Love, Actually.

I took a drive in my hometown while visiting family for the holidays this afternoon and what to my wandering ears did play, but a succession of songs I noticed were all about love. Not just a few. Every song that played through the damn radio machine during my half hour drive was a love song. Not just some. 

Every.Damn.One. 

It reminded me of this critique I had gotten over the content of my last post. You see, I write things in my blog like "love is great blah blah blah" and a friend of mine critiqued me and my love lies with the simple argument,

"...love doesn't exist and it's stupid."

Well, I don't have to be a pre-pubescent teenage girl who's listened to too much Taylor Swift to know love is not just something I made up in my overly emotional feminine mind.

It's FACT.

Like a scientifically proven FACT. Studies show when a person 'falls in love" dopamine and nor epinephrine go shitting through your brain like a good solid dose of coke up the nasal passage. Hence why people (mainly Ke$ha) say things like "your love is my drug". And why people LOVE cocaine. They literally fall IN LOVE with it.

Not only has it been scientifically proven that your coke habit and blind addiction to your new boyfriend are totally connected, but when love is lost there are physical withdrawal symptoms. Anyone who has suffered the pangs of a broken heart can attest. You can't eat, you can't sleep, you burst into tears on the subway and in the middle of the street. No? Just me?

But beyond the science (which let's face it, this isn't that kind of blog, I'm not that kind of person, and this wasn't supposed to be a dissertation I just have opinions) the signs and symptoms of a person in love are very clear. I firmly believe that in this case feeling is believing and anyone who claims that "love doesn't exist" has either never actually fallen in love, or has fallen in love and then been so badly burned they suffer from what I like to call PTLD (Post Traumatic Love Disorder). Now they are trying to convince themselves and others as a means of survival to believe love isn't actually real, feelings in general are a figment of everyone's imagination, and we can and should just train ourselves to not have feelings because having the feels means you feel pain so NO MORE FEELS.

And I have so been there.

I had come out a loser in the game of love too many consecutive times over the years and I was benching myself. If you don't play the game, you have nothing to lose right?

Wrong.

I was wrong and it didn't work anyway because a stupid boy came into my life no stupider than any other boy and next thing you know, after almost a whole year of single emotional 'freedom' and being able to separate my emotional being from my logical being I found myself prancing around my room listening to Jo Jo, YES JO JO, in my underwear and I'm smiling randomly like a schizophrenic during my shifts at work.  I'm writing blog posts about how "nice" men are and I can suddenly listen to Mariah Carey's "All I want for Christmas is You" without vomiting. 

It's disgusting. 

Now, I know what you may be thinking. "Lauren, you have been the most single of all the people for years and years, what the fuck do you really know about love?"

Well, Ladies and Gentleman....I don't really know all that much because even those scientists who have researched and made solid conclusions about how love affects us mentally and even physically come up short with explanations for how and why it comes. Just that it does. And it really is the best and worst of all the things.

I may not be the most religious person. But I truly believe love is the closest thing we have to experiencing God.

And it's all around us.  I just don't think people look in the right places. Or think that just because it doesn't pan out the way it does in the movies it's not the real thing. 

Like where's my John Cussack in adorable 80's garb with a boombox over his head outside my window? WHERE IS HE? 

Love isn't always so dramatic.  Love doesn't always come in the form of a dozen roses. Love isn't always romantic. My whole life I was so focused on gaining the affections of a member of the opposite sex and failing terribly that I thought I wasn't worthy of it or maybe it just wasn't in the cards for me. OR maybe, just maybe it really didn't exist. Until I opened my eyes and realized I am shown love daily by my family and friends who would do anything for me and love me just the way I am. And have the whole time. 

The second I opened my eyes and my heart to it I wanted to focus more on them and the love they were giving me. They taught me everything I know about what love is, how to give it, how to accept it, and how to maintain it. More importantly they taught me how to love myself. They helped me find love in myself so not only did I no longer find the need to chase after it, but it was always around.

Even then, our relationships haven't always been perfect. We have had huge fall outs, we disagree on a million points, sometimes they drive me crazy. Mostly I drive them crazy.  It is because I love them I am willing to take the time to work through these problems which in turn only makes our love for each other stronger.  

Love isn't perfect. It's not supposed to be. If it looks perfect from the outside you need to take a better look. People are flawed. Love is flawed. It doesn't mean it doesn't exist. It is very real and is found in both trying situations and in the most mundane.

Love is holding your friend while they sob uncontrollably into your arms over the loss of a loved one.

Love is your mother trying to pick the lock of your bedroom door because you've tried to shut her out after a fight.

Love is helping them heat garlic oil up in a spoon like a back alley crack addict to then pour into their ear for their infection and then Web MDing it to make sure they're not just listening to someones terrible home remedy recipe which you know they're totally capable of doing.

Love is compromise, love is picking up on their smell even when they're not around, love is knowing they eat ranch with their french fries.

Love is giving people the key to your weaknesses and praying they don't turn the lock.

