Tag Archives: Media

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The Next Heat Wave

I’ve been eating my words lately. Or rather, sweating them.

Compared to last summer, I was convinced in late June that 2011 would be different. I would barely use my air conditioner, though Mr. Possibility so lovingly installed it for me at the end of May, promising me I would need it sooner than what I thought I would. Let’s hope he doesn’t read this post because I hate to admit when he’s right.

The second I leave the cool air into the 90-degree heat, my body starts to melt. I sweat in places I didn’t know I could sweat and I can feel droplets of stickiness slide down me continuously. The ten blocks I would have walked now seem like 20 and I decide to take the train instead. I not-so-smoothly double-back in front of stores with their industrial size AC units blaring because that shot of cool air gives even a powerful orgasm a run for it’s power. Anything in my purse – from my NY Mag to copies of my resume – serve as a makeshift fan, and though it may make me rather ridiculous and cheesy, I’ve considered getting one of those battery-operated on-the-go fans to lower my body temperature while waiting for the train. My clothes can’t come off faster once I reach the frigidness of my room in my Upper West apartment, and I hope the tenants who can see into my windows don’t mind me standing butt naked, still wearing my heels, downing water, and worshiping my air conditioning. I still stand proud and hold true to the fact that it was the best $140 investment of my life.

With a few weeks left in July and just a handful of months until my birthday, I can feel this blog’s expiration date coming to a close. As I move to Step 10, sweaty and uncertain, a few pounds lighter, a million lessons stronger, one boyfriend and a dozen of wonderful new best friends richer, and one bank account that’s dwindling as it should smack-dab in the middle of my 20’s, I can’t help but think about what’s next. What comes after Confessions of a Love Addict? I’ve already decided the journey to loving oneself is never-ending, so though this blog and it’s daily writing commitment will end, the commitment I’ve made to myself and to my life only grows. I only tighten my grip so I can loosen the boundaries I’ve had on myself for so long. I vow to love myself without regard to wedding bands, love songs and sentiments, or any Mr. Possibility that may enrich (and beautifully complicate) my life.

What’s the next heat wave I’ll experience? What will be the next turning point? The last one found me naked in a Victorian tub, crying about a guy who was never mine, and realizing I was acting far more insecure than I really was and letting a parade of penises steer my life instead of claiming myself as a woman, as a person. And so this blog was born and this incredible journey that’s taken me to many places, most of which I never anticipated.

So what words will sweat out of me next? Where do you go after you decide to love yourself? To accept yourself? To always ask for more and demand the best – out of your friends, your love, and yourself?

Tell me readers – what’s next for Love Addict?

Daily Gratitude: I’m thankful for this blog, even if writing every single day sometimes gets the best of me. 

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Things Like This Happen

When you lose a piece of yourself because you gave it away too easily. When you lose a job your heart wasn’t in and then maybe one you put your heart into too much. When you lose that loving feeling with someone you really loved. When you spend more money than you have, place more faith in something that’s not worth your trust. When you get what’s coming to you, but it’s not what you hoped it would be. When you waited too long for a transformation that was never in the cards to begin with.

When something doesn’t go according to a plan you made, even though you know better than to make plans when plans always, always change.  When there are no words to say to someone to comfort them when all of these things happen, the easiest phrase to pull out of your bag of cliches is: “Things like this happen.”

This saying isn’t inaccurate. It’s completely true – things like this do happen. People do fall in and out of love. People fight. People breakdown. People breakup and makeup. People lose their jobs. People have their spirits crushed. People make new friends and forget old ones. People get caught up in today and don’t think ahead. People are people, and things like this happen, but hearing that never makes anyone feel better.

Because everyone wants to be the exception.

We want to be the lucky one who gets away without a scrape, a scar, or a tear. We don’t just want the piece of cake that we can eat, we want the whole bakery and maybe the rest of the block too. We want to be the one who enjoys all the finer things in life without paying for the finer price tag. We want to test our limits but never push them too far and we want to love without boundaries, without reservations, no matter how much relationship residue we build up. We want to find a job that’s perfect with a paycheck that’s too high for it, work a few days a week, and vacation for months in Europe, just because we can. We want everyone we love to love us back, and those we aren’t that into to quietly go about their business without being taxed with the task of breaking someone’s heart needlessly. We want the silver lining – but not the rain.

But things happen. And if they didn’t, we would wish they did. Because perfection seems nice when it’s unreachable, but if we really could have everything we ever wanted, we would still always wonder when the bottom would fall from beneath us. We would still always wish for something more, even if we had the world. We would still see our life as we see it now, even if it looks a little brighter than what it feels like now.

Because the best of us, the ones who are damned-and-determined to reach those dreams, to find that love, to pave that path, to see that big, beautiful, attainable world out there – we’ll never be satisfied. We’ll keep pushing ourselves and those closest to us to demand more, to push for better, and to believe in tomorrow.

