My dating statistics

1 in 3 of the guys you date will accidentally send the "for your eyes only" sexy boxer briefs photo of himself as a group text. 

1 in 4 of the girls who receive the text will be you. 

2 in 4 of the girls will already know each other. 

One of them will be you.  

60 percent of you will not be able to stop laughing for 10 minutes.

38 percent of you will feel extremely violated.  

2 percent of you will not be able to help but think he's still pretty sexy in those little briefs. 

3 other people on the text thread will be three too many other people for you to continue dating him. 

1 in 4 of the group-text recipients will break up with him. 

And it will 100 percent be you.

Chocolate rocks

I was sweating heavily as I handed him the Toblerone.
"Wow. Cool, Thanks!" He took the giant chocolate bar from me and turned it over in his hands.
I shifted slightly on the bed. There was silence. He looked up at me.
"Do you get what I'm trying to tell you?" I fumbled awkwardly, shifting again and hoping he couldn't tell how much I was sweating.
He looked thoughtful in the way he did when he was discussing Kierkegaard and existentialism.
"Oh. Um, no?"
"I like you."
"Oh."

Let's talk about how uncomfortable it is to be vulnerable. It feels exactly like walking out to the edge of a cliff and hanging out on a wobbly rock while someone pokes you gently with a stick to see if you're able to balance. You're excited by the sheer thrill of being somewhere you don't often find yourself. You're terrified of falling, of getting hurt. You're angry at the stick-poker for making you uncomfortable. Whether you walked out onto the wobbly rock of your own volition or someone sort of cornered you out there, you're not much in a position of power. So what are you supposed to do? You hang out on the wobbly rock for a while, for as long as you can. But at some point, you either fall, or you grab the stick and pull yourself in to safety. Maybe you shove the person holding the stick onto that rock on your way back, so they can see how it feels. But being wobbly is not permanent.

I guess what I'm trying to say, what I'm trying to tell myself, is that you should hand out Toblerone bars your whole life if you can. No matter how sweaty you get. It's hard to not be dissuaded when you get a blank stare or a long pause or your candy handed back to you. But you can't give up chocolate.

Writer Rachel C. Lewis says it better than I can:

"Maybe it’s weird. Maybe it’s scary. Maybe it seems downright impossible to just be—to just let people know you want them, need them, feel like, in this very moment, you will die if you do not see them, hold them, touch them in some way whether its your feet on their thighs on the couch or your tongue in their mouth or your heart in their hands. But there is nothing more beautiful than being desperate. And there is nothing more risky than pretending not to care. We are young and we are human and we are beautiful and we are not as in control as we think we are. We never know who needs us back. We never know the magic that can arise between ourselves and other humans."

(Read her whole post here.)

Push it real good

In the interest of not putting my “best self” on social media and cultivating my online persona so you think I’m cool and quirky and not a big ol' box of anxieties, I’m having an inwardly rough week, so I’m going to tell you about it whether you like it or not.

Stagnancy is one of my greatest fears. I hate the idea of settling, of “alright.” I don’t confuse contentment with complacency, but there’s a difference between being content because you’re where you want to or should be, and being content because you’re scared of doing anything else. You can be content while being uncomfortable.

But the problem is I’m just uncomfortable. I’ve been trying to create newness for myself in multiple areas of my life, but I’ve continually been met with (admittedly often self-induced) frustration. I’m afraid of being the kind of uncomfortable that isn’t “being challenged,” but just “being unhappy.” It’s like trying to scale a wall without having any footholds to start with. I want to be halfway up the wall, I want to be looking for the next place to step—I want to be that kind of uncomfortable, the kind where you know you’re going somewhere, maybe you don’t know where, but you're growing and tackling something new—but I’m still at the bottom. And I don’t seem to have the right shoes, and my climbing gear is starting to chafe.

The past few days I've been overcome with self-doubt, the irony of which is that it makes me become more self-loathing because I hate being the kind of person (i.e., a human) who second-guesses herself. I've always been extremely self-directed and independent, but lately it's become tiresome, and I'm sick of motivating myself; I just want someone to guide me through it or maybe just hold my hand and pat it gently but mostly stand up at the top of the wall and shout down step-by-step instructions to me and give me a hard push forward. 

I am not a patient person. I'm constantly struggling to balance patience with being proactive, but neither nor the balance of both has proved successful. Maybe this is just what being in your twenties feels like, or maybe this is what life will always be like during the interims of being where you want to be, but I'm exhausted and overwhelmed and discouraged. I'm constantly telling myself You're tougher than you think! And I know it's true, but I don't always believe it, especially when I'm crying in the car on the way home from yoga after I haven't gone in weeks, where I can't even twist myself into basic positions. 

The solution doesn't seem to be more yoga or more proactivity or more patience or both or switching into autopilot or settling. It feels like there is no solution, or I suppose maybe I've yet to find it. It just sucks, and I know it won't always, but right now the suck feels too big to not write as catharsis in this blog and be generally bummed out and maybe eat some (or all) of the chocolate I keep in my desk drawer for "emergencies."

The F Word

I go with my gut on most things. I know how I feel about someone very quickly after meeting them. I know if I’m going to be good friends with someone. I know if I could date this person, if I couldn’t date this person, if I’m attracted to them, if I could love them forever or if it’ll last a week. I can usually guess a lot about who a person is, what types of experiences they’ve had, what sort of ideology they subscribe to. I know when people are off, when they need to talk, when they need to just “be.”

I’ve known from just looking at a picture that someone I was involved with hooked up with another person in the photo. (This has happened on more than one occasion. Easiest sleuthing ever.)

