Tag Archives: Humor

A Wedding-Phobic’s Guide to Weddings

September 27, 2016 By in Humour Tags: , , , , , , Leave a comment
A Wedding-Phobic’s Guide to Weddings

So in case you haven’t heard (which would be tough, because we’ve been all up in your social media faces about it) at the end of May the boyfriend and I got engaged. Which, thanks to the kindness of our friends, made for a bunch of congratulatory texts, calls and emails, making us feel incredibly lucky as well as very smug and accomplished for no reason.

Yet, all this love and support heading my way came with very specific undertones of “Wait WHATTTTTT?!” and, “Whoa…I can’t believe you said yes.”

And this is not because I don’t entirely dig my boyfriend. I’ve been calling my life partner since that first time he oh-so gently and romantically prevented me from diving into a dark lake while high on mushrooms.

He is the best of dudes and patiently accepts me in all of my crazy, and I in turn accept him in all of the conversations about how annoying his hair is today.

But marriage? Nah, it was never really for me.

Call it an extension of my overall paralyzing fear of routine, being the center of attention AND titles, but I had always just envisioned a very casual spending of life together. In my version of our future, we’d just wake up one day, roll over, be like, “Ok so we’re in this for good?” Seal in with a high-five and go back to sleep.

But then I went and fell in love with Daniel friggin’ Lynch.

Dan is the only guy you will ever meet who when told, “Actually, you know what, I don’t particularly need a $10,000 ring or $70,000 wedding” didn’t immediately stand up and start spinning about in a slow motion twirl to the song What a Wonderful World.

Nope. Instead he said, “Aww really, but why not?”

But hey, I’ll give it to him: – for a chick who prides herself of being pretty self-aware, I don’t actually know myself THAT well.

Fact is, when it comes down to it, this whole engagement thing hasn’t sucked.

Everything I thought would be the worst, most self-induced torturous experiences in this whole wedding planning thing have been some of the most fun.

And because it’s been a whopping 4 months and I’m basically a wedding expert now (kidding, I’m always about 30 seconds away from passing out from the pressure of it all), here I present you with Emma Gillies’ Wedding Planning Pros and Cons.

PRO: You get to do whatever you want.

CON: People don’t like that.

Here’s what I learned REAL quick. If you step even a little outside the carefully mapped-out, “Everyone’s Guide to Weddings” people assume you’re going to have a gothic themed day, sacrifice baby lambs as an appetizer, then rock out some vows and seal your marriage with the tears of orphaned children.

When all this engagement stuff went down and we decided to actually do this, my one stipulation was that we did it our way **AKA my way** AKA an informally structured night heavy on the booze and light on all the other mumbo-jumbo.

When people heard that however, suddenly I started getting questions like, “Are you wearing a dress?” and, “What colour will you be wearing” and,“Will there be keg stands and red solo cups?” and, “Is the venue someone’s garage?”

As if just by the very nature of trying to go a little off-script we were essentially lighting the entire wedding industry on fire and cackling evilly as it burned at our non-conformist feet.

We might as well have been planning to make our wedding a giant middle finger to all the other weddings that came before. I would wear a black pantsuit; we would release doves and then tenderly shoot them and their accompanying symbolism from the air with BB guns. Stare at the aghast, horrified faces of our friends and family and scream “Welcome to our celebration of love bitches!!”

Just a little FYI: no animals will be harmed in the making of our wedding, I’ll probably wear white, it will be in dress form, keg stands are a no but I assume at some point there will be a pink flamingo beer-funnel, and the only thing we plan on sacrificing is a tiny bit of everyone’s soul and pride via an 8-hour open bar.

PRO: You get to have a vision.

CON: You have to have a vision.

Related to the point above, a ton of wedding decision making depends on people have some predetermined “vision” of their perfect day that they would like to see come to fruition.

I had no such vision, and Dan even less so. The first time someone asked us (our photographer) I froze and panicked knowing she wanted to hear something like “city rustic” or “hipster glam” and all I could come up with is, “Uhhh… a party for our friends that we happen to get married at?”

This will of course be little help to me when it comes to trying to figure out what shade of peony looks best against a brick background. Regardless, it stuck. Now we go forth making all decisions based on a carefully balanced scale of “Will this increase or decrease the amount of fun had?”

PRO: You get to try on fancy dresses.

CON: None; go do this now.

I had assumed wedding dress shopping would leave me lying in the fetal position delicately clutching a pile and lace and tulle, regretting every carb ever consumed and swearing off the colour white for the rest of time.

However, what I failed to comprehend is that weddings- and especially women’s dresses- are a carefully contrived, booming fucking mega-industry and that all these dresses are manufactured specifically to make women feel like goddamn beautiful angels.

I might as well have been dressed by singing Disney forest animals who draped me in combinations of white lace and silk blessed by Tibetan monks for now nice everything looked. We’re talking about ALL the things being nipped and tucked into the right places.

