The Science of Like and Love

I dated my first real boyfriend on and off for four years.  I was twenty when we met, and it was the first time a guy had ever openly reciprocated my advances.  The feeling of validation that accompanies being told you're pretty for the first time is intoxicating.  I was his.  I loved him with all of my heart. I had nothing left for myself, but I thought it was okay, because he would return my love with his own. When he repeatedly broke up with me, I was empty.  When he came back, saying he was sorry and that he'd made a terrible mistake, I felt like a starving person being handed food.  I was addicted to him.  Wrapped around his finger, I would follow him anywhere.  Shortly after graduation, we moved across the country, where our relationship quickly deteriorated.  I was out of my element.  I had compromised too much of myself to make a failing relationship work, and within a year, I was back in Michigan, single, unemployed, living at my mom's house without a car, money, or worst of all, an identity.  I had attached my sense of self to my romance so completely that I had no idea how to be me without him.

The year that followed that break up was one of uphill struggles and personal growth.  It was one of the best years of my life, and yet it was one that I would not relive for all the money in the world.  I was a scared, lost, and broken thing, but my friends took me in, wrapped me in a blanket, and nursed me back to health.  I had found my way home.  

My second relationship was a well-meaning and doomed endeavor.  I met a guy about a year after my first breakup.  He was nice, and he was talented, and he was smart, and he loved me the way I had always wanted to feel loved.  I genuinely wanted to reciprocate his feelings, and when I told him that I did, I thought I meant it.  I really liked him, and I knew that I would be sad if anything bad happened to him.  I worried for him, because I knew that my feelings for him lacked passion.  How many times had I heard or read, though, that no love is like your first?  I chastised myself for having unrealistic expectations.  Maybe this feeling was what I was going to need to accept in order to find happiness.  No more butterflies, just an honest appreciation for someone you like.  But I was still bitter, and my walls were too high.  I was terrified of losing myself to love again.  Love is scary.  It means showing someone your weaknesses and hoping that they don't abuse you with them.  I tried to love him the way he deserved to be loved, but I just couldn't do it.  I finally had to end things, and I had to accept a hard truth.  I had been wrong in telling him that I loved him, and because of that, I had hurt him more than I should have.  I felt cruel, but I also felt free.

A buddy of mine ended things with his girlfriend within a few days of my breakup.  That summer, we formed a sort of lonely hearts club, and over the next few months, he went from being a longtime pal to one of my dearest and most valued friends.  Through our beach days, movie nights, long drives, and bonfires, I began to wonder how I had gone so many years without realizing what a cool, unique person he was. How had I never noticed how much we had in common?  How had I let this fantastic friendship idle on the sidelines of my life for so long?  And when did he get so good looking?  And then, suddenly, there they were.  The butterflies were back.  I was scared, but I was also so deeply relieved that I wasn't broken.  I tried not to act on them right away.  After all, this was unlike anything I had ever experienced in dealings with love.  I had something so much more important invested in this potential romance.  I had a friend.  I had never been friends with someone I had dated.  With each of my respective exes, I had met them, and within a month we were monogamous.  This was a whole different story.  This guy knew me.  He knew my exes.  He had been there through both of my past relationships.   It was pointless to try and hide my flaws or highlight and emphasize my qualities.  This person recognized me as nothing more or less than me, and he still wanted to be my friend.  When things eventually did tip toward romance, it was this realization, I think, that made me fall in love with him.

In my first relationship, I believed that loving someone was more important than liking them.  In my second, I thought liking was more important than loving.  I believed that liking someone was a stepping stone to love.  Once you loved them, you didn't like them anymore, because love was bigger.  I don't see it that way anymore.  To like someone and to love them are two separate things, and in a healthy partnership, you should feel both.  Maybe you won't feel it every day, but working at each individually is what keeps you going when one slips a little.  In a lifetime with another person, you're likely to go through patches where you don't like them all that much.  If you still love them, though, you're not just going to throw in the towel.  Likewise, you may hit a dry spell, when you don't feel the passion or spark that once was there, but if you like that person, if they're still your friend, then you have a reason to hold on and work it through.

I'm not naive enough to believe that this realization portends a lifetime of unsullied happiness for me, but I am positive that it has laid the groundwork for the healthiest relationship I've had in my life.  I am, in equal parts, in like and in love, and I've even kept enough for myself this time.  And that, I think, is about the best I can ask for.

