How Anxiety is like Shitty Christmas, or, making your anxiety meet the world in the middle.

Lately I’ve been thinking about how there are times that I have to make my anxiety adjust to everyone else’s schedule. It’s also possibly some of the ADHD that I thought I was done with as a kid, but is apparently still there and this is a whole other blog post I’ll work on eventually (this is a procrastination ADHD joke). Basically, when I get anxious about something, I want answers and plans immediately. I want to know what’s happening, what’s going to happen, and what I need to do.

These are often valid things to want. When I think I might feel a lump in one of my boobs, it’s valid to want that checked by a medical professional. What this looks like in the world of my brain, however, is walking up to every single person at work saying “I think I feel a lump in my breast” while kneading my tit through my shirt with one hand and frantically pulling up the clinic’s appointment request form with the other.

The most frustrating form of this for me is when it comes to my anxieties about people. Okay, I tried painting myself in a less stupid light for a second by saying people, but I’m a dick for lying to you and what I really mean is my anxieties about anyone I’m sexually and/or romantically interested in and/or involved with. It’s a character flaw built by various traumas I won’t bore anyone but my therapist with because the world doesn’t need more white women crying about problems that make you want to scream “GET A FUCKING LIFE AND SOME HOBBIES, JESUS.”

Recently, I feared I was being ghosted by someone. Someone I had gotten used to talking to every day really slowed down with replies and, most importantly, it just felt super different. I wanted to immediately be like “WHAT’S HAPPENING? DID I DO SOMETHING? AM I NEVER SEEING YOU AGAIN? WILL I EVER HAVE SEX AGAIN? WILL TRUMP GET REELECTED? WHEN WILL THE SECOND CIVIL WAR BEGIN? DO I NEED TO BUY GUNS?” Most of those are real to me.

But then I thought about what my doctor friend says whenever I text him frantically about having cancer or herpes: “I’m sure it’s fine, but if it still feels off in a week, get it checked out.”

Why couldn’t I also apply that to my human interaction psychosis?

Instead of: “My boob feels fucking weird, but boobs do weird things all the time. This is the first time you’ve noticed the lump so if it is something, it’s probably nothing and waiting one week isn’t going to give you full blown cancer out of nowhere” it’s “Sure, communication feels way different right now but we literally just saw each other 4 days ago. In a world without phones, that might qualify as still having a person inside of you.”

Did I wait a week? Of course not. As much as I want to be on everyone else’s schedule, that’s just a fucking impossibility. I dream of the day that I wake up and go “Yeah I haven’t heard from him in a week, he’s probably skiing.” WHAT?! I’m self aware but I’m not a goddamn saint. I’ve canceled and rescheduled clinic appointments upwards of 5 fucking times while arguing with myself over how long I should wait. I’m just a mildly crazy girl standing in front of her anxiety begging it to at least meet the world in the middle.

The hardest part about this is that people are always telling you to trust your gut, but when you have a condition that fucks with your thoughts, it can sometimes be incredibly hard to distinguish between intuition and extremely well dressed toxicity. Furthermore, for someone who values authenticity above all else, waiting to share your thoughts can feel like playing games. And that is the last fucking thing I want for any of my relationships with people.

This is where friends come in! It’s the happy part of the post. My friends are awesome. You should meet them. A note: this section does not apply if you have the shitty kind of friends who don’t partake in self reflection or have evolved thoughts on anything and will just say shit like “Just never reply to him and only post pictures of you sitting on other people’s faces.” I don’t know if anyone has ever said that, but this is what I imagine those kinds of people say.

I cannot thank my friends enough for helping me through these times. They tell me when I’m being crazy, they tell me what they think is valid, and they remind me not to take myself so seriously and to try to remember who I am.

Sure, it had only been a couple days, but things HAD changed and it was valid for me to want to check in AND I realized it was possible to do so while being my open, funny, charming self oh my god what??????

This is turning out to be a sloppy dismount because I had an argument with myself about whether or not to include more specifics of the exchange and I decided not to since that isn’t really the point of the post and also is maybe sharing too much. So give me a minute and I’ll come up with some sort of moral for us to end on.

Okay so basically, having anxiety is kind of like when you’re a kid and you’re so fucking excited to go downstairs on Christmas (sorry, Jews) you might fucking explode but your parents said “if you come into our room before 6 I will literally murder you” so you just sit shaking with anticipation for like 3 hours and then burst into their room. You wanted to start Christmas at 3 in the morning and they’d have loved to sleep til 9, but you all only suffered a little (or at least a little less than a lot).

Anxiety can be just as taxing on the people around you as it is on you. But you’d be surprised how willing the world is to meet you in the middle and open your anxious gifts at 6 in the morning.

I’m Normal Until I’m Insane, and Maybe You Are Too.

I feel the need to open with an acknowledgement that I am not writing about the current situation with the Supreme Court and America in general. Part of me feels badly that I’m talking about inconsequential shit when such big and horrible stuff is going on and the rest of me is like you know what fuck it because this is all I have left now. If you don’t want to read this right now, though, I understand. I have, at times, yelled at people for promoting their work on days when shit that I view as tragic has happened and possibly that was just me being a dick. But anyways, that’s not what we’re discussing.

This week we will be talking about how eventually in every relationship (romantic, sexual, friend to a lesser extent) everything will be going great and then I ruin it by getting needy and insecure. Anyone relate? (Please oh god please say yes).

I don’t know why it happened this way, but I kind of started out my romantic career the way others start out drinking: too much too early, in severe excess, and by not shutting the fuck up about it. The way other teenagers drank heavily at parties to cover up the fact that they had yet to formulate a personality, I threw myself into someone else’s world hoping to attach their likes and accomplishments to my own resume.

