Giving Birth

Dear Readership,

It has been a hot minute. I unintentially abandoned my personal blog while I was in grad school (partially because of the writing workload for school, and partially because I worked, moved four times, had a crisis of faith, got a dog, got married, got pregnant, and had a baby all while in school during the pandemic). For obvious reasons, I come back to this blog a different writer and person. I’m not sure how that will shape what posts I leave up or what writing footprint I want to leave for myself on the wide, wide web. Some of my other posts are no longer a reflection of who I am, but they are the record of who I was. I am torn between preserving the evidence of every iteration of myself as proof of my growth, and not wanting my current self to be misrepresented by the writings of my former selves.

Either way, that’s not the point of this post and it is a problem for future Sierra to sort out.

The reason for this post is to share my experience with giving birth. As I rapidly approach Clementine’s first birthday, I find myself finally ready to share a bit of what my birth experience was like. I wrote a piece about it for my graduate thesis which is a collection of essays that I wrote on identity and religious trauma.

I want to clarify that the following essay is obviously only a reflection of my own experience and I do not speak for all women or birthing people about what childbirth feels like, how it shapes you, or the perceived correlation between religion and birthing identity. This is my story.

CW: Graphic descriptions of birth and postpartum anxiety and depression

***

I have always known I wanted to be a mom. Even when I stopped being a Christian and I began to dismantle and reject the message that procreating was my sole reason for existing, my desire to be a mother never wavered. I did, however, become annoyed with how often the line, “Be fruitful and multiply” had been flung at me in my formative years as proof of my duty: a direct command from God to Eve in Genesis 1:28 and therefore meant for me also. I had been told that her original sin was mine; her role as the corruptor of the good in man, as the temptress, and as the ruiner of paradise were all my inheritance. So too, was her responsibility to bear children.

Even as I started to distance myself from that theology and the people who preached it, I remained certain that motherhood was an important part of my future. Nothing is more fulfilling to me than watching a brand-new human being discover themselves and the world around them for the first time. Have you ever seen a baby realize they have toes? Or taste a new food for the first time? Have you ever watched a little kid try to figure out how to tie their shoes? Or wonder what the stars are made of? Watching someone else discover the good in life gives me renewed hope to live for myself. I wanted more than anything to have kids and share the magic of the world with them and watch them become their own person. I have always wanted that. I knew it was a romanticized ideal in a lot of ways that lacked nuance, but it guided me and my passion for becoming a mother.

As a kid I said I wanted fifty-six children, but I whittled that number down as I got older and gained a better grasp on reality. By high school I said I wanted ten children, by college I said four, and by the time I got married I had settled on two. But that absurd number “fifty-six” came back to me and rattled in my head, loud and hysterical, as I flailed on the delivery table, wild-eyed and inconsolable during the birth of my first and–after the experience that I had, perhaps only–child.

“I know it hurts, but try to make your contraction productive,” my midwife coached, “Push through the pain.”

“I can’t!” I wailed, thrashing my feet, embarrassed at my own petulance, but unable to regain any kind of composure.

I have always been someone who laughs through pain. Who downplays it, who stays in control. But I wasn’t in control anymore. I couldn’t laugh. I couldn’t even cry. I looked at my husband’s drawn face – I was scaring him – I still couldn’t stop. All I could do was grit my teeth and moan and scream and thrash and beg. I wanted to rip the IV out of my arm. I wanted to get off the bed. I felt a frantic need to pace, to rock, to scream. The epidural I had received was preventing me from getting up and moving around, but halfway through pushing, it stopped preventing me from feeling the pain. I was totally derailed by it. If only it had been a sharp, stabbing, or stinging pain, I would have been able to handle it. Instead, it was a huge, hollow, untraceable pain. I could no better describe it than I could escape it. I felt like the fibers of my existence were being ripped slowly apart. I was a million tiny elastic bands being pulled to the snapping point. I could hear them popping in my head, the strands of myself bursting and unraveling under the pressure. I felt like there was a black hole inside of me, pulling me in on myself like a dying star. I was turning inside out with pain, and I was sure that I would cease to exist.

I whimpered pathetically when the contraction released me. There was no relief, the terror I felt in anticipation of the next wave was as horrifying to endure as the pain itself.