Broken Feather Stories

In a far and distant land called Colorado, there walked a man named Broken Feather.  Broken Feather was a great cavalry scout.  Probably the greatest cavalry scout who ever lived.  He had a dog named Peto and a cat named Hairy and a duck named Bill and a bear named Bear, and he had two good friends named Ol' Sweet Tooth and Ol' Sour Dough.  Oh, and let's not forget about Straight Arrow, but he was usually lost.  He had two gorgeous daughters named Princess Yellow Hair and Princess Morning Star, and a beautiful wife named Running Deer.  There were also his dragon friends who lived up in the mountains, George Burns and his wife Imelda (who had 3,000 feet) and their son Scorch.  There were the mushroom people and the magic pony... and that pretty much covers it.  So anyway...

This is how story time started in my house growing up.  As kids, the best way to get my sister and I to cooperate at bedtime was with the promise of a Broken Feather Story.  We would rush off to our bedroom and await the sound of my dad's heavy steps on the staircase.  Sometimes, he would start the intro on his way up, and after years of recitation, he could say it in about 20 seconds (or, at times, we got the abridged intro, "In a far and distant land called Colorado, etc. etc. etc.")

Through the art of storytelling, my dad took us on countless adventures.  Once, Princess Morning Star ran away and joined the circus because she didn't want to eat what her mother had made for dinner, but after two weeks of shoveling elephant droppings, she was disillusioned with her new career and wanted to go home.  When the owner of the traveling show would not let her leave, it came down to the magic pony to fly in and save her, with the help of Scorch and his fiery brand of persuasion.  Another time, Straight Arrow got so lost, he wasn't seen for a month, and when they finally found him, he was in the woods behind Broken Feather's house (which was blocked by a few trees and a bush), living in a lean-to and surviving on berries.  After that, he didn't go much of anywhere without a map.

My dad always told us that he met Broken Feather in the army, and of course, we believed him, because he said it so matter-of-factly and parents always and only tell the truth, and since dragons were real if he said they were, they must just live in the Rocky Mountains, where we hadn't been, so that explained why we'd never seen one.  Also, his comically dated pop culture references soared straight over our heads.  Even as we got older, I remember laying in bed, discussing the possibility that they were komodo dragons, and that the stories hadn't been pure fiction so much as embellishment.

The truth is that, to this day, if you told me there was record of an actual man named Broken Feather who lived in Colorado and was in the same infantry as my dad, I would probably fall straight back into believing every word of his tales (including the dragons.  I'm an easy sell).  I long to know what Broken Feather is up to now, and whether his girls, now adults, are still in Colorado, or if Princess Morning Star achieved her dreams of stardom and whether Princess Yellow Hair became the marine biologist she longed to be.  (Or perhaps they're both still working toward finding themselves and their dreams. Princess Morning Star doing theatre when she can through a small production company comprised mostly of her closest friends, while perhaps Princess Yellow Hair is...oh, I don't know, living on a sailboat somewhere warm and sunny, playing her guitar and making it by.)  Whose to say?

The power of storytelling is incredible.  I attribute so much of my creativity and imagination to my dad.  Someday, when I have kids of my own, I will tell them about Broken Feather, and how he was a man they'd have been blessed to know.  And in telling his stories to them, hopefully they'll feel like they do know him, just as I did.  I may not know what he's up to now, but his stories live forever in my memory and in my heart.

Broken Feather was a great cavalry scout.  He was also a great father.  Probably the greatest father who ever lived.

New Things!

I often harbor the notion that my life is boring and uneventful now that I'm out of college, but looking back at the past few months, I'm realizing that I actually do interesting things sometimes.

Or it could just be because October is the most important month, full of the best things.  Whatever the explanation, I've had a really fun fall.

I kicked off autumn by sharing in the wedding day of two of my closest friends, Emily and Chuck.

The day could not have been more beautiful.  Blue skies, 65 degrees, a gorgeous outdoor venue, and my family of friends, all together, celebrating the happiness of two of its valued members.

Aside from the wedding, the obvious highlight of any fall is Halloween.  This year, my boyfriend Max and I were on a mission from God.