I somehow decided that all relationships had to be serious and that everything in them carried enormous weight. My first boyfriend was a nice enough guy (and is lovely now. If you’re reading this, I know we were young and stupid and I am sure you’ve grown into a lovely person and I enjoy our occasional exchanges) but did not want to be as serious as I did and he didn’t know how to handle that and I didn’t either. We were together for about 10 months, lost our virginity to each other, and I was certain we would get married. Thinking back on the relationship, all I really remember aside from pockets of happiness here and there was being miserable and anxious. I was always worried about something. I was always trying to fix something. And I wasn’t having any fun. When he tried to break up with me, I wrote him an 8 page letter about why he was wrong and then made him say it was a “break.”

If I had had any sense of self worth and knew who I was as a person, I’d have at some point known that that situation was not for me. But for some reason I didn’t, so I didn’t.

The kind of super shitty part about it is that right after that I dated one of my best friends for about a year and while I’m sure we did stupid and unhealthy things because we were 17, it really was a great match and someone I should have been serious with. So when he broke up with me out of the blue I was devastated and it also kind of reinforced this weird story I was forming in my head of “Relationships are deep, amazing, and serious, and you have to constantly be on guard or they’ll end and everything will be terrible and you’ll have nothing.”

Then rather than, I don’t know, figuring out who I was or joining clubs (I don’t know what people do) I just kept dating person after person chasing the high and trying to cover up the low of the last. Then they would all break my heart because no one can be trusted and if you aren’t constantly checking in to see how everyone is feeling then everything falls apart!

This cycle isn’t super unique. A lot of people fall into a cycle of being addicted to the rush of a new attraction and then insecurity and resentment and distance set in when they realize that maybe it wasn’t what they thought it was. Or whatever, again, I don’t know what other people are doing but that sounds right. Right?

Then one day, many years later, I decided I would make myself be single for awhile and break the cycle of filling the void with another person. So I got a vibrator, kept a journal, and started watching Arrested Development.

And then a few months later I started seeing someone long distance, New York to LA, with almost no prior romantic engagement with them. I can’t be prefect all the time. I mean this is the same year that I stocked up on lentil soup before Hurricane Sandy but forgot to get cash and cried in the middle of a pizza place the day after the storm because I couldn’t buy hot pizza.

Even with the knowledge that I have issues with being my own person in a relationship and even with the strong desire to change, it still gets me.

Nowadays when a relationship of mine ends, with the help of a lot of therapy and meditation and a bunch of other LA magic non bullshit bullshit stuff, I am able to let myself feel the pain of it and give myself the space to recover. I no longer jump right into something to mask the pain or to give me validation. I check in with my motives if I decide to have an “encounter” (listen, my parents might read this. I know it could be better but this is a real concern for me) and ensure that I’m doing it for enjoyment and not to fill a gap in self worth.

After my last relationship ended, while it was hugely painful, I quickly felt I was really able to breathe and be myself again. I started laughing as much as I feel like my true self does. I was excited to work on artistic projects again. I became charming as fuck again. And of course people were into it. Feeling stable and excited, I started….hooking up with a couple of my friends (I’ll get over it eventually!). I wrote a journal entry about one of the encounters and how I had been seeing a couple people (I won’t include the uncomfortable details. Maybe upon private request) and the entry ended with simply, “So honestly things are fucking great.”

And I remember feeling that way. So free and happy and excited and alive and appreciated and loved by my friends.

And then this week, here’s what happened in my head:

“Oh no he’s not texting me as much. Should I not have said that? Am I texting too much? What if he doesn’t actually want to see me? What if he’s not interested anymore? What if he doesn’t feel the way that I feel? How do even I feel? What are you even talking about? Where is this going? How will this end? Do I not want it to end? What would that mean? What have I done? Was that all make believe? I mean, the time together is so fucking wonderful I want it all the time. Why wouldn’t he? Does that mean he doesn’t enjoy it as much as I do? I knew last week when everything felt amazing and I wouldn’t let myself ruin it for me that eventually I would ruin it for me.”

Casual.

And might I remind myself (and tell you, reader, for the first time because you don’t live inside of my head yet) that just a week prior I had told him that he was overstepping boundaries and I didn’t want to hang out all the time and I needed to maintain my independence and keep my oxytocin attachment crap in check because I’m recently out of a thing, as you know. And now I’m the one wanting more time and attention.

Somehow I get in a space where I think the other person isn’t equally capable of having complex needs that have nothing to do with me and change constantly.

I recognized my familiar refrain immediately, yet that brought me little comfort. I was thinking about it a lot on the way home from work yesterday. I thought about how this is just something I’m going to have to be aware of and battle probably forever. And then a friend of mine called me asking for relationship advice. I immediately thought “I’m probably the worst person for the job right now, but go ahead.”

He talked about how he will sometimes be overcome with love for his girlfriend and then the next day he’ll think “I don’t feel that way right now. I’m looking at her and I’m feeling nothing. And then I think were those feelings a lie? If they were a lie, I’m a bad person. She is so perfect and great and if I don’t feel the same way and I really don’t love her as much as I thought I did yesterday then I’m being an awful person by letting her be with me. But then sometimes I’ll start being worried that she doesn’t really like me as much as I like her I mean she’s so perfect. Why would she like me? And then I can’t even enjoy my time with her because I’m so inside my own fucking head and I’m driving myself crazy and ruining the point of the whole thing. Am I insane?”

“Yes, dear friend. And you’re in good company.”

We then talked about how our respective pasts have given us certain false beliefs about relationships that then lead to irrational fears and anxiety. I told him that it would be something he would have to continuously be aware of and work on and that he wouldn’t just step into perfection one day, but slowly progress. And sometimes it won’t feel like you’ve progressed at all. Sometimes it’ll feel like you’re right back where you started. But that’s not true and you can’t listen to that. You just have to keep taking care of yourself and learning to listen to your true self.

