Tag Archives: New York City

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Claiming My Bed Back

Sitting in the Village with my dear friend K, I munched on a taco while trying to keep myself together enough to stomach the meal. Don’t get me wrong – K is great company and usually says all of the things I wish I could say, but never work up the courage to actually speak. Perhaps in a few years when I’m her age, I will.

We had just finished catching up in her apartment (which if she ever decides to leave, I will claim before anyone else can) and thought to grab an inexpensive bite about town. There, we chatted about her upcoming weekend with the new boy she likes – semi-tall, charming, funny, great in bed and most importantly, for the first time in a while – she just simply likes him. It’s nice to see her blush and if he doesn’t work out, there will surely be more – but maybe, just maybe, this one will be something. As she usually does when she gets on a roll, she shared a rather adorable conversation they had post-bumping:

“We were laying in his bed, talking, my head was on his chest. After a while, he interrupted me and asked if my feet were hanging off the edge. I’m so used to my feet dangling, that it never occurred to me  – I didn’t even notice. When I can’t sleep, I always kick a foot out of the covers and it soothes me for some reason. But because he knew we were around the same height and I was lower down in the bed, my feet would be hanging off. It’s funny – sleeping habits. We are both so used to being single that we also both sleep in the middle of our beds – that doesn’t always work with two people!”

As she’s happily telling her story with a little hesitation (somehow talking about the happy things makes them seem like they’ll disappear), I thought about how I’ve never experienced any of those things: 1- I’m rather petite, so I can’t remember any instance where my feet are anywhere but tucked closely to my body, several inches from the edge of the bed, and 2- Even when I’ve been single, I’ve always kept to my side of the bed, leaving lots of idle space next to me.

Well, until last night that is.

I thoroughly cleansed my room of Mr. P – took out pressed sheets, reorganized my dresser drawers, bought some new candles, packed away his photos, notes and jewelry for safe keeping, and bought myself a new bouquet of fresh flowers. I threw open the curtains and let the cool Fall air breathe new life into my apartment. After indulging in some much-needed therapy: good food, Desperate Housewives and Friends (the show and the real things), read a few pages in my friend’s book club book of the month and went to settle into bed. Without thinking, I instinctively scooted over near the window, until I heard K’s words in my head and decided…

…it was time to claim my bed back.

This bed no longer smells of him and while he was the last man to lay in it, he won’t be the last. He used to have that corner and that pillow, but the cases are different and the space in my heart is healing. He used to sleep on his side and look at his BBerry at 4 a.m., waking me up prematurely. But not anymore, this room will stay dark until the morning creeps in quietly, not via his loud BBM alert. Only a few months ago, I made a rather significant commitment to this bed – buying it with my own hard-earned cash. The comforter, I bought. Along with the pillows and the sham. I make it up every morning, only to ruin it every night by my incoherent tossing and turning that never wakes me up, but looks like warfare in the morning. I pay for the room this bed sits in – and damn it, it’s my bed! Determined, I moved over to the middle and laid flat with my legs reaching for the corners. I stretched until I couldn’t anymore and closed my eyes, feeling myself easily drift to sleep in my new cemented position.

Unlike any night in the last week, I didn’t wake up once in the middle of night to put my heart to sleep. It slept just fine on its own, without any assistance and it stayed that way, nestled in a Queen mattress from Ikea. When my alarm went off at 8 a.m., I groggily wondered if I was still claiming my bed back, as I so intently sought to do hours before. I was happily surprised to find that not only was I sprawled out across my entire bed, but I had one arm dangling off the edge, too.

Looks like I’m claiming my bed back. And my single status, too.

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Love Me Still

One of my favorite professors in college (actually, she’s the reason I minored in sociology) once told a story from the early days of her 30-something highly-successful and loving marriage.

At the time, her and her husband had yet to learn how to communicate with one another and often got in tedious fights over in the most insignificant of differences. In a particularly nasty fight, she stormed off into their bedroom, slamming the door and collapsing into the bed, sobbing uncontrollably. Ten minutes later, when her husband didn’t follow to console her and apologize, she raised out of her despair to find him. She pulled the drapes away to find him outside, mowing the lawn, seemingly unaffected by the argument they just had.