No, I did not get my four fried chickens ...or my Coke.  But we did take home the award for Best Couples Costume.  It was quite the honor, because we were up against some heavy competition.  Mike Nelson and Tom Servo of MST3K fame, Mia Wallace and Vincent Vega from Pulp Fiction, and Clark Kent and Lois Lane (with a mid-evening costume change into Superman to save a captive Lois), to name a few.  Ahh theater kids.  You gotta raise your standards to keep up around this crew.

Although he staunchly disagrees with me on whether Halloween is the best holiday (which is dumb, because it is.  Obviously.) Max took a break from marching in his one man Christmas Pride Parade to celebrate my favorite holiday with me.  On the actual day, he surprised me after work with pumpkins, a carving kit, an offer of jammies aaaaand The Nightmare Before... *ahem* ....Christmas.  It was a drizzly, cold, rainy night, but it was pretty perfect from where I was standing.

Apart from Halloween activities, we also had a fun-filled day at the orchard wine tasting, eating our body weight in donuts, and getting lost in the corn maze for roughly 20 years.  I was in good company, though, so I didn't mind at all.

Another highlight of October was our trip to see one of my best friends from college, Arielle, who is in her last semester of grad school.  She was performing in her thesis show, which just happened to be one of my very favorite comedies, Noises Off!  I drove down to Western Illinois with Molly, Max, and our other college friend Darion.  It was so great to spend time with some of my dearest friends that I rarely get the opportunity to see anymore, and it was an added bonus, getting to watch Arielle perform.  She is so talented, and I can't wait to see where she goes now that she's almost done with her schooling.  I look forward to saying, "I knew her when..."

Midway through October, I got to stretch my acting muscles again as well, as we started working on the University Wits' fall show.  It was an original piece by my best friend Molly's husband Kyle, called Shadows at the Sanford.  We stepped back in time to Grand Rapids just before the turn of the last century and told a heartfelt story of love that knows no boundaries.  I was proud of my friend for all of his hard work, both writing and directing... plus, I just really liked my costume.

The cast of Shadows at the Sanford

Looking back on my very eventful fall, I have to admit that I'm both lucky and blessed to not only have such fun and exciting opportunities, but also to have such wonderful people with whom to share them.  Hopefully this winter will turn out to be half as good as autumn has been.

Here For Now

So, I'm trying this new approach to life lately, wherein I don't think too hard about things that make me happy; I just let them do what they're doing.  As a lifelong, chronic over-thinker, this has not been a simple matter of flipping a switch in my brain to the 'off' position.  In fact, I am constantly struggling against my natural tendency to psychoanalyze my every choice and action.  I realized something a while back, though.  I have self-sabotaged a large number of seemingly happy experiences in my life by breaking them to see how they worked.  I would spend the whole time wondering what it all meant, so consumed by a hypothetical outcome that ultimately, all I would do was forgot to enjoy what was good about the present.

And the thing is, when I finally started making a concerted effort to just enjoy the here and now, I started realizing that things are pretty great right here, right now.  In fact, I'm the happiest I've been in a long time.  Yes, I am 26 years old, and I don't have anything close to a ten year plan.  I'd be lying if I said I have a solid six month plan.  All I know is that today, I am glad that my life is where it is.

So here's a list of stuff that makes me happy:

1. Mexican food.

2. Fall.

3. Muppets (except for the ones with heavy eyebrows and beaks, because they freak me out).

4. Brand new stationary and a really good pen.

5. This picture of a manatee chasing an ice cream cone.

6. Dresses.

7. THIS THING BECAUSE OH MY GOD.

It's called a quokka.  I KNOW.

8. Halloween is just over a month away!

9. New pajamas.

10. This song.

Perception

1.

I have had a terrible month.  I have been sick for most of it.  And not just a little bit sick.  Multiple trips to the doctor sick.  I have spent the majority of my time off either quarantined in my room or just in there because I didn't feel good enough to do anything else.  

I was transferred very suddenly (two days notice) at work to a different salon in the Grand Rapids area.  Longer commute.  Lateral transfer.

My car pulls to the right when I let go of the steering wheel.  I don't know why.  I've been ignoring it because I don't want to find out that it's expensive.

My roommate(s are/)is moving to Texas in October.  I'm envious of her adventurous spirit, and I am going to miss the crap out of her.  I don't want to find a new roommate.  I hate most people.

I let the dishes pile up on my turn again...

2.