The midwife reassured me that the anesthesiologist was on his way. He was going to give me more medicine to reign the pain back in. It felt like an eternity before we heard the knock and Todd–the only man involved in my entire birthing process and an oozing boil of a human being– came bustling into the room. Earlier in the day his face had been a mask of composure and condescension when I told him I was in pain. He explained to me the difference between pain and pressure. The epidural couldn’t remove the sensation of pressure, it wasn’t even able to make labor painless.

“You aren’t going to feel nothing,” he said in a slow voice, like he was talking to a particularly stupid toddler or a skittish horse, “Epidurals are designed to make labor tolerable, not painless.”

Now his face blanched when I turned my panicked eyes to him and begged him to give me medicine. A scream I didn’t have control over tore out of me as he hurried to inject something into the epidural port. My internal rage took pleasure in his discomfort at my wailing. I wanted to ask him if it looked like he had given me the right dose to tolerate labor. I wanted to be nasty, but all I could manage to say out loud was the word “please” over and over. Please make this stop.

I marveled at all the women before me who had had no choice but to endure this pain for millennia. I thought of my friend who was choosing to have a natural birth because she wanted to feel the pain, to be connected to her child and connected to the spirits of those women who had come before her. I laughed when she told me.

“Good for you,” I had said, “I couldn’t do it. I want pain medicine.”

Female oppression still exists in the United States. I had personally experienced it for all the years that I was a member of the Evangelical Church. I had been beaten over the head with a well-fed sense of inferiority as the ideology of complementarianism was hurled at me from the pulpit and reinforced by every man I knew. I was told that men were made for protecting and providing and women were made for submission and procreation. As far as I was concerned, the ways that I had been systematically forced to shrink, devalue, and limit myself were more than enough suffering to connect me to my foremothers. I didn’t need to experience one of the worst pains known to humankind, I wanted an epidural.

And yet, here I was, feeling it, and begging a man who had belittled me hours before to make it go away. I didn’t care. There is no dignity in suffering. My one and only goal was to obtain relief. Even though childbirth hasn’t been known to drive people insane, I could feel the pillars of my rational mind crumbling. As pieces of myself fell away, I began to fantasize about release in any form. Death wouldn’t be so bad. If I walked into a void and didn’t look back, at least the pain would stop.

When the medicine kicked in, my body melted into a quivering pile of desperate relief. The absence of pain was euphoric, but I was too tired to move.

“Do you need a little break before we keep pushing?” The midwife asked.

I nodded, teary eyed. I had already been pushing for nearly two hours and was nowhere near delivering. I wanted to quit. I wanted to sleep. I wanted to exist in any moment of time except for this one.

For twenty minutes the midwife sat there and charted, my husband, Bryce, gingerly held my head, and I entered into a paper-thin version of consciousness. I didn’t exist in my body but hovered slightly above it. I desperately wished for my sister, a labor and delivery nurse and my dearest companion, and resented that she had not been able to be with me. She had ended her travel contract on the west coast to support me while I gave birth, but Covid restrictions had clamped back down so that I was only allowed to have one support person. She would have given Todd a piece of her mind. She would have put me and Bryce at ease. She would have known what to say to make me feel like I could keep pushing. When my break was up, I wanted to cry.

The rest of my delivery feels hazy and disjointed in my memory. My midwife was not forthcoming about the potential danger I was in, she hadn’t told me about my mild preeclampsia or her suspicions about why pushing was taking so long, and I felt disoriented by my lack of understanding about what was happening to me. I only knew that giving birth was cleaving some part of my spirit. I felt altered by it. Motherhood didn’t dawn slowly in blushing shades of pink and orange like a summer sunset in my heart. It ripped through me, feral, painful, deadly, and riddled with fear. In my third hour of pushing, when I was so tired that I felt myself drifting in and out of consciousness, my daughter’s head finally began to crown. The midwife and nurse were cheering and encouraging me “Push, push, push” they said, their tone invigorated by my long-awaited progress. This was just a regular night at work for them.

I closed my eyes to push. When I opened them again, everything was different.

Bryce was no longer standing at my side. He had been pushed back to the edge of the room by a group of nurses that I had never seen before. Where did they all come from? When had they gotten here? They were suddenly surrounding my bed: a sea of strange and worried faces. They told me to push again and as I bore down, a searing pain shot through my vagina. My daughter’s head was most of the way through, but it felt like I was being stretched open and burned away by a speculum made of molten metal. My push wavered and cracked into the beginnings of a scream.

“No!” The midwife yelled at me, “Get it together, you have to push!”

