SLUTTY HEART

I fall in love waaay too easily.

[maryofone]

Unrequited

I would never have written a 75,000-word manuscript about something I didn’t have expertise in.

When I suddenly decided two years ago to take a stab at a book, I knew it was going to have to be about something I knew some shit about. Problem is I’m not an expert at a lot of things. I’m great at a lot of things, but I can’t say I’m an expert at them. Really, when I take stock of my life over the last couple of decades, the only thing I’ve undisputedly mastered is becoming completely. fucking. obsessed with dudes who aren’t even close to being obsessed with me. Honest to god I could teach a university course about it.

First of all let me address the fact that suffering from chronic one-sided love disease is most certainly a first world problem. Habitually making poor romantic choices and investing in emotionally unavailable men is by no means a unique sob story, in fact this blog is a drop in the ocean. But I’m not trying to say I’m unique, nor am I (currently) sobbing about it. I’m just saying I’m an expert.

Who knows why my life story is littered with so many tales of unrequited love. Who knows why I seem predisposed to pouring my heart and fucking soul into dudes who don’t text back. The dude always changes, but the feeling is always the same. And as anyone who has ever suffered from a hearty bout of unrequited love will attest, the feeling is a fucking heartfuck.

Every time I fall for a guy who isn’t falling back, I’m always amazed at the sheer volume of deep and nuanced feelings I have for him that I just have to discard, without putting them to any use at all. It’s hard to understand why, as a human, I’m wired to become completely enamoured and entranced by every ounce of another human, able to spend hours, days, months thinking about him and feeling inspired by him, while he’s over there, not feeling that way at all. It’s not so much of a woe is me thing, as a what the fuck thing. Why am I built to burn so much energy for guys who aren’t burning shit for me? Why are we wired to conjure up all of these massive feelings that are just destined to go to waste?

If I did teach a university course on unrequited love I’d definitely have a unit on leveraging the energy of it. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve taken my breathtaking adoration for a guy and channeled it into my work – with really inspiring results! For some sad-yet-productive reason I get next-level inspired by the guys I’m into, and that inspiration can fuel me better than coffee. It’s amazing how much I can excel at life when there’s a certain guy whose attention and admiration I want. In the end, I always end up getting crushed when I finally accept he’s not into me, but the byproduct is that I’ve been super productive and made my life better. So, you know, silver lining, right?

There’s a reason I called this blog Slutty Heart. All I have to do is decide a guy is attractive and even a bit lovely, and my heart is ready to dive right in. If my heart wore pants I would say that it drops them WAY too fast for a guy. Every time I decide I like someone, my heart just puts all the fucking chips on the table and is like, let’s fucking do this, he’s perfect, this is the one you’ve been waiting for, ALL IN.

Having a slutty heart isn’t about being a slut, but it is about giving it up too fast. I gave my heart up to guys way too fast, way too often, for like 20 fucking years. Then I wrote a book about it. Then I wrote a year’s worth of blogs about it. And after spending so much time writing about it and posting it for whomever to see, it feels like I’ve given up my heart in a different way. Like I’ve given it up to anyone and everyone who chooses to read this damned thing. And that feels better than I thought it would. Definitely better than giving it up to some guy who doesn’t even want it.

If I’ve learned anything from writing this blog for the last year, it’s that I still love giving my heart up to someone. In fact, the more I’ve given in up on here, the more I want to do it in the future. To more people. And I’m not sure if that makes me a slut or crazy or both, but I’m cool with it, as long as it makes me a better writer.

[maryofone]

God

Some people are raised to feel as sure as possible about the existence of God, and I was not one of them. I was raised in a house of atheists, and really only ever got the Coles’ notes on the bible. Growing up it seemed like the majority of my family just wasn’t buying this whole ‘higher power’ business, except for maaaybe my mother. I recall her once saying, “There’s something going on up there. Maybe not a guy in a robe, but there’s something bigger than this.” And the older I get the more I find myself in her camp. Not because I got into the bible or started really buying into any of these stories about what happened thousands of years ago. My belief that there’s something “bigger than this” is pretty much because of this one random feeling I get sometimes. A feeling that first hit me when I was 20.

I’ll never forget the first time I felt this feeling. I was sitting on the front porch of a big, old Victorian house that I was living in with a bunch of girls. That day I was chilling alone on the porch, lazing on the ratty old loveseat, having a drink and listening to my headphones. It was late summer and I was stoned, so I was pretty blissful just gazing out at the trees, with the sun shining through the green leaves dancing in the breeze. I remember this moment really vividly because it’s exactly when this feeling suddenly hit me. As I lay there, buzzed and gazing, I felt something I’d never felt before. And it felt like the trees and breeze and movement of the world around me had something to do with it. But it wasn’t just like some appreciation for nature. It wasn’t just me feeling like, oh that breeze feels nice and those trees are pretty. It was a feeling that made me feel like I was in the company of something.

At the time, I couldn’t identify what this feeling was. But I definitely felt it. It was the best feeling I think I’d ever felt. For some fucking reason, on this random day, in this random moment, lying on this gross old couch, staring at the veins of the leaves in the sunshine, I suddenly felt something better than anything I’d ever felt before. Something warm and big and beautiful. Something I couldn’t begin to describe with words. What’s more, because I was 20, and me, I of course thought this feeling had something to do with the guy I was obsessed with. I figured it was just genuine love I was feeling, which of course... it wasn’t. But for a while I chalked this mysteriously incredible feeling up to me loving some fucking guy, and I didn’t give it a second thought until this feeling started following me around (long after the guy was gone).

I don’t get this feeling all of the time, but one of two things will bring it on. The first is nature; being outside. The feeling is so incredibly hard to describe, but there’s something very comforting about it. Maybe that’s why it feels like I’m in the company of something or someone. You know that feeling you get when someone you love or feel safe with tells you that everything is going to be okay? It’s kind of like that feeling, but bigger. Instead of just hearing that everything is going to be okay, it’s like I’m feeling it with all five of my senses. The breeze on my skin, the smell of the air, the look of the clouds floating above me… I suddenly don’t feel separate from these things. I feel a part of them. And I just get this beautiful surge of relief flow through every cell of my body. And then the feeling passes.

The second thing that can bring it on is music. Sometimes, even indoors, I’ll get a flash of the feeling because of a song I’m listening to. Certain songs can bring it on like a motherfucker and they span genres, tempos, everything. I have no idea why certain songs trigger it and others don’t, but I keep those songs on my playlist at all fucking times.

Honestly, this feeling is a fucking mystery to me. All I know is that I only feel it every so often; nature and music seem to be the gateway to it; and while I have no fucking idea what it is, for a fleeting moment it feels like the space between me and the world around me collapses, and I’m just one with it all; without any fear or doubt or self. Sooooo, is that God? I really have no idea. It’s something though.  

[maryofone]

Love

The word ‘love’ is pretty subjective. There’s no one clear definition of love, because we all have our own. But I have to say, my personal definition of what love is has definitely changed over the years. And as far as I’m concerned, I used to have that shit ALL wrong.

