eHarmony Can eBite Me

I am a single woman. Free as a bird. No strings attached. Woo, feminism and hear me roar and let me burn that bra. No man for me! My bathroom is so clean!

It sucks.

It sucks, and I don't care if all the militants are getting the vapors, I am being honest. I am lonely as hell, and after over two years (YEARS) of being single, I have had just about enough of it. I'm not the random hookup kind of gal, (not that there's anything wrong with that, it's just not my bag, man) and since I don't have any friends in the area, I don't so much...leave my apartment. Ever. I have awesome, tremendous, fiercely loved friends, don't get me wrong, and I'd waltz through blazing fires for any of them, but there's not a one of them who could just randomly come over for a cup of coffee and a bad movie. Not an option. Yeah. Suck.

"So go out!" my friends wail. "Meet people! Do things! Stop spending eleventy million hours on the internet every day and go interact with actual people!" Well, this is easier said than done. For one, where the hell do I go? My whole adult life, the only social venues I have utilized are friends' houses and bars. And I am not allowed to go to bars anymore, in case you haven't heard. I have crippling social anxiety, and the concept of New People terrifies me. No new people! Only people who have read the dossier regarding Mah Crazy: Let Me Show You It! For I am vair, vair uninterested in having to carefully reveal the dramz to anyone new. I have a feeling it would end with "and then he ran away like his dick was on fire."

And to be honest, I was really destroyed by my last breakup. I'm not going to trust a new person for a really long time. There are also other factors of acursed circumstance that the internet doesn't get to hear, but yeah, going out and finding a local cat to start the awkward beginning-dating thing? Eeesh. Not really interested, thanks.

I can just picture my personal ad now:

"SWF seeks SM for possible LTR. Enjoys tv, playing on the internet, yarn, and coffee. SM must be open to mental illness, addiction recovery, arts and crafts addiction, pop-culture obsession, random goofiness, clumsiness, and cleaning up after barfy cats. Please have a job, your own apartment, a wicked sense of humor, and a bank account of your very own. No man-children, meanies, or frattys, please. Email only, the phone gives me anxiety attacks."

Woo, buddy, they'd be knocking down the door! Not that I'd ever place a personal ad. I have been on one (1) personal-ad date in my life, about five years ago. It was awful. But not in the way you probably guess. Nope, he was gorgeous, talented, funny, smart, (did I mention gorgeous?) and, drum roll...HE DIDN'T LIKE ME. Oh, that's just GRAND. So no. No personal ads.

(At this point, my friend cuparfyfe is eating his own face and screaming at the computer screen about how all I do is self-sabotage and dig my own grave re: relationships. He is...not wrong.)

So what the hell is my point, for the love of God's argyle socks? What was the reasoning for this blithering rant, when clearly I am not actually going to DO anything about this situation other than point at myself and howl "UNLOVABLE!!! MENTALLY DISEASED!!! RUN AWAY!!!"

My point is that fucking eHarmony dot com should not use a dude who resembles Zippy the Pinhead in their commercials to motivate me to "find my match." Do NOT call me, Zippy. And tell JoJo the Dogface Boy he doesn't have to bother either. I'll just play some Facebook Scrabble with my beloved, if not geographically convienient friends and knit more hats for the cats.

You Can Knock Me Down, But You Can't Keep Me Down

One of the most difficult things about dealing with mental illness is feeling better. When you've become so used to chaos reigning in your mind, having a quiet in the storm is disconcerting to say the least. I've been lucky enough to have found a medication cocktail that has made my borderline personality disorder and bipolar II (different from bipolar I in that I don't get manic episodes or completely lose touch with reality - it's also known as "the good kind") much, much easier to deal with. It's taken an incredibly long time, but I'm finally feeling like I'm going to be able to not only live with this, but thrive and actually, shockingly, be happy. It's an amazing feeling.

It's also scary as hell.

