I’m sorry I’ve misdirected my sorry: Watching my dad watch his dad die.

Posted on June 27, 2013 by Belle of the Library

I stand by my dad’s work truck while he ends his phone call before our weekly lunch.
Me: “That didn’t sound fun.”
Dad: “No, it isn’t. Dad’s dyin’ and he’s just pitiful.”
I hug him and he grips just a little tighter than normal.
Me: “Love you, dad.”
Dad: “Love you too, baby.”
Me: “So it’s bad, huh?”
Dad: “Yeah. Like I said, he’s just pitiful, but he’s been pitiful his whole damn life so it’s just pissin’ me off even more now.”
Me: “Well, I’m sure I’ll be there with mom one day.”

When I was little, my dad had two dads. One was his step-father, my Grandpa Murphy, who died of cancer when I was five. The other, we saw so little that I once introduced him to my cousin (also his granddaughter) when I was six. I can list what I know about my Grandpa Geff in bullets…

He went to Mass every single day of his life.
The few times we saw him, he made us go to Mass, but always bought us breakfast.
For someone so devoted to God, he completely dropped the ball on his earthly obligations, such as children.
He’s been a far more influential presence in my dad’s half-sister, Sarah’s, life than my dad’s or his sisters’. She’s a self-indulgent fuck-up, though, so maybe that’s a good thing.
For Christmas, my dad’s and his sisters’ kids got tube socks or a stuffed animal. Sarah’s son got remote control cars.

My Grandma Kay once told me that Grandpa Geff would regularly promise to take my dad out after the divorce; my dad would sit on the steps waiting for him all evening and he’d never show. After she married my Grandpa Murphy, he stopped offering to help at all and my dad quickly came to think of Grandpa Murphy as his father. Grandma Kay once explained the divorce to me, how Grandpa Geff wouldn’t let her use birth control, but wouldn’t help with the kids and wanted her to take care of him as if he were a child as well. She declared….

“I told mamma and daddy, ‘I’ve been a good girl my whole life and I’ve always done exactly what you wanted, but I will not stay married to that man. I hate him.'”

For the last few years, my dad and I have been celebrating semi-weekly Daddy/Daughter Lunches. They’re one of the best parts of my generally packed schedule.

I’m almost certain it’s more of a texting issue than a spelling issue.

For the last several weeks, though, he’s talked to me a lot about his and his sisters’ frustrations with Grandpa Geff’s cancer.

Me: “I’m kind of surprised you’re all doing so much. I mean, I know you don’t have the best relationship.”
Dad: “Well, you know, what can you do? You can’t just leave him to die.”

Me: “I feel bad, because I don’t really feel that bad, you know? I’m sorry.”
Dad: “Don’t apologize, baby. He was never around when you were growin’ up. You hardly know the man.”

Dad: “He keeps callin’ me over in the middle of the night swearin’ he’s gonna die. He’s just eatin’ up the attention.”

Dad: “He keeps tellin’ me he’s ready to go, that this is it. It’s never it. It’s not it until his body says it is.”

Dad: “Sarah keeps tellin’ the nurses not to give him pain medicine and tryin’ to bring her stupid ass preacher in to ‘pray for him.’ Fuckin’ crazy ass bitch. I’m gonna lose it on her. Dad was a devout Catholic his whole life. He is not gonna want some fuckin’ preacher prayin’ over him.”

Dad: “He won’t use the damn oxygen. He just sits there and wheezes, complainin’ about how he can’t breathe, but then he won’t use the oxygen.”

Dad: “I wouldn’t let my dog live like this. If she couldn’t walk, I’d put her down.”

I don’t want Grandpa Geff to die, but I feel worse for my dad than I do for him. Grandpa Geff’s a religious man who never pursued much in his life. He’s comfortable with death and as long as he’s medicated, his remaining days will be good. I feel so much for my dad right now, though. This is the end. He’s having to face the fact that Grandpa Geff will never come through for him…. while helping him bathe. Grandpa Geff milks the attention and drama, by refusing oxygen and calling every few hours to cry wolf that this is really the end. My dad rushes over, because it may be and then finds it’s just his usual drama. He’s relieved and regretful, feeling guilty about the latter. He doesn’t want to abandon the man, but at the same time, resents him for his own abandonment. On his death bed, he sees him coddle my dad’s forty-something half-sister like he never cared for him or his sisters, even when they were children. He’s hurt and stressed out and resentful, but still battling to carry out his dad’s wishes of using what’s left of his money to pay Sarah’s mortgage. He even fights her off when she demands to bring in her Evangelist preacher and take a sick man off his medicine. They’ve had multiple arguments about the house Grandpa Geff lives in, because ownership goes to Grandma Kay when he dies. She wants her kids to sell it and split the money, because their dad never did anything for them and Sarah is pissed. My dad’s still angry on my Grandpa Geff’s behalf, because Sarah’s taking advantage of him and has been doing so for half of her life. My dad’s a lot of things… vulgar, loud, funny, offensive, loving, generous on his terms, but he’s not sensitive and watching him hurt… well, that fucking hurts. When he hugs me tighter than usual, says “I love you, baby” and clearly eats up being around his young and lively 25-year-old daughter, if only to discuss his pitiful and selfish dying father… I want to tear up. It’s like watching Chuck Norris weep.

Yeah… that picture doesn’t exist. Point made.

Maybe I feel so much for him, because I will be there with my mom one day. Right now, she’s got a good 30 years to stop being who she is and apologize for what she’s torn away from me. Well, she eats a lot of mayonnaise, so maybe 20 years. When that day comes, though, and I never got another glimpse of the woman who used to put candles in my birthday pancakes? When I know it can never get better? That’s gonna hurt. When she somehow manages to dramatize death… that’s gonna piss me off. I’ll feel relieved that she’s never again going to play head games with me… and I’ll feel like shit because of it. So, I can imagine how my dad feels right now.

Then again, maybe watching my dad watch his dad die just strikes a cord with me, because I couldn’t bear to lose my dad. Maybe that’s intensified by watching him be so good to a man who did him so wrong, despite his defensive harsh words in regards to the situation. I mean, if there’s a single person on this PLANET who can see past the offensive jokes to the goodness and the pain, it’s the girl to whom he passed the gene, amiright?

I know for certain, though, that watching a man’s family have such conflicted feelings on his death… well, that makes me want to live a good life where I care for people and keep up my end of the bargain so no one’s ever not sure if they’re sad that I’m dying.

The Amazon in My Corner

Posted on June 8, 2013 by Belle of the Library

Abigail the Passive Assertive is how she’d go down in history if passive assertive people went down in history. They don’t, but you get the point. When we met, I was the mouthy one and Gail was the doormat. We seem to have leveled each other out, more or less, over the past ten years, as I’ve taught Gail the value of standing up for herself and she’s taught me the value of doing so without a screaming match in Algebra class. True story. Every now and then, though, people push Gail just an inch too far and it’s always Feed-the-Gremlins-After-Midnight awesome.

Scene: at a bar, where Crooked Teeth has been begging her all night to come out to his truck with him, actually trying to pull her to the parking lot at one point.
Crooked Teeth: “I just want to show you my truck.”
Gail: “Really? You just want me to see your truck?”
Crooked Teeth: “Yeah. I swear.”
Gail: suggestively “Well, what if I just wanted to go out to your truck, pull down your pants and suck your dick until you cum in my mouth?”
Crooked: “Uh… what? Is this a trick?”
Gail: “Uh… yeah…duh.”

The Musician was a phase (THANK GOD) and they were never exclusive. He, however, desperately wanted them to be… on Gail’s part, while he had a mirrored headboard and multiple brands of tampons under the bathroom sink.
The Musician: “So, what? You’re out at a bar trying to pick up other guys?”
Gail: “I’m going to let you go, so you won’t have to talk to such a whore anymore.”
The Musician: “I’m just trying to get to know you and that’s hard to do when my lady is getting to know other men.”
Gail: “I’m not YOUR lady, I’m MY lady.”
The Musician: “It’s just a figure of speech.”
Gail: “So is ‘nigger’.”