It’s bonkers, and a ton of fun.

I highly recommend it to anyone, regardless of current relationship status. Having a bad Tuesday? Try on a wedding dress. Getting over a head cold? Pretty dresses are the cure. Didn’t like your latte this morning? Satin and Chiffon will help.

PRO: Pinterest is basically the answer to everything.

CON: I actually just typed the above sentence.

I don’t actually know how the world operated before Google. And I definitely don’t know how people planned parties before other way more talented people planned parties and posted pictures of them for you to completely rip-off.

Here are types of things I’ve Googled since May.

  1. How do you make a mason jar look rustic?
  2. How do you make a tablecloth look rustic?
  3. How do you make a future husband look rustic?
  4. How do you host a barn wedding but like, in downtown Toronto?
  5. Are sumo wrestler suits an appropriate wedding activity?
  6. What wedding dress styles make your arms look skinny?
  7. What engagement photo poses make your arms look skinny?
  8. Should I just workout my arms once and awhile?
  9. Is it possible to have a bridal shower that doesn’t make people want to die a slow death?
  10. Are there wedding DJ’s that aren’t overall terrible human beings?
  11. Quotes about love and Whiskey
  12. What are the best kind of whiskey shots?
  13. What do you do if your boyfriend loves whiskey more than he loves you?

PRO: People expect you to use the word fiancée.

CON: This is an awful word that makes even the best of people sound like idiots. Let’s eradicate it from the human language.

I feel like this word was designed simply to set people in relationships apart from other people in relationships. What a strange, nonsensical divide.

There is no way of pronouncing this word that doesn’t make you sound like an asshole.

Please stop it now.

PRO: People will suddenly become very interested in that one part of your life and ask you a ton of questions about it.

CON: If you’re anything like me, you won’t have an answer to a single one of them.

Life is so weird man. Sometimes I think that if I laid all my pivotal life decision down like a series of dots every single one has been immediately followed by people asking, “Ok but what’s next?”

There’s no stopping it.

When you’re single everyone asks when you’re going to settle down. Find a partner and it’s when’s the engagement? The wedding? The babies?

Figure out one thing, what’s the next thing? You’re ok now, but you could be better and further along and more more MORE!.

When we got engaged I naively thought, “Boo yah! No one saw this coming, this will quiet down the masses for a second.” But then immediately it was “Have you booked a venue? When are you trying on dresses? WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU DON’T WANT AN ENGAGEMENT RING?”

Instead of taking a breath and just asking each other how life is right at this very moment, we’re all stuck chasing a future that for no reason is always deemed brighter and shinier and better than the present.

Everyone thinks I’m wholly naïve to think that I can bang out 90% of this wedding in the three months immediately preceding it, but here’s my rationale:

The hard part is over.

I found him.

We don’t all fight and cry our way through the relationships in our 20s in the pursuit of one day, or one party.

We do it so we can grow into someone worth spending life with. And then we go out and try to find someone worth spending life with.

It’s all so that one day someone will look at us and be like, “Hey, I like hanging out with you, would you like to hang out forever?”

The flowers and the dress and all those thousands of other small decisions will come. But I don’t want to spend so much time making those decisions that I miss the next year buried in piles of font and twine choices.

I’ll probably have a month’s worth of sleepless nights over appropriate tablecloth shades and string light bulb wattage. But 30 days is better than 365.

So maybe I’m inexperienced, and yes, maybe a little out of my league with all this planning but I do know this: When it’s all over, all I’ll remember is the people in the room and the person standing beside me.

Which brings me to the ultimate PRO: It’s your one excuse to get all the people you adore most in one space for one giant, ridiculous, intoxicated night of fun and horrendous dance moves. That’s what sold me on this whole wedding thing.

Plus, it’s life after the party that I’m pretty pumped for.

 

E.

These are the Hopes I Have for My Friends

October 2, 2015 By in Life Tags: , , , , , , 2 Comments
These are the Hopes I Have for My Friends

I wouldn’t call myself introverted by any means, but I do enjoy a good reflection on life. And yes, sometimes these points of reflection involve a juicer and a four-hour cry, and sometimes they involve feeling down and out and devoid of all the good energy. We all have those moments. They suck, you live them, and then you move on.

But more often than those days, there are days like today, where I sit and think about everything I am lucky to have. I am fortunate that I definitely have more good days than bad, and am surrounded by some of the most fantastic humans to occupy this little earth of ours.

I’m not sure of many things, but this I know: I have the most beautiful friends. They are the most loyal, weirdest, laugh-until-I-spit-out-my-food-at-a-Sunday-brunch friends. They are the most spirited, driven, ambitious, gracious and humble friends. They are the sassiest friends; some of the most back-away-slowly-because-they’ve-gone-temporarily-insane friends.

For these friends, who can change my day with just a wink and a hair flick, who talk me off of every ledge and who listen (I mean REALLY listen) to all my ridiculous rants, this is the life I wish for you.