I don’t think I’m a wizard, nor do I think I’m exceptional for being able to understand people. Lots of people know how to understand people.

I also know that I’ve judged people too soon, too harshly, and I’ve been wrong a million times.

But when I’ve been wrong, it’s usually because I didn’t listen to my intuition. Some of the bigger screw-ups I’ve made or crapfests I’ve been part of came about because my gut was waving giant red flags in my face and blaring sirens, and I put on blinders and plugged my ears. THIS IS BAD NEWS was blinking on a banner in my brain, and I unplugged the sign. I knew all about other people’s feelings, and I conveniently ignored my own.

My mom likes to give me a hard time when I claim omnipotent powers of intuition while she’s grilling me about any and every male in my life, since, her fingers are crossed, one might possibly be “the one” (hi, mom).

“How do you know you don’t like him?”

“Because I just know. I know how I feel about people when I meet them.”

“But then how come you didn’t know about [insert bad-news-boy #1 here]?”

And that’s the thing: I knew. I knew with him, I knew with others. I knew I shouldn’t get myself in any deeper. But hotness trumped rationale or desire overtook knowing better.

I’ve written blog posts before about “knowing” and how I think I know everything, and I’m consistently humbled to find out I don’t know a fucking thing. This isn’t a blog about that.

At some point within the past few years, I transitioned from being an INTJ to an INFJ. (If you are unfamiliar, these letters indicate Myers-Briggs personality types). These two types are only a letter off, but I like to attribute my current sense of self to that move from T to F. Basically: I let logic take a backseat to finally acknowledging that I had a lot of feelings, and that I was going to express those feelings instead of ignoring them, and I was going to allow them to guide me and inform my decisions instead of invalidating them at the outset.

I spent the majority of my life suppressing my feelings. When it came to sex and sexuality, instead of taking ownership of those feelings, I took on guilt and shame. When it came to romantic feelings, I berated myself for being what I thought was weak and cheesy and stupid and “female.” When it came to sadness and depression, I pretended to be okay, told people I was doing fine. I prided myself on being book-smart and book-logical. I stuffed down my overwhelming sense of empathy when I felt it was making me teary-eyed too often.

I was afraid that having feelings equated to being vulnerable. If you were vulnerable, people could take advantage of you, manipulate you, mistreat you and hurt you. As it happens, pretending to not have feelings is what got me into situations where people took advantage of me, manipulated me, mistreated me and hurt me. And as someone dear to me once told me, “No one has to know you’re being vulnerable unless you want them to.”

So I decided to acknowledge that I had feelings, to say what I felt and to feel all the feels. Sometimes my method for coping is just expressing out loud, “I feel miserable.” Sometimes (mostly) it’s making fun of my feelings. We all have ’em, so sometimes telling your Facebook friends that you just sobbed while watching a dog-food commercial is actually one of the most human things you can (and should) do.

The weird part is, ever since I embraced my feelings as a part of who I am, I feel like I feel less. (feelfeelfeelfeel) But it’s because I’m expressing my feelings that I don’t have to deal with them as much. I go with my gut, and it simply goes. I have a feel, I feel it, and I move on. Instead of bottling everything up and shoving everything down and dealing with the inevitable explosion, things become almost boring. Normal. Healthy.

Who knew?

I get so emotional, baby

Let's take a trip back in time, friends. To a time when I had all the feelings and wrote grandiose, melodramatic things in journals between pages of French phrases and cookie recipes and notes on Impressionism and the European Union.

Eat all the feelings, Pusheen.

Here are a few snippets from my former Big, Fat Emo Life.


"My heart feels like tiny twigs snapping under footsteps: It's soft, but it still hurts."

"When am I ever going to live in a place that feels like home?"

"Heath Ledger died! Isn't that surreal?"

"How do I live out the impossible desires of my heart?"

"Sometimes I wish I didn't have a heart so I didn't have to feel."

"I need to shave my legs. They're hairy."

"If I didn't like affection, I'd be totally set for the rest of my life, and I'd be the most content single person ever."

"I want him to sing to me and play the guitar for me every minute of the day."

"If being in love helps me understand humans and human nature, then I guess for me it's worth it. But why is it worth it for other people? Happiness seems like a very selfish answer."

"You know, as much as I write about love, you'd think I was obsessed with it."

"I wish we could empty our brains out at night time the way Dumbledore empties his head of memories."

"I can't even cry over not being able to cry."

"I think I want to get married in Scotland someday. But not in a kilt or anything."

"I miss art."

"I need some fucking Cheetos and a slap in the face and someone to spoon me."

This is why you don't give a 21-year-old your phone number and then act like an adult. Lol.

Him: Hey :)
Him: Hey :)
Him: Hey wats up
Him: Hey wats up
Him: Hey wats up? :-)
Him: Hey wats up?
Him: Hey how are u?
Him: Hey how are u :-)
Me: This is getting pretty ridiculous. You can stop texting me now.
Him: Lol why'd u give me ur number then?
Him: Lol ok ill stop texting u but next time don't give me ur number. Don't be dumb lol.
Me: I asked for your number instead when you asked for mine, but I felt pressured by you to give you my number anyway, so next time just let a girl do what she wants to do.
Him: Lol. Pressured? Wat are u in high school? U could've said no I would've been ok but wats wrong with talking? Lol. It seemed like we were getting along.
Me: I'm not interested in talking.
Him: Lol. Wow somebody is rude. Its cool sweetie. Good luck.


Wats that u don't believe me?