And as long as we’re living, things like this happen, so do things like that. Things happen, people change, relationships ends, jobs come to a close, chapters start over, apartments get messy along with hearts – but I’d rather see it all fall apart than to stay put or to settle for even one day of my life.

Let things happen so I can happen, too.

Daily Gratitude: I’m thankful to see the beauty in change and to embrace it with all that I have. Oh and for two very wonderful friends who talk me down from a ledge for an hour or so on Gchat and right next to me.

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In An Ordinary Afternoon

The city has a strength that few can deny – in one powerful moment on an ordinary afternoon, it can steal your attention and calm your soul instantly. It takes what it can take and gives the very least it can, but you push through anyway. New York doesn’t make excuses for anything it does and it expects no less or more from its inhabitants, either native, visiting or transplanted. It’s unbearably hot, frigidly cold, entirely unpredictable, and ruthlessly relentless. But us dreamers? We keep coming, one-by-one, and two-by-two, with a few suitcases and singing a duet of ego and fear, determined to be destined to make it here, in New York freakin’ City, the place we were meant to be.

But the city fails us.

It kicks sidewalk trash in our eyes, places pigeons in our path, and tosses our dignity away with the unexpected Marilyn-Monroe-like subway vent gush of warm air up our skirts. It rains when we wear suede even though the forecast promised super-sunny highs. It has train delays on the days we need to get somewhere and is entirely too fast when we’re going to a place we just don’t want to be at. It goes express when we need local, local when we wish for express, and if there’s a rooftop party with a view, it’ll give us something to toss up the afternoon. It keeps enduring it all, failing us constantly, and we keep living.

And one day, out of nowhere in the middle of another ordinary afternoon or night, we meet some boy. With some story, from someplace we’ve never been or a town we knew from this person a few years ago who used to date our best friend who recently got married – and we’ll click. We’ll have the distracting click. We’ll watch the way they stick out their tongue when they concentrate and adore the rosiness of their cheeks when they sleep, regardless if it’s humid or chilly outside. We’ll grow accustomed to the shape of their body, the flash of joy our body experiences when we see their name pop up with a text message, and having those things that are “our” things, just between us and that boy we met that day we’ll always find just so damn glorious.

But the boy fails us.

He’s human and he’s a guy, so automatically, he’s doomed to be someone we won’t always see eye-to-eye with. He’ll call most of the time when he says he will, but on those gloomy, crappy, downright awful times when we’re blubbering hot messes in need of a shot of Merlot and a Magnolia’s cupcake, he won’t be around. He’ll be out-and-about or an emergency of the real kind will pop up, and he’ll need to have his attention elsewhere. He won’t always give us what we need and we won’t always know how to ask for it. He’ll come and he’ll go in a sweetly sickening stance, teetering between being the man we always craved and someone we pray won’t shatter our heart in the end. But we keep going, we take our relationship as it is, enjoying the beautiful highs and weeding our way through each of our jungles of the past, and we keeping loving.

Then after we take the leap of faith to tackle our city and stomach the nerve to actually let ourselves sincerely care about someone, there will be one of those ordinary afternoons again, where everything seems to be going well and we find ourselves smitten by the state of our lives, wondering where the rain cloud went and pensive it’ll return. I mean, it always does, right? Or does it? This happiness can’t actually end, we’re too big for our shoes now. We’re too self-bloated to believe anything could change. We worked for this pleasure, we paid our dues, we did what we were supposed to be, minus skipping a few steps here and there. So why would anything happen?

But then we fail ourselves.

We’ll have some news that makes us crash-and-burn, question our skills and the way we’re leading our lives. We’ll want to run and run as fast as we can in a direction we don’t dictate, hoping that by moving quickly, we’ll escape the pressure that’s building, the regret we are attempting to ignore that’s bubbling in our chest. Avoiding tears because they make us weak, then letting them escape because we’re told that’s healthy, we crumble to the ground or into our beds, smothered in pillows and sorrow, wanting nothing more, no matter what age we reach, then to hug our mother, smell her hair, and just leave it all behind.

Because we know we went right when going left would have been smarter. We keep letting ourselves get down instead of working hard to push ourselves up. We made decisions we knew weren’t right, we stayed longer than we knew we should have, we made impossible demands on things there were once possible, but now are not. We let our attention wonder when it should have stayed focused, and when we were faced with a challenge, we tried to hide instead of stepping up to it directly. We lingered on the past, on the ideas of what we were, of what we could of been, of where we were going, without remembering who we’re becoming, what will be, and where we’re headed. We got lost in the losses instead of seeing the beauty in losing.