To the women in my life:

Fuck I adore all of you. I grew up a tomboy, thinking I would never have anything in common with females.

Dear God how you have proven me wrong.

You have proven women can be offside, and fall-off-my chair hilarious. Each of you gives me something to aspire to. I am in awe of all of you constantly; you are bundles of ferocity and positive energy. You have shown me that we don’t need people to pick us up and dust us off in our darkest moments; we are more than capable of doing that ourselves. But you’ve still picked me up, time and time again and for that I am forever grateful.

For you, you vibrant, feisty, vivacious little specimens, I hope so much.

I hope as you grow up, you continue to be protectors and supporters of other women, as you’ve taught me to be. I hope you continue to compliment other women without comparing yourselves to them. I hope you don’t pick yourself apart, say your fat when you’re not fat, or push and prod at your skin. Because at some point all of our asses will jiggle, all our arms will develop those weird little flappy skin wings, so we should probably just accept our fate, laugh, high five each other and let those little wings fly.

And know that when you call yourself fat, I’ll be there to support you in the mature, poignant way I always do: By saying, “Oh my god stop it, you’re SO skinny, I’m the fat one.” (Just kidding… we’re both hot).

I hope you understand and absorb every ounce of your own worth, and only let it be dictated by the strength of your own character. And never NEVER let this worth be shaped by some barely-good looking tool who decides to not text you back.

Let’s be honest, even you know he’s and idiot with a small dick. You deserve to be looked at with admiration and respect by someone with a bigger personality and a substantially larger penis.

…Also, he probably has mommy issues. Ok, I’m done.

I hope you never have to know the hurt of a disloyal friend.

I hope you continue to actually eat pizza and not just pose with it on Instagram like all those idiots we hate.

I hope you know you are never ever alone, not for one minute.

I hope you know that you are enough, and never stand for anyone who makes you feel like less than that.

If you’re one of the single ones, I hope you always let me live vicariously thorough your ever-changing, tumultuous, fun life because after living with someone for two years sometimes I just need to hear about that first date that ended at 6am.

I hope you only surround yourself by people who make you feel good about yourself. I hope that much like you’d cut away a significant other who made you feel bad, you trim your friendships down to those people who lift you up rather than dampen your spirits.

I hope if you want to have kids, you have a whole barrel of them. And if you don’t want to have kids, I hope no one ever makes you feel guilty for it. Growing up comes with an understanding that most of the time, just having the balls to make a decision is the hardest thing. Your choices are just that: yours; no one else has to live with them. So surround yourself with people who support your choices without judgement, regardless of whether they agree with them or not.

I hope for just one moment you let me tell you what a radiant beacon you are instead of laughing and shrugging it off. It’s too easy to cast aside the compliments and concentrate on the criticisms. Hear the compliments you stubborn little fool.

For those of my female friends in relationships, I hope you fight and battle your way to absolute bliss, and never ever settle for a relationship that is, “just OK” or “fine. I hope you stay, not because it’s comfortable or convenient or because, “Well, we’ve just been together so long.”

No, if you stay, I hope it’s because the person you’re with is YOUR FUCKING PERSON and you just can’t picture life without them. You don’t have to spend your life making excuses for why someone is acting like an asshole but is actually really great. You are a partner, not a mother, and definitely not a martyr. Please don’t dull yourself to let someone else shine.

You are vibrant, you are a force; you are God’s fucking gift to men so shine on.

To all my friends of the male persuasion:

If you’ve even managed to read this far, (I assume most of you hopped off board somewhere around “small dick”) I know you think it’s easy for women to get all ranty and anti-male in their trials and tribulations. But long before I understood the value of female friendships, my life was surrounded by men. I was, “One of the dudes” not so much by choice but by overall terrible haircut, glasses, and 11-year awkward phase. No one wanted to put their mouth on this mouth, so I became the friend.

You guys don’t have it easy either, and I imagine that’s not going to change as we get older. Sure I think I have some of the most ridiculously attractive and intelligent female friends, but for every one of them there is about 72 Toronto chicks who I would qualify as ABSOLUTELY FUCKING INSANE.

This city is full of women who ask what you do for a living before they even ask your name; women who want to be taken care of because they never learned to take care of themselves; women with horrific insecurities that you end up having to carry and placate; women who view other women as competition rather than comrades.

These are not my women, but they do exist in hoards.

… You know, those high maintenance, fake tittied club rats you all seem to fall victim to.

The men I consider friends are some of the most absurdly handsome, dependable, hardworking, passionate, hopeless dreamers. They are men who I see as having such bottomless potential to be relentlessly successful in their careers and personal life.

You guys are who I go to when I need a male perspective, or just someone to tell me to get outside my own head a little. Because sometimes everything doesn’t need to be talked to death; sometimes I don’t need the in-depth study of females, or to map out a SWOT analysis for every problem. Sometimes I just need to drink too much and hear one too many testicle story.

