whiskey

I don't like whiskey. Someone or other mentioned taking it for colds, and so I have done. Unfortunately, you don't discover quite how drunk you are until like an hour later. I don't like it one bit. I feel completely useless right now. Can't grade. Can't work out. Can't wrap Christmas presents. Can't do anything except sit here and tell God how sorry I am that I drank so much whiskey. I wonder if mouthwash would have accomplished the same thing? It's supposed to help you get better quicker, and I've had a cold for about a week now.

I saw Dan the other night. Do you know, Dan is the only person on this blog (besides Jared, I guess) who doesn't have a pseudonym? Dan is just Dan. I ran into him at a happy hour some of the girls at church were hosting. I made myself be the bigger person and go up to say "hello." And then I got sucked right in and really enjoyed talking to him (because he's such a winsome person). And then, before I knew it, he was excusing himself back into the crowd and I was cursing myself for not leaving sooner. It would have been just fine if I had made my excuses first. As it was, I was rejected by the same guy AGAIN.

I wish I hadn't seen him. It reminded me what a fantastic guy he is, which, given the circumstances, I really don't need to be reminded of.

Love

The thing I love about getting older is that I bounce back a lot quicker than I used to. Even though I was pretty torn up about breaking up with Dan 2 months ago, I'm pretty over it now. We weren't good together.

I'm glad I dated him, though; really glad, actually. I was intensely attracted to him. Most of the guys that I've been in relationships with, I am forced to admit, I haven't actually been that into on a basic, physical level. I never knew that before. I loved them so much as people that I failed to notice something really primal was missing. But now I actually get what people mean when they say "love at first sight." They mean sexual attraction. Check. I never would have understood what I was missing if I hadn't gone out with Dan.

If only he'd had a personality.

I jest. Kind of. I'm sure Dan had a personality, it just didn't mesh with mine...at all. We'd be walking through the park holding hands, and I would want to talk to him about a million things, but couldn't. I couldn't even think of the million things when I was with him. He wouldn't have understood them, so they hid inside me somewhere and instead I just had nothing to say. It was like that a lot. And when I did finally find one or two of the things I'd like to talk about, he didn't really get them. And I didn't get him. It was really a disappointment, for both of us. I can see that now.

Twenty-five-year-old me would never have expressed these thoughts after only 2 months. She'd probably be taking a bat to his headlights and writing epistles full of angst, which she would inevitably have sent to him (much to her later shame).

So I get all this now, sure. I get that there was a point to me dating him, and that the point was so I could see what was missing from my previous relationships. But if I couldn't find a soulmate when I was just dating guys I loved and respected, why would I suddenly be able to find one now that my list has grown to include "Holy crap!"?

That's why I decided to give up. It is hard sometimes and easier others. But I'm okay with that. I just want to help people and live a good life. I want to get to the end and say, "I have fought the good fight. I have finished the course. I have kept the faith." I want to strengthen others along the way. I think maybe I can live with that, even without a soulmate.

Some days.

Deathday

Tomorrow shouldn't be called my birthday. It should be called my Deathday. Because that is what it feels like. The day my dreams of carving pumpkins with Dan and going to the Art Fair with Dan and watching the Balloon Glow with Dan and biking to the wineries for my birthday with Dan all go up in smoke. Why? Because Dan is a fantastic man, and wouldn't break up with me on my birthday. In fact, he works really hard to hang in there and doesn't give up on people easily. I knew this but I could tell something was really wrong, and that he didn't want to bring it up right before my birthday. So I broke up with him. Then he felt free to say the following: "You are an amazing, incredible woman. You are LITERALLY everything I've prayed for, and to say that I fell head over heels for you would be a big understatement. But you are deep and emotional, and I'm not comfortable with that. I'm a straightforward, call-it-like-I-see-it kind of guy, and I know I would not only make you unhappy in the long run, but I would be forced to act like someone I'm not. I think so highly of you and have nothing but good things to say about you, but it doesn't seem like our personalities really match."

And that was it. I'm really sad now. I held it all together at school until 3 o'clock and then I started bawling my eyes out and I cried out, "Why are You doing this, Lord? I thought You were finally bringing me the right guy!" And then I looked up to see BJ Parkington still sitting at his desk finishing a quiz. FAIL. Deathday fail.