Love is a million things and comes in all different forms be it family love, friend love, lover love, one night stand love, and most importantly self love so don't fucking tell me it doesn't exist, because I'll tell you you're irrelevant.

And to turn on the radio. 

I'm not the only

Broken Record

In Defense of the "Nice Guy"

This past Sunday, I was standing at the service bar at the restaurant I work at, pouring what was probably someones umpteenth diet coke refill staring out into what I define as my soul sucking abyss when this shrill, two Pinot Grigio deep voice slurred it's way into my ear canal,

"There's no such thing as nice guys"

I immediately snapped out of whatever twilight zone I had drifted off to and without thinking replied, as if it were any of my business,

"That's not true."

My bartender laughed. She looked like I had just slapped her in the face. 

But someone was in need of their not-so-diet coke and I ran off. 

The statement, however, stuck with me as I continued to take another table's order and I found myself formulating a argument against her rude, blanket generalization about half of the world's inhabitants and on the defense for men. A gender that has been a former source of a lot of personal pain and which I have developed an arsenal of arguments against for.... let's see.....the entirety of my life. 

Back at the service bar I approached the friend who was being given this small minded excuse for whatever was wrong with men in her life and asked what the deal was.  She explained the 'meanie' in this scenario (a coworker) and her had recently started hooking up outside of their place of business, but refused to take things to the bedroom.

"Maybe he's just trying to be a nice guy," she said.

"He won't sleep with you? That doesn't sound very nice to me."

I continued to explain to her, and her friend who was returning from her visit to the bathroom, that a statement like "there's no such thing as nice guys" is as silly and untrue as saying "there's no such thing as mean girls" which we all know is super untrue because there is an entire movie dedicated to that topic alone thanks to the birth of Tina Fey's comedic genius baby.

Blanket generalizations like this are so small minded it makes me want to punch girls like our shrill voiced, platinum blonde, bitch in the ovaries because she gives woman a bad name. If the timbre of her voice spitting terrible wisdom unto this planet wasn't enough to give me a distaste for this individual I  found out from a friend that when I walked away 'dis bitch had rolled her eyes at me saying that I was obviously just too young to know any better. 

Now, what McCunterson didn't know, is while I may be just a baby fetus of the adult population, I have had more 'bad' guys in my life than I wish on even her and it was swiftly accumulated by the ripe, young age of 24. I have certainly excused and accused the male population for a number of my problems including but not limited to my low self-esteem, the 20 pounds I gained sophomore year of college, my almost 2 year celibacy stint, the 15 pounds I lost a year out of college, and my mind numbing depression the winter of 2012. 

A fucking douche-cake-with-a-dick named Matt Forney wrote an entire "Case Against Female Self-Esteem" and at another time I will not so kindly rip his pea sized brain to shreds with my classy wordage at some point in the near future. (And then I'm coming for your balls Matt. You can start trembling now.)

But somehow even though I have a million examples of just how mean the male population can be, personal and ...oh, I don't know, just by pulling thousands of examples of female abuse throughout the entire history of the world as we know it.... there is something called hope inside me for all humanity as I refuse to believe all men are bad.

People are people. There are "good" people and "bad" people but mostly people are just humans trying to make it through this world alive for as long as possible, with as much happiness as they can. We all bear the same potential inside to be "good" and "bad" depending on the day or whether or not mercury is in retrograde. 

I consider myself to be a GOOD person, but I have definitely done some things that were not very nice. I have put my foot in my mouth and offended those I love. I've gossiped. I've been hypocritical and judgmental and I'm only halfway through this post. I have lied (not very well) cheated (how do you think I passed honors physics?) and even stolen (red bra, high school, bad ass). 

I'm not proud, but I'd like whichever one of my readers has not at some point done one of those bad things in some way to shout me out on the book of face and say "ME! I AM THE PERFECT HUMAN SPECIMEN!" I'll buy you a nice, big cookie.

Guy's have the POTENTIAL within them to be very mean, yes. But so do woman and men, I'm sorry, but whatever mean tricks you think you have up your sleeve fall very short to the well-trained mind manipulation gifted to your female counterpart.

Men are mean, woman are mean, I used to have a pretty mean cat, didn't really like her that much. If you are complaining about this big ol' meanie in your life than get him the fuck out of there ASAP. But who am I to tell anyone who or what to waste their time with? I have certainly wasted my fair share of minutes to undeserving folks. At the end of the day though, the faster they're out and I mean OUT OUT OUT LIKE NO TEXTS CALLS DON'T SEE THEM IN PERSON OR STALK THEIR FACEBOOK GOOD GOD STOP IT NOW the better.

We are all, every one of us deserving of having our lives filled to the brim with the best of everyone, but there's a second part here that this ice queen wasn't acknowledging that is worth bringing up. Maybe the reason this woman had stumbled upon so much meanness, brining her to the conclusion "mean are big ol' mean daddy's" was that she in fact wasn't being very nice. 

A lot about relationships these days is "what is this person giving me?" but what can you give them? Love is the only thing that brings love. Love for yourself. Love for your life. A love and and openness to others. And yes, it is this sort of vulnerability that gets people hurt in the first place but there's no way around it. To get love you must give love. 