Because those thoughts that he had and those thoughts that I had aren’t fucking real. But he and I are extremely stubborn and logical people so we’re really fucking good at convincing ourselves that our irrational fears are rational. Like “Sure this could be fake but also don’t they say that intuition is extremely important in relationships so if I feel like something’s not right I should definitely listen to myself. I mean I don’t want to be one of those people who ignores these feelings for years and ends up in a marriage where no one is happy and then we have to have a messy expensive divorce. You’ve read about how horrible and common divorce is. This is the kind of shit to look out for if we’re to change the way these things work and improve the way society deals with relationships. I mean we’re the future. Be the change you wish to see.”

Uhuh.

I told him about a therapy technique that a lot of people use and that has been super helpful to me. It really helps to name the crazy thoughts and not only name them but make them kind of funny so you help yourself snap out of the belief that what’s going on in your head is somehow the most serious issue on Earth. So I told him how I identify my anxious thoughts.

I’d like you all to meet Stergil. Stergil is a little green, cartoon snake and he wears a ratty tophat. Stergil is a failed vaudeville performer. When I’m doubting my career goals and dreams and wondering if I’m good enough or if anyone cares about what I’m saying, I realize it’s just Stergil being a fucking dick because he feels bad about his failed career and he wants me to feel bad too and he doesn’t want to see anybody succeed. Emily V Gordon talks about the same technique in her amazing book Super You.

Now the truth is, Stergil is a dick but he’s actually coming from a place of wanting to protect me. Stergil knows that I’ve had my heart broken multiple times by people who pulled away from me. But Stergil is still a fucking idiot.

I had only really used Stergil for career issues before, but when I told my friend about him I realized that Stergil also had a lot of failed marriages and he doesn’t believe in letting your guard down in any kind of relationship because everyone will just break your heart anyways.

So now when I am trying to ruin the best fucking shit life has to offer and I think “But why isn’t he texting me back?” I”ll say, “Stergil, listen, I’m sorry your second wife left you too even though she knew how much the first one hurt you but get it the fuck together, man. You can’t keep shittin on everyone else because you feel bad.”

But progress not perfection is the name of the game, as I’ve learned from a friend of mine who’s an avid member of the Al-Anon world. For those who may not know, Al-Anon is kind of like a spinoff of AA and is for people who have alcoholics/addicts in their lives and it helps them with things such as codependence and blah blah blah (this is good journalism). I sound really optimistic and on top of my shit right now but I didn’t this morning or yesterday. I was a bit of a wreck. But I realized that I have a fucking cold and am PMSing so in a very real way I’m less well equipped to reign in Stergil. And one of the reasons I know that Stergil is real and that he’s full of bullshit is that I just took a klonopin and smoked some weed and I FEEL FUCKING FINE. I am myself. I’m sneezing all over the place and I haven’t eaten in 10 years, but I am myself.

The goal of course is to be able to get there without self medicating, even if I do have a prescription and weed is legal and safe (I’m saving the shame I feel about taking medication for my mental health for a whole other blog post). But it helps me know that when I really am being myself, I do not have those thoughts.

Am I Carrie Bradshaw?

This is shaping up to be a bit of a sloppy dismount because, as I mentioned, I am sick right now so I’m not working at full capacity.

So, uh, go find your Stergil and tell them to fuck off. Be yourself. Laugh at things. Don’t take yourself seriously. Listen to your truths and enjoy amazing shit. You deserve it.

Oh and vote in November. Please.

The Time My Friend Thought I Asked Him To Remove My Contact Lenses, or The Contact Fallacy

When I was about 20, I was at my best friend Duckers’ house smoking weed. Smoking tends to dry my eyes out so if I’m wearing contacts I almost always have to switch to glasses at some point. I for some reason felt the need to say out loud “I’m going to have to take my contacts out at some point.” He mumbled some sort of acknowledgement and we went back to (probably) watching South Park. Somehow, and I truly and deeply wish I could remember how, we discovered that he had thought I’d said “You’re going to have to take my contacts out at some point.” This would become one of the most important moments of my entire life.

The fact that he thought I said that and gave no reaction to it made me so utterly upset. Immediately. Viscerally.

The amazing thing is that we both knew instinctively that even though we didn’t yet know why, we both felt deeply that it was a very valid thing to be upset about. So rather than arguing, we launched a two person investigation into the intricacies of this interaction. After discussing for awhile, we were able to break it down into three feelings:

1. Why the fuck, after 8 years of knowing me and knowing me well, would you think that I would say “YOU’RE going to have to take out MY contacts.”
2. Why the fuck upon registering in your brain that I had said something so utterly absurd did you not say something about how weird it was?
3. Oh my god, do you NOT think that that’s an insane thing to say?

In that moment, I suddenly felt like if he thought that that is something I would say so casually that he must not know me as well as I thought he did. Also, I would hope that we are close enough that if we think the other person has said something insane, that we wouldn’t just brush it off and move on. I would hope that we would say “I’m sorry, I hope I’m mistaken here but if you said what I think you said you’re fucking insane and as your close and personal friend I’d like to discuss it.” Lastly, I REALLY hope this doesn’t mean that you don’t find that as insane a statement as I do. Much of our connection is based off of finding the same shit crazy or weird and being able to dissect it and make fun of it. If you don’t think an out of nowhere request for you to remove a contact lens from my eyeball with your hands just ’cause is unsettlingly strange, you must not be the person I thought you were and our connection is a lie.

We didn’t know the depths of this at the time but we were essentially picking apart the main components of true intimacy: understanding, honesty, and respect.