For Lily

Dear Lily,
You asked me for an update. There isn't much to update. I'm thinking of "registering" at Wal-mart... not for wedding presents or baby shower presents, but for the start of the school year. I know there are a lot of people who would like to help my students by buying them school supplies, so I thought this could be a cool way to tell people what we need. With all the back-to-school sales hitting, supplies will be like 75% off soon.

I leave for Greece Friday. I'm excited, but also restless. Our sister Lucy couldn't understand why I wasn't more thrilled when Nick called me a few weeks ago. Well, I'm not thrilled because he didn't SAY anything. Just shot the breeze and caught up. Haven't heard from him since, except for when I texted him happy birthday. I don't understand why God brought him back into my life if it was just to tease me. Like, "Oh, I know you really care about this person, so I'll remind you that he exists. But he still isn't into you!" That's what it feels like.

I am using this blog to write you this letter, Lily, because I know you read it and no one else (except for Jared) really does. First, I wanted to say that I love you. You were my baby that I tried to raise right. Second, I haven't really told you what I think about things because I didn't want you to get angry or hate me. But that isn't right. So here is what I think:

I let you down. Somewhere along the line, I completely failed you and I don't know how. I think I let you down because of you dropping out of college and getting pregnant and thinking it's okay to live in a van and teach your kid only the things you want him to know; I think I let you down because you've been kicked out of 2 shelters and you've come under the impression that it's okay to take welfare and food stamps and church handouts that other hard-working people had to pay for. And I let you down because you don't seem to have the "drive" to take responsibility for your life and make ends meet on your own, the way our cousin Angela does. She hates her job, but she goes to work every day anyway because she has a son to support, and she knows it is her job -- not anyone else's -- to provide for them.

Now don't get me wrong, Lily. I don't care if you ever wear make-up or get rid of your dreds or vote Republican! You don't have to do any of those things. But you can't just depend on the generosity or guilt of others your whole life to provide for you and your baby. God gave you a capable, healthy body. Use it to work. Is it fun? Maybe not. But it's your God-given right and responsibility.

So I wanted to tell you that I'm sorry. I don't know what I should have done differently, other than praying for you more. Most of the time I didn't pray for you because it hurt to much to think about, what with you telling me that every single person you know is a meth head or a heroine addict. I'm sorry that I let you down, and I hope that you figure some things out. You'll always be my baby, even if I don't get why you're doing the things that you do.

Dear Jared,

You should know that you and my sister Lily are the only people to consistently read my blog. So you don't have to email me every time you want to comment on something I say. You can just leave a comment if you want :) Lily does not judge.

Thanks for the letter! I forgot how exciting it is to receive mail by post... especially in the cramped and disjointed handwriting of a guy, which is like witnessing a blue moon.

I'm proud of you for getting this job. That takes a lot of guts to leave everything you know and go lay it all on the line for an uncertainty. And now you get to make fake movies! Don't forget to make me a star in one of them so I can feel famous.

E-train

ah hah

I had an uncomfortable revelation recently. I've been struggling mightily with the idea of joining this church that I've been going to for like 4 years. I took off work to take all the required membership classes, and yet I can't seem to make myself sign on the dotted line. What would really change if I were a member? Nothing, really, except then I would be subject to church discipline. And this church is feeling more and more heavy handed to me.

I was at church on Sunday and the pastor said, "You need to repent of wanting this church to be 'normal' if you're one of the people who is afraid of change. We are going to change, and it shouldn't be any other way! We are going to grow and expand and it's going to be uncomfortable, but that's okay. Normal is BORING! Your life is already boring enough. Did you know the average attender of this church only comes 2 out of every 5 Sundays? It's time to stop sitting in the boat and start ROWING! You know why?! Because if you're rowing the boat, you don't have time to bitch and moan about what direction the boat is going in!!!"

I told my friend Ralph this because he was out of town and missed the sermon. He was like, "Awesome! So are you going to suck it up and join the church now!?"

That was odd to me, that Ralph assumed that I took this sermon to mean I should join the church and become an actively committed "rower." And the more I thought of it, that is the very obvious conclusion, that is of course what I SHOULD have gotten from the message. But it wasn't what I got at all. I got a sick feeling. I told Ralph that I wanted to tell the pastor, "I know why the average attender only comes 2 out of 5 Sundays!!! They come to write their tithe check and serve in the nursery like you keep telling them to do, and then they look for another church on the other 3 Sundays!! They look for a church that won't make them feel like they are constantly missing the mark and stuck on the outside!"

