Love

Ryan Danger

/ Ashley / 4 Comments

This morning, I was just on my way to work when I heard a little blurb on the radio telling me to stay away from highway 441 because a car had flipped. I thought I would save my brother an hour stuck in traffic, so I called Corey to warn him to stay away from the highway because there was a car on its roof.

“What are they saying?”

“There’s a car on its roof. Over by the Racine street exit.”

“You know who that is?”

“Who?” Please don’t say Ryan, please don’t say Ryan. Please don’t say Ryan.

“Ryan.”

Ryan is about five years younger than me. I love the kid. You wouldn’t have known it when he first came around. When I was in kindergarten, I had my mom bring in our dog for show and tell. I told my class all about TJ – how she looked like a fuzzy bear cub and how she chomped at water when it shot out of the sprinkler. At one point, my teacher interrupted and asked if there was anything else I had to show the class.

I was clueless. Since Ryan was just a baby, my mom had brought him in too, but it didn’t occur to me to share him with the class. He was a baby. Pooped and cried. Got all the attention. “This is my new brother, Ryan,” I mumbled.

Ryan stole the attention from me. For five glorious years, I was the center of attention.Then all the sudden, Ryan came into the world. Corey and I sort of just tolerated him. He didn’t do anything. Just sat there drooling and occasionally sucking on a pacifier and eventually his toes. I thought I would have been able to play with him like a doll, but I couldn’t even do that. He was SO boring.

“What happened? Is he okay?”

Ryan and I became close over the last few years. I gave him advice with girls, counseled him through a breakup, and eventually we started bonding over Kanye West. When Corey told me Ryan had flipped his car, all I could see was him as a small child, squatted over a puddle in a striped shirt, reaching for a piece of playmobil.

He had hit a patch of ice as he was getting onto the highway, fishtailed a few times, slammed against a barrier, and landed upside down. Amazingly, he was able to punch and crawl out a window without any injuries. He didn’t even go to the hospital.

I was distracted for most of the day at work, thinking of Ryan and what it would be like if anything had happened to him. Since it was too much to think about, I just decided to think of what I would do when I saw him. I decided that I needed to give him a big hug, tell him I love him, and then smack him and tell him not to flip cars anymore.

T SwiftNow we bond over Taylor Swift and our ability to tolerate kittens.

I am going to die alone and merry christmas.

/ Ashley / 6 Comments

I learned the other day that Jon (Scott) is engaged. I was cleaning my room when I got the message from his sister in law. At first I didn’t react much – it’s just one more engagement that doesn’t really affect me. Also, he’s a douchebag.

(just now, I typed “douchebage” which made me think of douchebadge. Maybe that could be a new slam.)

But then I remembered that we had dated for two years. That statement isn’t actually correct, since the second year we weren’t dating – not even remotely committed to each other – just messily involved. He kept making promises he couldn’t (or wouldn’t – that detail remains a mystery to me) keep. He kept claiming he loved me while refusing to stop talking to the girl to whom he’s now engaged. He kept telling me he wanted to be with me and that he was sorry. Each time I tried to move on, he refused to let me and I mistook his controlling and abusive behavior as affection. It shocks me, the things I put up with. He said some of the most vulgar and offensive things to me – words so horrifying I refuse to put them in print. And yet, when he apologized, I accepted it and gave him another chance.

When I finally cut him out of my life (after a session with a therapist who told me  – and I quote – he was akin to a swirling vortex of insanity which would be near impossible to escape should I entangle myself further), it was complete. Though his behavior didn’t stop immediately, I simply refused to take part in it. Turns out if you stop indulging a psychopath, the drama stops pretty quickly.

That switch has since remained in the off position and I haven’t even considered flipping it in the other direction. It’s strange too, because I consider myself a somewhat sentimental person. Yet I feel a void looking back at our relationship. Surely there must have been some good there for me to be so reluctant to leave it behind, but I’ll be damned if I can find it. There is virtually no part of me that feels the slightest affection towards him, yet the news still struck a chord.

I’m reluctant to say that I cried over it, because that phrasing isn’t correct. It suggests longing and regret over the death of the relationship. The news prompted not only a ridiculous tweet (“Another of my exes is engaged. I’m going to die alone with my crochet projects.”), but a crying spell. Quick messy tears that made my day-old mascara flake off. I did the predictable self-indulgent girl thing where I made a mental list of my exes and compared their lives with mine, taking note of a single criterion. Of my five relationships, two of the men are married, two are engaged, and one is still single to the best of my knowledge. If the sitcoms are right and every breakup has a winner and loser, I’m pretty sure I’m the loser in all the cases.