See that. Gail’s a regular little Amazon when you push her too far. Overall, however, she’s a pretty passive person. We both had somewhat absent parents in our teens. My mother was busy eating candle wax, while Gail’s parents were busy bragging about her little sister. Don’t get me wrong. Gail and I both understand that they just have more common ground with Sadie and that’s why she was their favorite. It’s not that they love her more, but that they get her more. If there is a crime, it’s that they aren’t all that subtle about their preference. For example, I’m not even kidding when I reference the birthday card Gail saw displayed in Sadie’s bedroom declaring her “the best daughter two parents could ask for.” I cringe, not because of the obvious favoritism, but at ending a sentence with a preposition.

As adults, Gail and I find this hilarious. We know they love her just as much as Sadie. They just don’t connect as well with the daughter who truly had to be talked out of living in her truck a few summers ago, for no reason. As a teenager, however, Gail felt rejected and mistreated and, as is still the way of Gail, she said nothing, because familial conflict is a lot more difficult than telling off Jethro Clampett in a bar. So… enter teenage Belle, who felt abandoned and abused, and could therefore totally relate. Ultimately, we clung to each other, fumbling our way through our formative years with only another clueless teen as guidance. Considering we were both divorced by age 23, that may not have been the best path, but it was certainly better than going it alone.

Having been through all we have, Gail and I can both be accused of going Mama Bear on each other at one time or another. After I posted a blog about how overwhelmed I was with grad school, I got a text message demanding “You’d better be kidding about the cocaine.” I was. When Gail told me she met Terry on fucking Craigslist, she got an angry text message “That was wreckless and dangerous. You could’ve been super murdered and then I’d be all alone to deal with how much that sucked. Fuck off.”

“Eloquence” is the word you seek. I should be allowed to address the masses.

Despite the must-be-fated-in-our-blood connection, Gail and I are far from the same person. As a reader of Red Pill blogs (though I don’t subscribe to the ideology), I love to call Gail “Captain” when she does any traditional male activity, just to piss her off. It’s even more fun than “Rosie the Riveter”. She generally responds with a comment about how I should be churning butter or vaccuuming in pearls. You see, we are the victims of identically broken marriages to men who weren’t men or adults in any traditional sense. Both refused to work and resorted to tears as manipulation tactics. Neither took any pride in supporting themselves and were happy to let the woman of the house do it. Gail took it for less than two years. I took it for just over four. Our reactions were exact opposites. Gail wants to take care of herself and doesn’t need a man’s help. More importantly, she doesn’t want to support a man financially. I can take care of myself as well, but I want to be with a traditional guy who understands what role a man is supposed to play: breadwinner and spider killer. I’ll gladly slip into some pearls and vaccuum in the meantime. Ironically enough, Terry, Gail’s beau, is mighty traditional. I always knew she secretly wanted a man to take care of her.

Insert condescending head pat :here:.

You see, Gail has a mothering tendency that is beyond normal or healthy and the death of her infant daughter three years ago didn’t help. We once had the following textersation, in true keeping with our humor-cancels-out-emotion arrangement.

Me: I was watching this documentary on penguins and thought of you. “When the female penguin loses her young, she is quick to adopt any stray and will often fight another female penguin over rights to the chick.”
Gail: Shut it, stray.

So, when Gail dates a… oh, just for fun we’ll go with musician… who smokes a ton of pot and lives a wreckless lifestyle, she can’t help but worry (despite her own tendency to fuck Craigslist truckers). She feels like the babysitter, whereas I would just feel like it’s his fucking problem when he gets arrested. In completely different ways, we have both washed our hands of men who don’t act like adults. She avoids them and I encourage them to put pepper spray in their eye: another true story and one that demonstrates this perfectly.

About two years ago, Gail’s on-again-off-again (they still said “I love you”, but didn’t sleep together) boyfriend, Cam, was at my apartment with Gail. I had just begun a new job in a different part of town than my white, wealthy, suburb, where I walk the golf course at 2:00 a.m. with no worries, and my Gramma had insisted I buy pepper spray. My Christmas tree is hot pink, y’all. When I saw pink pepper spray, I was sold. Gail has this theory that there are some things that you just don’t buy in pink. I fully disagree since my tree and my hammer and both of those guns all work fine, Captain.

Gail, however, kept insisting that the contents of my pink pepper spray were “lemon juice and glitter”, to which I responded “I don’t want either of those in my eyes, so we’re good.” I must state that Cam was about two years younger than we were, putting him at 21 during this story. Though he worked three jobs, he was pretty much 12 years old forever in a lot of his antics. The pepper spray debate continued so I jokingly asked Cam…

Me: “Hey, Cam. You wanna test my pepper spray?”
Cam: “Sure! I’ll try it!”
Me: “Seriously? I was kidding. You probably shouldn’t do that.”
Gail: “NO! Do not! We’re going to have to take you to the hospital.”
Cam: “Oh, it’ll be fine.”
Me: “Alright. Here. It’ll be a story either way.”
Gail: “BELLE! Don’t encourage him!”
Me: “What?!?! He wants to do it. Let him do it.”
Gail: “Ugh! This is a terrible idea.”

So Cam took out his knife, cut open the package, sprayed a little bit of pepper spray directly into his palm, rubbed his finger in it and touched his eye.

Then… all hell broke loose. Cam immediately declared “It works! Oh… it burns!” and leaped up to run to the sink while Gail frantically ran water… forgetting about the open knife on his lap. As he was bent over the sink, blood gushing from his nose due to his clotting disorder and high blood-pressure from the pain, I took a moment from my uncontrollable laughter to ask “Is your foot bleeding?” as blood dripped onto my floor. Only then did we realize, he’d dropped the knife on his socked foot… and that was even funnier. In my defense, Cam thought this whole thing was hilarious as well and part of the problem was that he was laughing while Gail yelled at us both that this was serious, while shoving tampons into Cam’s nose, partly to shame him and partly so he wouldn’t die.

Me

Cam

Gail

That story pretty much sums up Gail’s entire relationship with Cam.. and the musician… and our friend Malik… and pretty much every irresponsible person she’s ever met. I just declare them to all be adults and let them do as they will. Worst case scenario, I know that’s not lemon juice and glitter.

Scene: Cam lies on my floor with an ice pack over his eyes, a bandaged foot, and tampons in his nose. Gail stews angrily while washing the bloody towels and sock.
Me: “Well… at least we know the pepper spray works.”
Cam: groaning laughter
Gail: groaning laughter “Damnit, Belle.”

Gail and… well, the majority of the relationships she has with people.

Since the Great Pepper Spray Incident of 2011, Gail has pretty much steered clear of Adult Children and I credit that to the actual stray she took in, Ginger.

Gail’s all “I don’t remember her taking this picture and this is the second time she’s posted it” as she reads this, because coincidentally enough, the sewer rat Gail insists is a dog looks just like this.

I comforted Gail during her divorce. She held my hair during mine. She listened to me cry during my miscarriage. I helped her make Valentines to leave on her daughter’s grave. Maybe we’re both pretty broken, but it’s beyond amazing to have someone there who will read everything I write and send me encouraging comments, come over and cry to me when a boy uses her, listen to me rant and rave about my lunatic mother, and call me when she’s having a hard time dealing with the fact that her little girl, Grace, would have been four today. Told you she was an Amazon, because fuck I don’t know how she’s retained her spirit through that. Lucky for me, though, because it’s pretty awesome that I always have an Amazon in my corner.

… and then God reminded me that online dating was at least funny.

Posted on May 31, 2013 by Belle of the Library

I caved. If you don’t recall, here was the hierarchical list, in the sense that I must accomplish one task before moving onto the next:

Graduate Portfolio
Master’s Degree
Librarian Job
Boys

I passed the portfolio and I got my degree. Then I had a panicked fit that went something like this…

“I’m never going to be a Librarian! Because I’m not dating, I’m going to die alone and not even Gail will be there, because she’ll be on a fucking couples’ cruise with fucking Terry! She signs onto CRAIGSLIST to giggle over serial killers looking for love and fucks a trucker in a Buick and it turns out perfectly (even though it’s the obvious set-up for a horror movie) and I’m going to be the lady from Mona Lisa Smile crying about how life wasn’t supposed to be this way! Gail won’t even be there to console me like Julia Roberts did! She’ll be too busy playing Pictionary with The McIntyres, even though they have the personalities of plates and wear too much pastel, because they have kids the same age as hers, and she’ll have outgrown me and my rotting ovaries! Motherfucking Terry!”

