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Friday, October 23rd, 2009
Do you have any regrets? You’re probably saying ‘no, because there’s a lesson in everything,’ right?
Bitch please!
Oh sure, there’s lessons we learn along the way, but you’re kidding yourself if you honestly think you don’t regret some of the dumb choices you’ve made in life. I have a whole village of regrets and a river runs through it! Here’s a little sample of things which will thankfully stay in the Bangs Vault of Shameful Things Past:
My Tie Dye/Doc Martin Phase
Whew Lord. I mean, I was young, but not too young to be bitch slapped. This ‘phase’ of mine lasted about 2 years. I had tie dye dungarees for God’s sake! Dungarees! Oh, for shame! In my mind, I was Angela Chase from My So Called Life (quick side bar: I’m still pissed that show got canceled after only one season), but the kids at school saw it differently. I went to school in Chav central, so my hippie chic was kind of lost on them. And unlike Angela Chase, I didn’t have a sexy ass Jordan Catalano following me around. None of the guys were turned on by the tie dye laces in my Doc Martins, I guess.
My Eye Liner Worn as Lip Liner Phase
This came right after the tie dye phase. I decided to go all the way to the other end of the spectrum. I cut all my hair off, wore jeans for the first time and decided that dark brown eye liner lining my lips would be a good look. Ahh, the sweet smell of rebellion. This time, my mother did try to tell me on multiple occasions that I looked like a wanker, but I was convinced that looking as scary as possible was the way forward. Ironically, there are many women with bad perms still rocking this look in Alabama.
My Tattoo
When I was 17, no one was gonna stand in the way of me getting a tattoo. After lengthy discussions with my parents, I decided to get…oh yes…the Japanese kanji for ‘love’ tattooed on my belly. Does it get any more cliche than that? (Well, actually it does, I could have gone with the ‘rose on the shoulder’ or the ‘heart with an arrow through it on the upper arm’) The only saving grace here is that no one ever sees it (I tend to not roam the streets in just my bra, however tempted I may be to do so). If my life takes an unexpected turn and doesn’t go the way I think it will (ie, a lonely, barren existence that ends when I die) and I actually ever have kids – when I’m pregnant, this tattoo will just be a bunch of random lines on my belly. Or, Japanese people will think I’m an extremely loving person.
My Dating a Crackhead Phase
I’m referring to the actual, literal crackhead I dated when I was 19, but really pretty much any man I’ve dated falls into the crackhead category. But, for the sake of this ‘ruing the day’ exercise, let’s stay with the actual crackhead. Surely yes, we can say there were some lessons learned, but if I had my time again, would I date him? Hell to the motherbitchin’ NO!
There are countless more examples I can give from my 20s (mainly involving men I should have never even have given my phone number to, let alone dated), but I don’t want to bore you with all that.
So, what are some of your regrets?
Tags: embarrassing things, exes, fashion, tattoos
Posted in life | 15 Comments »
Thursday, October 15th, 2009
So, you broke up. You may be sniffling into a tissue, you may be out drinking the pain away or you may be getting over him by getting under someone else. Alternatively, you may be acting like an adult and just moving on with your life. What I’m always surprised about with break ups is the number of women who turn into regular little Detective Columbos when their relationships crumble. They make it their business to know every movement, phone call and sighting of their ex.
Of course, social networking sites like Facebook have only exacerbated the problem. Back when I had my first break up (I was 18), I had a highly skilled team of spies to inform me of my ex’s whereabouts and who he was talking to. Each report I got back would crush my soul a little more. (Hey, I was 18 – we’re meant to be stupid at that age.) Facebook has made it easier than ever for you to never get over your break up and become a bitter, resentful, scheming, crazy woman.
Stalking is what is comes down to. You’ll go on his Facebook page to see who’s been writing on his wall. If you see he’s been interacting with some chick, you’ll put in an angry phone call to your ex expressing your disapproval or asking exactly what he thinks he’s doing. Congratulations! You just reaffirmed why he broke up with you!
You’ll follow his Twitter updates to see where he’s going and if you’re a special kind of crazy, you’ll even show up at the same places and pretend it’s a coincidence.
But really, all you’re doing is driving yourself nuts. You’re keeping yourself entwined in someone’s world that you are no longer a part of. To watch a blow by blow of how the other person is moving on with their life while you just watch/click/follow/read/stalk is not the way to get on with your own life.
And why do you need to know? Seriously, once you’ve broken up, what business is it of yours where he goes and who he sees? If he chooses to move on the very next day, it’s harsh, but that’s his business. You two are no longer together. He doesn’t need to account to you, nor does he owe you an explanation. He is only responsible for his own happiness now, not yours.
But what’s even more hypocritical is that while, in your mind, he is not allowed to talk to another woman as long as he lives (or until you decide you’re over it, whichever comes first), you’re out actively trying to line up your next date and flirting with anything with legs. So why is it one rule for you and another for your ex?