Failing doesn’t mean the end, it means the beginning. And failing is only defined by our own terms based on experiences we’ve had where we were told doing this or doing that meant falling. We can’t fail if we’ve never failed before. But we also can’t win if we haven’t failed. If we don’t know what it feels like when life most literally sucks (there is no more eloquent word), we wouldn’t know to appreciate the blessings when they come our way. Without failure, there is no progress, and with no progress, there is no way to fulfill those dreams in New York, or with or without a man. There is no right way, if there’s never been a wrong way.

So, fail. Learn. Take the road less traveled and figure out it’s wrong. Love someone who doesn’t deserve you. Give away your heart and let that spirit crumble. Make poor decisions that leave you sitting alone at Dunkin Donuts with a red suitcase, an attitude, and a banana you can’t eat (story to come), waiting on a comfort that no one can give you other than yourself, no matter how supporting your possibility is. Be a critic of yourself and give bad reviews. Eat that cheesecake. Yes, the whole thing.

And then breathe. Pick yourself up. Pay your gratitude to the fates, who gave you the beautiful opportunity to fall hard and get a little bruised up. Because now, my friend, it’s time to heal. And of course, to again, one day, in an ordinary afternoon, succeed.

Daily gratitude: I’m thankful that I’ve failed. And that I survived it.

(If you’re wondering, no, Mr. Possibility and I didn’t break up. It’s a different kind of loss)

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Dating the Doppelganger

Last night, my company had one of our big award galas followed by drinks on the boss and then the younger crew took to the streets for additional boozing. Needless to say, our GM’s request for us all to come in a little later was much appreciated.

My hair wet and my makeup carelessly applied and smudged, I couldn’t bring myself to read F. Scott Fitzgerald as I rode the downtown train. Somehow, Gatsby just seems to deserve more than my hung-over attention. Instead of reading, I did one of my prized past-times, people watching. Though I usually stand, at this mid-morning hour I gave into the desire to plop down and bulge my elbows to claim my personal space bubble.

Glancing through the straphangers, I met eyes with a few cuties, made a silly face at a baby with curls and said a prayer for the homeless man scratching himself in the corner of the cart as everyone around him scattered, afraid they could catch “homeless” if they got too close. The married, gray-haired man next to me read his Wall Street Journal folded up into a tight little square, opening it as he slowly read the financial news of the day. And a rather non-amused teenager listening to Nicki Minaj so loudly it made my eardrums ring.

And then across from me, sat Mr. Possibility.

Or so, I thought, anyway. But no, it couldn’t be – Mr. Possibility is out-of-town this weekend and there was no way he’d be riding the downtown train from the Upper West Side to Chelsea at 10 a.m. I did a double-take when I first saw him, trying to further convince myself that it wasn’t in fact my boyfriend, but his doppelganger.

I couldn’t help but study him, left with nothing else to entertain myself with for the next six stops. His hair laid the same way. His eyes were the same color. He made the same face that Mr. Possibility does when he’s thinking really hard. When he lost at whatever game his phone was entertaining him with, he mouthed “F***” just as I imagine Mr. Possibility would do if he had actually downloaded that Angry Bird app he once played for an hour straight at a friend’s barbeque. His attire could have been pulled out of Mr. Possibility’s closet. I didn’t know this man, but here I was watching him intimately, feeling like I could strike up a conversation with little effort. He doesn’t know me, but I’m dating his doppelganger. Who is this guy and what is the universe trying to tell me? It’s an omen of death to meet your own look-a-like, so what happens when you see the twin of the guy you’re dating?

Once I exited the train, I didn’t give too much more thought about the character I encountered and busily got to writing and editing articles. When 1:30 rolled around and I realized I was still surviving off my pizza indulgence from last night’s shenanigans, I hurried out of the office to grab something simple to eat and a hot dose of caffeine to keep me going until half-past-five.

Taking the stairs to rid my carbohydrate-d guilt, I flung the door into the lobby open and found myself face-to-face with the doppelganger.

He looked surprised and smiled as he asked, “You were on the train this morning.” I confirmed and felt my cheeks redden to the tune of Akon, realizing he noticed me, noticing him. We talked about working in the same building and both living on the Upper West Side and what a small world Manhattan is. I wasn’t too incredibly freaked out by the meeting until he said, “Well, it’s nice to meet you, my name is Mr. Possibility.”

Yep. They have the same name too.

I stammered my way out of his vicinity and into the streets, less hungry and more intrigued. Maybe Mr. Possibility is my match, but I just met his. I said a silent prayer they weren’t just alike because that probably means there’s another one of me lurking around the corner, writing a blog about dating, love, sex, and ridiculousness.