1. I graduated two weeks ago.
2. I’m 25.
3. I don’t know anyone with the last name McIntyre and neither do Gail or Terry.
4. I really like Terry.
5. I’m an eensy bit high-strung.

Soooo, I talked myself down from the bell tower and decided to change the list up, taking my mind off the job search with a little online dating… which I have not legitimately engaged in since November, when I failed my graduate portfolio presentation the first time. I got an OkCupid account and then I got a PlentyOfFIsh account… and then God reminded me that online dating was at least funny. Don’t get me wrong. There have been some promising guys and I’m continuing this effort, despite the guy who told me he was looking for someone “naughty” after three hours of standard Q&A texting… or the guy who explained that he got a divorce because there was nothing good on T.V. that day, my only ever reason I cannot dignify such a decision, outside of the obvious cheating with heroine stuff.* The promising ones, however, are not funny material for blogs. So, the following are copy and paste openers from profiles and personal messages.

*He actually said that there was no chemistry or passion in his marriage, because marriage is a tingly feeling and not a lifelong committment. Okay. He didn’t say that last part.

The Profiles

-I LIVE WITH MY PARENTS!!!!!-
Okay. There are extraordinarily rare scenarios where I’m cool with this and I think it’s best to be open about the fact that your mother can’t get around by herself after her stroke, before getting involved with someone. That’s fair and quite responsible e-dating, in fact., and I can get on board with such selflessness as this.You, however, offered no explanation for this living arrangement at twenty-fucking-eight. You did state that you worked full time at a clothing store. Dude, you have a full time job. We live in the South, where you can buy a decent house for $60,000 and rent a meh apartment for about $600 a month. Stop taking advantage of your clearly too loving parents. Grow. The. Fuck. Up.

-To those that have already seen my profile I want to apologize my crazy psycho ex somehow managed to get my password and talk crap about me?!-
Oh, please, please, please tell me you have issues with your ex-girlfriend!!! You do?!?!? There is a flash flood in my pants right now.

For realz, yo, I do not know your name. If your ex did this, start creating more unique passwords and get on with life. Anyone who actually saw what she wrote, probably won’t be back. Opening with a rant about your “crazy psycho ex” tells me that you thrive on that sort of drama. In other words…. NEXT!

-I’m a genuine gentleman at heart but I can also be a NAUGHTY BAD BOY ;]-
Telling me that you’re a gentleman “at heart” sort of implies that I can’t really see it upon the first meeting, which is not particularly gentlemanly; neither is calling yourself a “naughty bad boy” in an introduction. I sure as shit do not want to shake your hand without some kind of glove.

-I went through a divorce all of 2012. finally got my divorce papers a few weeks ago. I use to have a motorcycle, but i lost it in the divorce.-
“Von. Two. Three! Three uses of the word divorce in your first two sentences! Mwa ha ha ha ha ha!!!”

Wait. You’re divorced, aren’t you? Is there a clearer way to tell me that you are sooooo not over your divorce? My general rule for online dating, regarding exes: if they’re mentioned in a profile, they’re not ex, because they are still very much a current variable in your life.

The Personal Messages

-Hi I’d like to tell you more about myself My father was a beekeeper before me, his father was a beekeeper. I want to follow in their footsteps. And their footsteps were like this. (Runs screaming) AAAAAAAH! I’m covered in beeeeees!-
Ummm…. okaaaay. I get it. I do. He’s opening with a joke… a bad one. The thing is, I’ve gotten this from him before. It was months and months ago on PlentyOfFish (this was OkCupid). It was weird then (enough so that I remember it) and it’s weird now. This is also clearly his default opener and he’s sticking with it. He thinks this is funny and encourages conversation… even though it says nothing about him and inquires nothing about me. All this tells me about the guy is that we do not share a sense of humor and that is a deal breaker.

-You seem entirely like someone I could be interested in.-
I do not think this guy could’ve sound more pretentious if he tried. For one, this was worded… awkwardly at best, as if in an attempt to sound intelligent, though it ends in a preposition. Two, it sounded like he was inviting me to impress him, though he sent the first message. It was just short of “dance, puppet, dance!”

-You asked for a guy who is in a career…unfortunately I left a career to go back to school to do what I’m passionate about.-
He went on to tell me that he was studying vocal music performance and I think he thought I would admire this, despite clearly stating otherwise. Then again, he said “unfortunately”, so I don’t know. I honestly do not care what other people do with their lives. If he’s paying his bills and singing for his supper, what-the-fuck-ever. He’s not going to date me while doing it, though. My profile makes it clear that I want someone who has an obvious career and knows where their life is going and it does so because my ex-husband’s “career” was stealing from his wife. I have no idea what sort of future someone sees for themselves majoring in “vocal music performance”, because that’s not how I operate. In the movie Across the Universe, the old man tells the young man “what you do is who you are” and he’s clearly stuffy and unenlightened. Yeah. So am I. I’m into practical fields and that’s what attracts me, because I feel that means someone could potentially take care of more than just themselves. I also don’t see why someone needs a degree in music performance. If they’re good, why not just go sing? Mostly, I don’t get what this guy thinks he’ll have in common with someone so corporate as a librarian. I work for the man.This job is stationary and nine to five. His clearly will not be once it’s started, whatever it is. There is zero future there and my profile was just shy of saying so verbatim. He sent me another message a few minutes later telling me he added to his profile and wanted me to check it out again. No. I stated I wanted a career guy and he is the antithesis of that. That’s cool and all, but no.

-Is that the face your pup makes when he looks into the future?- (he was referring to a photo of my dog)
“Crazy man” was taken as a photo title in the folder where I save images for this blog. That should tell me something about my life.

-Good evening miss. So I read your profile and I am very interested in getting to now you. Maybe we could be like to comets in the night sky burning brightly in the night sky showing off are passion for each other . That is if we hit it off. Which I bet we would.-
I legitimately screen capped this and texted Gail to ask if she thought he was kidding. Upon reading his profile, I realized no, he was not. I recently read a great blog post by an online dater about a guy who awkwardly petted her head and asked for permission to kiss her. I’m pretty sure this is the Southern version of that guy and dating him would’ve made for a great blog post, though that would’ve been cruel. First, there are the spelling mistakes. Shudder. Second, there’s the somewhat creepy use of “miss” and the whopping romantic clichés. Third, there’s the use of the word “passion” in an introduction. Another, completely different, shudder.

In conclusion…

There are clearly many other reasons why I will be dying alone.

Four Dating Profile Clichés I Just Can’t Use

Posted on May 16, 2013 by Belle of the Library

Profile clichés seem to be a hot button for many online daters. Personally, as long as no one uses all of them, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the occasional well-used verse, if it’s accurate. I do want someone who works hard, because my ex-husband never had a fucking job. A generalized request such as this weeds out men for whom a 401(k) will never be on the table. I include many more specific details about myself as well, so if throwing in my commonly-shared desire for a man with a career sounds generic enough to pass me up, fine. That guy can suck a bag of dicks, because he’s obviously too particular anyway.

In general, online daters just aren’t all hobby-writers. They don’t realize that everyone would call themselves loyal, because they have other hobbies that are keeping them from heavily researching the dos and don’ts of profile creation. That’s a good thing. By declaring themselves loyal, they’re expressing a desire to be with someone who will make them a priority while still enjoying their own life. It’s called subtext and expecting everyone to be a bomb writer like myself would be just plain ludicrous. That being said, there are some well-worn clichés that don’t necessarily turn me off, but which I just cannot use, because they would be damnable lies.

“I know how to have a good time, but I still know when to be serious.”
Me: “I don’t even know if I can have kids.”
Gail: “Belle, that was one time and there were extenuating circumstances.”
Me: “Psh. You don’t know. I could have a Hamilton Beach blender in there.”

