active spewing.

Though it may be a little spam-rific at times, there are posts I have that cultivate conversation. When this happens, I find myself engaged in cyber conversations with people I normally don’t talk to often, but maybe I should. Such a thing happened today when I posted a status that read, “If patience is a virtue, then I’m not very virtuous.” Obviously, I was illustrating my frustration with finding peace in today and in tomorrow. Mr. Possibility and I are leaving for vacation on Monday morning for a week, and though I’m swamped at work, the hours between 9 and 6 can’t pass any slower.

In response to my update, a friend from NC said, ” My friend’s daughter, 8 years old, recently reminded us: ‘Patience is a virgin.’ Upon further reflection, and after several minutes of laughing, we realized that she had, in fact, made a good point, albeit unintentional.” After reading his message, I giggled and instantly liked, thinking about the meaning behind the words, the cryptic message an innocent kid sent without knowing.

A lack of patience only comes after you’ve experienced the many games of waiting. Like waiting to hear back about a job or waiting for a guy to text back after an incredible first date. Or waiting for a promotion or waiting to be approved for a loan, a house, an adoption. Or waiting to meet the man you’ll marry, the baby you’ll have, and the apartment you dream of owning, but don’t. Waiting for the perfect title or for the time when you can pack your bags up and head North.

Once we get to the age where waiting becomes commonplace and ordinary, we stop focusing on patience and instead, try to distract ourselves into some meaningless task until the waiting period is over. But we don’t really grow good at it, we don’t really learn to be peaceful and patient, we just find something to get us through.

Was the little gal right? Is patience only for the virgins? For those of us who have never wanted, never yearned, never hoped for something or someone so deeply that it hurt to wait? And what about when we are broken in, when patience is popped the first time we are put to the test? The first experience where we hold out for something, we cross our fingers, our toes, our legs and even our eyes wishing for something and then at the end, it’s one of those wishes that wasn’t meant to come true? Or a love we tell ourselves wasn’t meant to be?

Once we’ve lost our patience virginity, once we’ve become adults who want and need, instead of having everything provided, how do we learn to practice peace? Master the art of doing without but cherishing what we do have? Instead of being ancy and dissatisfied, twiddling our thumbs in anticipation, forgetting about giving people a break and giving life a chance to take over without controlling every aspect of our existence?

Can we re-virginize ourselves? I mean, I hear it’s a happenin’ trend now.

I don’t think so – but I do think we learn ways to cope. We learn to practice self-help, self-motivation, self-soothing methods that bring us some sort of calm in the in-between times of uncertainty. Because we’ve been there before, because we’ve felt these same things in these same way, we know how to handle it. We become better equipped to balance ourselves and we learn tactics for dealing with our fears and our frustrations. We survive and if we’re among the ones who strive, we eventually thrive. But we’ll never get back to that virgin-like state, that purity, that honestly, that only comes from being blissfully naïve, young and unaffected by the perils of patience.

That’s the thing about any type of virginity you lose, regardless if it’s having sex, living away from home, having a big girl job, having real world bills and rent, being someone’s wife, being accountable for your own actions, and being responsible for someone’s broken heart – once you let go and burst the bubble of oblivion…there’s nowhere to return to. No outlet to restore.

Instead, you just pack up what you have, who you are, what you’ve learned and you go out to face another day, another opportunity to lose another virginity, getting yourself one step closer to being one of those cool, independent, sophisticated adults we always wanted to be.

You know, before we lost our adult virginity and found ourselves laying in bed, feeling like a stranger naked in the company of ourselves, wondering: “Really, this is it? This is what everyone talked about? It’s really not all it’s cracked up to be.”

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I Wanna Be Made

In my sorority, I was known as the girl who was going to New York, who interned at Cosmo and was forced to stand in the back of the rows at recruitment because I couldn’t (and can’t) clap on the off beat. At the college newspaper, I was the bubbly intern turned reporter turned lifestyles editor turned associate editor for content that was never taken as seriously as I wanted to be – mainly because I never projected myself seriously – a lesson I’ve come to cherish in my professional career. In my family, I was the oddball cousin who went against the norms of the rest, who went to college, achieved a degree and headed to chase a dream instead of racing down the aisle and into labor.

And in my circle of friends, from the start of college until right up until…um, now – I was the ambitious, fearless, friendly, and confident gal who could do anything. Anything that is except keep a man. Or as my best friend A’s said after a particularly rough breakup: “Why can’t you ever just make it work with someone? Where do you find these guys?”

I tried, I really did. With each of them – Mr. Fire, Mr. Rebound, Mr. Idea, Mr. Fling, Mr. Smother and the rest – to make it work. I logged overtime in baking, cleaning, sporting sexy lingerie and being readily available to pet or to sex-away worries and stress. And then I was too available. I’d attempt at playing the game I was so good at, the book that I could write now on how to attract a man (and perhaps I will write it) and how to get him to approach you. I’d lure one in, hold him captive in my mystery until the subtlety gave away to reality, and there I was exposed, naked in all forms reasonable (and unreasonable), waiting for him to accept or reject my affections. But I was always something – too good for them, not good enough. Too much to handle or far too needy. Swimingly sweet or a wannabe-New York-bitch with an agenda. I told them what they wanted to hear and then all of the things they didn’t. I was this and that, that and this, over and over again, up until I graduated from college, fled the mountaintops to rooftops, ended things with Mr. Idea, and decided New York would be different.