For you guys, I hope you eventually find one of the normal ones. The girl who makes you feel secure and valued rather than jealous and taken advantage of. I hope all your hard work and charisma pays off and you are eternally successful so I can continue to let you pay for drinks without feeling guilty (It’s OK if I do it because you know I’m sticking around for life and also pay you back in wing-man capabilities).

I hope you realize that although being a man comes with certain expectations – to be strong, to provide, to win at all costs- that you will inevitably fail. And I hope you know that that these moments of weakness are as unavoidable and important as the moments of strength. Sometimes you’ll need the picking up and I hope you know that this is OK.

I promise that when you fail, I’ll be there to pick you up and once again, let you buy me a drink.

I hope you never lose your sense of humor, because there’s something about a 50-year-old man who still finds the word “balls” funny that’s really quite endearing.

Oh and obviously I hope you a never-ending stream of good, consistent sex because isn’t that the most important thing after all?

And mostly, for all of you: The new friends, the old, the ones I’ve lost touch with and the ones I had falling outs with. Thank you. Thank you for being the people I can rely on, for being the humans I disrupt people sitting next to us by laughing loudly with, who listen and care and don’t check their phone when I’m speaking to them.

Next to my family I have been molded most by you. I trust and love and fight and mourn the way I do because of all of you, and for that I will always be thankful.

I hold all of you in such high regard. You are MY FUCKING HUMANS.

Thanks for hanging in there with me you beauts, I promise to do the same.

Love Always,

E.

Love lessons you won’t find on an Inspirational Quote of the Day website

July 2, 2015 By in Life Tags: , , , , , , Leave a comment
Love lessons you won’t find on an Inspirational Quote of the Day website

I spent a couple of Sunday’s ago at one of my high school girlfriend’s wedding showers. And although wedding showers usually make me want to get day drunk and give an offiside speech to all the grandmothers about how the bride lost her virginity just to liven things up, the time other women spent making miniature wedding cakes out of Playdough did allow me to reflect on this period of our lives.

Three of my good friends are getting married this year, but they’re all these bizarre species of female who have been in relationship with their fiancés for 7+ years. I treat them like strange little aliens they are.

For the rest of us who find ourselves in stable relationships however, it comes from years of navigating the highs and lows of love, joy, chaos, destruction and heartbreak. For those of us who didn’t find our life partner at 15, we have spent the bulk of the last decade dating, falling in love, falling out of love and watching our partners fall in and out of love with us.

So I sat there, looking at these girls I’ve known for 17 years, reflecting on what it is about us now. What it is about these guys, this moment, and this time that has us all functioning in relationships where others have failed.

It would be too simplistic to reduce it to just the two people in the relationship. We are a product of so much more than just a He + She equation.

It’s more like: He + She + Environment + Age + Timing + Friends + Current Ed Sheeran song playing.

I may not be some 80-year-old woman full of sage wisdom with an entire lifetime of experience under my belt. But in my handful of experience, here is what I have learned about love:

 

  1. Love is NOT all you need

We get it Lennon, you were a damn talented man, but you were also so wholly full of shit. I’m sure when hopped up on acid and hallucinating cartoon submarines all of the world’s negativity really did melt away from you. I’m sure in those moments it did seem like life is easy and humans are intrinsically good and as long as you love one another everything is going to be OK.

But I’ve been in love with people, and been lucky enough that most of those people have loved me back. I’ve watched my friends be in love and watched other people love them.

And I’ve watched it all fall apart.

And yes, sometimes life does operate in black and white and you get to reduce this falling apart to one person just really fucking up. But most of the time relationships function in the many shades of grey; we don’t live in an easily polarized world of Hero vs. Villain, Prince vs. Witch, Princess vs. Jackass.

Because most of the time you love the hell out of one another and still have it not work out. Life would be a lot easier if we could just draw out a map or list of where it all went wrong. But perhaps one of the most poignant and adult conclusions you sometimes have to come to is, Just because nothing is wrong, doesn’t make it right.

At the end of the day, the Beatles can say what they want but it’s not all about love. You have to be able to communicate; you have to like each others families. You have to coexist in each others worlds and friendships. You have to be able to battle and scream and fight and then move on without building resentments or holding onto old grudges.

You have to like the way someone chews their food, the way they act when their drunk, the way they travel and they way they behave when nothing is going their way. You have to learn to like each other even when you hate each other.

It may not make for the same catchy love song lyrics, but in this many shades of grey world we live in, love is but one essential factor in a successful relationship.

 

 

  1. You have no idea how you fall in love I assure you, so don’t limit yourself

Very early on in my life I had this idea of how I fell in love. I mean, I only had a few instances on which to build my opinion but it had always happened in this real storybook ideal way:

Girl meets boy; girl is instantly attracted; girl pines; boy shows interest; girl pretends she never actually liked him in the first place; boy says screw it and starts to pull away; girl panics and draws that poor sap in at the last second.