There was no encouragement in her voice this time, only tightly cinched panic. My heart squeezed in fear and confusion, but I swallowed my scream and doubled down.

“I need someone on the bed,” she barked.

“Got it!” said a random nurse as she hopped up onto the edge of my hospital bed. She planted her feet and stood over me, pushing down on my pelvis from above me.

It was at this moment that I realized with crystal clarity that something was wrong. I have only ever seen three babies born, so I would hardly consider myself an expert on what a “normal” delivery is supposed to look like. But I felt certain that all these people in here, the midwife sounding scared, and this woman on top of me pushing down on me with all of her weight didn’t add up to “normal.” This was going badly. I pushed with a strength reserve that I hadn’t been able to tap into before I got scared. No one would tell me what the stakes were, but the animal in me knew danger was lurking and it became frantic with the need to survive. Suddenly I felt a big, sliding, wet plop followed by the most sublime relief as my daughter burst out of me and they dumped her onto my stomach.

There she was. Clementine Celeste. Slimy and new and looking like an angry turnip with her scrunched, reddish-purple face. There I was, gutted and empty and in shock. We made eye contact for only a brief second, but it was the most sacred moment of my life. The first time I looked into her eyes I encountered the divine. Not God, per se, and certainly not God in a male form. This was an act of worship that could only be offered to a divine mother, who or whatever she may be. And then someone whisked Clementine away. Something was wrong. They wouldn’t tell me what, but they were checking, poking, prodding, and scrubbing her. I didn’t get to do skin-to-skin and her dad didn’t get to cut the cord. Instead, the midwife began consulting with a doctor about the best way to sew up my second-degree tear.

“I’d just cut that away; it can’t be salvaged. Right, yes, there. And then stitch the rest up,” the doctor said, peering over my midwife’s shoulder and scrutinizing the wreckage between my legs.

I only barely heard them. I was craning my neck, desperate to catch a glimpse of Clementine as they examined her. It wouldn’t be until later that I found out that her shoulder had gotten stuck on my pubic bone during delivery. They are supposed to resolve emergencies like that in 60 seconds before there is a risk of brain damage.

It had taken them 63.

After nearly an hour, it was determined that she was a healthy ten pounds and one ounce, wrapped up, and laid back in my arms.

“I’m going to try to catch a few hours of sleep before my next delivery,” my midwife said as she heaved herself up from the stool where she had been sitting while she stitched me up, “But I’ll check in on you before I leave in the morning.”

One by one, the horde of nurses that had come to my rescue trickled out of the room until only my nurse remained. Before she could leave us to rest, she had to help me relearn how to use the bathroom. I climbed shakily out of the bed for the first time in seventeen hours, my bare ass exposed by the slit in my gown, and onto what looked like a hand truck. My epidural hadn’t totally worn off yet, so I was a fall risk and not allowed to walk. After the sheer number of people who had seen me naked in the last two days, any sense of modesty I had once possessed had already been torn to shreds. I was not embarrassed to be wheeled to the toilet or bashful to pee under the supervision of this stranger; I was only nervous about the physical pain that I knew that it was going to cause me to do so.

My belly was still distended by my misplaced organs and enlarged uterus to such an enormous size that I couldn’t see between my legs at all. I reached down to rinse with the peri bottle in lieu of wiping–something that would still be much too painful to do for several weeks– and I was surprised when my fingers brushed against my vulva about three inches further out than I expected. It startled me so much that I flinched.

“Woah,” I said to my nurse through a nervous laugh, gesturing to my crotch, “That is not where I was expecting that to be!”

“A lot of women feel that way,” she said.

Immediately I felt a little betrayed that no one had warned me. I had gone into this with no idea how swollen it would be or how dramatically an intimate part of my body would be changed by this experience. I knew the swelling would go down, but I wasn’t prepared for the jagged, plumb-colored stretch marks that would pucker and ripple the skin on my mons pubis as a result: stripes that matched the ones on my stomach, hips, back, and thighs. And the stretch marks were only one of the many permanent changes to my body.