Infuriated, she sought revenge to make him feel the same pain she did. She described herself running through the house inhibited, furiously looking for something to destroy. And there, sitting in its prized placement on their living room coffee table, sat a book of beloved poems. Not just any collection bought second-hand at a bookstore – but an actual, original copy. Knowing her love for the greats, it had been a wedding gift.

In her rage, she took it in her hands and ripped out the pages, letting them splash across the floor as pitifully as the tears rolled down her face. In this moment, her husband walked in and saw her. She stood frozen, the shreds pressed against the bottoms of her feet, and he stopped in his tracks. Whimpering, she put her angry face back on to show she wouldn’t be the first to let up or to give in. She was sure this would get him – look what she had done. This would get him.

Without saying a word, he picked up a garbage bag and dust pan, swept up the pieces of the book, including the spine and walked away. They went to bed mad, never saying anything, and she continued to pout.

Months later, at Christmastime, the fights had lessened and they had started to effectively discuss issues instead of taking them out on one another (or literature). When their guests had cleared and they were left alone, he said he had a special gift for her. Excitedly, they sat in front of the fireplace, next to the coffee table and she unwrapped a book. The book.

He had painstakingly taped back together every last page of that antique collection of poetry, and inside the front flap, written: How do I love thee? Still.

She had forgotten by then what that awful fight was about but she never forgot that gesture, and she tried to never do something so vicious again. My eyes watered while my heart swelled in class, and it still makes me a little gooey inside to write it now. It was inspiring – and so touching – that a person could forgive and still love someone ever after doing something so horribly disrespectful.

But now, a few relationships and more than a few years later, I’ve come to realize that what she did is no different than what we all do. Especially when we rely on immaturity and grand gestures to keep a relationship strong. If we race away (and wait the allotted few minutes or so), he’ll feel guilty and come to our rescue, tell us he’s sorry and all will be well. We really think that by leaving, the other person will surely follow, for they could never imagine their life without us. We believe that if we remove ourselves enough from the relationship, even cutting the chord or doing something we know that’ll dig that dagger despicably deep, they’ll see how much they’re hurting us because they’ll hurt too. And if they hurt and we hurt, then we’ll get back together, we’ll get over that awful predicament, to be together.

It doesn’t work that way, does it? It’s not supposed to, is it?

I can’t imagine being in (another) relationship where I feel like to be noticed, to be valued, to not be taken for granted, I have to leave. And I surely don’t want to be in one where even if I do, even if I’m pushed to that point, I’m left out there in the street, still waiting for a gesture that I’m nearly convinced will never happen.

Because somewhere out there, in this concrete jungle or maybe on a safari I’ve yet to scour, there is a man who will love me still. Who will love me despite the madness or the sadness, and regardless if I’m crazy or collected. Who will be able to give me what I need and appreciate what I give him. Who will be able to fall in love with me as easily as I fall for him.

And if there isn’t – if that’s not my destiny, I’ll still love me…still.

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The Best is Yet to Come

I finally caught that yellow chariot.

It whisked me away through Central Park, glittering past glowing street lamps and weaving through semi-windy roads. I sat alone, my purse laid by my side, listening to the cabbie mutter to himself. His stammering made me feel better about my tears at nearly two in the morning. He probably thought I was just another wounded drunk girl coming in from a Saturday night out where I spilled my beer and kissed a faceless boy at a bar.

But no, I was sober. And now, I was single. I mean, I am single.

It’s funny, I thought, once we reached Amsterdam and my heart released the anxiety that always comes from trusting a stranger to take you where you tell them to. A year ago, on this very day, I was crying in the bathtub, depressed over my birthday party where I didn’t get asked to dance, where I didn’t feel very pretty, where I was so sick of being single that I was an absolute mess. I hysterically cried and then made up my mind — I wasn’t going to feel this way anymore.