Look, I have given my blood, sweat, and tears to men who have trampled over me like unnoticed toilet paper stuck to their hush puppies. It wasn't love. It was desperation. It was insecurity. It was a need for validation. It wasn't me being too 'nice' it was me being mean. Mean to myself.

I've been the first person in the room to smoke on my cigarette of cynicism and blow toxic smoke into your lungs about how men are terrible humans who are only out to get their dick wet.  

While I have held this opinion, making me no better than the cunt queen I am now arguing against, it is a recognizably small, narrow minded, callous opinion that is just not true. Men are not mean. They have the ability to be the knights in shinning armor. There are woman out there who have stories of good men. My Grandmother is one of them. She continually sits me down and tells me how my Grandfather was the BEST man. They were married for 60 years. They had problems I'm sure but he was a good man. My father is a good man. I have watched him and my mother butt heads countless times. I have yelled at my father and said things no daughter should ever under any circumstances say to her father's face but I've done it. Despite the fact I am a self-proclaimed "daddy's girl" and always have been.

My point here is NO ONE is ONE THING. We are all the make-up of our past, present, and wants for the future. We are all layered. Like Ogres. And I really hate these articles clouding the inter web with their misguided conclusions and closed mindedness. Men are not mean. Men are not "nice". Girls are NOT UNICORNS. Although sometimes I definitely feel magical so okay, maybe we're unicorns but we're not always majestic. Sometimes we're smelly. Sometime's we're cranky. WE DEFINITELY POOP. (It's serious. Can we please stop pretending this doesn't happen because it's caused me bouts of serious and painful constipation my whole life).

Ladies; stop saying men are evil. Men; stop thinking you're all such "nice guys" and don't know why you can't find a great girl out there because the flip side to this argument is as nice as you may be, no one owes you their undying love and affection just because you've bought them a drink and have avoided staring at their tits, pretending to listen to what they have to say for over an hour with the secret hope of scoring at a decent BJ. 

Relationships regardless of gender, regardless of sexuality, regardless of even whether or not the relationship is platonic happens when one human is enjoying the company of a second human. Or a third human. Silly Mormons ammiright? 

And maybe the only reason I can sit here perched on my pedestal of hope and good will towards man is one of them made their way into my life recently and it's really all I can manage to have the feels about these days. Because after having what seems like a billion terrible experiences with the opposite sex, having one good makes me forget that it was ever really that bad. 

Because men, woman really do love your stupid, charming, penis bearing selves. That's why they bitch about it so much. If we didn't give a shit it wouldn't even be a topic of conversation and it's seriously THE topic of conversation like maybe 90% of the time. But woman are beautiful, majestic beings too and y'all need to get it in your thick skulls that if you have a lady you like and she has graced you with permission into her world DO NOT TAKE FUCKING ADVANTAGE. Because she was living before you and she'll live after you and she's handed dick on the daily so she definitely doesn't need you for that.

The point is, in my humble, perhaps aggressive opinion, can we all stop pigeon holing everyone to one thing? Be open to meeting people and cast your initial protective judgments like "hey something about that dude seems creepy" but be open to those judgements falling away and revealing your next boyfriend, or girlfriend, or best friend, or fuck buddy. Whatever you want. 

Let's just drop our expectations that everyone is supposed to love us and instead refocus our energies to loving ourselves. And maybe, just maybe, if everyone works on being a better fucking human, the planet will slowly rid itself of what seems like a race full of ass wipes and cunt faces.

I'm getting off my soap box now.....

Broken Record OUT

The Importance of Being Honest

I have had writer's block for the past two weeks with this thing. I started this little project about a month ago and have figured out a few things such as when I can factor time in to write, places I like to write at, and my longer than necessary editing process.  

Lately, when I sit down during my designated "writing" time, I can't seem to put words to the page. Last week I literally stared at my blank screen into the wee hours of the morning.  And it's not that I have nothing to write about. I have had idea after idea, the words spinning in my head as I stare into space on the A train, walk down the city streets, or during a lull at work. They are there. But they won't come out.

I had a conversation with my mother last week, conversations I try to put off as long as possible, about how I should really watch what I say because I don't know who's reading and no one in their right mind would ever want to be with a girl like me if I keep strewing my scandalous thoughts and adventures all over the internet. 

I told her they can suck my dick. 

But it doesn't mean her words didn't stick. They have been the sticky glue that has bound my hands together and prevented me from writing what I really want to say because I am now worried about judgements. But that sort of fear is what got me here in the first place. Judgement is artistic kryptonite and The Rolling Stones didn't get where they got because they were worried about what their mothers would say.

I'm tired of being so afraid of everything. I am tired of people saying I am too intense like it's a bad thing. 

I have been the girl who has kept her mouth shut. Who didn't want to stir the pot or say or do anything out of line. That girl kept me in a bad relationship ten months too long. That girl got me into all those bad relationships after . That girl has hindered me in my career. She was afraid speak up. Afraid of being too much. Afraid of rejection.