I began to realize that if I truly rejected the idea that giving birth fulfilled my life’s purpose, then I would have to dedicate a portion of myself to grieving the body I used to have. Some days, it would be a larger portion than I felt like I could spare and still manage to function. I would have to spend time getting to know and learning to love the fatter, lumpier, stretched out stranger that now existed where my body used to be. But if it was my purpose to give birth, then I could view these unwelcome changes as sacrificing my vanity and my comfort in the name of honoring God’s design. My stretch marks would be holy. I have always understood that very conservative Evangelical men liked the narrative that women were designed to give birth because it helped them maintain patriarchal power. I never understood why the women went along with it. Was it because they were oppressed and conditioned into agreeing with it? Or now, I wondered, was it because it was an easier route out of self-loathing? Believing in divine purpose is the fastest way to feel whole again in a body that nature has brutalized and distorted.

After my nurse wheeled me back to my bed, Bryce, Clementine, and I were left alone. He and I spent those first few hours marveling at her perfection, updating our anxious families who couldn’t visit the hospital because of Covid, and laughing at her hiccups. Listening to them fostered an untamable joy in us. Just the day before we had only been able to feel those hiccups through the skin of my stomach, and now here they were, high-pitched and delightful, like a cartoon mouse drunk on champagne. It was the best thing we had ever heard. But by 3 a.m. the adrenaline had finally worn off and Bryce passed out. His body was squished, and his long legs were contorted to fit onto the stiff little hospital couch in the corner of my room. I stayed awake, my bed in a seated position, beginning the first of many through-the-night vigils.

I only slept a combined total of two hours and thirty minutes the first two nights after Clementine was born. That first night I just sat in the hospital bed and held her, memorizing every line of her face. I didn’t know how to set her down. I had never set her down before. Nine months is a long time to hold someone only to let them go. That first perfect night was one filled with wonder. I couldn’t sleep, not when I had a front-row seat to observe a miracle.

The second night I was afraid to sleep. Clementine had choked on some mucusy spit-up earlier in the day. She stopped breathing for the longest and most horrifying ten seconds of my life as I called for the nurse in a panic. I kept trying to lay her down and sleep, but every gurgle and coo from her crib launched me to my feet. I have always been an anxious person, but giving birth unlocked new levels of terror I didn’t know how to face or handle. After we took her home from the hospital, things didn’t get any better.

For the first four months of her life, I felt crippled by a fear of her dying that was so real, so raw, so all-consuming, that I would slip into moments of grieving her even though she was still alive. That grief was always circling at the edge of my vision like a migraine aura closing in. It was a sadness so big that even brushing the edges of it felt life-ruining. The only way I could drag myself back out of the grief was by holding her and watching her chest move up and down in tiny steady breaths; it was the physical reminder I needed to reassure me that she wasn’t dead. But for how long?

In my secret heart of hearts, I almost wished she would die, not because I wanted her dead but because I was so tired of living with the acidic anticipatory fear of losing her. It was eating away at every part of me. I barely slept. I struggled to do normal tasks. Her death seemed inevitable for no particular reason other than the fact that I was sure it was coming. I had somehow gotten it in my head that she wouldn’t live into the new year. Waiting for her to die was as exhausting as the fear that it would be my fault when she did. I hoped that it would be SIDS that got her. But what if it was me? What if I rolled onto her in my sleep? What if I fell down the stairs while holding her and crushed her? What if I got into a car wreck with her in the back seat? What if I didn’t feed her enough? What if I fed her too much and she choked again? What if she ran a high fever and I didn’t do enough to tend it and it killed her? What if I spilled hot coffee on her and she died of burn complications? What if I got distracted while bathing her and let her drown? What if I accidentally elbowed her in the soft spot on her head? What if I ran the dryer during a nap, caused a fire, and she died of smoke inhalation before I could figure out a safe way out of our second story bedroom window? What if there were other deadly scenarios that I hadn’t even thought to be worried about and one of those killed her? I wouldn’t be able to live with the guilt of her death if it was my fault. The fear of hurting her was debilitating. How do you move through life when you carry the burden of protecting someone who is as fragile as a soap bubble? I knew it was going to pop and there was nothing I could do to stop it, so I just waited for the day that her life would end and mine along with it. I never set her down if I could help it. And I waited.

I wish I had a clear understanding of what eventually changed in me. Was it passing the arbitrary deadline of the new year? Was it my postpartum hormones finally balancing back out and returning to some semblance of normal? Was it just a matter of successfully getting through life one day at a time, week-in and week-out that finally put my jangling nerves at ease?

Whatever happened, the knife-sharp certainty that she would die faded into a much duller and more generalized worry. It could still happen; I still sometimes brush up against that all-consuming grief at the thought of losing her. It is potent and hellish, but I have learned not to let myself sink as far into the toxic bog of “what-ifs.” I still worry. Sometimes through the night. But every day it gets a little easier to imagine her growing up. And it gets a little easier to sit in the precious moments of her discovering the world without thinking of them as the memories I will cling to when she’s gone.