Am I right back where I started? Really Lindsay? I rolled my eyes at myself, glanced down at my silent Blackberry and felt the freshly Autumn air hit my cheeks. Here I was again, even with all this daily hard work for the past year, crying over some guy. At least it isn’t in that disgusting bathtub, huh? I thought and grinned. I also wasn’t an emotional wreck or crying because I hated being single. This time, they were movie-star tears that glistened through mascara eyelashes, and I wasn’t upset because I feared being alone but because I wanted to be.

That was the final straw, Linds. You really had no other choice but to walk away. You’d be selling yourself short and giving away yourself if you stayed, I reassured myself to gain enough courage to brave the face of the cabbie to pay him. My birthday had brought the next season, and with it, I was moving on to the next chapter. As much love as there is, as connected to my heart and my New York life as he was, Mr. Possibility didn’t turn back into Mr. Unavailable or grow into the only possibility, he just became impossible.

Maybe if you just gave him some more time or ignored him for a week or two, then he’d come around. Then he’d see you were worth it, the other side opposed as I turned the chunky silver key, allowing access into my safe haven, my home. I knew I could have stayed longer, I could have played the manipulation card as fiercely as he did – but there is a difference between being able to do something and wanting to do it. That was, after all, at the crux of our relationship: he may have wanted to give me what I needed but he couldn’t, and I could have stayed but that isn’t the type of love I want. It’s not what I deserve.

I deserve so much more.

Because I’m not that distraught girl anymore. I’m no longer afraid of being alone, but afraid of being alone in a relationship. There are worse things than being single, and unrequited love is one of them. There are worse things than having to go through the emotional warfare of a breakup, and settling for less, I can assure you, is much more painful. You’ve really come so far and you did the right thing, the rational voice came back with easy clarity. It hurts to essentially give up on Mr. Possibility but he needs to go through the 12-step program more than I do now. He has to love himself before he can ever love me, or anyone else, in any way that matters. I can’t love him enough to change him, and he can’t love me enough to change my mind.

So here ya are, Linds. You’re back to being single again and the blog is over, I thought as I looked out the window of my room, watching the lights flicker with the arrival of the morning. I couldn’t sleep, too much thinking going on. Too much aching for something I never quite had but know I’ll find one day. I’m different from I was a year ago. I’m much stronger, more settled. I’ve loved someone in New York and I’ve loved myself enough to walk away. If that isn’t progress, I don’t know what is, I sat up and felt my heart sink back into the bed. Sometimes the hard thing and the right thing are the same, and sadly, also the adult thing to do. Mr. Possibility isn’t a bad guy – he’s actually quite the opposite. He’s a wonderful man with so many possibilities but the past isn’t allowing him to have a future, and we’re in such different places that nothing between us makes sense anymore. It’s not worth fighting with someone you love, it’s better to love them enough to calm the fight by leaving.

And the fighting had been too much. We were starting to destroy what we had, the friendly foundation was turning into resentment. I couldn’t put my heart on hold or allow someone to love me with only half of their heart, and he couldn’t be there for me in a way that was constant and dependable. And so, on the corner of 12th and Third, I gave him one last opportunity to make amends, to step up to the plate, to prove his committment. But he passed and I turned the corner, only to look back and see him catch a cab in the opposite direction.

Well, looks like there’s no game of cat-and-mouse here, huh? I crumpled to the side of a building, wishing I hadn’t worn heels and covered my face, preparing for the flood. My friend M braced my back and promised me he was only the beginning of New York love, not the end. But the devastation didn’t come. Instead, I felt just a little bit of fear and longing, but mostly, I felt relief. Now I could be happy, he could find his happiness, and the happiness we had won’t be overshadowed by the disaster of the last month. After all, what I’ve wanted for him from the beginning was just to be happy, and now I see that I wasn’t helping him to happiness, I was just keeping him from really trying out those wings and learning to love himself as I have learned. I miss him, I will miss him but his brightest years are still ahead of him, just as mine are. We just won’t be sharing them together.

So does this blog end with the end of Mr. Possibility and I? Have I really completed the 12 steps because I found enough security in myself to not have to lean on a man for support? To not stay in a dead-end relationship because I couldn’t stand the thought of being single while all my Southern friends got married? How do you end something that’s been part of your life for the past year? How do you put that into words?

You don’t. So I’m not.