…You know, a real goddamn Cinderella story.

But it turns out; I didn’t really know myself that well at all.

We spend so long and expend so much effort in trying to know ourselves. We start to see patterns in our own behavior and create lists of what we like and don’t like, characteristics in others we value versus those we could do without.

And then we start judging compatibility based on the presence or absence of these traits.

The problem is, when we do this it becomes very easy to reject or dismiss people because we can’t fit them into our preconceived patterns. We develop rules and limitations for ourselves – we will never date someone younger, someone shorter, or someone who works in finance; we will never meet someone in a bar. We will never date one of our friends, or even a friend of a friend. We hold onto the notion that attraction can’t be built, it’s either there or its not.

The most illogical part of all of this is of course that we reject people because they don’t fit the mold, failing to realize that the mold is what hasn’t been working in the first place.

Sometimes life and love is most beautiful in the unexpected. That feeling of being absolutely sideswiped by someone we never gave any consideration to in the first place. Sometimes chemistry isn’t being struck by lightning but is instead akin to a slow storm brewing.

Sometimes that person in the background you swore you’d never date becomes the only person you ever want to.

Rules are for sports and prison. When it comes to relationships, be a bit of a rebel.

 

 

  1. Regardless of the nature of a breakup, watching someone move on is a terrible fucking experience.

There’s this widely drawn conclusion that in the war of Dumpee vs. Dumper, there exists this huge power imbalance, and the person doing the dumping naturally gets the better end of the deal and moves on faster.

But here’s the thing about humans. We may have opposable thumbs and consider ourselves the mightiest of all the species, but we are also so full of massive contradictions, flaws and paradoxes. No where is this more obvious than in the sentence popularized by pre-teens and adults alike:

“Just because I don’t want him/here anymore, doesn’t mean I want anyone else to have him/her.”

We are all such horribly prideful people. Sure we enjoy loving someone, but we also get off on someone else loving us.

So the hardest conclusion to come to is that we are completely and totally replaceable. That, as much as we’d like to believe it, our significant others sun does not rise and fall based on our existence.

Human beings are made to withstand loss and heartache. It doesn’t matter how much we cared about someone or how much they cared about us – They will move on, they will forget, and they will replace old memories with new ones.

They will have new favorite songs that make them think of new people, they will change and grow and breathe and laugh and they will do all of these things without you.

And you know what makes it worse: SOCIAL MEDIA! The first time I broke up with a boy I found out he was dating someone else weeks after the relationship started, over a phone call with one of my friends. And that was it. It hurt knowing he had found someone else, but the news was confined to one conversation – one large but quick ripping off of the breakup Band-Aid.

Now you get to find out someone has moved on in small increments, all playing out its course in public forums. You get to see photos and posts and tweets. There is no quick ripping off of the Band-Aid. Instead it’s like a slow death by heart shaped, kissy-faced emoticons aimed at new people.

We bear witness to our own replacement, and to put things simply, it really bloody sucks.

 

 

  1. Loving someone doesn’t just happen, it’s a choice you make every.damn.day.

Ok so maybe I actually did take this one from a Quote of the Day website.

Most of those websites make me want to vomit butterflies (unless of course I’m going through a breakup, in which case, like everyone else, I throw on a 2001 Dashboard Confessional album and ugly cry to, “Love like you’ve never been hurt before”).

But once and awhile one of those bad boys really resonates with me. In this case, a little gem by Sherman Alexie that goes:

“He loved her, of course, but better than that he chose her, day after day. Choice, that was the thing.”

All of my relationships have ended because I wasn’t prepared to fight for anything. I was too young and too egotistical to think I couldn’t find something or someone else. I was a wandering soul and I wanted to soak up as many experiences and human connections as I could. I didn’t want to fight. I wanted to run.

I am not a firm believer in this whole marriage thing people keep pitching me on, but that has nothing to do with the example that has been set for me by my parents.

I have zero comprehension of what it must take to make a 37-year marriage last, but I do think it must mean that when you stand up on that alter and say, “I Do” you’d better not just be concentrating on the, “For better” part.

Let’s be honest, for most of us in our twenties and early 30s, we have yet to really have to fight for anything. Sure some of us have worked our asses off in school and continue to do so in our careers, but the real fights haven’t started yet.

Life is hard and relationships don’t always make it easier. Think of how much you’ve changed in the last decade. Now think of how much you’ll probably change in the next decade, and the decade after that.

You’re going to change dramatically and so is that other person and there are no guarantees you’re going to change in the same ways or in the same time scale. You’re going to grow at different rates and sometimes you’re going to grow apart. You’re going to be busier than you ever thought you could be and more tired than you even thought possible. You’re going to have all the romance and desire stripped away from your relationship at times, and you’ll have to wade through the muck to get back to it.