I also still sometimes think about my fifty-six hypothetical children, and the comedy of wanting to give birth to an army when I could barely handle one. I think about all the years that I was coached to make motherhood my whole purpose and personality. I have committed myself to fighting my negative postpartum body-image and to resisting the desire to fall back on some sort of biblical crutch. I want to retain the identity that I worked so hard to create for myself outside of the Evangelical Church. But I worry that if you ask any of my friends, they will tell you that I have been consumed by motherhood already. I talk about feedings and diaper changes and nap schedules and daycare options exhaustively. Clementine is the only thing that is new in my life most days. I often go whole weeks without leaving the apartment for anything besides walking my dog or bringing in the grocery delivery off of my front porch. I am left to wonder how I am supposed to have purpose outside of the one thing that consumes every minute of my waking thoughts and I realize that the Evangelical trap is emotional as well as physical. I can see how it would be easy to believe that your purpose in life is having babies because if you don’t, then you have to spend every minute at war, trying to reconcile two incompatible halves of yourself. Motherhood and personhood do not do a good job of sharing space and trying to juggle two different identities is exhausting and the root of much guilt.

I have always wanted to be a mother. But I am finding that there is an upheaval to giving birth that I hadn’t anticipated. It brings out my inner joy, but also my inner terror. It has let loose my strongest emotions and they have run amuck in my life since the day that test came back with two pink lines. I am still living my dream, getting to revel in wonder and discovery with Clementine, but I have been forced to acknowledge the nuance of parenthood that I had previously been avoiding. I am realizing it would be easier to claim that I was fulfilling God’s purpose for me than to continue to try to carve out space for myself to exist authentically within the havoc that I have wreaked on my own mind, body, and spirit. I didn’t just give birth to my daughter, but to a whole new version of myself and my life with her, and it is messy.

***

If you made it all the way through, thank you for reading and letting me share this bruised and tender part of my heart.

Until next time,

Adieu

Once Upon My Childhood: Random Crap that Really Happened

Dear Readership,

For lack of better things to do, I have been taking a walk down memory lane recently and, without meaning to, have stumbled upon a number of memories that I had pretty much forgotten. So, for your reading (dis)pleasure: vignettes of weird, mostly unpleasant stuff that really happened.

**

We first moved to NC when I was nine. We were moving into a house that sat right off of a really busy road and even before we arrived my mom would worry loudly and often about living so close to a road with that much traffic because she had so many young children. Our move consisted of a three day trek across the country and we were all SO SICK of being in the car by the end that we thought we would kill one another if we didn’t get out soon. We pulled into the driveway of our new house and everyone jumped out. We were so grateful to stretch our aching legs and say hello to our grandparents who were waiting for us that we stood in the driveway for a few minutes. We literally had not even gone inside the house yet when all of a sudden we witnessed a semi-aggressive car crash. Everyone was okay, but they had been going very quickly, one of the cars was in pretty bad shape, it had been SO LOUD, and it literally happened right in front of our driveway where we were all standing not three minutes after moving in. Never has my mom ever had a bigger I TOLD YOU SO moment in my living memory. Funny enough, it was the only wreck we ever saw in the five years we lived there.

**

A number of years later we were pulling up after co-op one afternoon and a car that no one recognized was sitting in our driveway. It immediately started to back out.

“Oh, that’s awkward” I said, “They pulled in to turn around right as we got home.”

Just then some guys came running out of the garden (where my dad’s truck was still parked from dumping manure) and jumped into the car. It sped off. After a little investigation we realized they had sawed the catalytic converter off of his truck and stolen it. If we had hit fewer red lights on the way, would we have gotten home in time to stop this from happening? They hadn’t even tried to go into the house as far as anyone could tell, but it had us all solidly rattled and feeling vulnerable for several months after.

