"I Don't Want To Go Out Alone Anymore."

I find myself increasingly unable to handle "creepy" men.

Several weeks back (a few months, even? I'm so bad with time.) I was at a favorite bar for a show. Three bands on the ticket, two I knew sandwiching one I'd never heard before. A lovely acquaintance is in the band that was to play last. In between sets, I stepped outside to have a smoke. I do that. When I re-entered the bar between the second and third sets, I stepped up to order another beer. There were two men who had clearly been drinking for some time slumped into their bar stools next to me.

The man immediately to my left gave me a sidelong glance, as people do, and then started up a conversation, as people do. I go places alone often; I often get in conversations with strangers. It's one of my favorite things about going places alone, actually. Anyway, this guy started up with he'd never been to this particular establishment before, I told him it was one of my favorites because of its excellence as a live-music venue.

And from there, the conversation degenerated rapidly. He started asking me what "kind" of music.

"All kinds!" I said "Everything from folk-pop to hip hop to the noisiest noise rock you can imagine. Tonight there are three bands, all with heavy folksy vibes."

"Would I like it?" he asked me.

I hesitated. I had no idea. "Well, do you like folksy or bluesy music?" I asked him.

"Would I like the band?" he badgered me.

I tried to explain to him that there was no way I could answer that, given that I had no idea what kind of music he liked, but I was really into all three bands on the ticket and I definitely recommended checking it out.

He then proceeded to call me a "dumb bitch," say I was "stuck up," and mutter loudly about how women were all awful to the buddy sitting on his other side, while glancing at me every five seconds to make sure I knew he was talking about me.

I was so freaked out I left. I never saw the last band, the one my lovely acquaintance is in.

Last night, I was a bit blue: out-of-sorts, restless, unable to bring the snarls of my various thoughts into anything like a smooth-flowing order or even a neatly knotted braid. No, everything was willy-nilly. It's Summerfest in Milwaukee, so after the toddler was passed out cold, I kissed my mother and hopped on my bike and pedalled down. Death Cab for Cutie live? That will totally make me feel better, I told myself.

So there I was, hanging around the very edge of the back of the crowd, half-watching for a friend who was on his way down, half watching the screen, when a hand grabbed my ass. I jumped. A very large, very sweaty, very drunk man was behind me.

I scowled at him, moved to the other side of the table I was standing next to, and tried to forget it.

The next time I looked around, the man was planted on a table across from me, staring.

I was so freaked out, I left. The friend I had been waiting for turned up about ten minutes later and couldn't find me. I only saw about 40 minutes of Death Cab's set.

That's twice this year that I've been driven from something I really wanted to be at by creepy, inappropriate men. Ten years ago, even five years ago, I think I wouldn't have left either circumstance. I'm not sure if this is progress, or regress.

On the one hand, it's possible that ten years ago (or five years ago) I wouldn't have been aware just how creepy and inappropriate and downright awful these kinds of things were. I might have just brushed it off as drunkenness or a bad night. If I'm more aware now, that's progress. On the other hand, this "increased awareness" might be just increased fear. I'm allowing fear of worst-case to rule my own behavior in ways that I would have been utterly defiant of ten or five years ago. If I'm reverting to fear-based reactions, that's regress.

I've been thinking about this since I left the festival grounds last night. And I come, inexorably, to the conclusion that I'm reacting to increased fear. Five or ten years ago, I was at least somewhat secure in the belief that even *if* the worst case scenario happened, things would be done about it. Perpetrators would be brought to justice, courtroom drama would ensue, I would cry prettily. (I can't actually cry prettily, for the record: my face turns the color of boiled tomatoes and my eyes swell shut and my nose runs.)

I have spent too much time reading true horror stories, and seeing the non-cosequences of violence against women and rape to be secure in that belief anymore. Today, I believe that if the worst case scenario happened in any given circumstance, I would be blamed for it. It would be my fault for being out alone/having some drinks/wearing a dress/smiling at people/take your pick.