I have kept my lips silenced, my actions agreeable, jumped up, turned left, run right and gone down on cue.

I don't want to be afraid anymore. There are things that I need to say, that someone needs to say, while everybody else sits in silence nodding their heads making idle conversations about the weather. 

I don't care about the weather. I don't care what you do for a living or where your apartment is located or how much money you have. I want to know who you are. I want to know what makes you laugh, what makes you cry, what turns you on. 

These are questions I am begging to ask strangers in the street. Strangers I see on the train. We all have a story to tell and we shouldn't be made to feel embarrassed or ashamed because we are brave enough to admit our faults and tell the whole story. 

Life is not a ladder to climb. It is a coaster to ride. There are ups and downs and sharp turns and all of a sudden it takes you for a loop. Sometimes you feel like you just might vomit and then you go soaring over a hill and you are suddenly filled with a joy that courses through your body with all the vigor of an orgasm. 

I am an extremist. I love and hate life in extremes. I love and hate others in extremes. I love and hate myself in extremes. I have the capacity to feel intense happiness and earth shattering sadness and I know I couldn't have one without the other and for that I feel blessed.

I know that I cannot sit hear and listen when people tell me I am too much or not enough because as hard as I try to meet peoples expectations I have been both. I have been too much. I have not been enough. I've been loved and left and none of it has been because I say "dick" too much.

I am worthy of love and love for who I am. Not for some copy of an idea of what a 'good' girl should be. I have done 'bad' things but I have mostly done 'good' things and I think if you asked those who knew me they would say I am a good person. A great friend. A loyal, trustworthy, hard worker and these are the things I would like factored in at the end of the day. There are people in my life who see this and I only want those people in my life who appreciate me for all my good, all my bad, and all my insanity. 

Because I refuse to be less. In fact, I'd like to be more.

I want to strive for more, work for more, help others, and try to make any sort of sense out of this crazy life we're all supposed to live and what living even means. With the occasional obscenity thrown in.  

Perfection is a fallacy. 

I am shattered. I am made of a billion, broken shards of glass, but like a mosaic I am all these pieces brought together by my crazy glue. And it's a beautiful thing. 

So, god damn it,  once again. Either you want to hear what I have to say or you get off my blog.

Round and round and round the words go, where they stop, hell if I know.

Broken Record

Place Your Bets, No Regrets

I'm not much of a gambler.

Except of course the gamble I made following my acting dreams.

Or the gamble I made with my life that night I consumed half a bottle of Jack Daniels.

Or the recent gamble I made this past weekend taking my crazy in-financial-debt ass on a trip to Las Vegas.

Okay so I gamble all the time.

It just wasn't until this trip to Las Vegas that I actually GAMBLED gambled, like at a table with chips, and a dealer, and some middle-aged cocktail waitress in an ill fitted outfit that's basically had it with your shit before she's brought you your first cocktail.

I have previously had no use for trading my hard earned cash in exchange for multi-colored monopoly pieces to partake in a game of chance. A game that's designed for the house to win and everyone else to loose. I guess this time I figured 'if you can't beat them, join them' and seeing as all my friends were gathered around the Black Jack table, the thought of going off alone to pull lever's for pennies seemed unappealing. And yes, I'm talking about the slot machines.

So there I was in my shorts, crop top, and a neon pink mesh back hat that read THE GOAT (rewards from a conquest the night prior). A rather frail, mild mannered Indian woman stood behind the table seemingly misplaced for all the power she now held over us. I threw down a crisp hundred dollar bill onto the plush, vibrant colored table and was handed a stack of red colored chips. The cards were dealt by her swift, professional hand as I took a sip from my free beer, feeling like a BOSS ASS BITCH.

That was until it disappeared faster than most of my previous relationships.

I'd like to say I had any willpower and decided to cut myself off but by this point several Heinekens have made their way into my bloodstream and my inhibitions were down.  What was really the harm, I thought, in pulling out another 40 bucks...in fact while I'm at it why not 60?

Good thing I don't have a gambling problem (or any money to my name), but it didn't stop me from pulling out another hundred bucks the next night as well.  I can't say I didn't have a blast though. Every time I won I jumped (literally out of my chair) for joy and started hooting and hollering like the obnoxious, easily excited, child I am. When I lost there was the excitement of possible winnings on the next hand. The problem was that while I was playing by the 'book' I wasn't paying attention to what was on the rest of the table. And the cards weren't really in my favor. So much for beginners luck.

I won in other ways this weekend. Swimming in our glorious pool under a giant Eiffel Tower at the Paris Hotel in the Vegas sun. Free entrance to the hottest clubs on the strip. Sneaking past security to meet Ne-Yo. Consuming a delicious steak dinner at the sister restaurant I work for with VIP service. Overall the real win, what made all the money I gambled and spent truly worth it, was getting to spend time with my favorite people in the world, trampling around Vegas like we were going to die young.