**

That same house had a big, open, two acre yard right in the middle of the city. The yard didn’t have any fences and I guess for a while the neighborhood kids had been using the biggest part of the yard as an empty lot where they would meet up to play football. Turns out, even after we moved in, they still felt like it was their right to meet up in our yard and play football. They never invited us to play. They didn’t ask for permission to be there. They just played. After it happened a few times my mom went out to talk to them about respecting other people’s property, but in the end she told them it was okay to keep playing IF they asked for permission next time and made sure to be respectful. After that they would sometimes ask before playing, sometimes they wouldn’t. Then, one day, we didn’t realize they were out there and we let the dog out to go pee. She weighed all of five pounds and her big pointy ears comprised 2/3 of her body mass, but she was a fierce protector and ran out into the far part of the yard to bark at the intruder. She wasn’t a biter and I guess in the kid’s defense, he didn’t know that. But also he would have known if he ever bothered to befriend the dog of the yard he felt like he was entitled to play in. Either way, she spooked one of the kids and he yelled at her and then reared back and pretended to kick her across the yard. He made a big show of punting her. Oh boy, that was a mistake. My mom saw and gave the kid an earful and told the boys that if that was how they were going to treat our dog in OUR yard, they were no longer welcome to play in the field.

It’s probably unrelated, but all of the trees in our front yard were TPed like two days later.

And then a little while after that our car got egged (no great loss in value there, though. It was a bright red fifteen passenger van that still had the faint outline of a removed stencil that read Faith Presbyterian Church on the side of it).

A while after that our tires got slashed. That one hurt a little more.

A while after that someone slingshotted — that’s the real past tense of that word, by the way, I looked it up — they slingshotted a rock through my mom’s second story bedroom window while she and I were watching a movie in there. At first we thought someone had shot the window (lol we had clearly never heard a gunshot up close before) but the rock came through with such force that the glass shards flew the full length of the room. Afraid, we crawled out and hid in the windowless hallway for a while until we felt like it was safe to investigate what happened. That’s when we found the rock in the room along with a small pile of similarly sized rocks sitting in the driveway below the window.

Obviously there is no way of knowing if all of that stuff was the result of my mom scolding one kid who was a dick to our dog, but it doesn’t seem too far fetched. Who else would have it in for us?

**

The fire place in that same house didn’t work. Something about it being too shallow, I don’t remember. So we closed the flue and used it to store a big, open tub of blocks instead (when you have a lot of kids and not a lot of space, everything becomes a place to store toys) . One summer, the living room positively stank. I mean it reeked. We cleaned, we hunted for the source of the smell, we cleaned again, we aired the room out, but nothing was helping the gag-worthy odor and we couldn’t figure out for the life of us what was causing it. Then one day my mom instructed us to go grab the tub of blocks from the quarantined living room and bring them to the kitchen to play with while she read aloud to us. We dumped the blocks out on the floor and after a few minutes we started to notice little white things mixed in with the toys. Upon further examination, they turned out to be maggots. Big time gross. My dad went and opened the flue and out fell the mostly clean skeleton of a little animal (I can’t remember now if it was a squirrel or a bird) that had fallen down our chimney and died there. I still get goose bumps on the rare occasion that the memory comes hurtling back into my mind.

**

The house we lived in from the time I was born until I was seven was entirely carpeted, including the kitchen and bathroom. That’s it. That’s the whole memory. Terrifying, right? Dropping food or overflowing the toilet were big frickin’ deals with gross, long-lasting consequences. Whoever designed that needed slapped.

**

When I was eight or so we lived on this little farm in the middle of nowhere that honestly was the literal worst and probably the source of most of my hatred of nature to this day. Even as a kid I was a diva (hard to imagine, I know). Early that summer there was some kind of plague-like moth infestation, not just of our house, but of the entire countryside. Hundreds of them. Thousands of them (or so it seemed). It was all we could do to kill them and it was impossible to keep them out. I don’t know if you’ve ever killed so many moths with a fly swatter that you could distinctly see and smell their guts and the powdery stuff on their wings smeared everywhere, but it is a super unpleasant experience. Not to mention the horror of getting them caught in your hair.

We needed a more efficient way to kill them. One day someone had the idea to leave water in the kitchen sink and leave the light on above it overnight. The moths would be drawn to the light reflected in the water, fly to it, and drown themselves (it was some siren/sailor bullshit, but we were desperate). It actually worked! It must have killed hundreds of them the first night. You couldn’t even see the top of the water through all the little moth corpses. Which, of course, meant someone had to then stick their hand into the pool of dead moth bodies and pull out the drain. I don’t want to throw my parents under the bus here or anything, but it was rarely mom or dad who drained the moth massacre each morning to clean the sink and, yes, it has come up in therapy.

Side note about that little farm house, it ALSO had carpet in the kitchen (fortunately not the bathroom though). Once again, terrible design.