All it comes down to is each person wants to be the first to move on. It’s like a competition. Both parties want to be the first to date to show that they are desirable to someone else. But it’s important to remember that you were, at one point, desirable to each other. There’s a way to honor that and move on with grace.
Release it and allow yourself to breathe. Endlessly stalking his post-break up moves is going to get you where exactly?
Tags: break ups, crazy bitches, exes
Posted in relationships | 12 Comments »
Thursday, March 19th, 2009
Still having a MySpace account at this point is being the last person left in a club when the lights come on. It’s uncomfortable, a little embarrassing and you’ve lost your ride home.
Recently, I’ve been wondering why I have continued my MySpace upkeep. I joined up when I moved to Japan and found it a great way to meet English speaking people. That then turned into being solicited by, seemingly, every foreign man in Japan who could appreciate a girl with hips. Being hit on via the interweb was quite a new phenomenon to me. I’d get home from work and marvel at the fact that I was receiving about 10-15 new messages a day and all I was doing was sitting in my sweats, drinking tea.
But then my friends back home started getting on it and it was a cool way to connect with them. Then I moved to Canada and heard all this mysterious talk about something called ‘Facebook’. I resisted it for a while, then it became apparent that I could no longer function in society without a Facebook account. Seriously, seeing the look on people’s faces when you say you haven’t got one, is worthy of a bitch slapping.
And so I signed up for Facebook, which has put me in touch with some great people I’d lost touch with and some not so great people whose reasons for friend requesting me, when they clearly hated my ass in high school, is beyond me. Being that I live in one country and most of my friends are in another, it has become, basically, the only way I keep in touch with anyone.
But then the Facebook bug wasn’t enough for me and I had to feed my social networking jones by adding Twitter into the mix, or ‘Facebook on crack’ as I like to call it. It’s the ultimate tool for any narcissist. It operates on the assumption that the world at large should be intensely interested in your every move and yes, you should be in mine. I am just that interesting.
And so that leaves little old MySpace, struggling to stay relevant in this sea of over sharing. I check my account every now and then and now I’m being propositioned by random middle eastern men (apparently, I’m big with the Arabs), Nigerians and anyone who has released a hip hop mixtape in the history of time. An ex of mine (who is now married and living in Italy) likes to message me every few months and tell me, repeatedly that he wishes me all the best and I deserve nothing but greatness and he really hopes everything works out for me. So, um, to that guy, message received, roger that, I got it, over and out. Now kindly fuck off. I have like, at least ten Arabs lined up to get with me.
So, methinks it might be time for me to bid MySpace farewell. We’ve had some good times and you did kinda introduce me to someone who is incredibly special to me, so I guess for that, you get a high five. But I just don’t have time for you anymore, what with all the Twittering and such like.
Before I go, I will turn down that friend request from that random death metal band in Utah just one last time, for old time’s sake. *Wipes tear* So long MySpace. It’s been special.
Tags: exes, facebook, myspace, twitter
Posted in life | 8 Comments »
Tuesday, October 21st, 2008
When I was 19, I dated a drug addict. A crack addict to be precise.
Clearly, I didn’t know he was an addict when I met him. Because I didn’t drink or do any drugs (and I’m thankfully the same way to this day), I was somewhat clueless about addiction issues. We met at a film festival in west London. He was a community youth worker (yes, that irony is not lost on me), who was employed as security to keep all the neighbourhood kids from stealing the film equipment. We talked and hit it off. He told me he was 26. (He was actually 30.) He had a great laugh and his voice, a very thick London accent, made me hang on every word he said. He took me to pockets of London I didn’t even know existed. We quickly became inseparable.
Before long, I noticed that he smoked an abnormal amount of weed, like it was cigarettes. I didn’t think anything of it, though I asked him to not do it around me. He would sometimes go missing. His phone would be off, the voicemail box would be full. I wouldn’t hear from him for a few days, then he’d reemerge out of nowhere like nothing had happened. I never got an explanation and I very rarely asked for one. Perhaps, deep down, I knew I wouldn’t like the answer.
One night, about 3am, he showed up at my dorm. I opened the door, half asleep and he came in. He took his sweat drenched shirt off and would not stop moving. He wouldn’t talk to me. He was hurrying around the room collecting random objects. He was hallucinating – he got on his hands and knees, thinking there was something moving on my floor. He got a pen and built, what I now know was a crack pipe. At the time, I had no idea what he was doing, I just knew he was scaring the hell out of me. I was trying to get him to sit down, calm down. His heart was beating so fast, I thought he was going to have a heart attack and drop dead right there on my floor. Next thing I knew, he was smoking. I just remember this as a blur. There were no words. I just watched. I was shaking. I was scared. I was begging him to stop, but it was like I wasn’t even there. And somewhere, deep down, was this sick rationalisation that at least he was here with me, rather than out doing it on the streets.