I don't regret any of my losses, but I find myself sitting here now a BROKE ass bitch, trying to pick up doubles at my godforsaken job, the looming ghost of a career dream still breathing down my neck. Post Vacation Depression is a real thing and it has always hit me pretty hard. The thrill of travel sends me soaring and I can soak up all it's beauty and excitement and feel truly fulfilled. Then when I am back, I realize my life is exactly the same as I left it. A mess.

A beautiful, adventure filled, raging mess.

There's a part of me that wants it this way, that likes it this way. It's a mess I made after all and I am completely aware of all the wrong turns and backing up out of it I have made through the years. Part of me just feels ill equipped to even handle life at all. I have a vagabond spirit that doesn't innately like rules or responsibility or a sense that I can't at any moment drop it all for something else.

It's why I live in New York. It's why I don't have a boyfriend. It's why I don't partake in the 9-5 grind.

I have a soul that most days is urging me to take off all my clothes and run stark naked through the streets of New York causing mass chaos. Let's face it, even in my right mind I've pushed the acceptable limit of running around partially clothed in public a few times.

Life to me is most poignant when shit is fucked up.  Who needs neat piles and pressed shirts and dull conversation from timid lips? In the end it's all over and what did any of it mean anyway? Why are we even here? And why is it so hard? And why don't any of us seem to ever have an answer?

And so my mind begins to fall down it's slippery slope to my ultimate anxiety attacks that leave me paralyzed in my bed starring at my ceiling like I did this morning.  No clue what to do because I don't really know what I want.

What I do know is as exciting as uprooting my life and moving out to Vegas seems it won't take me away form the key to all my problems. Myself.

And while I can run around making money, partying around the globe, dancing on tables, or stages, or poles, after all the excitement wears away, the only thing I will have truly lost is time. Time I should have spent making something of myself.

You know, right now I'm not really sure what that something is. I thought I knew but all my childhood dreams seem to have betrayed me. Or maybe I betrayed them.

All I know is once I figure out what it is I truly want, I won't be scared to place my bet, and take a gamble.



A Broke-ass-thank-you-Vegas Record.

Like Mother

For as long as I can remember I have harbored a deathly fear of three things; spiders, the execution of mathematical equations, and becoming my mother.

A prime example of freudian behavior, I grew up idolizing my father and resenting my mother. Maybe it's because my father would take us to Six Flags while my mother nagged us to vacuum the house. My father introduced me to the Beatles and Led Zeppelin. My mother tried to put prunes in my oatmeal. My father would make us watch films of great directors such as Stanley Kubrick, and Quentin Tarantino and gave us books by authors like Tolk, Robbins, and Vonnegut. My mother fell asleep during action flicks.

My father was the coolest. My mother was the bane of my existence.

I would like to note here, that between the ages of 13-17 I took this resentment and used it to sharpen my vicious vocabulary in the emotionally scaring battles that took place between my mother and I.  We all know woman are the great goddesses of things said between breaths that make you wish you'd never been born, but this emotional manipulation takes on new forms when between mother and daughter.

The things I have said to my mother are actually atrocious and I have forgotten most of them for good reason. I like to think we have grown out of the "epic fights" stage but even now, a simple phone conversation will start with "Hey just wanted to see how you were?"and five seconds later I'm rolling my eyes shouting "MOM WHY DON'T YOU EVER LISTEN! YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND."

It's like I HULK out on her. Who the hell was that talking to her own mother like that? Me? Oh, yeah. Me.

I should be ashamed. I should be disowned. But not by my mother.

You see, my mother has an uncanny ability to forgive. She is possibly the most self-less, caring, loving person I've ever met.  I mean, maybe everyone thinks that about their mother, but I'm talking from a third person perspective.  She is so damn good, and I mean that all encompassing. It's damn near saintly.

You would never know I shared that woman's DNA. Even she doesn't always believe I'm hers.

My mother, while I was home this past week, handed me this little journal she used to write in while she was pregnant with me. I sat down to read it, flipping through the pages of her barely eligible script. I stopped at this one entry written the day of my first birthday. She writes,

"I really want the best for you, and I want you to grow into the best person that you can be, whatever you decide to do in life be happy doing it. Be kind and considerate of others. Be unselfish and giving. Try to treat others the way you want to be treated. I'll try to teach you everything I've learned about life but I'm sure there will be times when you won't want to hear me tell you about things. You'll want to discover them for yourself. But I'll be here for you always when you need me. I hope that I can hep you in the struggles that we all have to encounter from time to time and I hope that I can be there for all the happy and momentous occasions that you have to look forward to. From the bottom of my heart. Happy Birthday to you!"

Tears came pouring out. I openly wept on my childhood bed, in my childhood room as it really sank in just how much my mother loved me. How as of late, I have grown into this kind of monster that writes about all her scandalous thoughts and actions on the internet and how she continues to be there for me with her undying support. Her love has been so strong and steady and unassuming that I think I have barely taken notice. But that's my mother. Never the one at a party to stick out with a loud mouth or obnoxious dance moves, but usually the one behind the scenes making sure the whole party runs smooth.

And here I am just tearing it up on the dance floor, not giving any fucks.