Let’s pick apart honesty first because it feels like the least triggering for me. Honesty and realness is one of the most important things to me in any meaningful relationship. If I have to bullshit with you or I talk about you behind your back about something I haven’t said to you (or plan to say to you), you are not someone I consider a friend. It is still a struggle for me to understand that other people do not handle their friendships with the same philosophy, but it has gotten easier over time. It is weird to have to learn to not hold others to the same standards to which you hold yourself. If I thought that it meant people hated me every time I learned of them having discussed me behind my back, I would have like 2 friends. I know that their actions mean different things for them than they would for me. I don’t fucking know WHY no one else seems to give a shit about honesty as much as I do, but that’s for another time.

My relationship with honesty has evolved over time, though. It used to be a lot more of a burden. In relationships I used to feel that if I wasn’t telling them every single negative or worried thought I had about our relationship that I was being dishonest and our relationship wasn’t real. Thankfully I’ve moved past that, but I still have to fight the urges to puke up my emotions and offer premium access to the Arielle Stream of Consciousness channel. Additionally, I have finally gotten to the point where I don’t feel like I can’t have a real connection with someone if I don’t tell them they have a lot of blackheads that I’d like to fix (I’m serious. I honestly have the thought “well if I don’t tell them, are we really friends?”).

That said, I still maintain that if I say something that seems off or offensive or whatever, any true friend should say something about it. I only brush people off or let them say stupid shit if they’re someone who doesn’t mean that much to me (excluding of course grandparents and things like that. I love them dearly but they are old and insane). I’m trying to find the best way to describe this, because it has such a strong and specific feel to it but I haven’t found words that feel satisfying or adequate enough yet. I’m in a hotel room right now and the setup actually might work. Let’s try. So in the middle of this multi-level hotel is basically a covered atrium. It’s like a tall donut if donuts were square. Or like one of those stupid popsicle stick towers we were always making as kids for no one in particular. All the rooms are along each 4 sides of the carved out center, so on one side of my room is a window to the outdoors and on the other side is a window to the rest of the hotel. I can see what everyone else is doing but I’m not actually with them. The way I feel about friendship and realness is like this hotel: anyone I consider a friend is in my room with me. They’re going to hear everything I’m thinking out loud, they’re going to see me naked, and they will smell my poop. And we’re all stuck in here together being equally as naked and talky and poopy. We see the people outside and we might open the door to say shit to them, but they’re not inside with us. We are judging them through the window and talking about their stupid hair or their weird shoes or why they feel the need to use the word “actually” at the beginning of most sentences. Everyone inside already knows it’s weird to do those things, or they’re being lovingly made fun of for it because we can’t keep secrets in here and there aren’t enough corners to run to where we can gossip without being overheard. And it’s not that people on the outside of the room are always on the outside. Sometimes I talk about someone’s hair who’s on the outside of the room but then my friend on the inside talks to them through the open door enough times that I HAVE to bring them inside because with my room you can either be out or in; you can’t stand in the doorway. It’s also possible for me to kick someone out of the room for being a real dick. I do have some boundaries. But, obviously, not many since I just described friendship as pooping in front of a room full of people.

Respect is really rather similar to honesty for me in that I feel if you respect someone you should be honest with them and that honesty is a sign of respect and care. Aside from like the normal baseline level of human respect, I have no reason to respect the woman across the atrium who’s wearing socks and sandals so I don’t really care about whether I’m real with her so if when we’re in the elevator together and she asks me where I’m from and I say Washington and she thinks I mean Washington State I maybe won’t correct her. If a friend of mine made such a mistake, I would feel an obligation out of respect for them to make sure we’re on the same page. A possible character flaw of mine is also that I have trouble respecting people who feel wildly differently than I do about particular things. If you find enjoyment in pop music and don’t listen to anything else, I probably don’t respect you to the fullest extent I’d like to to feel comfortable calling you a friend (there are a few exceptions but these people have won my respect in other ways, not that my respect is something to strive for or anything but if we’re being real I obviously think it is). Lately I have been working on finding it INTERESTING rather than THREATENING when I have a different experience with something than someone else does. It’s still a work in progress. Like I’m at the stage where I still feel irritation bubbling up and I basically yell “HOW INTERESTING TELL ME MORE” at them. But the people who are in the closest circle of my friends (let’s say, on the toilet with me while I’m pooping) tend to feel the same way that I do about a lot of things. I’m not saying this is a good thing. But it is a thing.

Additionally, it, like, really pisses me off when someone mishears something and rather than figuring it out with contextual clues they decide to willingly be an idiot about it despite the fact that the rest of us are trying insanely hard to properly understand people all the time. And they always think it’s hilarious. You know the people I mean. The ones where when you say “How far is it to the restaurant?” and you have to repeat yourself they say “Oh my god I thought you said ‘Plow Mars innit? I’m feeling gaunt.’ And I was like, ‘HAHAHA WHAT?!'” Shut the fuck up, Susan. Respect the rest of us enough to use your goddamn brain for two extra seconds and figure out since we’re on the way to a restaurant that’s PROBABLY WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT.

Now for understanding. This one is going to be rough.

I have a deep, pervasive need to feel understood. I think we all do, although I’m not sure exactly how it manifests in anyone else so I’m just going to talk about what it’s like for me.

When I was a kid, words were constantly flying out of my mouth without permission and getting me in trouble before I even knew what had happened. I was either saying something rude and inappropriate that had somehow passed through the extremely weak, pre-9/11 TSA that is my mouth or the thing that I did mean to say somehow transformed into something completely different while it was being manufactured by my tongue and teeth. My cries of “But that’s not what I meant!” were always met with “You should think before you speak,” as if I had any control over the matter. The biggest emotion I feel when I look back is feeling deeply misunderstood.