And that's when it hit me: I ALWAYS feel like I'm on the outside of everything. I never feel like I really fit in. At my first college, my second college, CCF, my first church... And then I started thinking about it and I realized that the problem with the church I left wasn't that the man I was going to marry was on staff and I couldn't handle seeing him. I mean, at first it was that. But really what it boiled down to was that when we broke up and he got hired, I felt like he was the favored child, on The Inside. And I was on The Outside. I hated that the church was growing like crazy and he was part of this exciting new ministry and everyone knew he was... and I was just some random nobody who didn't belong and didn't fit in and didn't have any place anymore.

And then I realized that I'm really pathetic. I mean, what the heck? I can't go to church there because I don't have a ton of friends and I feel like I have no one to sit with? I mean, what is that? Is that why I can't commit to the present church, too? Because I don't feel like I belong? How much of my life have I wasted just imagining that I was on the outside of something? And how does one get past that?

Wanted: My Dignity.

I am a man in dire need of help. As you can see from this photo, my manliness has been either stolen or badly mislaid. Why else would I, a white man with a buzz cut living in the city, strip down to teeny-tiny boy shorts, anoint myself with enough oil to fry a chicken, and lay out to baste in front of my apartment complex? The mere fact that I just used the phrase "teeny-tiny boy shorts" should be evidence enough that something alarming has happened to impair my brawn. In the city, this ain't how we do! I have clearly been robbed. If you can furnish any information as to the whereabouts of my dignity (even if it's just a few shreds here or there) you will be handsomely rewarded with an apple martini.

Wanted: Man

Requirements:

6'+ Otherwise my mother will purse her lips and sigh

Fully loaded head of hair so my mother does not grimace and make tsk-ing sounds, both behind and in front of your back

Clean-shaven so that my ex-Marine Corps father will not immediately write you off

No wait, full beard so that Sister #1 does not immediately write you off

Stable career with excellent credentials so that my Financial Advisor brother will not extoll advice to me about how I need to make better choices concerning whom I date

Must vote Democrat so that Sister #2 --who legally changed her name to Bonsai and joined a commune -- takes you seriously... or rather, so that you can take her seriously

Scratch that. Must vote Republican or you will never hear the end of it when you come to dinner at my parents' house

Must willingly endure a meal at my parents' house one time per month. Also, must either forego alcohol altogether or cheerfully accept the label "alcoholic" from both mother and father (I've chosen the latter option myself)

A complete aversion to any and all physical contact with me will ensure that my father does not try to shoot you, either with his eyes or with his .357 magnum

Must be manly enough (ie, flannel, work boots, muscles) that my grandmother will not later inform me she thinks you may be a homosexual

Must like parrots whose sole claim to fame is the ability to mimic a smoke detector and blow out your eardrums

If this sounds like you, fantastic. Let's meet up after church.

House of Cards

Last night, I cried my eyes out. Finn, as you know, has been completely AWOL since coming to the city 2 weeks ago. I finally emailed him yesterday, due to a book I read. The book said that if you are REALLY brave, and you really want to change your patterns and find love, when someone refuses to go out with you again, you should call them up and say, "Hey, no pressure, I know things didn't work out, but would you be willing to tell me what I did or how I came across so that I can correct it for future dating situations that come into my life?" I did that. I appealed to him as a brother in Christ, too, cuz I figured, you should be able to ask someone who you share that commonality with what you are doing to alienate people.

He gave me a couple of things I did, which I really appreciated, even though they were hard to hear.

1.) I didn't really say goodbye to him when he walked me to the door of my store on that Saturday morning after he spent the night on my sofa. He thought that was really rude.

(It is true that I did that. I also apologized via text that very day. I said that I was really glad he had come to visit, and that I was sorry for the awkward departure because my [new] boss was standing right there with us and I felt super awkward having to tell him goodbye in front of her. Also, I thought Finn was going to go have a cup of coffee or something and then come INSIDE the store when we opened, so he could see where I worked! So I didn't know he was leaving.)