When I started this blog I have to say I was fully prepared to get a swift slap to the head. I knew that if I was going to do it right and spit the honest truth about where it was I had been and where it is I am going in this twenty-something post-grad stage things would come up I'd really rather the mom and pops not know. But now they know.

And instead of disowning me, they gave me support. Okay, so they flipped out for a second. But now I know I have their support. My pops even commented on the last publishing of the Lost Boys post

"Unfortunately, all these losers can never approach the all-around greatness of the first man in your life, your Daddy!"


Very true Dad.

I know I don't always say it, but Mom and Dad, I love you and I thank you for being the best parents a kid could have asked for. I know all those rules and "restrictions" you placed on me was for my own damn good and let's face it, I wouldn't have been a normal kid without having broken a few. At the end of the day though, I don't know another pair on this planet who could have better cared for and loved me and my big, fat mouth.

I used to say I got the worst of both worlds from you guys. But if I really think about it, I got the best.

So before this blog of mine continues further, I need them to know that I thank them for my life, I thank them for my overall nature, I thank them for that American Girl Doll I begged for who now resides in the attic.

Mom, I know you always say "you can't be my daughter" when I tell you about my liberal ideologies or that I just booked a flight to Asia on a whim, but I am here to tell you I most certainly can.

And I can only hope when I grow up, that I'll be a whole lot like you.




Thanks for giving birth to this Broken Record

A Ride or Die Bitch

A decade ago, while most of us were still in the bra training game, The Spice Girls said it right.

"If you wanna be my lover, you gotta get with my friends"

I may have a secret talent for attracting the most unavailable of men into my life, but I seem to also have a knack for attracting some of the best humans to walk this planet when it comes to my friendships.

Unlike in the dating game, we don't always seek our friends out based on a certain look, or walk, or talk, or our body's pheromones and what not going crazy over their body's what not when they're within a five block radius.

We don't bop around like pre teens in our living room, belting out "Call Me Maybe" on repeat after our first introduction. We don't wait patiently for them to text us for the first time and then spend HOURS trying to craft the perfect response back. We don't sift endlessly through outfits to figure out what to wear on dates, consulting third person parties to make sure our overall outfit says, "I won't fuck you tonight, but you should definitely want to fuck me in the future". 

Friendships just develop. Two people happen to be in the right place at the right time feeling equally sad or happy or stressed about their lives in a similar way and a bond is formed.

Sometimes it clicks instantly. A stranger you just met just GETS YOU. And you both are jumping up and down, white girl wailing "OMG I FUCKING LOVE YOU WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN ALL MY LIFE?!?"

Sometimes it's your worst enemy. That chick you despise? The one who just irritates you for no good reason really? Yah. I'm sure you both could gab all day over pumpkin spice lattes because we all know hate and love are identical twin brothers from the same mother and you could easily mistake one for the other in the dark.

Whatever the situation these relationships between two humans come to be through the repetition of meeting and finding your SELF grooving with another self. A spiritual connection. A soul mate. 

Whoever said you get one soul mate in this life was severely unlucky. I've found them all over. Or maybe my soul's just slutty.

This weekend I celebrated the birth of one of my soul mates and she can tell you, I wasn't always her favorite. In fact, she didn't really have much use for me when we first met.

Of course that was back when I was a whiny, freshman girl crying over boys and now…well...I'm an older, still pretty whiny girl crying over boys, but somewhere in there she saw the real me or what not and fell madly in love. 

We were sitting at her kitchen table eating breakfast Saturday morning when she expressed her true feelings. 

"Lauren's my ride or die bitch". 

And it's true. I'm a die hard friend. But I am only that way because she's proven herself to be my die hard friend. And I've had die hard, tough as nails, would probably take a bullet for me, friends in the past that have taught me their ways in 'How To Be A Great Friend for Dummy's'.

The birthday girl for instance, is a force to be reckoned with. We are different in a million ways. She wears lovely dresses, I insist on dressing like a 12 year old boy. She is a lady in every sense of the word, and I have a mouth like a sailor and run around like a post pubescent boy who's just figured out how his penis works. Through all our differences though she has let me be me and me has always been enough. 

This weekend we cruised down the highway with our other two best friends in the car, "Oops I Did It Again" Pandora Radio blasting our way back to the past (how the hell do we still remember every word, riff, and odd late 90's pop drop that ever was?). The windows were down, the sun was warm through the chill of the fall, and the four of us were belting the lyrics subconsciously engrained in our brains forever, off key, in each other's faces. No fuck's to be found. 

Now that's true love.

I just want to state that this particular post has taken me days and days to write because I keep trying to include all the names and situations of all the people I love and have loved and I want to cry because I could write a short novel dedicated to people who have come into my life so unexpectedly and have been and continue to be a security net for all my crazy anxiety ridden breakdown and breakups. I trust they know who they are anyway. They have pulled me back from the cliff when I am insistent on jumping off. They have held me as I cried and never judged me for any of my weird, loud mouthed ways and words. They have always been at my birthday parties while I run around intoxicated from too much to drink and too much love from all the random and exquisite beings that gather in the same room at the same time for the sake of me.