That was a serious conversation about my miscarriage. I definitely know how to have a good time, but I’d rather experience a treatable venereal disease than any sort of dramatic emotional display. I cope with the most crushing parts of my life, not by delving deeply into my psyche, but by giggling about them.

Me: “What the hell is up with therapy? Everyone wants to talk about shit, like that’s gonna help. You don’t talk about it. You bury it and pile inappropriate jokes on top. So sometimes you cry after you masturbate? Big damn deal. Who doesn’t?”
Malik: “How the fuck am I the most well-adjusted person in the room right now?”

Don’t get me wrong. If someone else’s grandpa is dying, I don’t respond with a chuckle. I sort of just awkwardly pat them on the back while standing at an acceptable conversational distance and make some facepalmingly obvious statement like “I’m sorry you’re sad.” I get that other people don’t want to hear knock knock jokes about their dying family members and want to actually feel and appropriately respond to their own emotions. I respect that bizarre tendency. Is it too much to ask for more people to accept my far more reasonable coping mechanism? Maybe so, but in the meantime, I’m not going to advertise my ability to take things seriously, because it just doesn’t fucking exist and when I try to force it…

“I’m hardworking, but laid back.”
::phone rings… it’s Gail::
Me: :defeatedly: “Hello?”
Gail: “Hey… are you okay?”
Me: “No. I’ve been looking for the honey for ten freaking minutes and the guy was a jerk when I asked where the oats were, so I didn’t want to ask him anything else. I just found the honey and there are seventeen different kinds! Why are there seventeen different kinds of honey?!?! I just want normal honey! I’m gonna buy some bees, open a honey factory and call it JUST DAMN HONEY!!!”

Honey, y’all. Fucking honey. That’s what led me to tears in the peanut butter aisle (for anyone who’s still wondering where the honey is located), because I am just not laid back. In actuality, I’m not that high-strung of a person, either. I just have a definable limit. For example, when I’m driving somewhere and realize I’m lost (this happens a lot), I’ll look at the GPS on my phone and try to drive one way until I recognize a street, while listening to the radio and rolling my eyes at myself. Then I’ll hit a street that I thought was in the opposite direction or realize I just drove in a circle and go from “handing it” to “inconsolable” from one heartbeat to the next. I am, indeed, a hard worker as well. Therefore, when I find out I’ve failed at something, say teaching myself a new skill, rather than putting away the knitting for another day, I’ll burst into tears and hurl the yarn across the room. There are no degrees of upset for me, because I think adults should be able to control their emotions and I try to practice that… until I just can’t anymore and I’m weeping over condiments.

Is honey a condiment?

“I have no baggage/drama.”
Ell oh ellsies. I couldn’t even manage to type this one without a hearty guffaw. One reason I like online dating is for the ability to open with ” I’m divorced” and then just stop talking about it. At 25, with a Master’s degree and no children, people just assume I’ve never been married. The last thing I want, however, is for my boyfriend of two months to ask what’s wrong and respond with “just wondering how to tell you that I was married for four years when I really should’ve brought it up ages ago.”

I suppose there are amicable divorces… but mine, sure as shit, was not one of them. I’m a happy person and my life is good, but sometimes I wake up cuddling a revolver, burst into tears in the baby aisle at Target, or hyperventilate at the smell of soot. I have six pounds of frozen meat in my fridge, along with twelve bags of vegetables and I live alone. I suck my thumb like normal adults smoke cigarettes. Soooo… while it’s undoubtedly appealing to run across someone with “no baggage”, this former 23-year-old divorcée is just gonna have to skip that claim and unsubtly avoid answering any and all questions about her relationship with her mother for awhile.

“What an interesting question! So, what’s your favorite kind of pie?”

“I’m not very good at describing myself.”
This right here is exactly why people employ clichés. They’re unsure of/uncomfortable with who they are. Maybe it doesn’t sound humble, but I have no problem talking about and/or describing myself. I can tell you my assets and flaws right here and now, because if there is one thing I’ve accomplished since my divorce, it’s self-awareness. I’m driven, successful, smart, loyal, hardworking, resilient, stubborn, socially awkward, foul-mouthed, high-strung, sexually inexperienced, obsessive, and sarcastic. I shut down the second confrontation sparks and will not apologize if I don’t mean it. If I do, it makes everything worse and goes a little something like this:

“Well, I’m sorry you chose to take it that way and upset yourself.”

My entire fucking blog is all about me and my life and the people in it. I am absolutely willing to be totally upfront with who I am as a person, because that’s the whole point of online dating. It’s such a waste of time to beat around the bush when explaining who we are and what we want, when the very purpose of online profiles is to skip the “you come here often?” bullshit we find in bars. I’m not going to claim I have any difficulty expressing myself, because the clearer everyone is, the more successful the whole venture.

“Divorce is the coward’s way out”: My yellow-bellied bliss.

Posted on May 10, 2013 by Belle of the Library

A few weeks ago, a woman who was unaware that she was speaking to a once 23-year-old divorcée, told me that “divorce is the coward’s way out.” Fine. She was a coworker, because I am broken and no one I work with knows I’m divorced. Happy, Gail?!? Of course, this isn’t the first I’ve heard of statements such as the above. I’ve ranted about them here, here, and here. I didn’t even comment this time. Now that I think about it, though, that was an inappropriate time to burst out laughing. Once I caught my breath, I started to really consider the implications of this statement. What about leaving my marriage to a sociopath makes me a coward? Then I realized… holy shit, it did take bravery to stay with the man that long. He was terrifying and I was terrified of him. For the last year of my marriage I slept with my wallet in my pillowcase and drove around with my Gramma’s jewelry hidden in my car. I spent my few free hours, between jobs and grad school, chatting and crocheting with Gail in a Taco Mayo, because I could buy a .99 soda and get refills all night and not be home. When I did get home, I drank to take my mind off my misery and would even play the “let’s see how fast can I write this essay before the Everclear kicks in” game. Both drunk and sober, I created entire fantasy worlds where my ex-husband died (through no fault of my own) and just was not in my life. I secretly (and sometimes not so secretly) wished he’d finally give into all of those suicide threats, because then it would be over. To this day, I sleep with a revolver next to me in a gun sock, occasionally cuddling it like a stuffed animal when I have nightmares about still being married. So yeah. It took bravery to stay and perhaps, by extension, cowardice to leave. If that’s the case, though, my cowardice has reaped some fantastic rewards. In the last two years, I’ve made amazing friends, had some hilarious dates, taken several epic day trips, gussied up and gone on too many dates with me-and-only-me to count, reconnected with God, chosen a new career path, lost nearly 100 pounds, taken up a dozen hobbies (only one of which sprung from my fear of my ex-husband)… … and oh, yeah… today, I have officially earned my Master’s degree. That’s right. Despite that sociopathic son-of-a-bitch doing his damnedest to drag me down into the gutter with him, I did everything I ever said I would and am going on to live my life with a bright future. I’ll never again eat free movie theater popcorn all summer or shoplift bags of frozen chicken under the dog food, because that one hundred dollar bill went missing from my wallet. I’ll never find myself pregnant and praying for a miscarriage more than freaking Rosemary, because that baby would have a father without a soul and then weeping with shame when said request was granted. I’ll never miss another holiday just to avoid lying to my family about whether or not my husband has a job and I’ll never again wipe blood from the dog’s paws. I don’t live under constant fear of eviction, since he not only hasn’t paid the rent, but faked having a job. Because I am such a fucking coward, my life is filled with absolute yellow-bellied bliss and he doesn’t get a single minuscule piece of something for which he did not work. I’ll gladly take this over the scars of bravery any day.

Bravery

Cowardice

The trouble with soulmates…

Posted on April 30, 2013 by Belle of the Library

“I don’t believe in soulmates, and I don’t think that you and I were destined to end up together. What I do believe is that we fell in love and that we work hard for our relationship.” – Monica Gellar

When we were kids, Gail and I were stupid and idealistic. I’ll pause so you can gasp.