**

While on the farm, we and the neighbor kids (the family who owned the farm and let us live in the little house next door) were responsible for collecting dry cow patties for kindling every now and then. Our house didn’t have central heating and relied mainly on a wood burning stove for warmth (ask me sometime about wearing seven pairs of pajamas and a hat to bed to stay warm in the winter). Often while out in the field, we would toe a patty to make sure it was dry and not stuck to the ground, and then we’d kick it around while we worked. It was gross but fun.

We could go pretty much anywhere we wanted, but weirdly, that field also had this giant mud pit that never seemed to run dry and we had been instructed to never go into it. It was such a big, beautiful pit of mud though, it looked perfect for stomping through. One day, despite the instructions not to, I decided I would stomp through it instead of around it. Who would know? It’s not like my mom could see me from the house. About halfway across the pit, the mud proved stickier than it had originally looked and it suctioned my little boot off of my foot. I wobbled, I waved, I tottered (enjoying the thrill and drama of making a big show of almost falling so the other kids would worry for me) and then I lost my balance for real and fell all the way in. I was absolutely covered from head to toe. I realized then that it seemed likely that mom would know I had gone in the mud after all.

I returned home contrite. When mom saw me she had plenty to say about it. She scolded me thoroughly for my disobedience and stripped me to my underwear while standing in the mudroom. Once I was naked, clothed in nothing but dry and caking mud and my shame, she decided to inform me that a good portion of that mud was actually cow shit and she hoped I remembered that the next time I wanted to disobey.

Well played mom, well played.

**

As a child, I once spent an afternoon with my siblings and a few friends picking crab apples from the tree in my grandmother’s yard. I had climbed pretty high up when something heavy hit me in the head. I looked up, surprised and hurt, to yell at whoever had kicked me, but no one was there. Weird. A few minutes later a rather cross and very tubby squirrel jumped on my hand, ran up my arm, and leapt off my shoulder again. It happened so quickly I barely saw it and almost wouldn’t have believed it had actually happened except he left me with two deep, long scratches up the back of my hand and extending onto my wrist/arm to remember him by.

**

Growing up we always checked out mountains of library books at a time on a nearly weekly basis (the librarians actually removed the checkout limit on my mom’s card because we always had more than we could get and they got tired of telling us to put books back). We were each responsible for keeping up with the books we borrowed and had to pay the fines if we racked up a late fee. One summer my mom told me an American Girl book I had borrowed was missing and I needed to search for it. I told her we had returned it. She told me there was a mounting fee on her card, and I must have overlooked the book so I needed to stop what I was doing and find it. I tore apart (and then had to put back together) every room of the house and still the book was nowhere to be found. I was in big trouble.

Where is the book, Sierra? You need to take better care of your stuff (totally true, but I was sure I had returned it). I was grounded from checking out more books until it was found (lol what a little nerd punishment) but weeks passed and it still didn’t turn up. Finally, my mom and I went to the library so I could purchase the book I had clearly lost forever, that way I would be able to check books out again. While explaining that the book had been lost, my mom happened to mention that I still maintained that the book had been returned. The librarian offered to double-check for us and WOULDN’T YOU KNOW IT Molly Saves the Day was there on the shelf where it belonged, it just hadn’t been scanned when it was returned. Boy was I smug. But the librarian just laughed it off while she removed the fine from my mom’s card. She said it was a “silly mistake” that “just happens sometimes” as though she could flippantly dismiss the fact that her sloppy check-in skills had caused me weeks of torment and gotten me grounded from the library for half the summer.

In the years that followed, whenever a book went missing I was always quick to accuse the librarians, but as it turns out, it was always genuinely misplaced in the house somewhere after that (ask me sometime about the twenty-something dollar fine I had to pay once because my baby sister got creative with where she stashed a Fancy Nancy book for the better part of a year).

**

There are more stories, I’m sure, but these are the ones I’ve been ruminating on. It’s funny to think of all of the little traumatic moments that seemed so big when they happened that are now a small pieces of the larger blur of childhood. They are memories that only leap into focus when they are deliberately called to mind now. Then they swirl back into the indistinguishable mass of what was.

I hope you enjoyed.