I carry an immense fear of not being able to express myself because something in me wants to avoid ever feeling like I did back then ever again. To this day, my most frequent nightmare involves me being in some form of Locked In Syndrome where I can hear people and see them and I want to respond to them but I just can’t get the words out of my mouth.

When I’m talking, I try so hard to avoid expressing my thoughts incorrectly that I’ll often take such long pauses between words that people think I’m done talking and say “What?” Like I’ll be trying to express how I feel when I wake up and my immediate thought is that it feels like I’ve been hit by a truck but then I think like wait but I’ve never actually been hit by a truck so maybe that’s not how I feel and maybe the person I’m talking to’s sister just actually got hit by a truck and anyways maybe I shouldn’t complain about such a privileged thing at all it’s not like I’m sleeping on a sidewalk but I still want to explain why I’m grouchy right now. But all that’s come out of my mouth is “Sometimes when I wake up, I feel like…” followed by me staring off into the distance. So, no, of course it doesn’t make sense. I was in the middle of  a sentence. You have half of a thought. But that’s my fault, not yours.

I somehow got it into my head that if someone doesn’t understand me perfectly on the first try, they’ll never know who I am as a person. Like if they only hear me say “When I wake up it feels like I got hit by a truck” they won’t also know that I understand it’s not a horrible problem to have and that I understand other people have it worse and also that I don’t even know what it’s like to be hit by a car and that it’s important to me to be fair but also that I definitely am a bitch in the morning and am kind of okay with that. And if I can’t fit all of that into one, neat sentence, clearly I’m a failure.

Not only do I think I need to perfectly convey the entirety of my being in one thought in order to express myself honestly, I for some reason feel like if someone thinks I’ve said something that I think doesn’t align with who I am, that that must mean they know nothing about me. And that they’ve never known anything about me. And that no one really knows anything about me. And that no one will ever know anything about me. And that I’m 10 again and in the play Bye Bye Birdie and we’re doing the scene where his groupies sing and I’m one of the groupies and we’re singing “Oh Conrad we love you” except out of my mouth comes “Oh Conrad we hate you” in front of everyone’s parents and now everyone thinks I’m a troublemaker when really I probably just had the song that the non fan group sings in the next scene stuck in my head because I heard them do it, oh I don’t know, 100 fucking times during rehearsals.

So it’s crazy that this extremely simple to explain issue doesn’t already have a word for it, we feel.

We usually just call it “that issue” or “the contact issue.” If I were a better writer I’d have built up to that beautifully and talked about how it really is The Contact Issue because it has to do with HUMAN CONTACT!!! But I’m not cool enough to hide the fact that I was extremely excited by the convenient coincidence and it felt dishonest to pretend otherwise.

After going through all of this with you, though, I think it should actually be called something else. Because while it is a term that describes a certain (EXTREMELY SPECIFIC) misunderstanding, it’s really more about how the issue makes us feel than anything else.

It is my dream to find someone who knows exactly what I’m saying all the time on every single level and knows what I would or would not say. But I don’t even fucking know myself that well. I’m not going to stop being bothered by this and I’m going to still call it The Contact Problem because I love explaining it to people and seeing whose faces light up because they have felt it, too and we can all be in a nice cozy hotel room together. But I actually think it’s more of a Contact Fallacy. The fact that Duckers thought I had asked him to remove my contacts from my eyes probably had nothing to do with how well he knows me and everything to do with the fact that we were high and mostly paying attention to South Park. The idea that the misunderstanding means “I am not understood” is a fallacy. It’s not true. I am really hating every second of writing this paragraph because I want it so badly to be that I’m misunderstood and Duckers and I are special. But I’m trying to be a better person or something ugh.

I mean don’t get me wrong, we are special and I’m difficult to understand. But I want the point of The Contact Fallacy to be to remember to laugh at misunderstandings rather than to have an existential crisis over them. And I’m going to try to remember to prop the hotel door open on that safety latch thing. Except Susan can’t come in. Susan’s an idiot.

The Day I Broke My Own Heart Because I Didn’t Understand A Story About OJ

This is going to be uncomfortable – but not as uncomfortable as it probably is to be OJ. Or to be murdered by OJ. Or to be orange juice and suddenly hate your own nickname. 

Yesterday I broke up with my boyfriend of a year and change. Is it very early to write about this? Probably. Am I insane? Almost definitely. I have never written about anything like this for public eyes before (unless you count extremely cringeworthy Facebook statuses circa 2007). I think that may be because I’ve felt like my emotions were so out of control I didn’t have anything useful or interesting to say (even in the throes of desperate, soul vomiting heartbreak I’m able to recognize that “BUT WE WERE GOING TO DO SO MUCH TOGETHER” is not a new take on breakup sadness, and while I may be wrapped in a sad bed burrito as I write this, I would sooner sell my soul to multilevel marketing than let the world know that I’m a fucking cliche). But when you’re an artist and you tell people you’re sad, a scene often unfolds  in which they scream at you “USE IT IN YOUR ART!” as if suddenly possessed by the ghost of Bukowski.

So really this is just to shut you all up. I’m using it. Are you happy? I hope not. I’m not!

I won’t bore you with the details of the genesis of our relationship – the only interesting meet cutes I’ve had with people resulted in relationships that were so psychotic they’re worthy of an entire TSwift album. Sam Jackson in Pulp Fiction gives the only meetup explanation the world will ever need, so we met “however people meet people.”

Something of note, though, is that I was so tired of relationships not working out that we decided we’d try this thing where when we had issues, we made the decision to *drum roll please* WORK THROUGH IT! That this was even an option blew my fucking mind. And I’m certain it’s the reason we made it past a year. I know a year is nothing to some people, but I am not good at sustainability. Maybe it’s the Gemini in me (or the having parents with unresolved mental health issues and inheriting a hefty endowment of anxiety and insecurities myself), but I have a lot of trouble moving through uncomfortable periods. I convince myself this (whatever “this” is) is how it will always be and boy if that’s the case you’d better leave now because you don’t want to be one of those suckers who’s stuck in some 5 year miserable thing they can’t get out of.

