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.