I used to think that love was a word you used to describe the feeling you have for your family, your close friends, and your partner. Like the people you love have this elite status that you don’t give to just anyone. I used to think you had to know someone for a while in order to know that you love them, and that these relationships with our ‘loved ones’ were mostly what people are referring to when they talk about love. But in recent years I’ve started to expand my view of exactly what the fuck love is, and I think it’s bigger than I thought.

People write a lot about love, talk a lot about love, fantasize a lot about love. As a society we think about it all the time. We have classic phrases about it and metaphors for it. “All you need is love.” “Love conquers all.” “Make love, not war.” And when I used to hear expressions about love, I kind of unconsciously figured they were referring to the people in your life whom you’ve decided are in that exclusive love club. “All you need is love” is a phrase I took to mean that all you need is the love of those people you love. Family, friends, partner. And more narrowly, as I hit puberty and the beginning of my decades-long obsession with men hit me, I read most lines about love as references to romantic love specifically. “Love conquers all” meant find a partner who loves you and you’ll win at life. And I don’t think I’m the only one who’s had this view of love. I think a lot of our society is fucking obsessed with romantic love and familial love, and while those things are great, we’re missing out on the rest of love that’s happening all around us all the time.

Years ago I started to notice a weird quirk in myself. Every so often, I would say hello to a stranger passing by me on the street, and the exchange would choke me up. Not all of the time, but once in a while, if the person looked me in the eyes long enough, or smiled warmly enough, it would hit me right in the heart. When I first starting noticing this habit I figured I was just desperate for love on account of the whole dead relationship I was in, or I was just like, crazy or something. But the habit continued long after the dead relationship, through happier, saner times. To this day, for whatever reason, every now and again, saying hi to strangers makes me want to cry. And I think that reason has something to do with love.

I remember first hearing the expression ‘love is a verb’, and automatically assuming that it was referring to romantic love. I figured the implication was that relationships take work and that love is expressed through actions. And what I’m learning is that the first half of that rationale is garbage, but the second half is very true. Love is expressed through actions, but not just actions in relationships. Love can be expressed through actions towards anyone. Helping someone up who just fell off their bike is an act of love; making a barista laugh when you can tell she’s having a shit day is an act of love; and yes, smiling at someone and saying hello for a total of three seconds is also an act of love. Love is something that people express all the time to each other, but we don’t call it that. We refer to it as being pleasant or polite, but a person can fake being pleasant and polite. The way I see it, when you’re being pleasant or warm or kind to someone, and you really fucking mean it... that shit’s love, man. Even if you don’t really know them.

Love isn’t about deciding that you officially love the entirety of a person and will formally say it to them. Love is about connecting with someone, anyone, even just for a second, and making them feel something in their heart. Could be the fucking cashier at your grocery store. When you see people genuinely smiling at each other, that’s love. When you see people giving each other a hand with something, that’s love. Love is all around us, but I don’t mean that in some cloying, Pollyanna kind of way. I mean that love isn’t that epic. It’s wonderful, and one of the most enjoyable parts of life, but it’s also pretty basic. Every time you want a dose of love you just have to be nice to someone. And I love thinking about love that way, because it’s just so simple. WAY simpler than relationships.

[maryofone]

Thank You

If I were to treat this blog like a book, I’d have to add some acknowledgements.

This blog is far from a book, but at the very least it’s an achievement in self-discipline, the likes of which I’ve never exhibited before, and I definitely couldn’t have made it to the finish line without the help of a few people. Unbeknownst to them, perhaps.

Thank you to Christopher, my dream agent, for lighting such a fire under my ass that I decided to do this in the first place.

Thank you Tom, for making this blog technically possible. More than that you made it look fucking good and feel fucking good, which is the essence of your talent as a developer, I would say. You’re also a dear friend who’s said multiple things about my writing that have nearly made me cry. So thanks for that too.

Speaking of things that look fucking good, thank you Jumper for that daisy shot I love so much, and for bringing my words to life with those quotes. I’m also grateful for you giving me that subtle nudge off the diving board into social media again.  I’ll always have love for those who teach me to think less and do more.

Okay whoa I haven’t even mentioned a woman yet. How about my mother? Mom, my sweet, consistently supportive Mom. You’ve liked, retweeted, commented, responded to more posts than anyone else by a long shot. You are ever the Proud Mama and I’ve felt it every day writing this blog. Your words about my words have been a pretty powerful fuel.

On the topic of parental support – Pops, I can’t thank you enough for how much interest you’ve taken, not only in the posts themselves but in my professional goals as a writer. Having someone other than myself thinking strategically about how I can achieve my biggest dream in life is pretty swell, I must say.

Thank you Sozan, for the intense, borderline-overwhelming support you give me in all aspects of my life, particularly with this blog. I’ve written before about how you make me want to be a strong woman but you make me want to be a strong writer too. And you also make me feel like I am those things. Honestly you’re too good to me.

Thank you Ian, for being an unlikely mentor. So much more than a coworker, client, and friend, you’ve given me some of the most valuable, life-changing advice anyone’s ever given me. You also inspire me to be the kind of person who gets shit done, so in honour of getting this shit done, I owe you some thanks for sure.

Thank you Karen, Krista, Steph, Ashley, Alissa, Cath, Shilo (probably missing some) for being such fucking amazing women and saying such encouraging things about the blog. Thinking of you all reading it was what made this project fucking FUN. 

Thank you to all of the women in my family. You’re all fucking amazing and you make me want to REPRESENT.

Thank you siblings, for being the only two people I’m ever really trying to look cool for. Part of me hopes I never feel like I’ve reached that goal, because it’s been a pretty damn good motivator over the years!

Thank you Kev, Alcides, Chris, Stuart – you are a precious pack of weirdos that I hope to know until I die. Your love alone makes me want to do great shit with my life, just so we can all cheers to it on our next vacation.

And last but not fucking least… Char. Charlotte. Charlatté. Buddeeeeeee. I could say lots of things about why I’m grateful for you but I really just want to focus on one thing. You’ve read every single one of my posts, without fail. Every single day Tumblr tells me you liked my last post. And honestly, you have no idea what that has meant to me. Every day since October 15th, 2017. DUDE. I love you. There were so many days when I just thought, what the fuck am I even doing this for? I knew I had to keep doing it, but in those moments of doubt, I would remind myself that I knew you were going to read it. And that was enough for me to keep pushing. As long as I knew that at least you, my brilliant, beautiful, fucking warrior woman buddy babe was going to read it. then that was enough to make me want to write it. You may very well have kept me from giving up. So fucking THANKS dude. You support me in lots of ways but THAT was the shit. Thank you.

And to anyone else who’s followed me on this year-long journey of entitled millennial self-discovery, I really do want to say thank you. I have such a long way to go as a writer and I’m sure this daily dose of MARY’S FEELINGS got occasionally tedious, but if you hung on, and you’re reading this now, fucking thank you. I promise the next one will be even better.

[maryofone]

The Plan

Back when I decided to write a blog post every day for a year I knew that I was going to be committing to two things. The first was having to write a goddamned post every goddamned day whether I liked it or not. The second thing was that I was going to wrap this shit up as soon as I reached my 365th post. By the time I’ve written that much about love and relationships, I’m going to be pretty well spent on writing about love and relationships. At least for a little while. I think.