NewGirl

Fortunately I had a couple friends to lean on in my time of need: Andrea, who told me to remember why I’m single (I’m not one to settle) and also that if he could get engaged, then anybody can. And Logan, who remarked, “Hahahahah! Good luck, sucker woman. Hope you have fun dealing with that for the rest of eternity!”

I decided to step back and take a look at my situation. I was on my freshly made bed, curled in the fetal position, and crying about a man whose existence no longer matters to me. Also, Flight of the Conchords was blaring out of my Kindle:

Hey Bowie, do you have one really funky sequined space suit? Or do you have several ch-changes? Do you smoke grass out in space, Bowie? Or do they smoke astroturf? Receiving transmission from David Bowie’s nipple antennae: Do you read me, Lieutenant Bowie?

And then I started laughing, because if there’s one thing that should never happen, it’s crying in the same room as Flight of the Conchords.

Life can be disappointing: sometimes the people you wish would burn with herpes sores for all of eternity end up getting engaged, but it doesn’t make any sense to cry about it. So the best thing you can do is pour yourself a cup of coffee, put on some lipstick, and laugh at the ridiculousness of Flight of the Conchords.

Anyway, I hope you all have a great Christmas. Go drink some wine and hug a family member.

I know I’m confusing, I’m a woman.

/ Ashley / 5 Comments

While lying in my bed earlier this evening, I saw a tweet that I nearly retweeted until I saw it had already been retweeted over 400 times. Just to spite it (the tweet, like it has feelings or something), I didn’t partake. Also, because I’d rather help out the little people rather than some woman who gets 400 retweets for a mildly clever and poorly punctuated tweet. Bitch.

I can’t remember the exact phrase of it, and it’s too far back in the day’s tweeting history to check, but it said something like, “I’m a woman. I don’t know what I want, but I can be mad anyway.” And while that probably sounds psychotic to most men, I’m sure it makes a lot of sense to women. It’s a good thing that I don’t write a political or advice blog, because I’m sure feminists would be all over me for going on about this, but whatever. With all of the other personal details I’ve shared on this, I shouldn’t have any problem admitting that I spend a great deal of time not knowing what I want.

This point is moot though, because for right now at least, I think I do know what I want: I want to know that I don’t have to depend on someone else. I started seeing someone a few weeks ago, and I’ve decided to try this new thing where the guy in my life isn’t the single most important thing in my life. Fascinating concept, right? I’m excited to try this new thing out. I’ve spent a decent amount of time on my own. I’ve finally discovered the peace that comes in the absence of other people. The sort of peace that comes when drunk cleaning your apartment and dressing up your piggy bank like Walter White, writing snippets to your 21-year old self, decoupaging Vonnegut quotes, and experiencing the unique horror that arises from OkCupid messages and consequent awkward dates.

I’m not going to claim that I enjoyed every moment of this solitary period, but I know that it made me a stronger person. It forced me to examine myself, reevaluate my priorities, solidify my goals, establish a career, and see myself as an individual.

But this new-found independence comes with its own setbacks. For instance, now that I’m sort of seeing someone, I don’t particularly know how to handle the fact that he’s willing to bring me whatever I need when I’m sick. So instead of telling him I could go for some homestyle chicken dumpling soup, cuddles, and rewatching four episodes of Breaking Bad, I heat up a can of soup, turn on a heating pad, and watch Netflix on my own. Of course, an episode in, I discovered that I did sort of want him there, but it was past the point of a reasonable request, so I didn’t tell him.

How bizarre is that? I’ve spent the better part of six months aching for someone to be there for me, and now that I have someone willing to do that, I’m like, “Nah, I got this.” I’ve gotten used to taking care of myself and I’m not quite ready to give that up. Call it pride or self-preservation, it amounts to the same thing: me, fairly content on my own. I think it’s just me not wanting him to see me vulnerable like this. By vulnerable, I mean sick and terribly whiny. So far, I’ve been able to present myself with semi-styled hair and matching outfits. I don’t want to destroy the illusion that I’m consistently lovely by him seeing me in pajama pants and a ratty college sweatshirt. Since he reads this, I’ll just let him imagine it. With any luck, the image is better than reality.