A major issue that I have had throughout my life is an inability to allow myself to hope. I haven't ever let it in because of a terrible, all consuming fear that hope is an invitation for pain. As if the universe would look at my optimism, laugh its balls off, and drop an anvil on my head, Acme style, for having the audacity to look for a brighter future. It's a survival technique that I have held onto my whole life. Of course, it's also a self-fulfilling prophecy. If I don't allow myself to hope without being convinced it will lead to pain, I'm going to find pain anyway, even if it is just to prove myself right. I know this, logically. Hell, I have an extremely expensive graduate degree in helping other people with problems just like these. Ones who cannot help themselves help everyone else, etc. etc. etc.

So in the past four weeks or so, I have been able to allow myself the tiniest amount of hope. I came to the realization that I'm here for some sort of reason (I got out of the hospital when no one thought I would, so there has to be SOME reason, I concluded) and even though I'm still not sure what the hell that reason is, I'm sticking around to find out. I love a good mystery. I'm working my ass off trying to get my brain in order, and it's really been paying off.

This weekend, the bubble burst. It was bound to, as emotion is an ebb and flow, and the high of coming out of the fog was going to taper off. I've been in a fairly wretched mood, with lows that come fast and hard. I'm riding the rapids right now, but this time, unlike all the other times this has happened, is different. I still have hope.

I'm not blowing sunshine and glitter up anyone's ass here. I'm just saying that the universe and the misfired synapses in my brain are giving me a hell of a ride right now, but I know I'm going to get through it. I can flip off the darkness and yell into the storm that I've beaten a hell of a lot worse than this, that circumstance and my own betraying mind have tried to break me again and again, and they haven't gotten the job done. I've made it this far, and I have no intention of stopping any time soon. So I give a hearty "fuck you" to the maelstrom in my mind today. You can kick me all you want, but you can't keep me down. I'm stronger than that. I always have been. I'm just grateful that I finally know it now. And that I will continue to hope, despite it all.

Strong in the broken places. That's damn right.

Unbreakable With Armor

And Unbreakable Without.

Git Offa Mah Lawn, You Damn Kids!!!

I was driving home the other day, and in front of me was a tween (I haaaaaate that word) girl on her bike. I knew she had to be between the ages of 11-15, because she was wearing shorts that could double as a belt, and had highlighted hair that probably cost more than the entire contents of my refrigerator. She was weaving in and out of traffic like Amy Winehouse on a particularly spectacular bender, and as I rode the brake at a whopping 5 miles an hour with visions of lawsuits dancing in my head, a thought popped into my head:

"That little bitch is texting. I bet my fucking life on it."

She finally wove over to the side long enough for me to pass her, and as I did, I looked over my shoulder to see that she WAS texting, goddammit! On a BIKE! In MOTION! On a road with AUTOMOBILES which were ALSO in motion! Without a HELMET! And I drove the rest of the way home in a rage, ranting and raving about the state of humanity today at the top of my lungs to exactly no one. Because I was alone in the car. And not texting. IN A MOVING VEHICLE.

My girls over at 30 is the New 13 and If You Believe, Clap are now (right now! Go read!) talking about pre-teen fiction they wrote/pre-teen characters they are trying to write, and how the pre-teen mind eludes all logic indeed. What the hell were we doing at that age? And more importantly, what the HELL were we WEARING? What did we DO before cell phones and MySpace and the internet in general? We were less likely to end up on "To Catch A Predator," I know that for certain, but christ on the cross, at least we TALKED. Do pre-teens...talk? Anymore? I picture withered vocal cords and super-strength thumbs becoming part of the evolutionary process.

I know I am a bitter old lady, but I swear to god, if I see one more in-motion-vehicle of any sort with an operator in the midst of texting her fucking BFF, I am going to put on my old Anthrax t-shirt and Doc Martens and start bashing their highlighted heads in.

(This post is brought to you by my upcoming 31st birthday, of which I am not obsessing about AT ALL.)

Where the hell is my boom box when I need it?

One of the plusses of going through all my moving boxes is finding crap I haven't seen in many, many a year. Other than completely hilarious old pictures I really have to get into a scanner, my favorite find so far has been a box of old cassette tapes. More specifically, old MIX tapes.