The beautiful end game is that if you last, if you choose each other over and over again, if you don’t get lost in the muck, then what you’re left with is an actual partner; a human extension of yourself. This other person who sees you for all your flaws and idiosyncrasies and late-night eating habits and still chooses you over all the other humans.

But if you’re not prepared for the worst- if you just love and don’t choose- life’s going to seem a whole lots longer and a whole lot harder than you’re probably prepared for.

 

 

  1. If you set someone free, they’re probably not going to come back to you, but that’s no excuse not to do it.

It is one of life’s greatest truisms that we are at times ruled by fear. In relationships this presents itself as an all-consuming idea that if we walk away from someone, they will move on, fall out of love and find someone else.

We let this rule us to the point that we keep strings attached, text when we shouldn’t text, late night booty call when we definitely shouldn’t late night booty call, post quotes and update our Facebook statuses in ways that are clearly aimed at that person.

We drop crumbs like Hansel and send out these small, almost invisible fishing lures trying to keep that person close enough that they find it impossible to move on.

It is cruel for both parties, and love at its most selfish and immature. It extends breakups and builds resentments. In the process you probably drag other well-meaning people into your bullshit. You break and squash and burn each other until there is nothing left to go back to – just an overall numbness where tenderness used to be.

Growing up comes with recognition that there are different kinds of love. The selfish kind of love is when you decide you only love someone when they are yours, when they “belong” to you. This is the kind of love that needs lures and breadcrumbs, because you feel like that love doesn’t exist unless they are near you.

If you can get past this point, you can let yourself delve into the real kind of love. Love at its most kind and selfless is the idea that you love this human regardless of time, of where they are and who they are with. An idea that you love them for everything they brought to your life and everything they are leaving you with. The idea that you may never see or know that person again, but a part of you will always love them just for what they meant to you once. This is the kind of love that doesn’t begin and end with a title.

If you can learn to offer love like that, if you can concentrate on the lesson and not the hurt, then all that fear just disappears.

Because maybe, just maybe, that’s the way that other person loved us too. And that, when we lie our heads down at night, there’s someone, somewhere, wishing us the very best.

 

E.

 

Love Apptually: A Tinderella Story

February 24, 2015 By in Humour Tags: , , , , , , 1 Comment
Love Apptually: A Tinderella Story

Once upon a time in a land far far away, sat a princess in her castle, carefully setting up the timer app on her iPhone camera. Once considered the fairest in all the land, long ago a fairy, fed up with the princess’ new-age vanity, cursed her with the inability to take a good selfie.

Banished to the land of poor lighting and double chin angles, only by finding true love (despite many an #instagramfail) could the curse be broken.

And so she sat, in the highest tower, of the tallest castle, on the largest hill in all the land, methodically swiping right on Tinder, hoping and wishing that her Prince Charming would see through her crossed eyes and duck face, and that he too, would swipe right….

…Ok, so a little dramatic sure, but tell me that isn’t a little bit more relatable than leaving behind a glass slipper or having to let down your long golden hair?

Dating in 2015 is a strange little monster isn’t it? In my last post I covered how I think the dating scene changes as you move from your 20s to 30s. But regardless of age, technology has entirely changed the way in which we find, forge and maintain relationships.

For obvious reasons I’m not on Tinder myself, nor have I ever been; I imagine my relationship would be a little less stable if I were constantly on my phone perusing half-naked bathroom mirror selfies of bachelors within a 2km radius of me.

Ok, part of that was a lie.

I was on Tinder once.

For 20 minutes.

And it scarred me emotionally.

It was two years ago, when Tinder was but a wee babe fresh out of the Silicon Valley womb. It was one of those, “let’s go out for one drink” kind-of evenings with a girlfriend that had quickly morphed into 3 hours and 2.5 bottles of wine.

Following numerous in-depth conversations on world news, Canadian politics and the state of Syria, our conversation pivoted to men.

Translation: we had been talking about men since glass one.

After a lengthy summary of her most recent escapades and a synopsis of my at-the-time battle with deciding whether to opt for monogamy or singlehood, she starts telling me about this hilarious new dating application that is, in her words, “Essentially a combination of Hot or Not, but with a location based component.”

I mean, how could I not be curious enough to check it out?

So I download Tinder, and her and I sat beside each other shadowing each others right and left swipes, until we ended up in a conversation with the same two guys, laughing as they fed us both the exact same cheesy pick-up lines.

For those who don’t know, part of the joy of Tinder is depending on how close a location parameter you set, you know if who you’re talking to is within a 10km radius of you, a 5km, a 2km, etc. It took about 6 minutes for both guys to begin vying for an in-person meet and greet with both of us, having no idea we knew each other.

That was about the time that the red wine buzz started to wear off, I became acutely aware that I was speaking to real humans somewhere within a 2km radius of me, both of whom I had mutual friends with on Facebook. I immediately deleted the application, curiosity satisfied and only mildly creeped out by the entire system.