When he’d finished, he put his shirt on and left. I chased after him down the stairs, begging him to spend the night with me, but before I knew it, he was out the door, disappearing into the dark. I was a frantic mess. I didn’t sleep that night. I stayed up, calling his phone every fifteen minutes. Needless to say, it was off. The next day, when he eventually contacted me, he told me he used to have a problem with crack, but he didn’t anymore. The previous night had just been a relapse, he said, and it wouldn’t happen again. And I believed him. My 19 year old self did not know the limits to which crack can take a person. It seemed perfectly logical to me, at the time, that he could ‘relapse’ and just stop.
Because of my tee-totalism, he viewed me as angelic and innocent. I think he was hoping some of that would rub off on him. Our relationship continued on as ‘normal’. My friends all had boyfriends who they saw all the time. Meanwhile, my man would disappear, sometimes for a couple of weeks at a time. That was our normal. I just got used to it. The truth is, at that point, we had become each others drug. We’d had a couple of bust ups, but we just didn’t seem to be able to leave each other alone. As far as I knew, he wasn’t smoking crack, but part of me knew that he was just respecting my wishes and not doing it in front of me. Sometimes when he came over, he’d spend extended periods of time in the bathroom. Eventually, the penny dropped that either he had some terrible bowel condition, or he was in there snorting coke.
But I was stuck in it. It’s not like I could tell anyone. No one around me could relate to what I was going through. So it became my dirty little secret. When people asked how my boyfriend was, I’d say ‘he’s good, he’s just busy with work’, which seemed like a better answer than ‘I don’t know, I haven’t seen him in a while’. How can you just walk out on someone you care about, who you know has a serious problem (however much the both of you may be in denial about it)? I just didn’t have the heart to leave him. All that stuff about addicts having to reach their ‘rock bottom’ before they get help – well that’s true of the people who love them too. And I just hadn’t hit my rock bottom yet.
That came about a year into our relationship. I had invited him over for dinner. He was meant to be at my house at 6.30pm. I called him, his phone was off. I called again half an hour later, still off. I just couldn’t stand one more let down, one more broken promise. I decided to pay him a visit. He had recently moved about a fifteen minute walk from me. I stormed up there, so pissed off, more than ready to give him a piece of my mind. I got there and buzzed his apartment. He answered, asked who it was and buzzed me in. I went upstairs and knocked on his apartment door. Again, he asked who it was. This was a warning sign. Looking back now, I wish I had turned around, gone back down the stairs and just never talked to him again.
He answered the door looking a complete mess and dashed back to the sofa. Who knew how long he had been holed up in here? The curtains were drawn and he was sitting in nothing but his boxers and a pool of his own sweat. The TV was on mute and any time I tried to say something he would tell me to be quiet because ‘they’ might hear us. He was convinced that someone was after him and doubtless, the copious amounts of crack he’d smoked had only served to heighten his paranoia. I didn’t know what to do, but sitting there, every lie, disappearing act, broken promise, unreturned phone call, deceitful, deceptive, annoying thing he’d ever done to me ran through my head. I gathered myself, got up and walked out.
As I marched back to my house, choking back tears, I hit my bottom. It wasn’t until that moment, seeing him in that state, that everything finally fell into place for me. I think every ounce of love and respect I had for that man had completely drained out of me by the time I got home. I cried for ten minutes and then I was done. I couldn’t cry any more. I’d been crying for a year. It was pointless.
He came around a week later, with the usual apologies, but he knew I meant business this time. I was a 19 year old fashion student – there was nothing I could do for him. We were done.
Sometimes, I would run into his friends in London and they would say things like ‘he’s kinda lost without you’ and though it was never explicitly said, there was heavy implication that his drug use was spiraling out of control. I had to try and block this out, because to think of what he might be doing to himself was just too painful.
Eight years have passed since we broke up. I moved to New York, then Tokyo, then Toronto, but every now and then, he has crossed my mind. I always figured one of his friends would track me down somehow to tell me he’d died.
A few weeks ago, I got a message on Facebook from someone I don’t know. It just had my ex’s name, a phone number and the words ‘please call’. This was it, I thought, he’s dead, for sure. I took a deep breath and called the number straight away. It rang a few times and someone answered. That voice. His voice. Unmistakable. He recognised me straight away and called me the pet name he had always called me. I was relieved. At least he’s still alive, I thought. He’s been clean a year and a half, he says. This could all be lies and I know this. I’m going home at Christmas and have agreed to see him when I do. It may be crazy, but even after everything, I still have an intense need to know that he’s OK.
Tags: drugs, exes
Posted in relationships | 8 Comments »