That’s seriously where my mind goes immediately for most issues. And I really mean most issues. We saw The Phantom Thread in theaters together and he absolutely adored every aspect of it, whereas I was sitting there wondering how the fuck I was supposed to find an abusive relationship amusing (eventually I realized that I guess it doesn’t seem that abusive to anyone who has never had someone verbally abusive in their lives, but I could write an entire 20 page post on this issue alone so I’ll cut myself off here). Upon realizing our differing opinions on the film, I fell into a deep pit of despair. I lay in bed crying trying to explain to him that since he enjoyed something that made me so sad we couldn’t possibly ever be happy together. And then I wrote the most intense journal entry of all time (I mean literally intense; I wrote so hard the pen tore holes in the page), which included the sublime line “I feel so much rage inside me I want to throw something,” and then I went on a tangent about how my emotional attachment to my unpopular opinions causes more issues than it should, in which I produced the gem “I feel so utterly alone. Why can’t I be right that St. Vincent is less lyrically complex than she comes off? It has to be that she’s not trying to be lyrically complex? I can’t offer interesting insight or thoughts? I’m just a negative bitch?” Poignant.

So we don’t talk about Daniel Day Lewis anymore, which is convenient timing being that he just retired (thanks, Dan.). AND we talked it through. And continued to talk it through every single time an issue like this came up (and it came up a lot). We talked about how I’m an insecure aggressive bitch about my opinions and he can be a bit of a pretentious dick about his. And we worked on it.

This dedication to each other showed me a side of love I had truly never seen before. But the thing about working through issues together is that some issues are too personal to be a team effort. My issues with anxiety and insecurity have, in the past, been too unresolved personally to possibly be resolved in a relationship. There are things that can only be worked through with a lot of personal dedication and a lot of time. And I think my lovely dude is there with his shit. My shit is nowhere near resolved. I’m like a supersenior at the college of My Shit. But he’s a freshman at the college of His Shit; he’s dedicated, he’s going to class, he’s doing most of his homework, and he wants to make the honor roll.

The fact that he was actively working on his shit is one of the things that attracted me to him in the first place. So many people (like, most people) don’t even know what their shit is. I knew I was making a healthy choice for once by choosing to be with someone who actively works on self improvement.

Unfortunately, an extreme desire to graduate doesn’t mean you can take accelerated courses (Jesus I regret picking this analogy. I mean it was good for the introduction of the issue but it’s become really campy and I don’t like it. I’m going to abruptly drop it now). He just wasn’t where I needed him to be with his shit. And we were aware of this. We spoke about it openly and discussed that it would be a deal breaker eventually if it didn’t improve at a particular rate. But again, you can’t just dump 4 years of coursework on someone’s desk and expect them to graduate next week (fuck, sorry).

Yesterday, I woke up happier than I have in a really long time. Maybe you’re used to waking up and not hating the thought of life, but this is a big deal to me. I think I felt okay because for the first time in awhile I wasn’t worried about Us. Though we had questioned the state of our relationship a week prior, the past week had been really great. We were clicking, we got each other, we didn’t get petty or mad about stupid shit like St. Vincent’s lyrical prowess, we chilled and played video games. I was going to go to the gym in the morning but I decided it would be kind of nice to just chill and walk to brunch together which we never do because we’re poor. In fact we hadn’t really just walked anywhere together in months. We had a really nice walk, we enjoyed ourselves at brunch, I put half of my delicious croissanwich in a box to go, and we left to walk back to his place.

On the way he started telling me about the last episode of Sacha Baron Cohen’s (I had to google that, I have never once successfully said or typed this man’s name) show where I guess Sacha disguises himself and gets OJ talking about the murders. On a surface level, I got it. Of course that’s what you’d want OJ to talk about on your show where you trick people into showing their true colors. But I wasn’t quite getting the contextual details of how he got him to talk about it or if OJ knew that’s what he’d be talking about. For some reason, I have always struggled with this; I want to understand all of the nuances of what someone is telling me because I don’t know how to feel about it if I don’t understand all the angles or the full message and yet I don’t know how to convey this need to anyone in a way that gets me the answers I’m looking for.

So I had a complete meltdown on Melrose Avenue in which I cried and screamed “BUT WHY WOULD OJ TALK TO A STRANGER ABOUT MURDERING SOMEONE.”

It’s definitely a “trigger” for me. It frustrates me that I can’t seem to just accept the information that people give me and have a normal conversation. It frustrates me that no one else seems to care about or need context as much as I do. And it really frustrates me that I fail to express myself in these moments because I immediately start feeling like a freak about it, like I did when I was 10 and then I proceed to act like a fucking 10 year old. There are a handful of issues that will do this to me. While I’m pretty logical and self aware, I am also a very reactive and emotional person. I have extremely strong reactions to things as they’re happening and then I calm down super quickly and am able to talk about it. In one of Marc Maron’s specials he reflects on how he hasn’t gotten any better about yelling at people, he’s just shortened the time between the outburst and his apology to the point where it’s basically like “FUCK YOU! I’m sorry.” That’s where I’m at, and we’d gotten to a point where he would just let me have my tantrum and then be there to talk when I was done. I have never felt so loved than in those moments.

When we finally got to his place (it took awhile. I stopped to cry on a lot of corners), we began to pick through what happened. I told him about feeling like a freak and hating myself for having this issue, and then something happened that kind of changed everything. He told me that all those times I had those emotional reactions and screamed and cried, he was just pretending to be okay with it and it actually really hurt him.