What I’m trying to get at is that I think I’ve always struggled maintaining my sense of self while dating. Instead of seeing myself as just Ashley, I tend to see myself as Ashley in relation to X. By acknowledging that it’s unreasonable for him to drive a half hour to bring me soup when I could spend 90 seconds heating up a can of Healthy Choice, I’m asserting that I’m not the kind of girl who needs to be taken care of constantly.

I think that’s what Destiny’s Child was talking about in that Independent Women song, right? The shoes on my feet –  I bought them, the soup that I eat – I heat it.

It’s all the same.

I used to be a nostalgic person.

/ Ashley / 8 Comments

Good god. I love that sentence. For more reasons than one.

It just a few years ago when I furiously scribbled in a notebook about how special I felt the night I wore a swirly boatneck tank and Eric told me, breathless, “You look amazing.” For years, I hung onto a piece of torn neon green paper to remember when Jon taught me to play cribbage while we drank mint juleps at the rented cottage. My heart gets a little sore whenever I listen to disco, because I remember the nights I spent dancing and kissing Bill between sets.

I feel like I’m not investing as deeply into my life right now. Maybe it’s because I’m not forging memories with somebody right now. Maybe it’s because for the first time in my adult life, I’m doing this all on my own. At the moment, I have no perspective on my immediate life, not that it’s possible anyway. But even back when Eric and I lied on our stomachs, watching the rain in the streetlights, I knew I was experiencing a moment I would remember forever. I don’t ache to solidify moments anymore.

My moments are an endless series of facades – like I’m just passing by it all. Life has turned into a collection of muted repeats – the same drive to work, the same cubicle, the same empty bed at night. Weekends offer a bit of variation, giving me glimpses of striking honesty and glee with my friends. Where are the moments that I’ll be able to look back five years from now and tell what temperature it was, what song was playing, how my mouth tasted, or what sounds were echoing off the streets?

I think this is part of growing up. Though the moments I described above happened in the same order, the vividness of the memories is reversed. It was late evening and Eric’s bedroom was filled with this cool amber light. He rarely turned a fan on because he said it made it warmer, so my face was damp with perspiration. The neighbors across the street were talking loudly, but it all seemed to fade out when he looked at me that way. Later that night, Eric would give me a copy of Wuthering Heights and we’d spend twenty minutes saying goodbye, stopping to kiss on the stairs, in the dining room, in the living room, and on the porch.

I know that Jon crushed the mint leaves and the whiskey made me shudder. The windows were open and the air was steady with the hum of boat motors. His breath smelt lightly of cigarette smoke as he jotted notes on the piece of paper he had found in a drawer. We went to bed early, he played sudoku while I read a book – Anna Karenina, I think. The next morning, he brought me coffee and we ate powdered donuts and did a few games of sudoku in bed before we went on a hike.

Bill is different. He played so many gigs that most of them blend into one. I would either go to the bar with him to set up, or I’d go later on, joining a friend on the dance floor. I liked to watch him play – he always seemed so focused on the music that I was surprised when he would catch my eye and grin. At the end of the set, he would walk over to wherever I was sitting and give me a hug that stunk lightly of sweat, polyester, and the Dolce & Gabanna cologne we picked out together. I remember feeling this strange sensation – a mix of excitement, affection, and pride – when he came over. I felt most at home when his arm was around me, but my favorite part of the night was after we had loaded his drums into my car, when we finally slipped into my twin-sized bed, our bodies laced together, and slept until 11 the next morning.

The memories are all still there and to illustrate them, I obviously have to fabricate some details, but it’s easiest with Eric and hardest with Bill. Maybe it was the length of the relationships – it’s harder to process two years than three months. Maybe my my brain chemistry was different at 18 than at 23. Maybe it’s self-preservation; I’ve become hardened and have subconsciously decided that shallow memories will hurt less than visceral ones.

I think romance just lends itself to nostalgia. While I’m actually very happy to be writing two nights in a row, it doesn’t make for a very memorable night. Maybe someday I’ll hear an Alison Krauss song and remember when I lit candles and popped off the cap of a hard cider before opening my laptop. And maybe I’ll be filled with a warm contentedness when I remember my apartment smelling like a late autumn rain and a peppermint candle.

For now though, this dreary weather and melancholy music just makes me think of times before. Not in a way that makes me depressed, mind you. I’m appreciative. I’m glad to have such charming moments to recall.