For the sake of those who are still reading my posts on a regular basis (which is amazing oh my god thank you let’s talk more about how much I appreciate you),  I thought it might be worth jotting down some of my plans after I close up shop on this blog.

First thing I plan to do is not fucking write for a few days. I want to say weeks, but I say days because I fear that this 800-words-before-9am routine is going to make me feel fucking weird once I’m suddenly out of it. I may find that I need to write on a daily basis now. But I can guarantee you that I will enjoy at least a couple of weeks not having to write a damn word. Except for my job, of course. I never actually stop writing altogether. And I guess that’s a fact I’m actually pretty happy about.

Honestly all I want to do after I wrap up this blog is fucking READ. For some reason, I haven’t treated myself to such a pleasure since I’ve been doing all of this damned writing. I kept having this attitude about it, like if I have time to read I should be writing. Well, I’ve followed that rule for a long-ass time now, so I think I’ve earned some reading time. Can’t wait to be on the receiving end of the words again, and just sink into someone else’s mind for a while.

As I’ve been focused on all this writing, I haven’t had the additional wherewithal to tackle my author dream in a properly strategic way. I haven’t used social media properly, or really promoted myself as a writer/contributor in communities that might appreciate my contribution. I haven’t taken full advantage of the opportunities that lay before me as a relatively young writer with a background in fucking marketing. In other words, I haven’t sold myself to anyone yet. I’ve just been fucking writing. And that’s all well in good, but it’s time to mingle with the writing community a little more; to raise my hand and say something; to pull up a seat at the table. My goal in the next year is to get on people’s radar.

My goal in the next year is also to get on men’s radar. I’ve been writing about dating for a LONG FUCKING TIME now, so I think I’m probably due to start actually dating again. Or like, dating properly for the first time ever. Whatever you want to call it, that’s the plan.  

[maryofone]

Don’t Worry, Be Henry

My dog kicks fucking ass and deserves one last shout out before I wrap this whole thing up.

I’ve already expressed my love for Henry on here but I’d like to zero in on one particular quality of his that inspires me every day: he doesn’t fucking worry.

Henry doesn’t worry about what other dogs think of him. He barely thinks about other dogs unless one is in front of him, and as soon as they’re out of his line sight (or smell I should say) he’s completely forgotten about them.

He doesn’t worry about his health. And that’s impressive given that he was fucking maimed in the first year of his life. He’s got a mangled shoulder that will never heal and is quite possibly in a mild amount of pain every waking hour of his little life, but he does not appear to be the least bit stressed about it. 

He doesn’t worry about whether he’s getting the most life has to offer. He doesn’t question his relationships, or regret past decisions. He doesn’t worry about his appearance or whether he’s good enough for people.

Talk about enviable, he doesn’t have to worry about Trump. Or the threat of war. Or climate change. He doesn’t have to worry about anything that exists on the internet. How nice would that be?

This is not to say that Henry doesn’t have concerns. He’s ever-concerned with when his next meal is, despite being fed twice a day religiously since the moment he met me. No matter what, the consumption of food is still his main concern in life. And I mean, he’s not wrong to prioritize life that way. He’s a good reminder that nothing really matters more than what’s for dinner.

He’s got some inexplicable concerns though. Skateboards. Traffic cones. Suspiciously shaped garbage bags. He seems VERY concerned with some pretty random shit, and it’s not inspiring per se, but it is nice to know that humans aren’t the only species who make issues out of things that aren’t issues.

He’s also quite concerned with me. What I’m doing, where I’m going, and what it means for him. I know it’s probably mostly Stockholm syndrome because I’ve forced him to live with me and spend most waking hours with me and rely on me to provide his basic necessities, so he almost has no choice but to worship me, but regardless of the reason, that little fucker does worship me. If I so much as sigh in an unusual way his ears prick right up and he immediately wants to know what’s going on. If food is his main priority, I’m definitely a close second.

If Henry’s concerned with anything besides food and me, it’s being outside. And this is a priority I really have to give him props for. Dogs really get it, when it comes to the importance of nature. They all just want to be out in it, all the time. And this feeling is actually contagious, so I’m pretty fucking grateful for that.

I think about Henry’s state of mind almost every day. As I tend to the swirling thoughts and corresponding feelings that occupy my head and heart on any given day, I look down at him while we’re walking and I wonder what he’s thinking about. Not long after I wonder I can usually surmise that he’s wondering about how close he can get to that squirrel, or who took a pee on that discarded tarp. It’s always something basic. In the moment. Never complicated. Nine times out of ten I’d rather be thinking about whatever Henry is thinking about. So that’s what I try to do as often as possible.

There are a lot of reasons to love the little dude, but I think I love Henry most as a meditation tool. He's just a constant reminder of the things that really matter. Survival, nature, love (even if it’s Stockholm love). If Henry’s taught me anything, it’s to keep my priorities straight.

[maryofone]

Ego

My ego is exhausting.

The first time I ever really read up on the subject of ego was in a book written by Eckhart Tolle. Tolle’s made a pretty big name for himself as a spiritual teacher, master of self-help, and all-around wise motherfucker to listen to. The book I read was A New Earth and in it he talks a lot about what our ego is actually designed to do, and why it wreaks so much havoc on us. 

The ego is designed to help us identify with certain social structures and individual roles to find our context amongst society. Your ego tells you you’re this kind of person who does these kinds of things and reacts this kind of way when put in these kinds of situations. Your ego is all about maintaining the type of person you want to convey to the world. There’s a reason we pay attention to the kinds of clothes we wear and the personality traits we express. Our ego has evolved to know that we have to identify ourselves with something in order to survive in society. But the tricky business with the ego is… it’s not always right.

Our egoes can convince us to identify with a lot of bullshit. Tolle’s book was where I first learned that your ego isn’t just in the business of convincing you you’re great. Your ego can make you identify with negative societal roles too. Like when people get sick or rejected or something bad happens to them and they start identifying as a victim. Not to victim-shame or anything, people genuinely suffer from being victimized all the time. But for some people, their ego will really latch onto that victim narrative and hang onto it for years. Sometimes their whole life. The ego doesn’t necessarily care what it’s identifying with, as long as it’s something.

I could list off all kinds of things that my ego wants to identify with. All kinds of aspects to my personality that I believe/hope contribute to people’s overall impression of me. There are certain ways I’d very much like to be seen by the world. And that’s where it gets tricky because sometimes we have to learn that the way we want to be seen by other people just isn’t how we’re being seen, and it’s in those moments of realization that our ego usually freaks the fuck out.

I never knew how much my ego could freak the fuck out until this year. Until this blog. You see, the creation of this blog was made possible entirely because my ego was on an upswing. I’d just been given some pretty encouraging feedback from the agent of my dreams, and I was READY to take my voice to the world and start building my platform. I had the blog up and running in less than two weeks and braced myself for the world’s reaction to my words.

My ego prepared itself for a lot of things when I launched this blog. It was prepared for harsh creative feedback from my previous superiors who once reared me as a young writer; for all of the haters who weren’t going to like what I have to say; for some exes to be pissed at my airing of our dirty laundry. My ego was prepared for any and all of the kudos and criticisms that were surely going to flood my way once I started publishing a post every single day. But it never prepared itself for no response.