Now, kids, gather 'round and let Granny Banshee tell you about mix tapes. Back right after the Ice Age and before the internet (I know!) when teen angst reared its ugly head, or when you were sooooooo in love, ohmygod, you made mix tapes. Some were for you, intricately composed of the songs that really SPOKE to you, man, this is the story of my LIFE, only Pearl Jam really UNDERSTANDS ME and my PAIN of being 14, man! Others were worn to a staticky thread after that amazing boy broke your heart, you don't even LIKE that song, but oh, oh, you still love him, and once upon a time he loved you enough to make you a mix tape, so you listen to it over and over, carefully backing it up onto ANOTHER tape in case, horror of horrors, your Walkman ate the tape or you lost it on the bus. Liner notes were carefully and artistically fashioned and dated, and sometimes you were so proud of your efforts that you actually considered LAMINATING them, so deep was your passion for mix tapes.

Nothing can compare to the dedication needed to make a mix tape. CD mixes are okay, I GUESS, but nothing like the real thing. And forget iTunes. No. No passion there. A slight to the magic of the mix tape. No, the real deal involved sitting on your bed in a pile of cassettes, wearing your fingers to the bone carefully constructing your list, then, in an OCD act worthy of Howard Hughes, recording the tapes on your double-cassette boom box, re-playing and pausing for optimum editing. You worked that pause button like a SAFECRACKER, finding the one millisecond difference between a perfect segue and a disasterous cut-off of the last song. Tapes were also a very specific length, and let me tell you, if I had given a millionth of the obsessional time I took to make sure all the songs would fit on a 90 minute tape (45 minutes on each side, no leeway) to high school math, I would have been accepted to MIT. If you screwed up? You had to go back and do it ALL AGAIN. And don't even THINK of recording at double speed to save time. The audio isn't as good, and that would prove that your dedication to the mix tape was a SHAM. No, you sat there for hours until the tape was perfect, and then worked yourself into an absolute panic attack wondering if your music tastes were cool enough to be worthy of your high school paramour. (Hint: they never were. Such is the pain of pubescence.)

So I've been listening to my old tapes in my car. Yes, the only tape player left in my life is in my 2002 Kia, (don't smirk, the Kia demands AWE and RESPECT.) It's pretty amazing how music takes you back to specific times and places, with incredible emotional memory. I was playing an old tape my pal Mark gave me back in the day, and I swear, as soon as the grainy audio started, I was back walking down Amsterdam Avenue on a summer day. I still can't listen to most Sarah McLachlan without remembering the walk across Boston Common from my dorm to the classroom buildings. And forget about the songs from the Soul Asylum Unplugged show, which I taped from the VCR to the boombox, to the mix tape. I mean ALL the mix tapes. Every single one from 1994. And I made a LOT of mix tapes in 1994.

I remember being out of my mind frantic when my Walkman was stolen during AIDS Walk 2000, not for the machine itself, but because it contained a mix tape that K-Bat had made for me. Don't worry, K-Bat! I had made a backup tape! Banshee don't PLAY when it comes to mix tapes.

At this point, I am seriously, seriously considering finding a way to burn all my tapes onto mp3s, because these cracked and worn tapes are only going to hold on for so long. But I'll never, ever, throw them away. I wish I could make more. It makes me sad that angsty teenagers will never know the emotion of crouching over a boom box, thinking of that special person you are absolutely certain you will love forever and ever, spending insane numbers of hours constructing just for them, only for them, the perfect mix tape. Because that? Is love.

Thoughts on Statistics

I've been very open and blunt about my stint in rehab, and my addiction to alcohol. Lots and lots of alcohol. Enough to put me as close to death as one can get without actually being on the slab. I talk about it, I joke about it, and 104 days after my last, almost fatal drink, I'm still beating it soundly, as they say, one day at a time.

I'm one of the lucky ones. In more ways than one.

I got a phone call today from a fantastic person I went to rehab with. We were thick as thieves there, and by the time we became "old timers" there, were more caregivers than anything else. I was, obviously, a drunk, he a "pharmaceutical enthusiast." We both had serious drive to get better, and coming up on four months on the outside, we're both doing very well. He just became a father, and I'm regaining my independence. We are not the norm.