This is the reality of rape culture: I don't want to go out alone anymore. I would rather remain cooped in my house if I don't have the protection of another person with me. I don't want, or have the strength of mind, to fight through all the fear that is building up around being out, in public, alone. And why is it incumbent on me to have to fight through all that just to enjoy the world? Because I'm a woman? Bullshit.

Men, quit acting like this. I don't care how drunk you are. I don't care how long it's been since you got laid, or how badly your last relationship ended. Just knock it the hell off. There's no excuse for it.

I don't want to go out alone. If you know me even a little, you must understand how momentous a statement that is. I don't want to go out alone anymore.

The Palm, the Willow, the Way Forward

When I was nine, I spent part of a summer with my paternal grandparents in South Carolina. My family's relationship with my father's family has always been complicated, so this trip was something of an anamoly in the firmament of my childhood. The experiment was a nearly unmitigated disaster; my grandmother and I fought like the pig-headed autocrats we both are inside. However, the pine forests of the Carolinas are beautiful, majestic, regal, and to this day I sometimes dream about how they smell and the quality of silence that's created by the muffling effect of years upon years of pine needles decomposing beneath your feet.

About halfway through the trip, my grandfather took me for a drive along the Carolina coast. This was 1993, as I recall, after Hurricane Andrew. There were palm trees along that drive that were growing crooked: gnarled and bent over and sticking out from the earth at a uniform impossible angle.

"Do you know why those trees are bent?" my grandfather asked me.

I shook my head.

"They bent in the hurricane's wind. They bent so that they would remain standing. The trees that didn't bend are gone now."

We spent the rest of the drive in silence. Even at nine, I knew what he was trying to tell me. And I was a little ashamed that he felt he had to impart this lesson to me, and I was little resentful that he wasn't trying to impart it to his wife instead, and I was about as thoughtful as a nine-year-old gets.

My grandfather died a few years ago; my grandmother is still alive in the Carolinas, and the last few times I've seen her, it's certainly seemed as if she's learned to bend in the wind.

The palm trees in the wind are the beginning of mystery. I am grateful to my grandfather, and the hurricane, and those trees, for giving me such a concrete lesson, but it's time to move on from the palm trees. The palms, you see, they bent in the wind so that they would survive. That's all. That's it. Acceptance so that survival.

I've been having trouble bending to the winds lately. I've been having trouble accepting merely to survive. My horizon is broadened, and mere survival seems small. I feel buffeted at every turn, everything and everyone seems hell-bent on knocking me over and leaving me small and broken on the ground. Events, yes, but also people. From elections to relationships, I cannot bend the way I ought. I have no acceptance because acceptance feels like defeat. I don't want to succumb; I want to thrive. I don't want to be a solitary palm tree, isolated and broken and just hanging on. I want so much more than that.

A few days ago, I randomly stumbled on a parable that I can no longer place, but it showed me where to go, how to continue to bend to the winds.

The willow shoot bends in the wind until it is a forest that can break the wind.

Time to grow into a forest.

Identity

I think I'm having an identiy crisis.

Or, I was. Maybe I still am? It's hard to tell. I'm certainly more than usually interested in certain questions that are often thought to be beastly and/or immature to expend mental energy on.

But here's what I've learned in the last four days:

I don't have to live up to anyone's expectations or ideas of good.

I mean, that should be self-evident, right? And when I say I've learned this, I don't really mean I'm ready to implement it. I will certainly still be chasing external validation for years to come.

But... when I don't get that support, that pat on the head, that "Well done!" murmured into my hair while someone wraps arms around me and holds me close, maybe I'll remember this, right now, and remember also that it doesn't matter what anyone else thinks. If I'm satisfied, then it's enough. Maybe I'll remember. Probably it'll take "learning" this several more times before that happens.

Which brings me to the question that I'm now wrestling with.

Am I satisfied?

No.

Why not?

I don't know. I can't separate my dissatisfaction with the ways in which I am perceived and receieved and judged and held to account from any internal dissatisfaction that may (or may not) be festering. Part of me wants to lay whatever nagging sense of "not doing good enough" I have lurking in my breast right at the feet of other people. But, that would be too easy.