I can’t say people haven’t responded to this blog. People have actually said some super encouraging things about it that I’ll never forget. But in comparison to the reaction my ego was preparing for... it’s been a cold, quiet year. Having abstained from social media for five years, and never taking on a personal creative project that I would publish for the world, I was admittedly in a pretty naive mindset about the ocean of content I was dropping this blog into. I also forgot just how many inputs are pulling at people’s attention online, every single second. After a few months of pumping out posts every day, I started to realize that it didn’t really matter what I'm saying, most people probably aren’t going to hear me.

The good news is, a little bit of failure is a good. Feeling humbled is good. Taking small steps as part of a bigger creative journey is good. But the bad news is, my ego doesn’t give a shit about any of that longterm spiritual progress bullshit. My ego just cares that I’ve spent every day writing a blog that almost no one reads. For the last 358 days my ego and I have been grappling on this imaginary wrestling mat in my mind, every fucking day. Some days my ego likes to remind me of the thousands and thousands of blogs online that are a shitload better than mine. Other days it likes to remind me of the thousands and thousands of blogs that are worse than mine, but have followings the size of a small country. Basically my ego is just freaking the fuck out at what a nobody I am online, because it never envisioned me as a nobody. My ego is fine with me being considered a little rude, not everyone’s cup of tea, occasionally offensive, sometimes over the line… but it’s not fine with me being nothing to people. It’s not fine with me spending two hours every single morning for a year, writing posts that one of my 75 Twitter followers might read. By the Internet’s standards, I don’t even qualify as a nobody. And my ego fucking haaates that.

The interesting thing about your ego is that it can be the most powerful force driving all of the decisions you make, OR you can choose to ignore it.  I’ve chosen to ignore my ego for the last 358 days. Every time it reminds me that there are millions of female writers my age who are way better at this, I just keep ignoring it. Every time it whispers at me that my words aren’t meaning anything to anyone, I ignore it. Every time it tries to tell me that this is all so fucking pointless and I’m not even a nobody, I ignore it. And if I’ve learned anything from ignoring my ego, it’s that I never should have trusted that shit in the first place. For as much as my ego has tried to convince me that this effort is futile, I did it anyway. And in six posts from now, it will be done. And that shit is not nothing. It may be a while before I’m considered a somebody, but this effort was not nothing. And this post I get to relish more than others because in six days I will officially get to pin my ego to the mat and say, you’re not the boss of me, bitch.

[maryofone]

The Book

I’ve got one more week of this blog and I figure I should probably say something about the book that started it all.

I guess you’re not allowed to call something a book until it’s actually published, so technically I wrote a manuscript. But that word doesn’t express the weight of the effort quite as well as saying, “I wrote a fucking book.” And that brings me to the first thing I learned about writing a book: writing it is the easy part.

Writing 75,000 words about something was actually easier than I thought. Prior to this effort I never would have thought I had the patience to do such a thing. But I don’t know, something strange happened. It’s like some determination switch got flipped in my head and all that mattered in life was making a first draft happen. And once that switch got flipped it suddenly became super simple to map out the project and make it happen as efficiently as possible. More than efficient, it became therapeutic, writing all that shit out. It wasn’t just easier than I thought to write a book, it was actually super enjoyable.

I wrote about every failed relationship I’d ever had. And I use the term relationship loosely. Every guy who came into my life and left a mark, I wrote a chapter about. And as I wrote out each story, it forced me to think through these experiences, examine them, and articulate what I took from them, sentence by sentence, for months. It’s not like I hadn’t already spent an excessive amount of time reflecting on these failures, but it felt like I was processing them in a whole new way by actually writing them out. It’s like writing out each story forced me to reach a conclusion about it. And then suddenly, that story, that memory that had been clanging around in my mind for so long was now staring back at me; outside of me. My brain felt lighter afterwards. And I really fucking liked that feeling.

So writing a book about my journey as an abject romantic failure was super fun, but I was pretty naïve about the glacier of challenges that lay just beneath the surface of this new author goal I had. The pitch process alone required weeks to wrap my head around; months to actually prepare for. Learning how to write a query letter, and a synopsis, and creating a pitch deck because apparently new non-fiction authors have to submit a formal proposal otherwise no one gives you the time of day. Then researching agents (which is way more challenging than you’d think), then writing pitches specifically tailored for those agents; all while learning the process of hiring an editor and weathering the blows to my ego while she lobs off chunk after chunk of rambling fat from my work. And that’s just the shit you have to learn if you want to pitch a book to an agent, not even a publisher. The road to publishing is loooong and I can see why most people give up after the first few steps.

The real hurdle hit me when I got a rejection letter from the agent of my dreams. Agent to the author who inspired me to write in the first place, he’s a big enough deal that I certainly wasn’t expecting a response from him at all. I was just sending him my first ever pitch letter for the sake of ceremony. I didn’t even expect one of his interns to get back to me. So when HE got back to me, I fucking died. Sparing you the letter in all its glory, there was a nugget of feedback at the centre of this incredibly encouraging note that I was going to have to chew on for a while. And that feedback was – I’m nobody. More specifically he said that these kinds of bad date/bad relationship memoir type books only do well if people know who the author is. I’m not writing some great fiction or well-researched study on something, I’m just a girl talking about the shit she learned from crashing and burning with guys. And if no one knows who I am, no one’s going to give a shit about this book, regardless of whether it’s a good read or not. So basically, his feedback was to build my platform as a writer, then pitch a book. In other words, get famous first. Other than this technically devastating blow to the timeline of my author dream, the rest of the letter got me more inspired than any single piece of communications I’ve ever read. He told me that I had talent and I should keep pushing. He told me he liked the subject line of my query, Tales from my slutty heart. And he ended the email on one single line that may very well have changed my life:

“I hope the fact that you didn’t get a form letter offers some spark.”

Implying that he doesn’t take the time to personally reject just anyone, this was a pretty fucking powerful point of inspiration for me. I’d had people review my work as a copywriter for years, but never my personal writing, and the fact that my DREAM agent was telling me I was talented and should keep pushing, well it gave me some fucking spark alright. Did I immediately buy sluttyheart.com and commit to writing a post every single day for a year? Yes. Was that maybe a ridiculously disproportionate allocation of my efforts that could have been spread across a more varied approach to building a platform? Yes. Have I even built a platform in the last year? Mmmmm not by any actual standards, no. But I’m on my way. Slow and steady, motherfuckers. One year at a time.

[maryofone]

Daydreaming

At various points of my life, the act of daydreaming has both saved me and ruined me. 

I just wrote a post about how much I think about guys and relationships, but daydreams represent a unique sliver of that overthinking pie. Daydreaming is more than just pondering and analyzing. To daydream is to completely ignore the real world around you and escape into a world created entirely in your mind, basking in whatever made-up scenario you want. For me it’s always scenarios involving whatever dude I’m into at the time. Just he and I living out our lives, as we naturally drift closer together and fall in love. I could live in the nuances of that scenario over and over in my mind until I’m dead. These daydreams have been a regular part of my psyche for most of my life, and I’m honestly not sure whether to feel grateful or resentful about that.