They are the loves of my life.

If I ever meet a man who is set on boarding my crazy train, he better be ready to board their train too because I'm never letting them go. So it's their way or the highway. Like literally if you're not down for a N*SYNC sing along they'll kick you out of the car.

You ride with them, or you're dead to me.

Sincerely,

A "Break your neck if you mess with them" Record

The Island of Lost Boys

If you are close to me, or hell, even if you're just meeting me, you will probably gather quickly that I don't have the best luck when it comes to men. 

Let's start from the beginning. My infatuation with humans of the opposite sex started when I was just a wee little tot trampling through the planet. My mother told me that I would just go up to little boys on the street and try to hold their hands. Or kiss them. And in kindergarten, I even came home exclaiming that I had married one of them.

The point is I have always loved boys, I always will, and whether I like to admit it or not, they take up a good 25% more of my brain space then they ever should.

The problem here lies in the fact that as much as I love boys, I have let few boys who truly love me into my life.

At 23 the list of men I have accumulated  in my dating history is advanced to say the least. I have been on (and off and then on again) OKCupid at least five (? I really don't know) separate times. I have kissed upwards of a hundred men randomly found in streets and bars and venues all over the globe (yes, the globe). I have flirted and teased and admired from afar. Just today I saw this man walking past me and I actually stopped mid walk, and followed him with my gaze like a giant creep-o because he was SO DAMN ATTRACTIVE LORD HELP ME WHERE ARE THIS MEN FABRICATED?! 

I'd say I probably fall madly in love at least three times a day.

But while I find myself constantly falling in love with these men of the world, there are very few that I have actually liked. I mean really liked. These men cause a stampede of butterfly's through my core that give most the delight and euphoric sense they are falling in love.

It gives me indigestion. 

I have spent years building up a titanium fortress around my heart so they can't get in again. Who do you think you are just knocking all that down in five minutes? I SAID WHO SIR?!

Let's note the wonderful (and I say that because they really are) men I have fallen for have always chased after me first.  They have not been the most handsome, the funniest, the most financially (or physically) well endowed. But for some reason I can't help but becoming obsessed with every single part of their being. Things like how that one tooth on the bottom row, right in the front, is crooked or the sound of their laugh or the fact that they put coffee in their cereal because they don't like the taste of milk.  These traits and attributes are permanently seared in my memory and are no more exceptional than any other human's weirdness except for the fact that it is THEIR'S.  

These men pursue me for a said period of time while I try to run far, far away (because I already know where this is going) but can't seem to pick my feet up from off the ground. I am emotionally paralyzed. Aware of what's to come but succumbing to the delightful and semi-nauseating feelings of all those butterflies frenzied in my soul.  

Until one day, just like that, they're gone. 

We spend an amazing day, or night together. Maybe I had just bought them a bagel and kissed them goodbye as they were boarding the train home for Thanksgiving. Or we had just slept together on my friends daybed talking about what we've done that we've been most proud of in our life to date. I've stared into their eyes as I've said goodbye. Kissed them. Watched them walk away. Never to be seen again. Never even heard from them again. Even if in the days following I had the stupidity to text or call and say "Hey, whatsup? Where have you been? Is everything okay? Did I do something wrong?" 

Am I doing something wrong? 

My lovely girlfriends say things like "No, Lauren, you're just picking the wrong men" "They are just intimidated by your greatness" "Boys are just dumb"

My male friends would say "They're just not interested anymore, Laur".

And after one, maybe even two mishaps any girl could easily delude herself into the pointing the finger at the penis clad child or just brushing it off to a lack of interest.

But at this point, I know there's got to be something wrong with me.

And not me in the sense that I did something WRONG because I didn't.  I've always been nothing but the COOLEST MOTHERFUCKING HUMAN (I said coolest, not calmest). But there's obviously a problem. 

There's a pattern. It's so calculated I could draw up the blueprints. I don't even know how my friends have been so gracious with me through all of these. 

Even my therapist has had it.

The meeting, the falling, the obsessing over, the disappearing act.

Just call me the Houdini of the dating world. 

I'll never truly know why these particular men just fall off the planet the way they do. I mean they'll never have the courage to say why, that's why they felt the need to disappear in the first place. 

And I know I'm not alone in this. My girl friend told me she calls it the "Island of Lost Men" but anyone who disappears from a relationship (no matter how casual or serious) with another like that isn't a man so I'm reclaiming it. 

My most recent disappearing act was this kid who came up to me at a festival and asked me to dance, with the most innocent of intentions, who I spent a wonderful hot, sweaty, three days in a tent with. I have let him sail off to join the rest with a pain in my heart but an understanding that there's nothing more I can do if they want to go. 

And with that I have gathered what's left and sailed off to my own Island of Lost Souls to search for the validation in my own life. That is, again, so apparently missing.

Because no boy, no matter how awesome, or stupid, or just plain ignorant should have the ability to send me tumbling into these black holes of depression and self loathing. 