We used to talk about this theory we had, where there were many people on this earth that could be increasingly right for a person on a scale of one to ten. You could get along alright with a seven, better with an eight and have a lifetime of happiness with a ten. Then, there was the eleven: your perfect match, or soulmate. It was stupid and we had an excuse for believing it. We were fifteen. Plenty of adults, however, still believe that there is one perfect person for them and I’m willing to stand up and say that they are wrong.

I’m not going to lie. I enjoy the notion of a soulmate in my smut novels and even the occasional chick flick. Nothing beats a paranormal romance where everyone has a destined “mate”. How fucking nice would that be? There would be no strangers trying to drag you by your wrist to the parking lot of the cowboy bar, insisting that “it’ll only take a minute.” There would be no awkward meetings with men you met online who make jokes about how your master’s degree isn’t a real master’s degree. There would be no heart-wrenching, soul-sucking divorce. A close second to the paranormal “mate” is Instalove. Erotica and romantic suspense are known for Instalove. Hero’s been speaking to heroine for all of nine minutes and already she’s said something so astounding or given such a delightful laugh that he’s a changed man. He can’t place his finger on it, but six days later, we all know: it’s loooooooove. In reality, it’s been nine minutes, I’ve already made one inappropriate joke and it’s a good thing he’s in loss prevention and not construction, because clearly he cannot measure for shit: 5’8″ my ass. If he dares to say “I love your laugh”, I snort in disbelief and blurt “Really? Cuz no one else does.” True story.

Fairy Tale

Reality

The reason romance novelists write about “mates” and Instalove is because we women were raised by Disney and fucked over by reality. More than once I’ve expressed my desire for an arranged marriage, because my daddy sure could pick ’em better than I can. The idea of just knowing he’s the one, without the risk that he’ll take off with your Gramma’s jewelry or torture your pets… sa–woon. But that’s all it is… a big girl fairytale. Here’s why. Quick. Describe Anastasia Steele’s character without mentioning her physical appearance.

….

I couldn’t do it either when Jennifer Armintrout made the original challenge. She’s… um… a pushover? Way behind in modern technology for a girl who just graduated college? Sexually repressed? Name some of her hobbies other than British literature.

…

Drinking? Pushing her friends around? Insulting all women ever? Feeling insecure? Sure, this is a product of piss poor writing. E.L. James mentions Anastasia’s love for art in chapter one, but then on the honeymoon has her declaring that she doesn’t really know anything about art, so I’m not sure if I can or cannot include that under hobbies. My point, however, is that any character in a book or a movie is a pale comparison to an actual human being. For example, I’ll describe Gail’s character without mentioning physical appearance.

She’s tenderhearted and loyal to an obnoxious fault, sticking by people who fuck her over, yet somehow still managing to be shocked and hurt when they fuck her over again. Despite this lack of caution, she’s beyond paranoid in all other aspects of life. She’s intelligent, with a dry and dead-panned sense of humor. She would wear house shoes and sweats to a wedding without embarrassment, as long as it wouldn’t upset anyone, because her greatest fucking fear is rocking the boat. She’s irreparably damaged from the death of her infant daughter, yet this somehow has not affected her love and kindheartedness toward children. She has a deep-seated urge to mother and protect, which positively consumes her around the wrong people, resulting in exhaustion and resentment.

I’ll name some hobbies without mentioning road head.

Gail is fascinated by finance and legitimately finds Dave Ramsey attractive, because of his radio show. She listens to rap music and can sing it… poorly. She enjoys finding ways to give to charity and loves her job delivering mail… for some fucking reason. She likes crafts of all kinds, even if she’s bad at them and this girl is so into current events, I swear she masturbates to the news. She adores feminist literature almost as much as she likes arguing with me and engaging in e-slap fights about it, because it’s okay to rock the boat when people she doesn’t know are in it.

That’s a real person. No. That’s a blurry Polaroid snapshot of a real person. Real people are complex and multi-faceted individuals. All of them, including the people we’re dating. This soulmates horseshit encourages the idea of having a “type”, which is completely counterproductive to the dating process. We’re supposed to be getting to know new people and trying new things, but instead we choose one or two exceptionally narrow aspects of who we are and buy a painting to match the sofa with no regards to the love seat or the rug.

I like books, guns, pretty pink dresses, college football, fishing, shopping, and sewing. I’m the librarian who swears like a sailor… in prison. I could be with an accountant who was captain of the academic team in high school or a police officer who played football. As I’ve said before, good budgeting skills bring this girl to the yard and he’s not a real man if I’m the better shot. Limiting myself to only one or the other aspects of my personality… IS STUPID. I might find out the cop is more fiscally responsible than I am and the accountant can nail a headshot on the first try. Furthermore, those complex people? They change over time. Fifteen years, three kids, two dogs and a mortgage later, that funny sweet man you fell in love with may now be hardened and sarcastic and sometimes even cruel. He may be a drinker with unrealistic standards for you and your kids. The delightfully old-fashioned chivalry he displayed at 25 may have morphed into an expectation that you will organize the fridge just the way he likes it or there will be hell to pay. Real love takes commitment and vigilance to grow together and treat each other well. Your “soulmate” just punched you in the kidneys nine years into your marriage. Rethinking that soulmates theory, now? Or is he just not it anymore?

Yeah, I had enough of this movie in the first five minutes.

Hunting With the Game Warden

Posted on April 23, 2013 by Belle of the Library

So, earlier this month, I was planning my budget… lolzies. I’m just joshin’ ya. I was painting my nails glitter pink! Anyhoo, it was about that time I saw the above photo on Facebook. My first thought was “Jeepers, I agree! It would suck to have a fiscally responsible man with me when I’m shopping. I much prefer to just spend willy nilly with no regards to my financial situation or that of my family! I am, after all, just a silly little woman.”

Wait. That’s a damnable lie. While I do own pink glitter nail polish, when I saw this I was filled with annoyance… but the cute, non-threatening, kittenish kind, of course, because of my VAGINA.

I get that this is just supposed to be a cutesy sign to hang in the kitchen next to the old fashioned brass novelty cake pans that I don’t have/want, but I don’t understand why someone would want to hang this anywhere. A game warden is in charge of enforcing hunting, fishing, and trapping laws, ultimately protecting the balance in the animal kingdom. Hunting with one would probably be pretty awesome, because he’d know exactly what I could and could not target so I didn’t kill something endangered or just too frickin’ adorable to die. By this comparison, shopping with aforementioned fiscally responsible husband, who knows exactly what can and cannot be spent in regards to our family’s happiness and stability… well that sounds pretty neato as well.

Here’s my real qualm, though. I’ve never been hunting. I own and shoot pretty pink guns, but I’m strictly an indoor girl in temperatures below 50 degrees. I’m pretty damned vocal about it, too… meaning I whine and that tends to scare off deer/boar/ducks or what have you. Freezing my ass off with red cheeks and chapped hands ain’t cute and I like to be cute. Bawling my eyes out because I shot something fluffy isn’t exactly adorable either. I am way too much of a damned girl to hunt… but I’m still aware that if I changed my mind, it would by my responsibility to find out what I could and could not kill. If I shoot a deer and it’s not deer season, I can’t just point to the game warden and claim he didn’t say differently.

What?!?! No one told me!!!!

We are women, hear us roar… until our throats get a little parched, amiright? We want to hold the same jobs as men for the same paycheck, but at the end of the day, we don’t want to own up to how we spend said paycheck? Not only that, we want to publicly broadcast our unwillingness to do so? The idea that I need some testicles following me around, telling me that I really can’t afford that $218 Fossil purse is just offensive. Personally, I’m a traditional gal. I’m happy with doing the laundry if he mows the lawn. I just don’t like the assumption that I am incapable of working such complex machinery as a lawnmower. Perhaps, one day when he’s sick, I can even fire up that beast myself and just mow the fucking lawn, because it’s not that big of a damned deal. Similarly, even if he is the one who manages the finances, it’s still my responsibility to follow the guidelines we’ve set. Regardless of whether or not the game warden has accompanied me on my hunting trip, the laws still apply. Regardless of whether or not my husband’s standing next to me, I still can’t afford that Fossil purse. If the problem is that he can’t allow me to look at and long for said purse without reminding me of my financial constraints, then fine. We have an issue of respect and his inability to show me some in public… and I definitely want that on Facebook, right y’all?