Fast forward a mere TWO DAYS after said interaction, and I am with one of my best guy friends, watching a concert at the Rivoli. I turn and look at the door, and Tinder Guy #1 walks through…

…Followed directly by Tinder Guy #2.

Let me repeat, the only two people I have ever spoken to on Tinder, walk into the incredibly small, packed bar TOGETHER.

Now, despite only having had engaged in a 10-minute discourse with both of them, and having none of these messages include even the mildest undertones of the sexting or inappropriateness, I FREAKED OUT.

Looking back, I assume anyone who saw my next movements must have assumed I had lost complete control of my limbs, or was suffering an epileptic seizure.

Upon seeing both these men, I hurled my entire body down under the crowd, and crouched on the floor with my hands over my head mumbling various obscenities and threats to God.

My friend, standing beside me, was of course generally confused by my insane person behavior. I barely had time to hear him say, “What the balls are you doing?” because I was too busy forward crab walking, still below the crowd, to the bar’s washroom.

There I sat alone in a stall for 10 minutes, texting the friend who introduced me to Tinder various overly dramatic rants about how I will never EVER drink red wine again, how I plan on lighting my phone on fire and how I can now understand the plight of people who live in war-torn countries because isn’t this basically the same thing?

Her supportive reaction of course, “This is the best story ever, I want to marry your current situation and have its babies” and an equally supportive, “Well good luck, let me know how it works out. I remember the brunette being hotter if that helps.”

Some would call my frantic ground crawl and bathroom stall stay an irrational overreaction; others would call it a ridiculously irrational overreaction.

In retrospect, of course I realize it all sounds very illogical and over-the-top; like someone caught me white girl dancing to Alanis Morissette so I threw myself in front of a car. But as I said, I grew up in this city. My world already feels so exponentially small and I do everything I can to not to make it feel smaller.

And this made it so small I felt like I was wearing a parka in a phone booth.

I felt like I had just rolled over first thing in the morning, faced not with just one but two bad decisions from the night before lying beside me, and I wanted to chew my arm off rather than wake the beasts.

In short, Tinder made me feel like I had been part of a threesome gone wrong and I was traumatized.

Let’s also remember that Tinder was still so new at this point. There was no cushion of, “Well everyone’s doing it.” Walking back through that crowd, forced to make eye contact with my two Tinder BFs, I could only assume they were thinking, “Oh, how nice of her to leave the comfort of her home, her collection of stamps and 42 cats to come out for an evening.”

It didn’t matter that to know I was on Tinder they had to also be on Tinder. My brain at the time was not processing basic reason and deduction.

In short, I am chalk full of vanity and was just hugely embarrassed.

As it turns out, I think way too highly of myself, or the memorability of said 20-minute interaction because when I walked through the crowd- in what I imagined to be slow motion- the theme song to The Walking Dead playing on loop in my brain, they looked up, took me in, paused for about three-tenths of a second, and then turned back to each other and continued their conversation with ZERO semblance of recognition.

That’s right… I was the member of the threesome that no one even remembered being in the room.

It looks like they weren’t on Tinder some good banter and solid use of puns. Colour me shocked.

And although I was momentarily so outraged at my text game not making a lasting impact that I thought about walking up, licking both their faces and saying “How’s THAT for a right swipe?!” I realized the value of anonymity was too good and rare to pass up.

APOCALYPSE AVOIDED.

I know this is a relatively PG story. I’m sure reading the title you thought you were going to get a way more risqué tale, like, I don’t know, an actual threesome.

But I never really got to delve into the full gamut of what I hear Tinder has to offer. No one has ever offered to drink my bath water, told me about the toy hat that fits on his penis, or inquired about my desire to have them sit on my face. I’ve never gone on a Tinder “date” at 3am or had to stumble across the profiles of all of my exes on a particularly lonely night at home.

But for one brief moment in time, I got to be Tinderella in a not-so-Prince Charming sandwich.

To those still fighting the good fight, swiping right in the hopes of finding someone you’d gladly have sit on your face, I wish you a most sincere Appily Ever After.

The End

E.

“I hate the way you fill ice cube trays,” and other adorable things you find yourself saying when you live with a significant other

January 25, 2015 By in Uncategorized Tags: , , , 4 Comments

It was back in July 2014 when my boyfriend and I decided to embark on the ultimate young people’s social experiment. After a mere year of dating, we made the leap to move in together.

I wish I could say this decision was made purely from a place of deep romance and poignancy; that we were so enraptured by one another we immediately dumped our roommates out of a desperate, passionate need to share a bathroom.

But alas, we were the dumpees.

My beautiful and spunky former roommate decided she would prefer to live every day accompanied by above-zero winters and an ocean view and moved to Vancouver to live with her boyfriend.

She now wakes up to cartoon birds and mice that enchant her with high-pitched songs as they dress her in only a jean jacket because apparently that’s all you need to survive a west-coast winter.

Traitor.