Where's my undying love for myself?

The only undying love I have had in my life (besides from my terrific and seriously under appreciated parental units) has been from my friends. My gay best friend who'll have my favorite wine and cheese plate already waiting when I visit him at work. My insanely fierce girlfriend who inspired me to write this blog (see: chelseatwentysomething.blogspot.com). My other insanely fierce girlfriend who came up with the name for this blog in five minutes while I had been mulling over it for a week with no success. My incredible roommates who I am have been blessed to make a home with and my life long girlfriends who knew me before I even grew tits.

They are gems among gems and have provided me with a stable and constant love. Every story of me meeting a guy, allowing said male to bend, break, rip, kick, spit at my self worth leaving it cold and lonely in a ditch is followed by my friends picking it back up, feeding it love, and repeating- until I get it through my thick skull-- that my self worth is not defined by the actions of these men.

And that I should probably get my shit together.

And having the love of these beautiful humans is always enough for me to get back up and try, try again. Because if they're still there at the end of the day, than I must be doing something right. 

Until next time, 

Your (maybe) Broken (but very hopeful) Record

Starting From Scratch...Again.

What is it about that first, crisp, smell of fall in the air that makes the gay best friend in my head go "look at your life, look at your choices"?

Perhaps it's the fact that for 18 years of my life fall brought with it newly sharpened pencils, fresh pages of Five Star notebooks, and the highly anticipated "first day back to school" outfit that had been very carefully debated, chosen, and friend approved during the week prior. This outfit alone was a personal statement to everyone in school that you were cooler, hotter, and WAY more mature than you were just two and a half short months ago. It was a representation of how far you had come and just how far you wanted to go in terms of the adolescent social ladder of success which, let's face it, for a lot of us was top priority back then.

Now here I sit, two years after my schooling has been complete. Sipping my black coffee, the chill of fall creeping in through the screen from my  window. I should be loving this. I usually adore the fall. My birthday is in the fall. Thanksgiving is in the fall, the holiday devoted to stuffing our faces (and giving thanks and stuff). Pumpkin pie, pumpkin spice lattes, pumpkin munchkins, pumpkin scented candles, pumpkin french toast (is there anything that hasn't been done with pumpkin?).

Yet I can't help but yearn for the start of another school year. Not because I miss schooling really, but because I miss that feeling of getting a fresh start. A redo. Fall used to signify a new beginning...and nowadays I can't help but feel stale. A new year in my life (my birthday remember?) is approaching and I'm not really sure what I've done in the past 24 years of my life. And I'm not really sure what I want to do with the next 20. I was hoping my poor life choices would cut me off at like 30 and then I wouldn't have to worry about the rest.

I knew this would be a problem two years ago when I graduated with my basically useless degree in what I like to refer to as imagination (Musical Theatre) and was handed the reigns of my soon-to-be rest of my life. From here on out I was going to be held wholly responsible for whatever happened in the years to come. Would I be famous? Would I be broke? Would I be that crazy homeless person on the 6 train reeking of piss and singing "Under the Boardwalk" deliciously off key ? Would I be the 50 year old, overly enthusiastic, barista at the Starbucks who is WAY TOO HAPPY for 6am?

Like, didn't anyone KNOW me? I am, at my core, reckless, eccentric, over analytical, afraid of commitment, and just a big ol' HOT (hot being the key word) mess. Y'all want me to be responsible for my LIFE? I didn't even like being responsible for my roommates plants when she was away on vacation this month. 

In the two years since graduation I have made a beautiful, wondrous, ABC Family worthy life for myself. I have drained my bank account, traveled the world, fallen in love with strangers, almost killed myself with alcohol, raged my face off, ingested a multitude of substances (separately and all at once). 

Yet every fall I start to get the sense that my life is going nowhere and I should, in fact, start picking my shit up off the floor and getting it together. 

So with this new blog I would like to grant myself a new beginning. I have fallen off the metaphorical horse a multitude of times and to be quite honest my ass is fucking sore and I'm over having to hop back on. But hop I must because otherwise I'm just going to "hands up pants down" this life and become one of those crazy people who abandon life and society as we know it and just shack up in some abandoned house in the woods for eternity. Like Thoreau.

I invite you now, dear reader, to follow me on my developmental journey of twenty-something. Lost and confused and desperately seeking a clue as to what the hell I want to be doing with this life I have been so recklessly cast to care for. 

It will be filled with lots of question marks, commas, run on sentences, and parentheses. I will not be politically correct, socially correct, grammatically correct, and the only reason this isn't littered with spelling errors is because of auto-correct.

However I can promise to provide you, precious audience, with tales of my ever adventurous life. Some sexy-time tales of a single, overtly sexual female living in Manhattan. My 30 day trial with Bikram yoga in an effort to find zen in this ever racing mind of mine.

Essentially this is my own little personal experiment, seeking answers, seeking validation, seeking to record the mistakes I have made and continue to make so maybe I can be held a little more responsible. To finally make some changes and stop sounding like such a ... a.. 

Broken Record.