If You Were Wondering, Yes I Am Mad At You
1. I don’t really understand baby fever.
Brag moment: I am exceptional with kids. Really, I am. I can get any baby to sleep, I can handle meltdowns, I can understand babbles, I am a very patient person, I also just think they’re fun and wonderfully honest and instinctual and squirmy and cool. I’m great with kids. But I’ve never really…wanted them.
I don’t have a maternal urge. I like coming home to an empty house. I like being able to drop everything and leave. I like being up at 1 AM by choice. I like drinking on Mondays. I like going to the movies without permission and staying all day. I like being my own person and not responsible for something/someone else.
So I don’t understand baby fever, but that doesn’t mean I don’t feel something similar literally EVERY time I look at Pet Finder.
I have been OPENLY weeping at Pet Finder all week. I want to rescue a dog so badly my heart physically aches. I want to give them a life. I want to show them the world (shining, shimmering, splendid) and stuff. I want to rescue a dog so badly. I texted no less than 5 people when Jenna Marbles adopted a greyhound because it literally made my chest want to burst open with love so badly because of how much I admired what she was doing, and wanted to do it myself. Every time Chrissy tells me a little win with her rescue Stevie Nicks I want to send Stevie a new trophy so she knows how proud I am of her and how much I love that she’s home.
So someone tell my current dog. Because I can’t bear it and I know she doesn’t want it and I have “want to save a dog” f e v e r honey.
2. Not every opportunity is right. That’s just a fact. And I don’t particularly think that’s anyone’s fault. Sometimes a job or a gig or a project or a relationship or even a dinner isn’t right. I don’t think anyone is at fault—I think it’s one of those things that just is.
But what bothers me, what I obsess over, what is keeping me up lately, is when something isn’t right…but people agree to it anyway, and then just don’t follow through and they let it die or break or fail when that outcome could’ve been avoided if they just didn’t bite off another thing when they already clearly couldn’t chew. They ghost or they teeter off or they just let shit fall apart without any real concern because they didn’t have the backbone to say, “This isn’t right for me,” from the get-go.
It’s irresponsible and messy and very not chic and it turns me off, man! I realize that describing irresponsibility and mess as a turn off is a peak Virgo moment, but it’s very true. If I am standing here doing my part, and you’re not doing yours, you’re a letdown.
And I don’t have room for letdowns anymore. I am almost 30 so I have very little time and patience and if I’ve learned anything over the last (almost) three decades it is that there is literally always someone else waiting in line ready and willing to take your spot, babe.
3. I am ready to start gardening again and it is probably going to fail and I with be left with potting soil in my sink and dead succulents and plants that I have to get rid of all over the balcony but fuck I just want to try and keep a plant alive, okay?
4. I’m getting really tired of people being so superior when deep down they’re actually garbage disposals of human beings and everyone knows it.
I can’t write anything else specific or even really vague about it or them without giving away too many of the things I purposefully keep in my back pocket to pull out when It Matters Most™. But knowing that I have the ability to be like, “Oh so-and-so? Oh yeah here’s the deeply hypocritical and horrendously fucked up thing they did that they thought would go away. Yeah. People remember,” about them is very gratifying. And yes, I’ve done it. And yes, I will do it again.
Whatever. Everyone is broken. I can’t wait to live on a farm.
5. I am afraid that there isn’t enough here to fill her.
Today I spent a solid 3+ hours reading theories about how Taylor Swift is actually queer, how this new album will be her coming out, and all about the past women she’s supposedly been romantically involved with. This isn’t about to be some poetic thing about Taylor Swift and her “TBD” sexuality. I’m not going to get way too into dissecting the fact that she probably (definitely) was with Karlie Kloss. Seriously, it’s not that. But there is something about privacy and not wanting to write about people and not want to talk about people that I very much get. There is something to the whole “keep things to yourself” thing that she and other people practice so heavily and sternly that I get. But then, I also get the itch. The pulse. The need. The urge. I get the way their names scream at you from this weird part of your brain where it feels like the only way to make the screaming stop is to write a metaphor, a clever lyric, a fucking tweet, literally ANYTHING about them. I get why we crack. I get why we break.
I get why we write things, why we create things, why we feel like we have to talk about them.
So here it is. A small thing. A very, very, very small thing.
I am afraid that there isn’t enough here to fill her.
Once a few years ago I wrote a tweet that’s still in my drafts that just says, “Introverts are always afraid of being too much, and extroverts are always afraid of never being enough.” And while that is far too angsty and moody to ever tweet now (v off brand) I think it’s very true.
I am afraid that there is, that I am, not enough for her.
And that’s not really that small of a thing, is it.