I won’t write every single day anymore, but I’m still going to write. Confessions of a Love Addict isn’t ending, it’s just changing. It’s going back to Step 1 to repair myself through the five-moods of a grief over impossibility. To learn how to put back together the pieces I lost of myself in the relationship, even if this time, they aren’t as scattered or jagged.

I wanted to blog for 365 days and I have – so now it’s not about meeting my own deadline. Now, it’s just about writing as I feel, sharing what I want, and starting the journey all over again. Really, the process of accepting and loving who you are is never-ending. Because just like the New York skyline is always changing, so are people, and so is time. Stages come and go, love grows and then it hurts. Friends go their different ways, luck comes around ever now-and-then. Sometimes you get what you want, but mostly you get what you need.

And I still need this blog. Because now, a whole new journey is about to unfold, and if the last year is any indication of the thrills ahead of me, I couldn’t be more excited. Especially since now I’ve traded that bathtub for a cab, those tears for a red dress, and that fear of being alone for the option of having something extraordinary. And that hatred for the word “single” into a thankfulness that through it all, I still have just what I’ve always needed:

Myself.

And of course, a bottle of champagne, some great friends, a heart that’s still beating and believing, and the faith that the best is yet to come. Stay tuned.

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Pigs Can Fly & Hell Freezes Over

I prefer to do my crying in the shower. Naked emotion seems to pair well with literal nakedness, plus mascara used as blush just isn’t cute. The issue though, is that I tend to bathe in the mornings before work, so my hair is freshly pressed for the day. Or as it is in most cases, unpredictably wavy in all the wrong places. So when I retreated to the bathroom at my designated time (with four roommates, you have to auction out privacy), with warm, salty drops splashing on my cheeks, I wasn’t concerned with why I was actually crying but frustrated that my eyes may be puffy for work.

Luckily with some careful washing, I managed to escape any noticeable marks of sadness that anyone could see. However, the raw emotion that caused the tears didn’t wane as easily.

I’ve been attempting to put it into words, both here and in my own head, what I feel about Mr. P. We haven’t been able to go even one night without an argument or without me crying in quite some time now. For a relationship that has always been chaotic, this isn’t exactly out of the norm, but it’s most certainly out of my comfort level. The thing I always loved the most about us, about him, was that I could talk to him about anything. Nothing was off-limits, no crazy outburst was too crazy, no ridiculousness distracted him, no irrational fear seemed irrational to him. For the past year, he had a way of putting me to ease and he offered a secure shelter from any New York frustration I battled.

I think I fell in love with the friendship and then as I started to fall in love with him as a man, as a partner, as a lover – I started to pull away. I stopped conversations about exes, even though we had always analyzed our lovable (and unlovable) pasts together. I stopped being able to stomach the fact that he had lingering feelings toward women who refuse to talk to him. I also stopped being able to ignore that as a gaudy red flag right in front of my face. My preferences in bed changed, I wanted our weekend plans to change, I wanted him to march up to his rooftop in Brooklyn that’s cleverly decorated by his domestic-fied roommate, and shout that he loved me, that he was crazy about me, that he was so happy to be mine.

But I knew that wasn’t going to happen. I still know it won’t. Mr. P may be infamous for too many little white lies to count, but he won’t scream something so absurd. Especially if there’s a chance someone could hear that he was smitten. Because…he’s not.

Sure, he loves me. I know he cares about me. I’m confident if I needed something, if I was in dire danger, he’d come to my rescue. I think he could see a future here, he could picture us together in the long run and he knows I’m marriage material (whatever qualifies that anyway). But he’s not there yet. I think those were the words he used. And if I could just slow down my feelings, if I could just take a breather and stop wishing and demanding that he feel the same, we could go back to that easy happiness we once had.  If I could just relax and be that carefree, easy-going woman that he fell for. The one who didn’t pressure him or who didn’t want anything more than what he could give, then maybe I’d have a shot at holding the prized title that so many women are eyeing by blowing up his Blackberry and Facebook. I could have the opportunity to be The One.