Financial irresponsibility is not a vaginal secretion. My clitoris does not take away my culpability when I break my budget. I don’t understand why “budget” is such a four-letter word today, anyway. In the words of Dave Ramsey, “a budget is when you tell your money where to go instead of wondering where it went. Stop acting like it’s anything else.” Personally, I’ll forever remember that summer I went on the Free-Movie-Theater-Popcorn-From-a-Trash-Bag diet. It was also known as the Belle-Needs-a-Hasty-Divorce diet. Yeah… strong budgeting skills continue to bring this girl to the yard.

What’s for dinner? Ooooh, nothing, my favesies.

Excuse me, Miss. You dropped your dirty bra on my newsfeed.

Posted on April 10, 2013 by Belle of the Library

My bachelor’s degree is in Family and Consumer Science Education (home-ec), which is a degree focusing on a wide range of things. Stereotype mostly dictates these as sewing, cooking, child development, and marriage. I once burned Easy Mac. My dog’s alive because he barks at me if he doesn’t have food and he probably didn’t actually eat that bullet that one time. I’m 25 and have been divorced for two years. You can’t learn everything from a book, y’all, amiright? I, however, can sew and bake like a badass motherfucker. So there’s my proof that some lessons stuck. Another one of those lessons was how to be really bad at marriage… not that this was necessary to learn from a textbook, because Facebook provides me with constant guidance into this venture. The following are all paraphrased Facebook statuses, mostly only straying from direct quotes because I couldn’t bring myself to include all of those spelling errors.

– “Ugh. I’m so tired of the fighting and verbal abuse. I just want a divorce.” –
You know how you get a divorce? You call a lawyer. If you truly “want a divorce”, you’re typing it into a search engine, not the Facebook status bar. You don’t want a divorce. You want to villainize your husband, so that your mutual friends will realize that you’re the wronged one in the relationship when it finally ends, and take your side. What you’re doing, however, is attacking him in public. This is the E-equivalent to taking off your high-heeled shoe and beating him with it in a Wal-Mart while screaming that he’s an abusive bastard. You don’t look verbally abused when you make this post. You look like the verbal abuser, who is making an effort to humiliate her husband to the masses. This is especially true when he makes no similar posts ever in time about your marital issues. If he’s calling you a worthless, fat, cunt, whose children are right to ignore her, it’s still not appropriate to lament about this on Facebook. It’s appropriate to call up your mom and sister to cry and tell them your marriage is a wreck. It’s appropriate to break down at a family dinner to your grandma and a room full of supportive cousins. It’s even appropriate to drink 8 LITs at a bar on Thanksgiving while blubbering incoherently about how he was supposed to make 60% of the income and not pawn your jewelry while your best friend gets the keys. All of these interactions are as perfect as can be in a disastrous situation, because they are confined to people who give a shit. That list doesn’t include your high school student council members, that girl who bullied you and was friended just so you could watch her get fat, or the third cousin who was never really open about why he went to prison.

– “I just carried in a fifty pound bag of dog food all by myself. I always wanted to be a single mom. Oh, wait…” –
This particular woman’s husband was working out of town fighting wildfires, while she was staying home cuddling the baby. Don’t get me wrong. Babies are gross and loud. I wouldn’t want to be left alone with one, either, and I can imagine this is difficult… you know, sort of like how putting out wildfires is difficult. This is such a regular social networking trend that I want to bomb the Internet. I’ll flat-out admit that I am completely and totally biased here. These women are bitching about a man who works too hard to support his family. Try sopping up the blood from your foot because the cat knocked a glass off the counter three days ago and he never cleaned it up, despite not having had a job for three fucking years. Spend four years with a man who is too lazy to bathe and then you can bitch about how your husband has a well paying job in which he’s working in extreme and dangerous climates to buy diapers for your child. These men aren’t workaholics regularly taking on 80 hours a week. They just have mutually agreed upon jobs with unpredictable and sometimes non-local hours. Said jobs are often worth it, too, because they pay well enough for these women to stay home and whine on Facebook while their husbands bust their asses. Again, it’s not that these women are bad wives for feeling lonely, frustrated, or overwhelmed. They are, however, ungrateful and unsupportive partners for posting these thoughts on a billboard read by their husbands’ friends and entire family. If my son ever married a woman who complained publicly about having to carry fifty fucking pounds, I’d be perfectly willing to call her out on the fact that this is the approximate weight of a six-year-old and there are plenty of actual single moms carrying those inside all alone with a lot less bitching, because being a single parent is a lot more difficult than carrying dog food funded by their husbands.

Key difference: she works to pay for that dog food and then carries it in alone.

– “I’m so glad my husband decided that my telling him he could have one or two beers with the guys meant he could get plastered and leave me to take care of three boys alone.” –
No.Your husband does not need your permission to have a beer with his buddies, just as you do not need his permission to buy that new Coach purse. You are both adults and should be making any and all decisions with regards as to what is best for your family and whether or not this splurge is possible without hurting the overall unit. If he dropped the ball doing that, fine. People make mistakes. Telling your friends, family, high school acquaintances, and his friends, family, and work buddies when you fucking tag him in this status, however, does not undo the damage, and hurts the family unit far more than his original crime, by involving other people. I have never seen a man post a status update of “I’m so glad my wife decided that getting her nails done was more important than buying new tires for the car” or “I’m so glad that my wife got so drunk last night that she threw up in the entryway, passed out and pissed herself.” It’s not that these women don’t make mistakes or go too far, just that their husbands aren’t choosing to share it with the world. – “I am so tired of hearing my husband tell me that the money I make doesn’t mean anything. From now on, I’m just going to take my money and spend it on whatever I want then, if it’s so unimportant.” –
Why in the hell would you even want to post this on a social networking site? No one sounds good in this statement. You have an unhappy marriage and you’re officially choosing to no longer contribute to it financially? Maybe next you’ll post about you got drunk, threw up in the entryway, passed out and pissed yourself. Sure, your husband comes off as a jerk here, but you look like a child throwing a keyboard tantrum. Perhaps, instead of bashing him on Facebook, you could take some of that paycheck and put it towards the marriage counseling that the world now knows you need. None of the feelings that inspire these posts are particularly bad. You’re losing faith in your marriage. Fuck, I feel ya there. Run, run, run, and don’t ask me for marital advice, because that is always the answer. You feel mistreated. You’re lonely and overwhelmed. You’re upset about the fact that your husband made a bad decision and it’s affecting you. You’re feeling under appreciated. I getcha. I felt all of those things all of the time in my marriage. You have my sympathy… or you would if I fucking knew you outside of Google Chrome. I don’t, though. I know that when we were kids, you liked Batman, you have a golden retriever, your baby isn’t that cute, you like to take pictures of your overpriced manicures, you’ve put on a few pounds, you’ve decided to call yourself a “photographer”… but I haven’t seen you in person since high school. I should not know your marital issues at all, unless you’ve personally sought me out for comfort. When I got divorced, I had multiple family members ask at Christmas how over it was, because they hadn’t heard anything about it. I’d filed the paper work before I told any of them. That’s because, with the majority of them, we weren’t that close and they only kept up with me through Facebook, where I never complained about my marriage to Voldemort himself. What ever happened to the old adage about not airing your dirty laundry in public and why do so many women in my generation not understand it or realize the value of keeping private issues private? This is social networking, not your private blog. Everyone you know can read this. Yes, indeed, it is specifically a female problem. I have never seen a man make any of these personal posts about their relationships (though I’m sure it’s happened and is just rare) and it’s ridiculous that women think it’s okay if they do. Equality doesn’t mean we get our turn to humiliate. If a man posted on Facebook “I can’t believe she just spent $200 on the UGGliest boots when she needs new tires” or “I love that I’ve been stepping over bottles of nail polish in the living room for two days”, I would be mortified and expect him to immediately take it down and apologize. Why don’t we owe men that respect? Furthermore, why don’t we owe our relationships that respect? I get a say on this trend, because ultimately, when you air that dirty laundry for all to see, you invite those people to comment on your shitty laundering skills.