We chatted about who we had heard from and/or about, and out of all of us, we are the only ones left who haven't "gone out" again. The statistics for relapse are grim, and for today, he and I are indeed, in the vast minority. I was proud of us, terribly proud, and at the same time, incredibly sad for all the people we knew who are back out. There's nothing we can do for them, and that sucks. But, given the damming statistics, we can't. We have to take care of ourselves. It's not easy, being selfish. But we have to be. Just listing all the names of the less fortunate made that grimly obvious.

I don't have anything stellar and inspiring to say about all of this. I'm just a little stunned at the perspective I gained from that conversation. I think often about the people I went through rehab with, I wish them the best, I worry about them. But for today, I'm just incredibly grateful for what I have, and that my pal is doing so well.

Congrats, DP. You're going to be a great dad. You know what to do. Love ya.

This just in: Hookers have feelings too

Found this on Metafilter this morning. Apparently, a college journalist wanted to end his column with a bang (horrible pun intended) and go to a brothel to request a cuddle. The experience was not what he expected.

Now, I'll be honest. I went into this skeptical, but my immediate reaction to reading it was that it was overly twee, but enjoyable. I felt it was touching and well-described. It may have intruded on my heart a little bit.

Of course, the feminist in me swelled up and whacked me upside the head soon after. I started mentally grumbling about white, middle class male privilege, and how "shocking and unexpected" finding that prostitutes are people too is, zowie my goodness, what a revelation. I became a little ashamed of myself, and figured I would immediately be banned from Jezebel, at the least.

Still, I'm not entirely full of hateration. It's an interesting topic, at least, and certainly one for discussion. And I am glad that, however blatantly obvious, this guy had his prank turn on him, and maybe made him think about societal preconceptions and how they so often differ from reality.

It's an obvious revelation, to be sure, but it was also something that caught my attention and made me shake the cobwebs from my brain early on a Sunday morning. There's something to be said for that.

I still wish he would have played Scattergories with her, though.

I'm a New Yorker. Got a problem with that?

I was born and raised in New Jersey. I am not ashamed of this at all. I love Jersey, and will defend it to the end. However, in all my travels, I have related to one location more than any other. I love it, I hate it, it is part of me, and will be forever.

I am a New Yorker.

I lived in New York for only a few years, but, growing up less than an hour from midtown, it wasn't just "the city," it was MY city. As a kid, I went to Broadway shows in my best Christmas dress. I visited the Rock Center tree, the Met, saw the dinosaurs at the National History museum. I've lit candles at St. Patrick's, and had tea at the Plaza. As a teenager, I went to the Knitting Factory and CBGB's for shows, in the dark, cramped, tiny spaces where you always had the chance of seeing Joey Ramone shooting up in the corner. I got served at the Bar 55 before my sixteenth birthday. I was often mistaken for homeless. Back then, this was cool.

I moved to the city from Boston after college. I love Boston with all my heart, but that's another post for another time. I lived on the edge of lower Harlem on the West Side, in a neighborhood where I had Glatt Kosher Chinese food and Barney Greengrass and muti-millionaires living across the street from housing projects. I loved my neighborhood. I had a microscopic studio apartment with a waterbug problem and an old AC vent that was constantly leaking, no matter how many times it was patched. It was the most perfect apartment in the world. I worked thousands of temp jobs, modeled for shoe companies and makeup demonstrations. I acted in Lower East Side theaters with more rats than actors. Kevin Bacon's kids played with my neighbors' kids. I bought knock-off designer purses and had Dim Sum in Chinatown. I would walk from 93rd St. to the Village and back on the weekends for kicks, people-watching through Jackie-O sunglasses. I ate shady burritos and Ethiopian food. I loved every minute of it, even when I hated it.

I saw my world explode.

I left the City eight days later. I haven't lived there since. It's too hard, too fast, too crowded and too nerve-wracking for my often-fragile psyche. But I am still a New Yorker. Always will be.

Smithsonian Magazine puts being a "rude, crude New Yorker" in a lovely light.