We are each of us responsible for ourselves. We're responsible, ultimately, for finding our own happiness, for living our own lives, for coming to our own fulfillment. To push that task onto someone else is the height of selfishness. So, laying any dissatisfaction with my life and the things I do on someone else's shoulders, anyone else's shoulder's, is not a thing I am comfortable doing. I don't want to be that person that is selfishly putting their burdens on another.

Some part of me feels that people who love you should willingly shoulder some of that burden for you, though. Some part of me feels that loving someone is the act of attempting to ease burdens, without being asked. Pay attention, recognize need, help. That's how love behaves. Isn't it? That's how love should behave. That's how we who love should behave. But by that measure, there are strangers out there that love me more than the people I say "I love you" too, and strangers that I love more than those, since there are strangers I am more capable (and sometimes more willing) to help than my loved ones.

Perhaps it's true that familiarity breeds contempt. We can't help but start to take for granted that which we feel entitled to by virtue of some concept of love. And once we start to take actions of love for granted, they no longer seem like acts of love; they become merely what we are due, and we demand ever-greater feats of validation, of proof, of love and sacrifice to continue believing that we are loved.

It's a neverending spiral, moving up or down as you see it, positive or negative, up to the blissful heights of heavenly perfection in which we have obliterated a self for another and they have done the same and we have essentially swapped care of ourselves, or down to the depths of hellish despair where nothing is ever good enough, where nothing we give nor nothing we ever receive manages to prove that we still love.

But if familiarity breeds contempt and there's no way around it, then there's no hope for any long-term relationship. We should all wander the earth as half-strangers, helping when we think we are needed, being helped by those that think we need it, and allowing the connection to fizzle out as soon as whatever it is has passed. We should never try to develop or deepen our relationships. We should be forever generous, loving strangers to each other.

How depressing.

I don't want to live in a world of strangers! Even generous, loving ones.

So how do we continually prove that we love, and continually accept that we are loved, without starting to trod that spiralling path that leads to utter disaffection or complete loss of self? How do we tread water and still get where we want to go?

I don't know.

I would like to know, though. I would like to know how to be happy for praise, hungry for it even, without trying to curry it. I would like to know how to not feel guilty when I can't help someone that something in me whispers I ought to know how to help. I would like to not be contemptuous of the familiar comforts that were once new and fresh and perfectly capable of lifting me up.

Perhaps I haven't resolved the identity crisis yet. Perhaps if there's a solid enough sense of self, of purpose, of skill and craft and art and love, of ideas, these aren't questions that need to be asked or pondered.

So. Am I satisfied? No. And it is my responsibility to change that. But it would be good to be loved, anyway. While I do that.

Aging

I think being old has snuck up on me, and then jumped me in a dark alley and forever left its mark on my life.

I'm 27. True fact. I've traveled the world, been married and divorced, given birth, been abandoned. Now I've got a job and a 401(k) and I drop my daughter at kindergarten every morning on my way into the office. She takes dance classes on Saturday. I schedule phone calls with my best friends. I shop online because it's easier. I have a cocktail or a beer after work. I'm in bed, asleep, by 10:30 most nights.

This is what old people life is like, isn't it?

I mean, I could still go out on Wednesday nights if I wanted to, but getting five hours of sleep and being slightly drunk when I wake up is hardly worth it when all that's going to happen is I'm going to go to a bar (alone), sit there (alone) and then go home (alone). Plus, I'll probably end up spending more money than I ought to, considering I really want to figure out a way to rationalize the purchase of a ridiculously expensive dress that I have nowhere to wear, and it's really hard to do that when you just dropped $25 on craft cocktails.

So basically, it's not worth it to go out and be wild and crazy and young. I don't want to go out unless I have guaranteed sparkling conversation. Which means plans made in advance, and I am so horrible at asking people to do things and most of the time it doesn't work out anyway. So why bother? I can watch Netflix in bed or write about theater events I haven't seen or read 10,000 word articles about Dominionism instead.

I'm old, guys. I'm a fuddy-duddy. A spinster.

It won't be long until my jowls start to sag and my tits are around my knees and I wear support stockings and complain about my knees. (Actually, I already have some serious wrinkles and I am more apt to complain about my cartilage-less hips. For real. They hurt.)