I have had a fantastic month.  I've lost weight because I'm never hungry from being sick so much, but hey, get it where you can.  Also, being sick introduced me to both New Girl, which successfully pushed Zooey "tandem bike-riding, ukulele-playing, manic-pixie-dream-girl" Deschanel off my shit-list and back onto my tolerable in the correct context list, and The League, which made me kind of wish I understood football a little bit better, but not enough to even Wikipedia it, because mostly I'm too busy thinking about how big my crush on Mark Duplass and Jon Lajoie is.

I needed a change.  I was starting to stagnate, and it was driving me nuts.  My job went through a sudden and unexpected upheaval, and it was jarring, to be sure, but I feel like I'm making progress again.  I think I'm on a better track toward finding what's right for me.  And now that I'm moving, it's easier to keep that momentum up.

My left arm is getting really strong from holding my steering wheel a little left of center all the time.

More change is on the horizon, but I have a feeling that if I just remember to lean into it, things will work themselves out.  I do envy Rachel and Ryan and their new search for fulfillment, because I will miss them, but that said, they are inspiring me to find my own enrichment.

And it's all around.  It's just in the way I look at it.

Recap!

Rather than try to remember every important thing that happened to me in the past year, I'm just going to do a picture show.  In order to truly experience this, though, I think it's best to make it a montage.  So please listen to this while you scroll.

"Slung-Lo" by Erin McKeown

Here we go!

I smoked cigars.  Like a lady.

I took family photos at 1AM after Foxy Shazam concerts....like a lady.

I slept sometimes.

But not...often.

People got married!

Batman happened.

I almost got eaten by this shark.

But I lived to sing another song.

I held this baby, and I didn't drop him once.

I was in a play for the first time in almost two years.

I FINALLY got my tattoo!

I went to see Rocky Horror again.

I found friends to play with me forever and ever.

This pin-up girl bachelorette party happened!

This guy got older.

I accidentally dressed up like Where's Waldo on a regular day.

I directed a show, and I was really proud of it.

Monty had a rough start to the year.

Cancer's a bitch, but he pulled through like a champ.

Though now he sits like this sometimes...

But enough about my stumpy cat, I was also in this play.

I went on a spontaneous adventure.  (This is pretty much all of it.  It was great.)

I made this face.

And this face.

And also this face.

It's cool.  This guy gets it.

I got inked yet again.

I read a really good book...

...and MacGuyvered this toilet.

And through it all, I had these people at my side.  And I'm pretty happy about it.

Let's do this.

10 months.  9 days.  4 1/2 hours.  But I'm back.  And this time, I'm going to do my damndest to stick with it.  Because goals.  No apologies.  No regrets.  No promises.  Just goals.

Here are five things that I know:

1.  I like who I am today more than I did the last time I wrote an entry on this blog.  I'm not perfect.  I don't have things entirely sorted out.  But I've improved.  And I'm still improving.

2.  Sometimes, when something is so good it feels like there's no way it could last forever, that's because it's not supposed to.  A life well lived is in a constant state of flux.  Change is essential, and good memories are the true testament to success.  Let life live.

3.  Cheese is still delicious.  That is not a thing that will change.

4.  Sometimes, people prove that the world isn't a lost cause.  It's imperative to look for those moments and focus on them with all your might when you come across them.  Fill yourself with them, and you will be quenched when you suffer through a positivity drought later on.

5.  It's important to do at least one thing every single day that you feel passionate about.  That thing could be painting.  It could be writing a blog entry.  It could be as simple and seemingly meaningless as singing a song in the car that makes you feel better after a long day (mine is "Me & Julio Down By The School Yard").  It could be texting a friend to say hello.  It could just be the perfectly exquisite moment when you take your socks off at the end of the day.  Just as long as you acknowledge it.

I found my quote book on my bookshelf the other day.  For most of high school and college I carried around an increasingly battered composition notebook, which I filled with sayings and phrases I either heard or read.  Some of them don't speak to me the way they did when I penciled them in, but that's okay.  They spoke to me then.  But some of them still ring true.  I'll end this with a few of my favorites.

"Every person is just one, 'Oh, what the hell; why not?' away from a great adventure."  - Ryan McKernan

"There isn't enough time to do nothing!"  - Nate Higginson

"Who needs exercise when you can just laugh?"  - Rebekah Hudson

"Death's a comin' for ya, girl!  You've gotta grab life by the ass and cherish it!"  - Josh Fish