I have to give props to daydreaming because it did help me survive high school. So many moments in high school are just fucking unbearable and daydreaming about my crushes was just the best medicine I could think of to make it through (until the Zoloft, I guess). But even in my twenties I still couldn’t stop dreaming up imaginary scenarios that involved whatever guy I was sweet on at the time. It remained a psychological crutch long after it probably should have been. But it’s hard to knock it because it got me through some tough times. It’s amazing how comforting it can be to just escape into your own mind and imagine a better life.

There were those few moments in time where I actually was living the dream and maintaining a functional relationship, and in those times my daydreams were pretty dormant. In fact, it was usually a sign of impending doom for my relationship if I caught myself daydreaming again. Sometimes I don’t realize I’m unhappy with my life until I notice how much I’m fantasizing about a different one.

Daydreaming isn’t always a helpful mechanism though. I’ve definitely been caught up in it a little *too* much. Enough to wonder if I actually have a mental issue. It’s not like I can’t tell the difference between fantasy and reality, I just have a preference for my fantasy over my reality, most moments of the day. And that can’t be healthy. At least not when it comes to dating. I’m not exactly sure how my excessive daydreaming about the guy I’m into effectively ruins my chances with said guy I’m into, but I have a hunch that it does. 

I also worry that even if my daydreams actually come true someday and I meet someone who’s like this permanent source of warmth and love and light in my life, I’ll still be addicted to daydreaming. I’ve spent so many of my years daydreaming about a better life, what if I’ve conditioned myself to always do that, no matter how amazing my actual life gets? Daydreaming has kept me from a lot of sadness, but I don’t want it to keep me from happiness too.

Ultimately though, I can’t disparage the act of daydreaming. When you consider how many people have truly terrible lives and have to endure truly terrible moments, I’d say daydreaming really is essential to our survival. Being able to escape reality and create an alternate one in our mind might be one of the greatest gifts we’ve been given, considering how much horror there is to escape here on Earth. I don’t have nearly enough horror to justify the amount of daydreaming I do, but what can I say? I’m addicted to going to my happy place. And I figure as long as I keep trying to create said happy place in my real actual life, I’m allowed to keep daydreaming about it.

[maryofone]

Think Too Much

If I could wipe one phrase from existence it would be, “you think too much.”

I’ve had a lot of feedback over the years, about who I am as a person. This is because I can’t ever seem to stop talking about myself, so naturally I invite the occasional note from whomever I’m dissecting myself to. Far and away, the most consistent piece of feedback I’ve received from friends and family over the last 20 years is that I think too much. It’s something a lot of people are told about themselves, but I get told a LOT.

I don’t think people should tell other people they think too much. As someone who’s been on the receiving end of this criticism for most of her life, I can say with authority it fucking sucks. If you’re the kind of person who has an overactive brain, then having someone tell you that you think too much can feel infuriatingly unhelpful.

To be fair, I do think too much. It’s a fucking nightmare, actually. Every day of my life I put a disproportionate amount of thought towards something. Often more than one thing. I’ve had an obsessive thinking problem for as long as I can remember. I’m in a perpetual state of mulling, every waking hour. I can overthink all kinds of things in my life, but for whatever reason, as evidenced by this blog, I really CAN’T seem to stop thinking about guys and relationships.

Thinking too much is not a choice. At least it’s not for me. When people used to tell me I thought too much I would really believe that the only solution was to try and think less. It took me years to figure out that it’s entirely impossible for me to just reduce the number of thoughts I have. Never going to happen. But I have learned some helpful tools. Meditation taught me how to let my thoughts go, which was super helpful. I’m still inundated with constant musings all day every day, but I don’t dwell on each of them for as long anymore. Definitely a work in progress, but I’m gradually learning how to let a thought into my mind, and then usher it out just as quickly. Sounds like a tiny consolation but I literally believe this tool alone has saved my fucking life.

The other tool I use to cope with overthinking is one I’ve been working on for years. I realized long ago that I wouldn’t be able to reduce how much I think, BUT if I had more things in my life to think about, I could at least turn some of this endless mental energy towards those. It’s not as easy as it sounds to just add things to your life though. It took me years to figure out what other things would stimulate my mind and heart as much as thinking about guys did. In a nutshell, I had to make my life bigger, so I’d have bigger things to think about. And it feels like I’m doing that, so hallefuckinglujah on that score.

Writing is also a good solution for thinking too much. I had a real come-to-Jesus moment about two and a half years ago, when I’d been quietly craving some kind of personal writing project, while simultaneously struggling with my constant obsessive thinking about my love life. My ongoing search for something meaningful to write about and my nonstop relationship thoughts driving me to the brink of insanity finally collided one fateful May morning and I just started to fucking WRITE. Write out all of these fucking thoughts that have been running around in the backyard of my mind for fucking YEARS. Every thought, every story, every lesson I’ve ever taken from my shit love life was coming out of my fingers and onto the page. And a few months later I had the first draft of a book. So thinking too much may very well be a trait worth correcting, but it’s not always a bad idea to see where it takes you either.

[maryofone]

Gut

I’ve never had a problem trusting my gut. When my gut does successfully communicate something to me, I usually believe it. What I do have a problem with though is actually noticing when my gut is trying to tell me something. Apparently my gut has all kinds of signals it tries to send me when I need to become aware of something, and apparently I’m built to ignore all of these signals until it’s too late. 

Nothing makes you want to fervently audit every last one of your recent actions like getting dumped on a park bench. I’ve been looking back on everything I’ve thought and felt the last few weeks, trying to figure out how the fuck my gut let me down on this one. At first I thought my gut was telling me this was a good thing I was in. The first few minutes of realizing this was in fact another dumpster fire, I just couldn’t believe my gut misled me so much. But as I continue to reflect, I’m starting to see a different picture. A picture that involves my gut subtly trying to tell me, constantly, all summer, that this guy wasn’t the guy.

“27 year old men are monsters,” is the first thing I ever said about him. A sentiment that came from both my gut and my conscious thinking, but alas, I ignored it.

“How many girls do you think are waiting for him to text them back right now? At least a few.” This is another of the first things I said about him. Out loud. Heard myself say it with my own two ears. Didn’t really hear it though, I guess.

My gut even interjected the very first time he and I flirted with each other. He was informing me of some kind of work timeline that seemed unreasonable, but he assured me that the workload wouldn’t be too overwhelming. I half-jokingly replied, “I don’t believe you, or trust you.” We shared what I believe was our first laugh together, meanwhile my gut was like duuuuuuuuuude thatwasntajoke.

See, my gut is pretty fucking vocal. It literally speaks to me in my own words. Audibly. Articulately. And I still choose to ignore it.

But then there are the non-verbal signals from the gut. Those signals are harder to ignore and also – fun fact – they feel fucking horrible. Isn’t it kind of amazing when your gut is trying to tell you that something bad is happening or going to happen, and it just makes you feel this general sense of badness all over? It’s hard to pinpoint exactly what about you feels bad, you just know you feel bad. And you can feel it in every ounce of yourself. I felt it all week leading up to the bench dumping. Like my soul felt sick or something. And those signals I couldn’t ignore, but they were almost so strong that my conscious mind was actively trying to argue them, for the sake of salvaging the dream. Alas. I did not respond to said signals in time, and the decision to end it was no longer mine, but his. And my gut just thought, way to go, idiot. I told you.