I almost threw up. I had just told one of my good friends about how beautiful it was that I was with someone who could just let me do my thing and know it wasn’t about them.

But how could it not hurt someone? When it happens, I often think there’s no way I’d be with someone who talked to me that way. I don’t even remember the things I say in those moments because they’re said in such fits of rage and emotion. That’s a scary thought.

I’m going to have a real moment of honesty here. I started this post thinking I’d talk about how we realized he just wasn’t where he needed to be for a healthy relationship. And I think that’s true. But through writing this I’m realizing I’m not a supersenior at the College of My Shit. I’m a fucking Junior who already has Senioritis and is now phoning it in because they’ve made the honor roll all 5 semesters so far. I’ve been resting on the laurels of all of the work I’ve done on myself and I’ve stopped short of the juiciest bits. I’m not saying the goal is to be perfect and never explode at someone. I think people should be able to be the shittiest versions of themselves sometimes and have people in their lives who love them not just despite it but because of it. But if I’m being honest I’ve barely been trying since I got comfortable with our dynamic.

We sat in silence for awhile after he said this. Then I asked him what he was thinking and he talked about his own struggles. We were quiet for about another ten minutes, but my brain was screaming “breaking up is the right choice!” And eventually, I said it out loud. He said he agreed. I got up to pee because I’d been holding it since OJ. Then I packed up my stuff. We both ugly cried for about 20 seconds and I realized if I didn’t leave then I’d change my mind. So I walked out the door and LEFT MY FUCKING HALF CROISSANWICH. I MEAN COME THE FUCK ON. YOU TOOK THE TIME TO USE THE BATHROOM AND PICK YOUR UNDERWEAR OFF THE FLOOR. HOW MUCH TACKIER WOULD IT HAVE BEEN TO TAKE YOUR FOOD?

I cried the whole way to my car and kept stopping to look back, hoping he’d come after me. I don’t know what I was expecting. What was he going to do, walk out of his place in his boxers and say “No! Don’t go! We aren’t actually troubled individuals! Or even if we are, let’s just risk hurting each other in terrible and dramatic ways anyway!”

Actually that does sound nice right now, if I’m being honest.

I’ve never broken up with someone that I love. I have either had my heart broken or I let myself get sick of the person. I feel like I just broke my own heart. I listened to myself and I feel fucking terrible. I’m the worst friend ever.

If you happen to be reading this (I mean him specifically. Anyone who’s reading this is reading this and this message isn’t for just anyone) please accept my beat up, bleeding heart. It’s not a great gift, I know. I’m not even sure what you’re supposed to do with it, but I want you to have it. I guess you can have the half croissanwich, too. It probably tastes better.

How I Ended up Crying in a Vegas Strip Club

…and not for any of the reasons you might reasonably guess. In fact, go ahead and make 3 full guesses and let’s see if you’re right. I’ll give you points if you’re even in the same general ballpark.

How we got to Vegas:

It was under interesting circumstances that I went to Vegas, so it’s not wholly surprising that there was a drunken evening that ended in tears.

My boyfriend was about to move to another state and since he finally had free time we decided to take a trip. His dad lives in Vegas, so we figured that a short drive and not having to pay for a hotel made it a desirable as well as practical and financially responsible destination.

I had been trying so hard for so long to be super cool and understanding regarding the move that I began to realize I was harboring some anger. Being the neurotically zen person that I am, I decided that the best way to handle this would be to use the time in the car to discuss with him how I was feeling anger but I still understood and supported his choices and that I just wanted for my “anger” to feel heard (I am almost certainly rolling my eyes harder than you are. I’m actually surprised I can still type considering my pupils are actually pointed through the back of my head right now). He lovingly heard what I had to say and after about 2 minutes we moved on and spent the rest of the drive posting snapchat videos of us singing horribly to songs from the ’90s.

We got in at about 1 am, so we chatted briefly with his dad and then went to sleep.

How we ended up at The Spearmint Rhino:

I had only been to Vegas twice before: once when I was 9 and once when I moved to LA and we stopped at the Venetian to eat dinner before continuing on. Understandably, I wanted a true Vegas experience.

We slept fairly well Friday night (despite a real dick of a bird that woke me up on several occasions. Also, it’s occurred to me there aren’t really bird sounds in Los Angeles), so I woke up ready to go to the strip.

There were just a few things on my Vegas bucket list:

1. Smoke a cigarette while playing slots
2. Drink at a Vegas strip hotel bar
3. See some titty

We planned to be fairly conservative financially, but before leaving his dad gave us $300 and told us to have fun.

The night started out slowly with dinner and slots. I turned down offers to order drinks by the roaming waitresses in an attempt to still be economical, but was eventually informed that you get free drinks while gambling. By the time we found the Game of Thrones slot machine, we were probably 4 beers in each.

Also, freakin look at this thing:

Ok it was more daunting in person. A drunk person took the picture. It lacks perspective.

Derpy slot player:

Yes that’s a Wizard of Oz themed slot machine. We ended up putting a couple hundred into slots.

And thank god for that investment.

We took some time to briefly roam the bars of the various hotels and then got street cart beers to drink while watching the Bellagio fountain show (which, by the way, has turned into an interactive app game because nothing is sacred).

By this point I had stolen a rock from a display in one of the hotels and accidentally dropped things into the lake at the Bellagio, so we figured it was time to head to our final destination.

My boyfriend called his dad for a strip club recommendation. He said we would have quite the experience at The Spearmint Rhino, and we promptly got in a cab line. Most of this part is hazy to me, but I distinctly remember the man working the cab line saying to our driver “They’re going to The Rhino.”

At The Spearmint Rhino:

Before we start, let’s play another guessing game. If you can guess how we spent $165 in under 20 minutes at a strip club, I will give you $165.