S#^t I Can’t Do (Part 1): Share Important News Like a Normal F&@#&*% Person

Posted on April 5, 2013 by Belle of the Library

I would throw myself under a train if this man took a vow of celibacy.

Over Lent, Father shared a series of homilies focusing on the Seven Deadly Sins. Each week, he focused on a different one. This is the same… exactly the same.

Shit I can’t do:

Date Without Being a Jackass
Time Management
Cook on the Stove
Express Sympathy Appropriately
Manage Heartbreak Without Humor
Drive… At All
Share Important News Like a Normal Fucking Person

At the moment, I’m caught up on that last one. I’ll cover the others at some point, if I don’t get distracted and decide there’s other shit I want to discuss, because that’s how blogs work.

If I could watch any man clean a gun naked…

Where was I?

When I was five-years-old, my Gramma had this warm, sweet, cuddly little kitten named Calamity.

Hahaha. I’m just lying. It was really an under grown chupacabra and it ate souls. Regardless of the hellfire coursing through Calamity’s veins, though, my Gramma liked this stray enough to claim it as her own… sort of… it’s difficult to cage that sort of creature in anything but a circle of salt. My dad, however, has always been one of those redneck men who thinks it’s funny to tell stories of cats dying. Yeah… that’s a thing, here in the Midwest.

At the time, my brother was just like any eight-year-old boy, hero worshipping his dad while running around barefoot on an acreage, shooting things with a blow dart gun, after having handcuffed his little sister in a field. So when my dad jokingly (says he) told Bo to shoot Calamity with a blow dart… he did… and she crawled away to die. Yes, someone please tell this story at my next wedding.

So a few days after the demise of Calamity, my Gramma wondered where she’d gone. She asked my parents and my brother and they swore they didn’t know. It really was a shame that she’d run off. Then she asked me.

Me: “Dad told Bo to shoot him with a blow dart, so he did.”

A few years later, a neighbor’s un-collared and often unfed dog kept killing our chickens. One day, I came home from school, all alone at eight-years-old, because that’s totally safe, and found my rabbits inside-out all over the back lawn. You can spread pet rabbit pretty thin, y’all. I called my mother in hysterics and then just a week or so later, the neighbor’s dog met with my daddy’s gun and he buried him the back field… because my father is Jed Clampett.

A week or so later, one of the neighbor kids asked if we’d seen his dog.

Bo: “No.”
Me: “Yeah, my dad shot him and buried him in our field.”
Bo: “Shut-up, Belle!” :silence: “She’s kidding.”

My dad was within his full legal rights to kill this dog that was trespassing on his land, so despite the threats, there were no consequences… for everyone except me. Yes, that’s right. I got yelled at when my eight-year-old brother went full-on Dexter on my Gramma’s cat. I got yelled at when my dad tried to start his own Hatfield-McCoy feud.

As I got older, though, I naturally developed the ability to empathize with people appropriately and recognize the importance of breaking significant news in a personal and serious manner. For example, at 18-years-old, I needed to get on birth control and wasn’t sure how to go about doing so with my insurance. So, one afternoon, I sat my mother down and had a serious heart-to-heart, explaining that I had made the adult decision to protect myself.

Bazinga.

No, no. I was really helping her clean up dog poop in the backyard and blurted “I’m having sex now and I need to get on birth control.” Roseanne handled that topic better than yours truly.

As the Hometown minister warned during our high school sex-ed class – I shit you fucking not – sex led to pregnancy… three years later. My ex-husband wasn’t working… still. I was just shy of my bachelor’s degree and working at the movie theater, living off financial aid and prayer (which is not so tasty). This was not good news. How to tell my dad? I KNOW! I’ll go to lunch with him and tell him then.

Dad: “So what do you want to eat?”
Me: “I’m pregnant.”

So that’s out of the way. Now how to tell everyone else…

Facebook Status:
Belle is… seven weeks pregnant today.

Then, as I’ve mentioned previously, I lost the baby. It was heartbreaking, physically painful with no medication at the end of my first/start of my second trimester, messier than those Lifetime movies ever said, and absolutely terrifying since I was all alone. So I called my Gramma and my dad. I told my mother when she showed up unannounced. I texted my brother, since we weren’t very close. It wasn’t perfect, but it was personal… enough.

So that’s out of the way. Now how to tell everyone else…

Facebook Status:
I lost the baby. I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want your apologies or to hear your awful miscarriage stories. Just leave me alone.

It was between that and…

A little over a year later, I’d had enough of the stealing, the lying, the pet abuse and murder, the make-believe jobs… you know, marriage.

Wait. Shut the front door! That’s not how marriage works?!?! Wha…?!?!

So, I told my ex-husband he needed to leave… and he said no.

Wait… that’s not how divorce works either…

Over the course of the next few months, I continued to tell him to leave, often loudly, occasionally with projectiles.

Ex-husband: “We never have any fucking food!”
Me: “Then maybe you should GET OUT.”

Oh, just suck my big fat furry dick, Disney.

At this point, I probably should’ve reached out to someone, told my family what was up, let my daddy bury the bastard in the back field… but nah. I suffered in silence. Finally, I threatened to call the police, on Jay’s advice, and my ex-husband left. He kept sneaking in and taking things, but I didn’t have the emotional capacity to deal with that, so I still called it a win. Then I filed the paper work two weeks later.

Chad: “You seriously need to tell your family.”
Me: “I will… eventually.”

It was two weeks before Christmas, when I finally got up the nerve to tell my Gramma. I lay on her bed, staring at the ceiling, while she watched the news. Neither of us had been talking.

Me: “Gramma?”
Gramma: “Yeah?”
Me: “I’m getting a divorce.”
Gramma: in an almost bored tone “Are you really?”
Me: “Yeah… like I filed the paper work already.”
Gramma: “Huh.”

You see! That is why emotion freaks me out. She wasn’t mad. She fully believed me. She was glad I was leaving. She just understands that feelings are for the inside.

There’s a girl who knows how it’s done!

Voicemail: “Hey, Bo. It’s Belle. I just called to tell you I’m getting a divorce. He wouldn’t work. I couldn’t do it anymore. I don’t want you to be disappointed in me. Love you.”

text conversation with my mother
Me: “I filed for divorce.”
Mother: “Do you need anything?”
Me: “I’d really like that Fossil purse for Christmas.”

Then the most epic of all. I pulled up to my dad’s house, knocked on his door.
Dad: “Hey kiddo. What’s goin’ on?”
Me: “I’mgettingadivorce. I’msorryIruinedChristmas.”
Dad: “Do what?”
Me: “I’m getting a divorce. I’m sorry I ruined Christmas.”

Since then, there have been numerous breaking news faux pas.

Me: “Do you like memoirs?”
Gail: “Yeah, sometimes.”
Me: “I do. I really like biographies too. I did shots with Chad and let him feel me up last night. I just really like to read another person’s story, ya know?”
Gail: silence… “Yeah. I’d love to hear another person’s story, too.”

Text message
Me: “I just woke up on my grandma’s patio after passing out from the heat.”
Gail: “WTF? Seriously?”

This particular incident was accompanied by an “I need a ride to the E.R.” text message to my step-mother a couple of days later, when I couldn’t stop vomiting from the concussion.

Over the years, I’ve just accepted it. I am never going to be able to tell anyone anything important in a grown-up manner. There will one day exist the “Honey, I’m pregnant” text message. It’s actually become a running joke.

conversation with my female cousin Mick, the baby of the family
Me: “Well, if you ever do decide to join the Air Force to be a pilot, just remember, the best way to break serious news is via Facebook. ‘Mick… just joined the Air Force. Love y’all.'”
Mick: sitting next to her mother “Yeah… I think that one might get me into a lot of trouble.”
Me: “Well, yeah. That’s why you ‘lose your phone’ that day.”