So the good news is, my gut is worth trusting. The bad news is, I’m terrible at hearing it when it’s talking to me. Something for the ol’ noggin doctor, I guess. I have faith that he and I will be able to figure this one out. I also have a hunch that life will get a little easier once I actually start listening to my gut. It just seems so much more helpful than this stupid fucking heart.

[maryofone]

Salesman Eyes

I have an account executive fetish and if I don’t get rehabilitated soon it’s going to fucking kill me.

What’s an account executive, you ask? Well if you’re not familiar with the term, an account executive (or supervisor or manager or director or even just an account guy) is someone whose job it is to manage the relationship with the client and make sure all projects are seen through from start to finish and meeting the client’s expectations. Account guys are the ones who wear the suits to the ad agency, while the rest of us creatives look like we belong in a basement.

I’ve worked in advertising for 10 years, so I’ve worked with a LOT of account guys. They definitely have a stereotypical vibe. Nice clothes, well-groomed, well-mannered, usually on the charming side. And of course that makes sense because these are the guys who have to manage the client relationship. If your entire role is based on keeping a specific person or group of people happy, then it would behoove you to have at least a little bit of charm. I’ve come to refer to these guys as ‘professional flirters.’ I love watching them in action, tending to the client and staying super engaged in the conversation, joking around with them, nurturing the rapport. I personally think it must be THE most exhausting job on the planet, but hey. That’s why they keep us creatives in the basement.

As much as I scoff at the manufactured warmth these account guys are able to muster on a daily basis for literally everyone they talk to, I still find myself susceptible to them. For the last several years I’ve caught myself developing lethal crushes on account guys, and it’s always, always, ALWAYS a bad idea. I’m just too susceptible to a charming man in general. Even in the restaurant industry, my first boyfriend was a fucking flirting MACHINE, with every single girl we worked with. Servers, customers, everyone. He just loved flirting, partially because that was just who he was, and partially because he wanted dem tips. Over the years I’ve continued to be a sucker for a man who likes to flirt, and thus developed a dangerous tendency to fall for guys who flirt for a fucking living.

Account guys have something I like to call ‘salesman eyes’. I’m not sure if it’s something they’re born with or if they develop it after years of charming clients, but it’s definitely a thing. I can see how the term ‘salesmen eyes’ could conjure up an image of someone with an insincere or exaggerated look in their eyes, but salesmen eyes are just the opposite. They’re subtle, and sexy, and if you’re not careful, completely fucking arresting. When you think about it, eye contact is an important part of being a professional. There are so many instances in business when you have to communicate with people, and eye contact is such an important part of that. Then when you consider the profession of an account person, who is constantly communicating to their client with the intention of keeping them happy, eye contact is like a skill they can use to their advantage. And boy do they.

Salesmen eyes aren’t a constant feature of an account person’s face. They don’t always have them turned on. They wouldn’t be as effective if they used them all the time. Salesmen eyes are something an account person will turn on for just a flash, when they’re talking to someone. They could be charming the client into extending the deadline, or charming the creative team into working their third late night in a row, and they’ll find juuust the right moment to flash those eyes. And if I were to describe exactly what a flash of salesmen eyes looks like… I’d say that it happens in a moment of connection where the two of you have just shared a joke or both agreed on something, and he’ll look you right in your eyes, with a little smile, and just scrunch his lids ever so slightly, as if his eyes are hugging yours, just for a second. It’s borderline imperceptible but it still hits you. And a skilled account person will flash this intoxicating little scrunch at exactly the right time, so they can get exactly what they want from you. The best account people (or creative directors or CEOs or any other person who’s job it is to sell you on something) are the best at this.

I have to admit that I am completely fucking hopeless when on the receiving end of salesmen eyes, and it has cost my heart dearly. If I had a nickel for every account guy I got butterflies for because of those stupid salesmen eyes, I’d be a rich bitch. I just can’t resist that sexy scrunch, I guess. Even if he scrunches like that for all the girls.

[maryofone]

Nothing To Lose

There’s only one good feeling that comes with getting dumped and that’s the ‘nothing to lose’ feeling.

There are certain things we cherish in our lives. Certain things that we keep our focus on to make sure we don’t lose them. For me, clearly, the thing I cherish most is the prospect of a healthy, rewarding relationship with someone. When I’m in a relationship, or close to being in a relationship, it’s my number one top priority to cherish that shit, protect that shit, do whatever I can to maintain that shit. This disproportionate amount of focus often comes at the expense of other things in my life. Other things that could really use my focus, like my career or my friendships or my writing. At least I’m not the only one though. There are tons of people who put a disproportionate amount of focus on the thing they’re afraid to lose. Could be their career, or their appearance. Could be their marriage or their following on social media. Whatever it is, a lot of us can get a little too wrapped up in the one thing that matters most to us, and while it may seem terrifying to lose that thing we cherish most, some surprisingly good shit can happen if we actually do.

Being dumped/rejected/tossed to the curb is one of my least favourite feelings in life (I’m sure a lot of people would also rank it that way) and I happen to be in the midst of it right now. The hot sting is still pulsing through my veins, as I keep having to remind myself over and over about what just happened. I’ve been through this enough times to know that the sting passes, but right now it’s in full effect, and hoo boy is it hard to find a silver lining. Fortunately, there is one. And it’s the same one I’ve seen after every rejection I’ve had. After every failed relationship, every romantic bubble bursting, every time I thought I had a special thing with someone only to find out it was nothing, there’s been a silver lining. And that silver lining is the ‘nothing to lose’ feeling. In contrast to the rejection feeling, it might be one of my favourite feelings in life.

There’s a taste of freedom that comes with losing the thing that you didn’t want to lose. Sure there’s a lot of pain and sorrow that comes with it, but there’s a freedom too. And it comes in two flavours. The first is that you know the worst has happened. It’s amazing how much energy we burn while unconsciously worrying about some worst-case scenario happening. Sometimes I think it’s the entire reason I’m thin. So once the worst-case scenario comes to life, you can just let all that worrying go. Sure, you might be fucking devastated, but worrying is a fucking BITCH, man. Being free from worry is always a good thing. Second flavour of freedom that comes with losing the thing you didn’t want to lose is that your mind is free to think about other things in your life now. This fucking thing that you kept thinking about and focusing on and giving all of your energy to isn’t in your life anymore, and now you’ve got this huge surplus of time and energy to focus on whatever the fuck you want to make happen in your life. And that freedom tastes pretty damn good.

The ‘nothing to lose’ feeling never feels AMAZING, because it’s always accompanied by some of the worst feelings a person can feel. The ‘nothing to lose’ feeling is just this quiet little consolation that you can cling to in the sad moments. Eventually though, as time goes on, the sad moments start to lessen, but that ‘nothing to lose’ feeling is still there, giving you the freedom to make all kinds of plans for your life. Then eventually, you build a life that includes something you don’t want to lose again, and then you start thinking about how much it would suck to lose it, and thus the cycle repeats. So I guess I should really savour this moment in which I have nothing to lose, because freedom of any kind is worth cherishing.  