But you know – I kind of already know I’m not one-of-a-kind. Sure, there’s not another Lindsay Tigar on Facebook or anyone who is just like or looks identical to me or has my same history and passions – but I’ve met women who are very similar to me. The planet has no lack of writers or editors and not enough jobs to fill the passion. Anyone who wants to be can be a blogger and if you want a byline, there’s probably an outlet for you somewhere on some website, somewhere in the World Wide Web. There are blue-eyed beauties and average-height brunettes who love heels and hail from North Carolina. And if you’ve dated at all, you’ve probably found a Mr. Unavailable, a Mr. Possibility, a Mr. Idea, and all of the rest. I have no doubt I probably have dozens of twins and perhaps even a doppelganger too, that I’d like to not meet anytime soon.

Maybe we’re not so unique but rather, vain enough to believe there is only one person who can do whatever it is that we do. Or perhaps we’re silly to believe that only one person is designed to be our partner in this life, that only one wonderful, dream-like dude can fit the bill of boyfriend or husband or otherwise.

But that’s not true. I’ve met two Mr. Possibilities. And really, isn’t every man a Mr. Possibility until proven…impossible?

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Seriously, Wake Up

Following the very last class I took in college, I stopped by our university’s post office to check my PO box and forward my mail. I was excited and hopeful for the future, feeling relieved I would never have to attend another lecture unless I wanted to. When I turned the dial, I was surprised to find an envelope marked from Raleigh, NC with my name neatly typed on the front. Full name, mind you.

As I walked behind the building to my apartment on the main strip in town, I stopped dead in my heels and my mouth dropped: I had received my very first hate mail.

More or less, the anonymous writer wished me ill-will in New York City. They said they hoped I fell on my face, that living in the city for two months during an internship was no indication I could survive full-time. They misquoted me and promised me that fairytales don’t come true, that my Prince wouldn’t be waiting at Grand Central or Times Square or Bryant Park to greet me when I landed on Northern soil. They were rude and blunt, standing their ground as a coward who wouldn’t reveal their name and though they started the letter with “this is not from someone who is jealous of you – there is nothing to be jealous of” -each and every one of my friends could feel the envy seep into their hands as they read it and laughed with me in the days that would follow.

They signed their Letter of Unlove with: “Seriously, wake up.” I think there were some Gossip Girl-like “xoxo”s thrown in for good measure, and in all, it didn’t amount to anything more than a few sentences strung together without proper punctuation or a real purpose.

At the time, I was a little stunned. Part of me was hurt. The biggest part of me was curious and annoyed whoever had such beef with me wasn’t willing to say what they wanted to my face. I read their words with a grain of salt, never being one to let anyone’s opinions stand in the way of what I intend to do, no matter how unmanageable a task may seem to everyone else.

And I mean, I couldn’t exactly disagree with them because they weren’t telling me anything I didn’t know.

I never expected New York to be peaches-and-ice-cream, sunflowers-and-roses. I didn’t think I’d prance in and climb the media ladder without faltering here-and-there. But I’ve been successful. I’ve landed on my feet with a great group of friends, a job I enjoy, an apartment I adore, and a happiness that’s unparalleled. I didn’t think I’d meet my husband the second I moved (though in my love addict stage back then, I wanted to)- but I’ve been blessed to love a few good men and discover a possibility worth taking a chance on. I never wanted to work in magazines because I was “pretty” as the author claimed, but because my byline could has the opportunity to make tides – even if women’s issues in dating, love, relationships, and such doesn’t seem like that big of deal to many. (But don’t we spend the majority of our time obsessing about those things? Just sayin’)

Before I left to return to NYC today, I went through some old things on a bookshelf my father made and inside a book I read before I took flight when I moved, I found the letter in its original envelope. A dozen life lessons, heart breaks, changes, and tearful nights later, it had a different impact on me than it did on that cold December afternoon.

In fact, it probably had the intended effect the writer wanted. I read the typed lines, smiled and realized, I was awake. Anything that I once took for granted or anything I thought would be easy and wasn’t, most of the unrealistic notions I had about love and men, and all of the things in between – they’re all different now. I’m not cured, but I’ve matured. I didn’t need a letter to wake something up inside of me but it’s nice to know someone cared (or didn’t care) enough to go to the trouble to say such cruel things. If anything, I now see it is a testament to my own impact, my own power, and the essence I exude into the world by dancing across keys. I’m not the best writer, but unlike this author, I’m actually one who is brave enough to state my name. Even when more often than not, it isn’t always the easiest thing to do.

Without showing Mr. Possibility, I tucked the letter into my purse and decided just what to do with it. One day, when I find that private office, when I’m doing just what I want to do, when I’m happily married with a non-happily-ever-after mentality, when I live downtown and finally find comfort and cushion in my finances – I’ll frame this letter. I’ll hang it in my office where younger editors and interns can see.

So that they too, like every other dreamer in this city who also happens to have the conviction and courage to chase those desires with heightened ambition, will wake up. Because like me, they may find the life they created isn’t merely a dream, but a dreamlike reality based on your own hard work.

Seriously.