When we got to the strip club, they said that cover was $50. I thought this meant for both of us, so I said, “Yeah, let’s do it!” As it turns out, they meant for each of us but I was too drunk to notice that he had handed them $100.

I really had to pee, so before festivities, I ran to the bathroom. They were in the middle of renovating so their temporary bathrooms were in these weird trailer style outhouses, but they still had restroom attendants. I remember having an extensive conversation with mine, but I do not recall what it was about. I paid her in the change I had left from playing slots. This took up about 5 minutes and actually brings the total amount spent to about $165.75.

Before scoping out the meat of the place, we went to the bar. We got two Bud Lights for $25.

I turned away from the bar and saw a sea of strippers. The ratio of stripper to civilian was approximately 20:1. This is drunk math, but I still feel like it must have been too many. I remember thinking there were so many butts that I had little interest in the butts. Rather than housing an atmosphere of “Oh my god, when are we going to see the butt? I want to see the butt!” it was like, “They’re all wearing the same thong. Do you think the employers provide them or do they have to get their own? And do they tell them to get the same one or is that in style? Is it frowned upon to wear a colorful thong? Anyways, let’s find the stage. Maybe they’re doing something interesting.” But this is neither here nor there. We can discuss the effects that the emergence of a culture of over stimulation have had on the social atmosphere and politics of strip clubs another time.

We waded through the throng of butts towards the stage. Immediately, a stripper came up to us and asked if I wanted a dance. I was interested but wanted more time to maybe watch the stage show first and possibly have a chance to actually select a stripper of my liking. About 5 minutes later, she came back and yelled “Buy her a dance!” I asked how much it was. She said $20. We agreed.

Here are the things I remember thinking during the lapdance:

-She smells like Victoria’s Secret.

-She looks kind of old.

-Wow those are fake.

-Is it weird if I seem too into it? I mean, this is just work for her.

-What do I do with my hands? Am I allowed to touch her?

-Will she be offended if I touch her?

-Will she be offended if I don’t touch her?

-Is it incredibly weird that I’m just slouched down with my palms up at my sides not moving?

-Does she think it’s weird?

-Am I making her uncomfortable?

-Am I the only one who is uncomfortable?

-Can she tell I’m uncomfortable?

-I wonder if it is less weird from where he is standing.

-I hope he is enjoying this because I am not in the moment at all.

The song eventually ended, as did the lapdance, and what followed was this conversation:

Stripper: Okay, that’ll be $20.

Arielle: (Turns to her boyfriend, who is nowhere to be seen) Oh, I don’t know where he went. Um…he’s probably just out having a smoke.

Stripper: Hm, well do you have money?

Arielle: No, but I’m sure he’ll be back in just a minute.

Stripper: Well I can’t really wait. Time is money for me.

Arielle: Okay, um…

Stripper: Come on, let’s go to the ATM.

She took my arm and walked me over to the ATM. I was too drunk to work it so she pressed all of the buttons, took the $20, and left.

At this point, my inebriation was rivaled only by my embarrassment. I frantically ran through the club looking for my boyfriend. I finally found him sitting at the bar, chatting casually with the bartender. I immediately started sobbing and screaming, “The dance was over and I didn’t have any money and I couldn’t find you and she made me walk to the ATM and I was so embarrassed. You left me with her. WHY WOULD YOU LEAVE ME?!” I repeated “Why would you leave me” approximately 10 times. It would seem that, sometimes, calmly telling a person that a part of you is angry with them doesn’t quite get the job done and that you’ll just end up screaming your feelings at the top of your lungs in the middle of a strip club in Vegas.

If you’re keeping track, our tally is still only at $145.75. As it turns out, my boyfriend had actually put a $20 on my arm and left for the bar after deciding it felt too creepy to watch us from the stairs. I never saw the $20, so we can only assume that this incredibly pushy stripper managed to snag the $20 before I noticed and hide it in whatever strippers keep their money in these days (a small satchel in the snatch? A snatchel? I seriously have no idea). She then double charged me by forcibly walking me to an ATM where, ultimately, she robbed me at nipple point. I have to respect her for managing to make a nice $40 for 2 minutes and 45 seconds worth of work.

Did I mention this all happened before 11:00 p.m.?

The aftermath:

Wisely, he promptly escorted me out of the club where we waited for a cab while I continued to cry and yell at him for laughing. My memory of the rest of the evening is foggy, but I recall talking to our uber driver about people who have been struck by lightning more than once. I also somehow managed between the club and home to find two people who had served in the armed forces and to thank them for their service, despite my complete lack of awareness of anything armed forces related when sober.

I also drunkenly tried to pick up a cat I had just met:

We somehow were able to sort of have sex, after which I immediately passed out (which I’m really annoyed about because I have a very firm stance on the fact that it’s bullshit when movies and shows depict people waking up naked as if they had sex and then just went into a coma. Like, get up and drink some water and brush your teeth. Have a light snack, even. Jesus. If you identify with these movie people who apparently don’t struggle with maintaining homeostasis after physical activity, I don’t get you and I don’t want to). I then woke up around 2 a.m. with a pounding headache and my contacts glued to my eyeballs. I woke him up to tell him it wasn’t fair that he got to sleep while I was miserable. I then asked him to help me find my pretzels which he said were in the car. I cried more and then sat on the floor naked eating a piece of bread.

I apologized immediately the following morning.

I digress.

I would like to have advice for you, but I don’t. I don’t want the message to be that there is sometimes no way around a fight in relationships, because I feel there must be. I just haven’t found it. Or maybe there isn’t. I have no fucking idea. Do you know?

But I will say that if you try too fucking hard to be cool and understanding about everything, you will definitely get robbed by a stripper in Vegas. Wait…or was it…