[maryofone]

Solipsistic

The hardest feedback I’ve received about this blog came from my dad. Not because he doesn’t love the blog, in fact he and my mom are probably the most avid readers of the damned thing. Almost everything he’s ever said about my writing has been complimentary and encouraging and everything you’d hope your dad would say about your work. But as an avid reader of many things, and an intellectual, and an actual teacher for a couple of decades, he would be remiss not to share a little constructive criticism too, and therein lies the feedback that keeps me up at night.

My dad has said two things about this blog, framed in the nicest way possible, and as you'll see there’s definitely a theme. The first was:

“Well sweetie, everyone likes to engage in a little navel-gazing so it’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

While technically a reassurance that my style of excessive self-expression was completely normal, that ‘navel-gazing’ word never left me. The second thing he said was (in the middle of actually complimenting the blog):

“An uncharitable person might call it solipsistic.”

I definitely had to consult dictionary.com on this one, and what I learned was that it was pretty similar to the concept of navel-gazing. Basically just living in a fucking bubble of your own thoughts and feelings and opinions, without any acknowledgement of anything else in existence. It’s not like my dad was trying to be a dick about it. That last note was part of a larger note about how much he appreciated my style of writing and how ultimately satisfying it is to read. My dad has complimented the shit out of whatever the fuck I’m trying to do here. But those two notes… navel-gazing and solipsistic… did not go unnoticed by me. Since my dad is so sparing in his criticisms I knew that he meant it.

Now that I know what solipsistic means, I agree that I am solipsistic as FUCK. Of course I am. I've literally written a blog post 352 days in a row about myself. Before that I wrote 75,000 words about my life. My stories, my emotions, my growth. The lessons I’ve learned, the experiences that made me into the person I am today. From a writing perspective, it’s just been me, me, me, me, me for the last three fucking years. And then from a talking perspective, well... I’ve been gazing at this here navel for a lot longer than three years. 

I talk about myself a lot. I’ve known this for a long time. Some people just like to hold court longer than others, and I’m one of those people, I guess. For much of my adult life I exacerbated this “quality” with alcohol. Fortunately I’m not the only person who never shuts the fuck up about themselves when they have a few drinks in them, but DAMN did it feel good to stop drinking and find out that I wasn’t *quite* as obnoxious in my sober, natural state. I know my mother was relieved. As my dad’s been the one who’s observed the solipsism in my writing, my mom’s definitely observed it in conversation. If there’s anyone more relieved than me that I no longer go on three-hour, white-wine fueled rants at the dinner table, it’s her.

Turns out alcohol isn’t the only thing that makes me talk a lot. Just the general nervousness that comes with socializing makes me talk a lot. Particularly dating. I learned this the hard way just a day and a half ago when I got dumped on a park bench. I shouldn’t technically say dumped because it was only a few dates, but we’d been in each other’s orbit for longer than that, and what can I say, shit hurt like a breakup. As I stumbled for words and started cramming the ultra-awkward silences with MORE insights about myself (as if that was going to change his mind) I decided to say the one thing that everyone knows you’re not supposed to say when someone’s kicking you to the curb:

“I mean… is there like, something wrong with me?”

I tried to say it somewhat in jest, more with the intention of highlighting how baffled I was, but of course it just came off weak as shit. Regardless of how unsavoury I was painting myself in these last few minutes of knowing him, he actually had a response to the question.

“Well, you did talk a lot on our first date.”

I froze mid-blather to try and compute what he had said, just staring at him with my mouth open, shocked that he would actually have a response to the “is there something wrong with me” question. I was also trying to compute if he was serious, and if I had actually just ruined my chance with this guy because I honestly can’t shut the fuck up. He quickly saw how struck I was by the comment, so he softened and said, “No, I’m just kidding,” but that motherfucker was not kidding. He answered too quickly to be kidding.

This only happened two days ago so honestly I’m still kind of sitting here with my mouth open, wondering if I just fucked it all up because I talk too much. Thinking about my mom’s advice to say less and ask more; thinking of my dad’s notes about this blog. I’ve always given myself a pass for talking and writing about myself a lot because I’ve always felt like I’m trying to achieve something deeper. I don’t just talk to hear my own voice. I talk because I want to identify with people. I want them to know what life feels like for me, in hopes that it feels the same way for them. I want people to understand me, and relate to me. Because honestly it feels like I’m on a fucking island sometimes. But I don’t know. Maybe I just fucking talk too much. Maybe it’s that simple. Maybe if I just reduced the shit I yammered on about by like 40% or something, then I won’t lose people’s interest. I wouldn’t have lost his interest.

One thing I do know for sure is that I can’t force myself to be anything that I’m not, so if I’m a person who’s arrived on this planet and I’m meant to say a bunch of shit about myself whether anyone asked to hear it or not, then I guess I just have to be that. I’d rather be naturally obnoxious than artificially tolerable.

[maryofone]

Mirage

Is it weird to admit that mirages are one of my biggest fears?

When I was a kid I learned what a mirage was as most other kids learn: that it’s a thing that you see in the desert when you’re dehydrated or exhausted or otherwise losing your mind and your eyes and brain trick you into thinking you see some kind of salvation/oasis/paradise, but once you get up close the vision dissolves and you realize there was never anything there to begin with; it was all in your imagination. Even as a kid that idea really fucked with me. The idea that my mind could trick me like that; the idea that I could see something with my own two eyes but it’s not actually there. The concept of a mirage has always given me the heebies jeebies.

The weird thing about mirages is that they can kind of happen in our relationships too. You can look at a relationship you’re in and be 100% sure that it looks a certain way or is a certain way, until someday, either gradually or suddenly, it all just fucking dissolves and you see it for what it really is. This figurative kind of mirage I find just as troubling as the desert kind, and over the years I may have (definitely for sure have) developed a pretty thorough fear of them.

There are all kinds of reasons one might see a mirage in their relationship. If your partner is lying to you about something, like who they are or what they’re up to, that’s one way to see a relationship that isn’t actually what you think it is. But some people create their own mirages. Some people want their relationship to work so bad that their mind works overtime trying to convince itself that the relationship is working, when really it’s not. Denial is some powerful shit and I’ve certainly known people who choose to see their relationship a certain way, while it’s pretty obvious to everyone else that it's not that way at all. Chances are, however, that reality will eventually come to light.

For me the real kicker isn’t actually the threat of a mirage in a relationship, it’s the hefty dose of mirage-paranoia I’ve developed over the years. Once you watch a relationship mirage dissolve before your eyes, and you’re left with the cold, blustery reality of the relationship you were actually in, you start to get wise to the possibility of mirages; and then you start to keep an eye out for them. I want to be as aware as possible at all times so I never get caught in a mirage again. But that’s the thing about mirages… when you’re looking at one, everything looks great. So even if everything IS great, I can still freak myself the fuck out that it’s all going to dissolve into a pile of sand, any minute now.