2.) Calling him an idiot via email.

(I did that too. He had said, "I don't really feel like sending my son to a babysitter and driving 100 miles to see someone who references the fun dates she's going on with other dudes." And I said, "I was talking about you, you idiot!" Admittedly, that was really not a nice thing to say. I apologized profusely for it, but I guess he couldn't get over that.)

3.) Telling him he overused the word "antecedents."

(I don't know what to say about that. I did do that. I said, "You should learn some new words. Here are the ones I like right now: hyperbole, superfluous, juxtaposition, and janjaweed. I just learned that last one!" I thought I was being funny, but he was super offended. I guess I can understand that. Apparently people really don't like to be corrected on their words, because this is the 2nd time someone has quit talking to me after I corrected them. I don't know why I didn't learn from the first time! What's weird is, I almost NEVER correct anyone, even my students! Because I do think it's annoying. I've corrected people 3 times that I can remember. And 2 of them quit talking to me afterward.)

Well, that's it. I finally met a nice guy that I actually liked. Allison tried to tell me last night that I will find love, and it'll come in the form that I least expect it. I wailed, "He WAS the form I least expected! He was short and balding and graduated from crazy-conservative ORU and never drank and had a six-year-old!" I mean, if that's not what I least expected, I don't know what is! And yet for all that, for some reason, I really liked him. And I messed it up because I'm a porcupine and I drive people away.

Who can understand the human heart? Not me. If I could understand it and if I could tell myself who to like and not like, I would make myself like the slightly older Asian man who "gets" all the same things that I do and goes to my church. And dries a cool BMW convertible. But I can't change how I feel, so I guess I'll have to just cry it out over Finn and be sorry that I didn't watch my words and actions closer so I wouldn't be so prickly.

For all that, when I was thoroughly cried out last night and my nose was all stopped up, I felt kind of a big sense of relief. Like, "Oh man, now I don't have to WONDER anymore what I did or what I didn't do or why he quit talking to me or if he was ever going to talk to me again! Now I can just be free from the rollercoaster of caring about whether this person loves me or hates me today."

The thing is, I'm a mess. I know I'm a mess, but I prefer to think of myself as a beautiful mess. Or, as Francis Schaeffer once said, "a glorious ruin." I am a work in progress. Even though I bawled my eyes out last night over the realization that I'm still a porcupine and that I'm still difficult to get close to, I hope that I'm a lot less prickly now than I was 6 years ago when Webel first called me that. I hope I'm not quite as difficult to love now as I was then, that I'm just a little bit softer. I guess I hope that someday someone will come along who sees that I'm a mess, but loves me anyway. Or not even loves, at first... just who has enough grace to genuinely forgive me when I say, "I'm sorry for the awkward goodbye, I really was glad that you came to visit." I hope that I find someone who I am attracted to, and who also will be gracious and patient with me as I am trying to grow.

But the truth is, I don't really think there's someone out there for me. I think I'm just finished.

King David, Princess Elle

The other day I was reading my Bible. King David gets a big head and decides to number all his people, so he can see how powerful he is. His advisers warn him against this, thinking God might not like it. He does it anyway, but then feels immediately convicted because he knows he was numbering the troops out of pride in his own strength. So he apologizes to God, and God gives him 3 options for his punishment:

1.) You can either have 3 years of famine (some places in the Bible say 7)

2.) You can be pursued by your enemies for 3 months

3.) Or you can have a bout of pestilence fall on Israel for 3 days

I would have taken one of the first two I think, but not David. He says to the prophet, “I am in great distress. Let us now fall into the hand of the LORD for His mercies are great, but do not let me fall into the hand of man.” That's insane to me! He trusts in the grace of God more than in his own abilities to flee from his enemies. Essentially, it's a reversal of his previous stance, which is especially interesting because if ANYONE has the ability to elude his enemies, it's a guy who spent half his life on the run. But David knows the heart of God so well that he says, who knows, maybe the Lord will have compassion on us, despite the fact that I earned his retribution. Let us throw ourselves on His great mercy.

So true to His word, God sends an angel (I suspect it's the Angel of Death from Exodus) to go wipe out portions of Israel with a plague for 3 days. 70,000 people were killed. But here's my favorite part: "When the angel stretched out his hand toward Jerusalem to destroy it, the LORD relented from the calamity and said to the angel who destroyed the people, “It is enough! Now relax your hand!”