Similarly, the boyfriend’s roommates decided they both wanted to become fully functioning adult males and live in their own places with bizarre home décor contraptions like doors…and curtains.

I tell you all of this because it is important to note that when it comes to relationships, I am more of a wade veryyyyy slowly into the water, turn and bolt out, skulk along the shoreline and then finally begrudgingly dip a toe in, than I am a dive-right-in sort of gal.

Another less delicate way to put this is that I only make important decisions on relationship commitment and progress when forced into a corner, and then kept in that corner for an extended period of time with a gun to my head.

In this case, the gun came in the form of…gulp… LIVING WITH A BOY.

To prepare myself for this dramatic change in my life I made a lot of both mental and physical lists. Things like, “Worst case scenarios” and “Ways that I am more mentally prepared for the zombie apocalypse than for living with my boyfriend” and finally, “The pros and cons of keeping a completely full ready-to-go storage locker in case I have to quietly slip away into the night.”

It has always been the case with me that I operate better in situations when I prepare myself for the worst possible outcome, and then anything that differs from that outcome is deemed a pleasant surprise.

SPOILER ALERT: It’s all been one GIANT pleasant surprise. I mean, pleasant in that way that’s it’s almost been TOO easy a transition, and that most days I have more difficulty choosing between light or regular cream cheese than I have living with him.

That being said, let’s be honest, no one really wants to hear about some perfect couple made of rainbows and honey that falls asleep every night holding hands on a bed of clouds. Life isn’t like that; I would never want it to be.

The most beautiful part of life lies in its imperfections, and in caring about someone enough to continually enter the battlefield together.

And oh how we’ve battled.

Living with someone is the equivalent of placing all your worst habits, insecurities and characteristics on a platter and then offering them to another human to accept. And not only do we expect them to be accepted, we are somehow insane enough to believe that this other human should them endearing. Like we should all just be walking around uttering a continual stream of, “Oh babe, I think it’s cute you’re the spawn of Satan first thing in the morning, and that pizza box that’s been sitting by our front door for the last 3 days is friggin adorable. Awww, is that a recently clipped toenail on the floor? How charming!”

All the pretense of dating, the ability to be the best version of yourself when you’re out with them, all of that disappears. There is no acting; that other person is going to see you for all the sides of your personality, and from unfortunate angles you’ve probably never even seen yourself.

On that note, word of advice for both sexes: if you want to keep the fire alive, never put on socks naked if the other person happens to be sitting directly behind you.

So naturally, this dropping of the curtain can cause some pretty ridiculous friction. I mean think of all the absurd things you couldn’t possibly imagine having a disagreement on (e.g. cracker brands, toilet paper costs, what temperature the room is set at).

Yep, you’ll argue about all of them.

Take for example the below nonsensical differences of opinion we’ve engaged in:

  1. Why I am the only human who’s ever deemed the microwave an appropriate place to bake a potato. (I’ll tell you why – 3 minutes BEGINNING TO END people. It takes 20 minutes just to heat up an oven. I would much rather spend the extra 17 minutes trying to find just one pair of matching socks in my closet. It’s called PRODUCTIVITY)
  1. His remarkable ability to make the bed in the exact wrong way on a daily basis. You’d think with 2 throw pillows and 1 quilt there would be a maximum of 5 ways to screw it up but no, I’ve been the witness approximately 62.
  1. My refusal to walk 10 feet to the recycling chute of our building. I prefer to create an elaborate Jenga-esq pile of boxes and tin cans under our sink. The taller it gets, the easier I am able to detach myself emotionally from its existence.
  1. His use of our communal bath towels to shower with after hockey. Have you ever smelled post-hockey hands? I feel like it’s a serious issue that probably comes up often in marriage counseling sessions, and the smell rubs off on EVERYTHING. I’d rather host a condo bonfire than have to get close enough to wash them.
  1. My general inhuman behavior before I’ve had coffee in the morning. This is less an argument in itself as it is the trigger of almost all of the above arguments.
  1. A mutual dissatisfaction with each others’ inability to refill the water jug in the fridge. This isn’t even some fancy Britta-type situation where you have time to conceive and birth a child while the water trickles through a filter. No, we have a dollar store jug that we fill with tap water to keep it cold. Yet neither of us has developed the aptitude to complete the two-sstep process of turning slightly to the left and turning the tap on to keep it constantly refilled.

Now who wants to come over to our party pad and enjoy a baked potato and some room temperature H2O?!

And yet, here is what I can tell you in short: Sharing an 800 sq ft condo with a significant other has been one of the best experiences of my life. And it’s been so fantastic not in spite of the above arguments, but because of them.

Because if you can’t stand the way someone makes the bed, the way they leave every door in the house ajar, and the way they chew food like they are sound checking for Madison Square Gardens; if you hate all that and you still want to stick around to see what new annoying habit they develop next…well, that’s love baby.

And I haven’t even come close to using that storage locker.

 

E.