Mirages can exist in all kinds of relationships. Work relationships, family relationships. Like when you grow up thinking a relative is a certain way and then you get the scoop when you’re older that they’re actually super fucked up or something. Or when you think everything’s going great at work and then one day when you’re steeping your lemon tea in the kitchen the business lead calls you into a boardroom and fires your ass. That last one’s obviously a personal anecdote. But really, it’s pretty common to see a mirage once in a while in your life; to see what you want to see in a situation, until one day you’re forced to see the truth. And that idea just scares the shit out of me for some reason. Same reason I hated The Matrix.

[maryofone]

Second Virginity

The first time I lost my virginity wasn’t bad at all. In fact it’s an incredibly fond memory for me. I lost it to one of my best friends at the time; a guy I loved and trusted. It was surprisingly enjoyable for the first time ever doing it, he was really into me at the time, and I technically have no regrets. But after the decade and a half of sexual partners that followed, and the recent hiatus from sex altogether (600 days and counting thankyouverymuch) I have to say I wouldn’t mind a hard reset. Wouldn’t mind starting from scratch on this whole sex life thing. And because I’ve gone so long without it now, I feel like I can. Figuratively speaking it feels like my hymen has grown back. Sorry for the visual but that’s really the best way to describe it.

I think everyone has the right to a second virginity. But of course, you can’t just up and decide to declare yourself a virgin again and expect it to have any meaning. You have to earn your second virginity. Fortunately, as far as my system works, earning it is pretty simple. You just have to go one calendar year without it. Four complete seasons without sex and you can say you’re a virgin again. That may not seem like much, but trust me, it’s MUCH. Most people I know, whether single or in a longterm virtually sexless relationship do not go that long without sex. There’s something about going an entire year that really makes your body (and soul and mind and heart) feel as if it’s regenerated somehow.

Experiencing a full year of life without sex or anything even close to it can have a profound effect on a person. It’s not just the abstinence that’s powerful, it’s what one does in the absence of a sex life that causes the real change. Having a sex life and thinking about your sex life and tending to your sex life can take up a lot of your thoughts and energy, and when you suddenly remove sex from your life for an entire spring, entire summer, entire fall, and entire winter, you can do some pretty transformative shit with all that extra time and energy. You might not even recognize yourself after a year without it.

Ultimately, something in me was craving a reset. I have no regrets about my sexual history, but there’s something about all of the guys I’ve been with before this last year that all seem to fall under the same category. They were all so different and yet they all seem to share the same quality, as I look back on them. They were all just… wrong. Wrong for me. Maybe right in some ways; right in ways I needed at the time. But they were all wrong. Because I was going about it the wrong way. And by ‘it’ I mean sex. Relationships. Love. I wasn’t thinking about it right, so I wasn’t choosing right either.

After four entire seasons without sex (and then two more on top of that; maybe even three), something has shifted in me. Perspective, I guess. It just feels like I’m seeing the concept of sex and relationships differently than I ever have before. In a way I wish I’d seen it before I ever had sex in the first place. Oh well, better late than never right?

The funny thing now is that it really does feel like I have this second virginity I’m going to have to “lose” to someone at some point, and I’m not going to lie, the stakes feel higher this time around. The pressure is definitely on to make the right choice. Fortunately, with over 600+ days of sexless life contemplation, I’ve established some pretty clear criteria for who’s going to get the golden ticket. The stakes have never been higher and neither have my standards.

[maryofone]

One Room

The Me Too war is raging in the US right now because of these Kavanaugh hearings, and it’s making me think a lot about men and women. Men VS women, specifically. It’s been a crazy transformative year for men and women and how we relate to each other, and if anything’s clear, we still have a TON of shit to sort through. It feels like we’re in the first really difficult stages of change, full of anger and hostility and shit breaking down before our eyes. Things are so far from being fixed, but at least they seem to be breaking in the right direction. SO far from being fixed though.

Right now all I see in our society is angry women and defiant men. I understand the anger on our side. Women are just fucking DONE with generation after generation of being the subservient sex. Any group of humans would eventually say ‘enough is enough’ to that shit. Being told we’re the pretty ones, the delicate ones, the ones that stay quiet and let the boys do the real work was going to take its toll eventually. An explosion of female rage was inevitable in our society, and now we’re IN IT. And as much as I understand (and genuinely feel) the anger on our side, I understand the men’s defiance too. Hear me out though! When it comes to the men who don’t seem to be hearing the cries of the Me Too movement, I don’t like their reactions and certainly don’t think they’re helpful, but I understand why they’re happening. People, by nature, have a hard time keeping an open mind to an argument if they’re being screamed at. Regardless of how much the person who is screaming deserves to be screaming, whomever is being screamed at is just less likely to see their point of view. I’m not basing this on any research of course, I’m just thinking about what it’s like to be a person. So even though my rage spikes when I see these men denying the legitimacy of a woman’s story, I can still see where this infuriating defiance is coming from.

Right now our task as a society is to make sure that women’s voices are being heard by men. THAT is the goal we’re trying to reach here and evidently it’s not as easy as it sounds. I have zero practical solutions for such a challenge, but if I was some sort of omnipotent genie or god of some kind, I would sure love to get every man and every woman in one room together, so I could say my piece to both sexes, with everyone listening at once. 

To the women I would say:

Hey girls. We’re fucking pissed right? Yeah, I don’t blame us. I cried the weirdest kind of tears watching the Kavanaugh hearings yesterday. I once got spit on by a guy walking past me on the sidewalk and those tears felt similar, which I guess makes sense. But anyway. I don’t want to tell you to calm down. I think we’ve been calm too long, and that’s why nothing has changed until now. But as we continue to rage against the machine for the next few years, let’s remember that hating all men and shutting down their words isn’t the answer either. We’re mad because we haven’t been listened to by men, and for the sake of integrity I’d rather not do the same thing back to them. Screaming doesn’t invite conversation, and conversation is the only thing that’s going to fix us.

To the men I would say (in the calmest voice I can measure):

Hey guys, here’s the deal. I know that none of you singlehandedly caused our society to be structured generations ago to keep women oppressed and men flourishing, but have you ever really taken a minute and considered what that would feel like? To be treated as less capable, less smart and less worthy just because of the junk you were born with? It would probably be pretty frustrating right? It’s not YOUR fault, because you were just born here a few decades ago, living in the society you were dealt, so no one is blaming you, but you have to agree it’s kind of a bullshit system for women on a lot of counts, right? And without a tsunami of anger and resentment barreling towards you, would you agree that our society could use just a little rejig to even the playing field?

I can’t be the only person in the midst of this Me Too movement who fantasizes about us all having one calm, collective conversation, amongst all of society, that results in a productive solution to fix our equality problem. Wouldn’t that be amazing? All of mankind and womankind in one room together, at one table together, maybe with a catered lunch, calmly sorting out a new plan for society? Sadly such a room cannot be constructed, and this is but a fantasy. The closest thing we have is the internet, which definitely includes all men and all women talking, but everyone’s in a room by themselves. And that shit won’t change anything.

UPDATE: I still stand by what I wrote here, but I did see something this week that does challenge my argument for calm discourse being our only route to real change. Watching those two women corner a senator in an elevator and scream in his face for five minutes about voting for Kavanaugh DID cause some change. You could literally see him changing his mind in real time. So I don’t know. Maybe calm conversation isn’t the answer. Maybe we do all have to keep screaming until something changes.