Tag Archives: girls

Life decision # 6: Letting go, but not moving on… Yet.

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“When was the last time you were single?”

“Uhh, before I dated my ex, duh.”

“No no no – when was the last time you were SINGLE? Like, not talking to a girl, not going on dates, just being you, single?”

[I gave a half-hearted chuckle] “Ya know, I don’t really remember.”

It was true. In college, I had more rebounds than most of Mississippi State’s basketball team. I had just missed a rebound attempt and was realizing I was dealing with the hurt of two failed relationships at the same time, and it was clear what my friend’s point was. ‘Sure, you’ve ended things with each of those girls, but have you truly dealt with things emotionally?’

I spent the next year in solitude dealing with emotions I’d suppressed for a long time. It was awful. It was necessary.

I found myself going over relationships in my mind from well into my past – relationships that lasted days, relationships that lasted years, and everything in between.

All I can really say is that it’s kind of like when someone constantly complains about their roommates. Some of my friends could talk about poor experiences that they had with each of their roommates from every semester of college. And it hit me one day – if someone constantly struggles to get along with their roommates, then maybe they’re the bad roommate. This isn’t to say that there aren’t shitty roommate situations, but if you have chronic roommate issues that don’t get much worse than, “OMG she brings her bf over and they snuggle in the living room and I can’t be in there but I mean it’s a SHARED SPACE why can’t they go somewhere more private?” then you’re proooobably the bad roommate. Somewhere in my year of solitude, I realized I was the bad roommate in my relationships. I had plenty of failed relationships yet I always found ways to make them the bad guy. In reality, the only common denominator in all of my failed relationships was me. Here, let me type that again in bold: The only common denominator in all of my failed relationships was me.

The problem I was having was that I wasn’t taking enough time to reflect on my relationships before I moved on to the next one. I would come up with some way to blame the girl I’d dated for being ‘a bitch’ or ‘crazy’ or ‘a princess’ by taking something she said or did and blowing it out of proportion or taking it out of context. But, while it’s important to understand why you’re breaking things off with someone, exaggerating that reasoning to the point where you shift all of the blame from yourself isn’t healthy. It’s definitely good to know why you’re breaking things off with someone, but it’s equally important to know why someone is doing the same to you. Breakups suck, but they’re important for, ya know, growth as a human being. Are you going to keep making the same mistakes or are you going to get better? Will you rush into the arms of the next person you match with on Tinder or are you going to be deliberate with who you choose to date based on things you’ve learned from previous relationships?

That’s a decision you have to make.

Life decision #5: Not being so embarrassed.

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I feigned interest as she sent me text after text, sometimes two or three at a time, telling me how dumb I looked.

“I just can’t believe you would put something like that up for everyone to see!

No one is going to be attracted to something like that! What were you thinking!

That’s so embarrassing!”

My ex had found my profile on a dating site. Which really shouldn’t be a big deal, but…

“BAHAHAHA! That’s hilarious. I can’t believe you stumbled across that.”

“It’s embarrassing John.

WHY???

Why would you put that picture online?”

“I think its funny that you care so much. I seriously put around 5 minutes into making that profile.

I don’t even have the app on my phone anymore. It seemed trashy and dumb.”

“Well you need to delete it.

You’re embarrassing yourself.”

“I really do not care. That’s a really funny picture.

But I’ll delete the profile if it would make you feel better.”

As this discourse was going on, I was reminded of a scene in one of my favorite movies of all time, Hot Rod. Jonathan, a lawyer, jerk, and sort-of antagonist in the film, addresses Denise, his girlfriend and generally awesome neighbor of the main character: “Well, guess what. You’re embarrassing yourself.” To which Denise replies: “It’s only embarrassing if you care what people think.”

It’s weird that one of my favorite serious movie quotes came from such an off the wall comedy, but I really love Denise’s response. You can’t be embarrassed if you don’t care what other people think.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I still get embarrassed about things, but I quit being so ashamed and caring so much about what other people think when I realized just how beautiful embarrassment is.

Something I used to find terrifying was telling a joke no one laughed at. Legitimately I cannot think of something more embarrassing than that – having everyone listening to you as you tell a story, only not to get even a courtesy laugh when you make it to the punch line.

That being said, one of the biggest contributors to humor is how relatable a joke is. When no one relates to your joke, no one finds it funny. But, therein lies the beauty of it. When no one understands the joke, when no one enjoys the story as much as the teller, when no one can relate – that shows such a unique part of the storyteller. You can find humor in something no one else finds humor in. It shows just how different you see the world than I do, and how AWESOME is that?

Generally, embarrassment works the same way. When people don’t understand your perspective, don’t understand your thought process, don’t understand why you would do/wear/say something like that – you are the most ‘yourself’ you’ve ever been.

If you spend your whole life caring what other people think, then you’ll never truly be yourself.

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Hell, I’d swipe right. 😉

Life decision #2: The catch-22.