I could make it work in New York. I would make it work in New York. This was where I was supposed to be – the rest of those dudes, stuck in North Carolina, stuck in finance jobs they consider big money and big deals in Charlotte – they just weren’t for me. They may had walked all over me resentlessly and maybe I had let them on numerous occasions – but not anymore. I was in New York and if I could make it here, I could make it anywhere.

And so dating turned into a challenge. It became a sport I played throughout the week, developing new tricks and tactics along the way. I had a strategy, I figured out my best angle, my best feature. I found ways to cover up flaws and discovered sentences that all men like to hear, regardless if they’re Jewish, Italian, single, married, straight, flamboyant, consistently hard or hard-of-hearing. I mastered The Look, I signed up for free online dates for the weeks when I ran low on a free dinner evenings, and when it all became too much, I’d take a night off with Chinese and Merlot, watching Hulu in my panties.

But then I would start to like one of the many bachelors. I’d grow a little attached, I’d find some element of them attractive and irresistible, and then atlas, I’d have hope that I could make it work with one of them. I could be the woman they wanted me to be, I could be all of those perfect, dreamy qualities they always imagined a woman would be. If they’d let me, I’d take my sweet Southern grandmother’s advice to be a lady in the living room, a chef in the kitchen, and a well, you fill in the blank, in the bedroom. I’d find a way to keep them close to me, to make them fall in love with me and then I’d actually make it. I’d have one of those relationships that works and I wouldn’t be that girl anymore. I wouldn’t be the one of my friends who was scarily always single, yet never lacking a date.

That was all fine and dandy until the men would resist. Until they’d have excuses or let me know they only wanted to sleep with me and if I wasn’t looking for something casual, I should look elsewhere. And so I would, but I always found myself in the same situation again and again, until I had a moment of realization. I tend to have the best of these when I’m walking the streets sans iPod or when I’m in the shower, left to only the device of my rambling thoughts. And that’s where I was, curled up in an old Victorian tub that needed to be scrubbed, my arms wrapped around my legs, crying and wishing I could just make it work. Just once, I begged to some unnamed wise character of the universe. If I could just make it one time, I wouldn’t need a second chance. I’d get it right and that’d be that. I wouldn’t have to feel so disposable, so unwanted and undesirable if I could just make it work. Just once!

Looking up at the running water turning cold, it occurred to me that I wasn’t working. I was functioning, sure. I had a small pool of friends, a job in the industry I adored, a pseudo-studio in the pseudo-Upper West Side.  On paper, my jagged pieces didn’t seem so rough around the edges. I seemed like any semi-adjusted girl who was somewhat new to the city, discovering what she liked and didn’t like, and making the rest up as she goes.

But did I want to make it up? Did I want to have to make something work with someone? Did I want to wear makeup to cover up the dark circles left from late night fights, not late night romps? Did I want to have to work so diligently, so intensely, so patiently to make a relationship last through the beginning stages? Is this what love is made of? If it is – why do I want it so badly?

Or could it be that what I wanted -what I still want – is to make myself? Not go looking for myself in the beds, the eyes and the empty promises of men who are saved and then deleted from my phone? Could I not make anything work with a man because I wasn’t working? Because I wasn’t a whole person, I wasn’t made up into the woman I wanted to be, into the me I knew I was meant to become? Had I allowed love to race to the forefront of my priorities and lost myself somewhere in the laps in between?

I had. And so, without knowing what else to do, I did the one thing that brought me comfort: I wrote. I wrote and wrote, I thought and thought, I chatted with my best friends and I picked the brains of the mentors I trusted the most. And I came up with this blog, a program of freeing myself from love addiction. A gradual way to detox myself…from myself. So that I could start anew, clean and unbothered by my tireless pursuit to make something out of nothing with men who should have never meant anything.

Nine months, nine steps, a new boyfriend (yes, I said it. Let’s move on, now), a well-read blog, a new apartment, a new sense of self, a new group of friends, a few freelancing gigs, one failed attempt at learning Italian, one deceased Beta fish (RIP in Giorgio), and a few lovely trips later – here I am. Not trying to make anything work. Not praying for things to work out perfectly and ideally. Not imagining my life or my love life as detrimental or possible to be classified into classified sections of “dateable” and “non-dateable.” Not hearing A’s words ringing continuously in my head when Mr. Possibility and I have a disagreement.

Nope. I’m just making myself into me. Into the me I want to be at any point, on any given day, without any notice or prerequistices. Because the thing I’d most like to be made into is the best version of me that I can be.