That's amazing to me because all throughout the Old Testament, you see a God of judgment and justice. But King David knew the heart of God SO well even before the grace of the cross entered the picture, that he foresaw God doing exactly what he did... saying to the Angel of Death, "ENOUGH! Relax your hand!"

I learn more from the Old Testament than the New Testament because it seems less pedagogical and didactic and more subtle in its approach. So here's what I take away from this story: It is a good thing to throw yourself upon the mercy of the Lord; it is a good thing to know the Lord's heart.

Last summer, after a breakup, I thought, "I'm done messing around! I'm going to find the guy I'm supposed to marry this year, before I get any older. All you really have to do is make up your mind to do it!" Online dating seemed surefire if one really committed to it. After all, the statistics about how many relationships begin online were splashed all over TV commercials, and I had personally met lots of people who met their spouse that way. So I joined some dating websites and determined to spend serious time each day reading and responding to emails from men until I found a keeper. No more of this distracted clicking through profiles while I watched "The Big Bang Theory." I was going to treat finding a mate like preparing for a job interview or training for a marathon. All the people from eharmony and match.com promised me that they could and would find me a spouse. "Fine! I trust you! Do it! I'll do everything in my power to cooperate," I said.

But they did not. I went out on a few dates, but was stood up more often than not. And when I told one very nice, attractive doctor that I didn't really see a future for us and didn't want to waste anymore of his time, he bit my head off. That's about the time I began thinking of King David, throwing himself upon the goodness of the Lord instead of depending on men to determine his plight. I thought, maybe David had the right idea, saying "Who knows? Maybe the Lord will have mercy." So after 7 months online, I cancelled my memberships and asked God to be merciful and handle my situation Himself. I work at a school where I know everyone on staff. I work at a store where the only men are gay. And I no longer have a profile online. So if I'm going to find a life partner now, it's going to have to be because of the mercy of the Lord.

Seth

I think I was tricked into going on a date with my ex-roommate. Here's how it happened:

I went to this thing at church. I'm trying to get more involved at church. There are several different locations of my church and this forum was at one of the locations in mid-town, where Seth attends regularly. When I saw him, I gave him a hug and made small talk. I hadn't seen him in a few months, since I moved out of his parents' house (they took us both in when we lost our respective homes).

A few days later, I got a text saying, "Hi, Elle. I got your number from my parents. Would you like to have coffee sometime?"

I was perplexed because:

A.) we had never hung out without his parents before

B.) Seth is one of those people who is immensely sweet but whom I don't "click" with on a deeper level... like, there's only so much I can talk to him about, so I never saw us being good friends.

Nonetheless, I knew that he worked in Midtown and since I live nearby, it wasn't a big deal to meet him for coffee. I came from the gym, wearing athletic shorts and a ratty Harvard sweatshirt. Seth was NOT dressed in his work uniform and had apparently driven from 35 minutes away, where he was pet-sitting. Oops. Oh well. I refused to see this as anything more than a coupla' sort-of friends hanging out to shoot the breeze. I grilled him about why my ex-boyfriend was trying to make my life hell by reminding me he exists, even though he has a girlfriend. Seth said Derek did come over to the house one time months ago for "counseling" or something, after I'd moved out. And then he opined that it was probably a classic case of wanting to keep someone on the back burner, keep your options open. Then I asked him about this girl he was interested in when we lived together.

See? Not date-talk.

After an hour and a half, I told Seth I had to go because daylight savings was killing me and I promised myself I'd go to sleep early. He hugged me goodbye and I drove off, feeling pretty ambivalent, but also smug. I didn't know what just happened, but I had navigated it fairly shrewdly, I thought.

But then the next day, I got a text saying, "So, I had a really good time last night. We should do it again."

Isn't that what people usually say after dates? Am I reading too much into this? If it were just an ordinary guy, I could blow him off. But this is a guy whose parents I adore and would never want to offend.

So, I met a friend of a friend who then requested ME as a friend on Facebook (and of course, we will never talk again now that we are that kind of friends). And he posted this article on Facebook. And it hit me like a ton of bricks: I'm not married because I'm a bitch.