When Gail was raped and couldn’t figure out how to tell her boyfriend a couple of weeks later (he’d been out of town), I suggested a cake with the words “Your girlfriend was raped” on it. The guy’s had enough bad news. Why not give him a cake, too? Do you have no compassion at all?!?

I also suggested a barber shop quartet… and wrote the lyrics, which did make Gail laugh and that was the whole point. Duh. She’d just been raped, yo.

“Your one and only girlfriend was ra-a-aped.”

I give the best fucking advice.

Sidenote: This incident will also be covered in the topics “Express Sympathy Appropriately” and “Manage Heartbreak Without Humor.”

The fact of the matter is, of the Shit I Can’t Do, several share one foundational issue. Emotion is horribly uncomforatble and should be hidden like the last fucking horcrux.

Right there. That is where your feelings go.

“I’m sorry I asked for detailed information on your sex life before meeting. Lol.”

Posted on April 1, 2013 by Belle of the Library

Motherfucker, I am bad at this.

Not just like a little bad. Like a lot bad.

I met Teacher on OKCupid. He’s a choir teacher and that’s super gay, but I’m aware that I’m being judgemental and stereotyping with said assessment. I’m trying really hard to knock it off with having a “type.” I mean, I think it’s important to have something in common with anyone I date, but I’m a varied and complex person. I’m also not narcissistic enough to think I’m the only one out there. I like to shoot pink guns, but I also went to Batman Live alone, because no one would go with me. I have a dear affection for Disney on Ice and regularly use the words “snazzy” and “keen”. There’s also the little detail about majoring in books. Who’s to say the nerdy girl is any less significant than the country girl? So, I put aside my snobbery and responded when Teacher messaged. Overall, he seems like a pretty nice guy. I was even able to check online and see that he actually works at the middle school he named. But I was still hung up on one little detail from his profile:

The most private thing I’m willing to admit:
I have Dom tendencies.

Yes, yes, I am, indeed, going to end up in Tupperware for the fact that I would respond in the first place, but that phrase could mean a multitude of things, from “I like to be in control in bed” to “How’s that ball gag feel? What? I can’t hear you, because of the ball gag, bitch!” Now, I’m pretty inexperienced, since my ex-husband was morbidly obese, which limited the positions possible, and never wanted to have sex. I also, however, know that I like when the guy takes control, so I’m fine with the first option and that’s what I was thinking in the beginning of my correspondance with Teacher. He also hasn’t asked me a single inappropriate question or implied that he expects anything from me, so I’ve continued texting him. We were supposed to meet Friday, but I got busy talking to tech support about my Gramma’s broken T.V. (that I bought her for Christmas) while she was hilariously and uncharacteristically ungrateful.

Me: “Well, I got a new book loaded on your Nook, at least.”
Gramma: “Yeah, well I’d prefer to have my T.V. working!”
Me: “I had a date tonight, Gramma. I canceled to deal with this.”
Gramma: “Oh, bull. You did not.”
Me: laughingly “Okay.”
Gramma: “Oh, you did not.”
Me: “Okay, Gramma. I love you.”

angry old lady
I didn’t even try to convince her, because she’d be even more upset that I just murdered all of her future great grandchildren and it wouldn’t change anything. Teacher was really understanding about my flakiness, though, so I still didn’t have an excuse to stop speaking to him. Damn it. Gail and I had Easter breakfast and I told her that I was considering “pulling a Belle” and just ending all communication without an explanation, because of the Dom comment.

Me: “It freaks me out.”
Gail: “It freaks you out, even though you’re into it?”
Me: “I’m not into that.”
Gail: “You’re into that a little.”

Good point. Teacher had wished me a happy Easter far too early in the morning and I hadn’t responded. After time with family, setting up my Gramma’s new T.V. with much more gratitude (Wal-Mart did let her return it), and amounts of chocolate that would kill Willy Wonka, I went home and crashed. I woke to a text from Teacher asking how my Easter was. Ugh. This guy will not give me a legitimate reason to act like a dick! He didn’t text at all Saturday, texted once Sunday morning in a way that required no response, and still sent a text asking about my holiday when I didn’t respond, hours later. I can neither accuse him of being annoyingly clingy, nor can I claim he’s not interested either. DAMN IT!

I responded and viewed his profile again. That’s when I saw this question:

If a trusted partner asked you to submit to them sexually, would you? Assume that this would involve letting them collar you, command you, and have control over you during sex.

Teacher’s response was no, with the explanation “I am a Dom.” Okay. He’s not really responsible for that question. OKCupid brought it up. I read into shit, though. I’ve written multiple blogs overanalyzing fiction. I’m also not-so-secretly looking for a reason to sabotage all possible relationships, because I am the White Witch of Narnia.

“Dom tendencies” and “I am a Dom” resonated completely differently with me, even though that could just be taken as an explanation for why he wouldn’t be interested in a submissive activity. Naturally, I texted Gail, because I have no idea what the fuck I am doing and can’t choose a brand of shampoo without her input.

Gail: Ask what that entails. And you should be nice even if it’s super weird.
Me: You’re trying to get me killed.

Gail was shocked when I told her I’d actually asked, because she really was expecting me to pull a Belle and just drop of the face of the earth. My only other female friend, Niki, told me to tell him I had cancer and was dying. Thank you! That’s more my speed and there’s a reason she’s one of two vaginas with whom I’ll associate with any regularity.

So I asked Teacher what “Dom tendencies” meant with no lead up at all. His answer basically told me that he doesn’t know what the word “Dom” means and he just likes to be in control and handcuffs could be fun. That’s cool with me. Collars, not so much. He also asked why I was asking so suddenly, which… yeah. Who asks that with no context? Sending Gail screen caps, I relayed my response to her:

Because there’s a question that asks about collars and that freaks me out. Like, the guy being in control doesn’t, but like… well collars. You seem nice, but that’s extreme.

Gail supplied me with her translation: “you seem weird, but it’d be nice if you’d prove otherwise.” I’d already sent the worst save ever.

Like, for me, I mean. More power to the rest of the world. I don’t care what they do.

His response was as normal and nice as could be in this situation, and he explained that he would never do something that made his partner uncomfortable and that that was ages away and we should probably meet first. I apologized for asking and told him that it had just made me nervous.

I’m sorry I asked for detailed information on your sex life before meeting. Lol.

Again, he was really nice and said it didn’t bother him and he asked what else was making me uncomfortable. I ignored the question and made a joke about how I needed to stop reading the sex questions. He said he hoped he hadn’t scared me off. I was feeling really awkward and started rambling via text. Oh, yeah. That’s a thing.

No, it’s okay. That’s why I asked. And your answer was super not creepy. Lol. Gail and I used to look at the Craiglist personals, because they’re funny and the people who used the word Dom generally weren’t meaning such a mild version.

they were descriptive. And terrifying. Maybe I should stop doing that.

It’s alright to pretend I never asked if you had a woman in your dungeon.

SHUT-UP, BELLE! SHUT-UP, SHUT-UP, SHUT-UP!!!!!

He asked a quick, undetailed question about my preferences and I said I was inexperienced, but not prude. Then he changed the subject, because everyone on the planet is better at this crap than I am.

I’ll continue to try and find flaws with Teacher that will justify my ditching him. If I can’t do so by Friday, I’ll meet him in person… then I’ll surely find something… because I want to die alone.

Belle of the Library

… the musings of an overly organized thirty-something, married, southern librarian turned stay-at-home-mom with too many opinions, too much ambition, just enough kids, and a stubborn, mouthy, redheaded country boy to accompany her through life.

Category Archives: Relationships

I’m sorry I’ve misdirected my sorry: Watching my dad watch his dad die.

The Amazon in My Corner

Four Dating Profile Clichés I Just Can’t Use

“Divorce is the coward’s way out”: My yellow-bellied bliss.

The trouble with soulmates…

Hunting With the Game Warden

Excuse me, Miss. You dropped your dirty bra on my newsfeed.

S#^t I Can’t Do (Part 1): Share Important News Like a Normal F&@#&*% Person

“I’m sorry I asked for detailed information on your sex life before meeting. Lol.”

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: