Tag: shame

humor, personal writing

the sun will come out

mycrookedrainbow

Do you ever sit down and take a little look-see around your life and think, WHERE THE HELL DID MY MOJO GO?

Yes, that happened to me recently.

For starters, I was, at the time of my existential deliberations, in a kiddie pool at the town rec center pool walking.

Let me set the stage for you. Now I am not very tall, but quite tall enough, thank you very much, to feel painfully visible to the teenage boy lifeguarding, the super-fit serious-swimmers, and the one actual kid (who was, unlike me, in the big girls pool).

So here I am, pool walking for some post-surgical rehab. I already have, as I mentioned in a previous post, the grace of a rhinoceros. Put that rhinoceros in the kiddie pool and require her to put on a swim cap as if she’s about to compete with Michael Phelps, and what you get is a painfully self-conscious rhinoceros.

As I am bouncing away, I notice the lifeguard is looking but trying not to look at me. Oh I see, yes, perhaps it is because I am bouncing not rhythmically up and down, in a regular cadence, but bouncing this way and that, in a helter skelter sort of fashion, zigzagging across the pool without discernible pattern, and catching myself on the side wall every few seconds when I lose my balance. Right. I get it. I look like a crazy person!

It was from this spot that I began to think, WHAT HAVE I COME TO?

Back when I was 7 or 8, I used to have MOJO, you see. I was so confident of my latent charm that I regularly “entertained” my parents’ party guests – even without their specifically requesting I do so! How Very Thoughtful Was I?

In any case, at these parties, I’d cue up the old record player with my favorite album of all time (back then): the soundtrack to Annie: the Movie. The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow was ready to roll. I had my little brother trained to start playing it when I gave him the signal. I ran down to “center stage,” a coffee table in front of the guests, and I got up on top of it, OF COURSE. From this mark, I put the microphone to my mouth and gave my brother the nod and boom! IT’S ON. I took care to really BELT OUT the words so that they could hear me and not just Annie singing. It’s only fair, you know. These people didn’t come here to listen to a record!!

I sang my little heart out. I even had a “routine” if you can call it that. I flung one arm out here at this part of the song, and then the other got flung out at that part of the song. I knew my stuff. I had watched Hee-Haw. I had seen live shows. This is how I knew, performers have to Take a Bow when they are done. So I did, and yep, there was in my memory some pattering of hands together before the parents’ party guests resumed their conversations.

What happened to this little Annie girl? She was a rising star sure that The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow. Sure, too, that the clapping of those guests of her parents meant that they really did enjoy her singing and dancing.

It was only later – I shudder to think how long it in fact took – that I realized I can neither carry a tune, nor move my body in space in any kind of way that could be called dancing. Entertaining, maybe. But not dancing, and definitely not pleasing.

So I put my little orphan Annie self in the trunk of childhood by about age 9 or 10. No more singing. No more dancing. Not even (especially not) Karaoke. What happened? Oh, just the sudden birth of SHAME.

Maybe it was my arrhythmic bobbing in the kiddie pool that brought this memory to the fore. What happened to that little kid that didn’t CARE what she looked or sounded like? She just put her WHOLE HEART into it, whatever it sounded or looked like.

I wonder – if my Annie self had somehow not been decimated by the savage trauma of just being a person, would I still have my life mojo? Would my life have turned out differently?

Or is this like asking, if a tree falls in the forest….

But why is it that some people are able to hold onto their little Annie selves, keep them safe from the brutal storms of life, and bring them out, relatively unscathed, when it is safe to be vulnerable?

I will ponder this question later. For now, I will focus my attention on being a bit less of a rhinoceros in the kiddie pool – or, better yet, recognize that if I must be a rhinoceros, maybe I can become less self-conscious of my rhinocery.

In fact, maybe one day in the not too distant future, I will grab the mike, get up on the proverbial coffee table, and downright celebrate my rhinocery!! With a little tune I know called…. (IN UNISON, PEOPLE!): The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow.

dating, humor, personal writing

the green dot blues

mycrookedrainbow

OK. I get it. I’m online dating, you’re online dating, he’s definitely online dating, everybody is online dating. On every possible app. Yep. Got the memo.

But here’s the thing. Dating in this era, especially for an insecurely attached introvert such as myself, is – let’s see, there’s a word for it – oh yes: HELL. It is unmitigated torture. Like a slow drip from a faucet while you’re trying to sleep and wanting to think thoughts of anything other than the slow drip of the damned faucet.

Or like those monks who believe self-flagellation is an integral part of their spiritual practice, flogging the fragile skin of their naked backs with those heavy, prickly ropes, over and over and over and over in a ritual shaming of the flesh, that will leave its mark only UNTIL the END of TIME .

Or like getting all settled into your seat on the plane on an overseas 12 hour flight, only to find the guy next to you wants to spend the entire time alternately snoring into your ear and creeping into your shoulder space, or chewing on some dry pretzels, little bits of which spew this way and that, as he explains to you his ten year plan, while exuding what must be some kind of protest against capitalism via his utter disregard for the hygiene products it peddles.

Or like ordering this amazing dress you’ve been eyeing for a while on Amazon (on sale! great reviews! pics so cute!) only to have it arrive at your door looking nothing like the dress you imagined flitting prettily about in, not even looking – in pure point of fact – like a dress at all, but rather more like the shriveled aftermath of a party of polyester and cardboard left out in the rain, for a few years, then put in the dryer with a hamster. (Not to put too fine a point on it.)

Or like going to the mechanic with your car that’s been making this noise for a while, and then suddenly, now that you’re telling him about it, it’s not making a noise at all, it actually goes ghostly quiet, even though you KNOW something real happened and you’re NOT imagining it – but the mechanic just looks at you, like, Whatever, lady! NEXT!

Or that awful dream you wake up sweating from where you’re at a party where you just can’t quite figure out what the hell people are talking about – is it another language they are speaking? Why can’t I understand what is going on? Wait, I was supposed to bring a gift? Is that why they are looking at me that way? Cue looking down: OH MY GOD I FORGOT MY PANTS.

You get the drift? Yes, I think you do. This, my friends, is online dating in 2019. As a 40 something straight lady. In a city. With lots of dudes. And lots and lots and lots of beautiful young women.

So here’s what I find to be the most excruciating facet of this whole maddening enterprise, for me anyway: that f*cking green dot. ONLINE NOW! Or the green dot equivalent. On Bumble, it’s the mysteriously rapid-changing locations of the person you just had some you-thought-fabulous-dates-and-hot-chemistry with. But there he is 3.6 miles away, now 4.7 miles away, now 8.2 – which means he is SWIPING NOW!, wherever he is, he is MESSAGING SOMEONE NOW…. or so you have heard (or, let’s be real, so you have *read,* after some obsession-fueled googling with a glass of wine to calm your nerves).

But it is OKCupid that is the origin story of my Green Dot Blues. Somehow this is made all the more devastating by the fact that OKC has, no offense, evolved into what feels a graveyard of gray faces, mine included (so I can say it, y’all!). In other words, OKC is like Facebook. Once upon a time it was KOOL. Now it’s where daters go to die. But even there, he’s ONLINE NOW, checking out all the other, better gray faces than yours.

Well, carry on, shall we?

Nah, I’m being harsh. There are nice guys out there. For sure. Really nice. It’s just hard not to feel like we are all the picked-over garments after a massive end-of-summer sale at TJ Maxx. This sweater is good, but bummer, it only comes in xxxl or xxss. This blazer has a stain that’s been there since the 70s. Wait, are these pants wearing a wedding ring? There’ve got to be other clothes stored somewhere in the back? No? So… this is it? Then you look down and realize there’s a hole where there’s not supposed to be a hole in your own damned t-shirt.

Yeah. Here we all are, god help us, we have *that* in common. And that, I guess, is a start.

Also, an update: recall Mr. Cutiepants from the horrific mistaken hand-holding incident post? I remembered just now that that was not the first time my subconscious pulled that stunt with this guy. On our second date, after he kissed me for the first time, and it was raining and we were looking for a little shelter where we could make out on the sidewalk in the rain LIKE TEENAGERS, PEOPLE… And I might have just grabbed his hand and held it, grinning madly. In my mind, I was skipping with him hand in hand down the sidewalk, onlookers turning their wet heads to watch these two new lovebirds go by, love story blooming as they watched. In reality, my reverie evaporated soon as I found myself holding hands with this guy I’d just met, who, for all I know is a PLAYAH. I had said, “Oh My Gosh! I’m holding your hand – is that weird? I think that’s weird! I mean, it’s weird for a second date! Sorry if this is weird! IS it weird?” He said, as gamely as he could, “Only if you make it weird!”

So, that about sums up online dating for me thus far: Only If You Make It Weird (i.e., Yes, You’ve Now Made It Weird, You Weirdo) and, perhaps not unrelatedly, the post-date Green Dot Blues.

I do have one final thing to say on the matter, on this lovely Friday evening, where I am – you may note – NOT out on the town. And that is:

F-U WHEN HARRY MET SALLY.

F-U JOHN CUSACK and YOUR GIANT BOOMBOX.

F-U JUDD NELSON and THE STUD EARRING YOU GIVE MOLLY RINGWALD AT THE END OF MOVIE.

That is all.

dating, humor, personal writing

the hand holding incident

mycrookedrainbow

So the other day I am on a date. Well, can you call it that? It was accompanying someone I find incredibly attractive on some errands. Fourth time meeting. Why did I agree to go on a fourth date like this? Where’s the rolling eyes emoji when you need it?

This is just how things go for me. You will see this, all in due time.

So anyway, aforementioned cutiepants and I are on this, you know, errand-running date. He is squeezing me in, you see. Which, I must admit, makes me feel a little bit unsure of my date’s interest in me.

He and I arrive at the mall where he is to pick up an order he’d placed online. Fair enough. We go in, but they need to find the order in the back. So we are instructed to wait for a couple minutes. It being a furniture store, we sit on a nice little two seater couch. (OK, not bad, we can sit next to each other!)

We take a seat. He seems a little distracted and had been looking for something in his coat. But out of the corner of my eye I see his right hand reach in my direction. My left hand – god help you, left hand – grabs his right. Like a ninja reflex.

But then – where’s that embarrassed face emoji? – I realize, he was not reaching for your hand, you fool of all fools! He was looking for something in his coat.

“Oh,” I say. “Wait, were you reaching for my hand?”

He pauses – and his hesitation is all I need to know, NO YOU DUMBASS HE WAS NOT REACHING FOR YOUR DAMNED HAND!

I pull it away and stare immediately at the very, very interesting things on the walls over there, in the direction facing anywhere but toward him.

This is just a little window into my love life. My so-called love life.

This might be why I am single. Here I am, this 40-something single lady, with a cat, mind you (a cat I walk on a leash, but that is for another day) trying to navigate the online dating world in a sea of millennials. Cutiepants is what I’ll call a late-stage millennial. Their norms are all kinds of different from Gen X-er’s like me.

Thus my confusion.

My mistaken hand-holding incident led me to spiral internally, as I do, and catastrophizing, as I also do, with thoughts like “Oh boy, this is a reflex from my LTR days. This is what someone in a RELATIONSHIP would do. We are just going out. We only just met. He is a late-stage millennial – he wears a SCARF for christsake! Is he going to call me a “Stage 5 Clinger” to his friends when he talks about this later? Holy crap, I’m DOOMED! I will choke on a baby carrot and die a single lady in my studio apartment with five cats who walk over my dead body for days (with that swishy-tailed I’m-Pissed vibe that cats do). OK, we are done here.”

Naturally, in my mind, we were done here. So I curled into myself and muttered nonsensical chatter mirroring the tone of his chatter until he dropped me back home, still mortified at my fatal mistake.

Instinctively assuming someone is reaching to hold your hand on date four, an errand date no less, is the equivalent of saying “I need you to love me, NOW”