I'm old. It's pretty terrifying. I'm shallow, and so being old also means no longer being pretty, and that's really, really scary. I honestly don't know if my self-esteem will be able to handle the blow of no longer being looked at by men.

But it also means that nothing I accomplish between now and my death will be as notable as it might have been. I am not a prodigy. I am not a wunderkind. Even if I manage to publish a book or write for the New York Times or really just about anything that I might want to do, it won't be the kind of show-stopping accomplishment that it would have been if I'd done it young. Somewhere in my head, I wanted to be Tavi Gevinson, and now I have to deal with the fact that I'm not. I'm not that great. Even if I manage to accomplish great things eventually, I'll not be great-great, just normal-great.

Nothing will ever come ahead of schedule. Now I'm stuck in the local lanes, slogging my way through all that detritus.

I'm old. I'm scared. I guess this is growing up.

Chickenshit.

I promised, promised, promised myself that I wasn't going to blog about my personal relationships anymore. I really, really did. And I meant it.

It can be seen as more than I little passive aggressive, after all. And in truth, it probably is a little passive aggressive. It's a passive way of expressing my discomfort and anger with the things that go on, a way of expressing my negative feelings while still avoiding all conflict.

I'm conflict-avoidant. Really. I'm not a screamer. I don't pitch fits. I'm really quite meek, a little white mouse. I sit and I nod and I smile and I try to understand what's being put before me, not just what's said but also it's subtext. I try to understand not just the words that are being presented to me, but the context of the lies.

There are always lies. Everyone lies. I lie, although I like to think that I lie less often and less virulently than a lot of people. Maybe that's just me lying to myself; I'll let other people make that call.

But I think I have to break my promise not to write about my personal relationships anymore. I have no other outlet. Some things have to be said, and since I'm a chicken shit, this is how I say them. Perhaps, at some point, I'll get over my pathological need for harmony enough to say them to the offender's faces, and I truly hope I get to that day. But right now, in this moment, I need to say something, and this is the only medium available to me.

Here's the absolute, God's-honest truth: EVERYONE LIES.

And, contrary to what my meek and smiling and understanding face says to you, I am not taken in by your lies. I know you're lying. I'm allowing you to do so.

I know everyone lies, and therefore, I trust no one. I don't trust you. I don't trust you when you say you really like to spend time with me. I don't trust you when you refer to your "ex"-girlfriend. I don't trust you when you tell me that you'd like nothing more than the opportunity to take care of me. I don't trust you when you tell me your marriage is in good shape. I don't trust you when you tell that you're not angry about anything. I don't trust you when you tell me that money's fine.

I know when I'm being lied to. By everyone.

Some of these utterances are the most egregious of falsehoods; others are merely stretches of what is probably a pretty solid grain of truth. They are still ephemeral promises of a solidity that will never materialize. You are not fooling me. I will not cling to your promises like rafts in the vast ocean so that I can drown later on when they disintegrate as I continue to try to clutch the dreams you've given me in cold, cramping, deadened fingernails.

I trust no one. I trust no one's words.

If you want my trust, you earn it. You earn it through action. You earn through unflinching honesty that is ugly and scarred and scary and embarrassing. You earn my trust. It's not an easy task: I'll tell you up front. Many would, I am sure, claim that it's impossible. It's not.

It is possible for me to trust. But you have to quit lying to me if you want that to happen. I am capable of unimaginable feats of forgiveness; I promise you. I have ben forgiven for some pretty awful things in my life, and I know what a gift it is and what a benediction. Because I know, I can forgive. Because I have been shown that it's possible to let go of awful things, I know that I can do it.

I've forgiven people some pretty awful things, too. I don't hold grudges. It would be disingenous to say that the things others have done to me have left me unaffected, because without a doubt my experiences have colored my extreme distrust for the words of others. But holding myself protected and remaining angry are two very, very different things.

I let go of anger a long, long time ago.

So this is what I'd like from the world: stop it. Just quit telling me falsehoods and half-truths and let me have the ugly, unvarnished, unflattering truth. I can handle it. And I'll love you even more for it than I would for the prettiest, most comforting lie.