But to do that, to stay in the relationship, to keep him in that role in my life, I’d have to put my feelings on hold. I’d have to fall out of love enough to meet him down at that level he’s at. While I’ve progressed the last six months or so by gradually becoming more attached to him, he’s stuck back in February when everything was new and unsure. I’m not questioning how I feel anymore, but I can’t stop doubting how he does.

And so, I cry. I pick fights. I stop in the middle of foreplay because my mind won’t shut off. I don’t return calls and I ignore emails. I attempt to go an entire day without a text message. I try to resort back to how I was before I fell for him, before I told him I loved him, before I started imaging visions of happily ever after with him. I try to convince myself that I want this, that we could really be something one day, that we could come out of this and he could see that I’m irreplaceable. I keep reminding myself that it’ is possible for love to bloom out of complication, that so many relationships have rusty beginnings, that he could very well end up changing his tune and be the man I crave.

I see the facts, I understand the reality of the relationship. Yet I’m stuck in dreamland, lingering on some hopeless prayer that Mr. Possibility still has possibility, that he’s still capable of releasing the past to build a future with me. That just because I fell in love with him before he fell in love with me, he could still feel all of those things I want him to. That if I can fall in love, can’t I fall out of love so someone else can fall in it?

Or am I waiting for pigs to fly and for hell to freeze over, spinning my tires on some dirty gravel road that leads to a bleak dead end that’ll only waste my gas and piss me off? I suppose we’ll have to wait for my give-a-damn to weaken to find out.

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When Will Loses its Way

They say where there is a will, there is a way. I’ll agree — but what if there is no will? Then is there a way? Or are they mutually exclusive?

I almost always have a will to do something — even if it’s just to have that Champagne-infused brunch or to see a discounted show for Broadway week. My wills are bigger too –I willed to live in New York, to be an editor, to have the things people come to visit in my backyard. I’ve willed to be better and stronger, more independent and sufficient, and here I am financially, emotionally, adult-ally all on my own. And I’ve willed myself into overcoming an obsession with men and their presence (or often, their absence) in my life. Though I’m teetering between possibility and impossibility, I’m still standing firmly and finally, not compromising what I need to feel needed by a man.

All of this willing has always found me a way to something, to someplace, to someone. It is rarely the something, someplace or someone who I crave – but whatever it is, it’s always there. But what happens when it’s not anymore? What would happen if I lost my will?

My life bloomed when I stopped waiting for it to change and changed it for myself. I was stuck in a pattern that I had made inevitable: meet a guy, fall for him, ask for commitment, be denied, cry, moan, whine, obsess, think I’m the ugliest thing ever, blow my confidence and money away on exercise and Ben & Jerry’s, then meet someone new….and start all over again. My oh my, did I find it exhausting. But I willed to find love and love was what I wanted, so there would be a way, right?

A year and 12-steps later, I wouldn’t say that will is gone but it has most certainly lessened. I don’t long to get married or to start a family. I don’t need an engagement ring to feel settled and secure. I’m not crawling into bedrooms, looking for remarkable sex because I know I’ll most likely just find a heartache hangover the next morning. I don’t feel the pressure to rush down an aisle as my cousins and my childhood friends have done, and when it comes to wondering if the stranger on the next cart is my mate – that curiosity has mostly killed the Tigar.

But does that mean I’ve lost my will? Do I not hope for love anymore? Do I not value how wonderful, how overpowering, how incredible it can feel when it’s right? When the man is right? If there is a man that’s right, that is? If I have indeed lost my will, will love still find its way to me? Or without that will, is there surely no way to one day stumble across holding-hands-in-Central-Park-while-raising-babies-in-a-brownstone-in-Brooklyn bliss?

I’m still willing to be successful, willing to find happiness in my single shoes, willing to make New York more of my home than it already is, and most importantly, willing to just be myself and be okay with that. So a will for love is still there, it’s just not in the spotlight. It doesn’t get front-and-center attention because it’s not at the forefront of my attention. It’s still there in something, in someplace with someone I haven’t met — but it hasn’t disappeared. My love will hasn’t lost its way, it’s just found a new way to exist.

It’s found a way to exist without being all-consuming so that I could do more than just exist. So I could really, remarkably, beautifully, live.