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We’ve all been there. Between a rock and a hard place. In a no-win situation. The all-too-dangerous catch-22. If we say or do one thing, it sets us up for failure, but if we choose to go another route, we end up failing in a completely different way.

It’s always an awkward situation.

For this example, it’s doubly awkward, because the setting is a middle school (AKA ‘Jr. High’ for those of you of that dialect). I may go so far as to say it was triply awkward, because this involved me and a girl I’d crushed on the last two years in elementary school.

The middle school years are a time of change. Your body starts growing rapidly and not all at once, your feet becoming size 15 behemoths while you barely graze 5′ 7″. On average, girls are actually taller than boys at that age. EVERYBODY has braces. And all the God-forsaken acne…

It all started out innocently enough.

It was a normal morning for my seventh grade English class. The teacher was at her desk doing paperwork while some of us played video games on the computer, read our assigned reading, or finished the homework we were supposed to do the night before.

I don’t remember exactly what I was looking at, probably just one of the games a friend was playing, but suddenly my view was obstructed. By what, you say? A girl in the class.

Now, there are some girls at that age who have older sisters in high school and who decide that they can wear the same things their sister wears. Sometimes their mom will even trade clothes with them. This was one of those girls. On this particular day, she was wearing one of her sister’s (or mom’s … ewww) rather low cut tops, revealing much of her chest below the neck.

But it didn’t just reveal her chest. Oh no…

Like many people at that age, this girl was struggling with acne. And not just face acne. She had some gross chest acne.

Naturally, the part of her body which obstructed my view of my friends’ online Tank Wars was her chest. I quickly became distracted by the red bumps and white heads and the question of ‘Why the heck would you wear that when your acne is as bad as it is? Cover that up!’

I’m sure you’re wondering something like, How is this a catch-22? How is this even a decision? and stuff like that. Patience, my friend. Patience.

By now, multiple seconds had passed as I examined the volcanic field of pimples that was this girl’s upper torso when the absolute worst thing that could have happened at this moment happened.

She caught me staring.

I was dead meat (meet? meat? meat.).

Here it comes… The worst question I’ve ever been asked in my life. It would have been better to miss the $100 question on Who Wants to be A Millionaire. Sigh.

“Are you staring at my boobs?”

[An aside here, ladies: this is a terrible question to ask. What are you going to do if a guy says, “Yeah, sorry.”? Probably hide yourself from his creepy gaze. What would you do if you didn’t ask this question? Probably hide yourself from his creepy gaze. Same result, fewer steps to get there. You’re welcome for enhancing your efficiency. Although, I might add another step: checking yourself in a mirror, so you don’t end up with this creepy guy trying to wipe ketchup off of your boob.]

It’s in moments like these that the body gains a certain super-human aspect. Some athletes experience a feeling of the world slowing down as they leap to catch a ball or make a play. To me, the world was slowing down as I tried to think of something appropriate to say.

Option 1: Tell the truth.

Normally, I subscribe to the old saying of “Honesty is the best policy.” This was an exception. The girl’s question was loud enough for others in the classroom to hear. Also, with the amount of adrenaline running through my body at this moment, I probably would have shouted, “NO, I WAS STARING AT YOUR NASTY ACNE!” loud enough for everyone to hear in the next three classrooms. I probably could have also fought off a small bear (we’re talking about a lot of adrenaline here, too much for my young body to handle). Consequences: come across as a complete dick, while probably starting a cruel nickname related to chest acne that would follow the girl for the rest of her life.

Option 2: Deny vehemently.

Perhaps this would have worked, but my flushed face would have surely given me away. Also, imagine something similar to the above situation only me yelling, “YOU’RE IN SEVENTH GRADE, YOU DON’T HAVE BOOBS! I WAS LOOKING AT THE COMPUTER BEHIND YOU!” Consequences: come across as a complete dick, while probably starting a cruel nickname related to being flat-chested that would follow the girl for the rest of her life.

Option 3: Fall on the grenade.

As mentioned in Option 1, the girl had asked me if I was staring at her boobs loud enough for many people around us to hear, all of whom were listening intently for what I had to say for myself. The last option that entered my head in that split second was to take all of the attention off of her, and place it all on me. Frankly, I wasn’t exactly a stud back then, so I wasn’t going to hurt my chances with the ladies by just saying that I was staring at her boobs. Consequences: come across as a complete creep, while the girl goes on to be one of the most popular kids in school.

I’ll be honest. None of those options sounded very great at the time. Actually, none of those options seem all that great now.

I let out a huge sigh. “Yes, I was staring at your boobs.”

Honestly, I don’t remember what happened after that, probably because I immediately put my head down in shame. She did go on to be one of the most popular girls in school, and I never dated a girl from school. That would make it seem like the consequences from Option 3 came to fruition, but I really don’t know. I just use this story whenever people ask me what the most embarrassing thing to ever happen to me was. To me, it’s just a funny story about growing up, one that I like to share because it reminds me to be selfless sometimes and that embarrassment is a natural part of life, a part of life that is really pretty funny.