Until next time,

Adieu

The Ghost of a Sister Who Does Not Love Me

Dear Readership,

The following is an unsent letter I wrote to an ex friend a while back. It’s messy and a touch melodramatic, but so am I. (Enneagram type fours, am I right?) I went back and forth a lot about whether or not to post it, but I finally decided that I should in the name of closure, and because I think that it is a pain most of us have felt. I hope that you don’t see yourself and your own experiences in this post, but if you do, you’re certainly not alone.

~~~

Have you ever experienced the pain of loving someone who stopped loving you back? I think that you have, because I remember sitting with you through the worst of it.  It is such a devastating ache to care deeply for someone, to assume that it is mutual — because it has always been mutual and I’m still the same me that I have always been — only to discover that it isn’t true and hasn’t been for a while. There is no hurt like finding out I have been breaking my own heart for a painful but worthy love only to realize that I’ve been causing myself anguish over an empty shell. That thing that I longed to retain, I have already lost. The person I so deeply cared for has already forgotten me and I am left with broken fragments of nothingness scattered all around me where you used to stand. 

“We drifted apart naturally and it was no one’s fault” you said.

Did we? But did we? Because I have felt for months that I was rowing upstream, feeding myself comforting lies to excuse your behavior because I longed to feel the acceptance that you used to always show me. I have been clinging to old memories of your love and telling myself that’s how it still is, even though everyone else could already see that it wasn’t. I would tell myself that you were just going through a phase, but as it turns out, I was the phase that you were going through and you have already moved on. I kept telling myself that our bond was stronger than that, but apparently I was the weak link in our broken chain and now I no longer own an arctic wolf. 

The silence has been a chasm, but I thought that perhaps you just had nothing to say back at the moment so I continued to shout into the wind indefinitely, hoping to reach you. I would text you and get a one word reply or watch the conversation die whenever you held it. I would invite you to things that you lamely excused yourself from. I carved time out to visit you and you would comply when convenient — or maybe you would just run errands instead. But I ignored all of it, waiting for you to tell me what was going through your mind the way that you always used to. Then whispers began to get back to me — people whispered, instagram whipsered, and your silence whispered loudest of all: I realized that you have never stopped speaking, you only stopped speaking to me. Your life has continued forward — filled with a happy frenzy that you no longer felt I deserved to be privy to in the way that I once was. 

Oh, it hurt. I cannot even say how it hurt. I wrote and burned 11 letters, each too mean and emotional. I cried, I lectured myself on overreacting, and then I cried again. I will always support your decisions and love you the best that I can, but when did you decide that I should no longer know what those decisions were and why? When did I stop being worth an explanation? I guess you decided that the day that you stopped loving me. When was that exactly? Six months ago? A year? The last time I confronted you because you would not speak to me about the things I did that hurt you? I don’t know when it was, but to me it is fresh, so the pain still holds all the malicious brightness and vigor of youth.  

Finally, unable to hold back my sadness, I said, “you’re hurting me, talk to me, friends talk.”

You said, “I don’t owe you an explanation. You’re being selfish.” 

You said to someone else that you like me, “less and less every day.”  I felt the weight of every single day slam into me when I heard that. 

I sparked with wounded anger. I said, “Then I guess we aren’t friends like I thought we were. I’ll not impose any longer where I’m not wanted.”  

You said (again, always, to someone else) that you won’t respond to me because you have seen my “true colors” and they are mean. 

You’re right, my truest colors are in fact the meanest colors you could imagine. I fill up with a hateful, poisonous rage. I am plagued with an all-consuming anger that looks for chinks in my enemy’s armor so that I can craft the deadliest words and take them down swiftly. I am ugly in my weakness, snarling and snapping and I go for the throat in a flash of blinding, white, werewolf-ian fury. You can guess at my ugliest true colors, but you have never seen them.

I told someone once — in a sigh of exasperation after you overreacted when you should have apologized — that you like to play the part of the victim when we argue. It has always irritated me because I have never yet made a victim of you. You would know it if I had because you — in all of your self-loathing fragility —  would not be able to stand back up again if I let my anger loose against you.  

I come from a tribe of hotheaded people who wield their anger like daggers, stabbing swiftly and deeply with teeth bared in a snarl of hatred. But the anger always fades as shame and apologies bubble to the surface of our lips. The eruption of swiftly flowing magma soon turns cold and new life is able to grow in the ashes. We are a proud and angry people, quick to look for fights that we won’t quit until we win. We are not a grudge holding people, but we are also not people who are often forgiven by those outside of our own. Our rock-hard Scottish heads crash against the spongy skulls of nicer, weaker people; once the stinging fades, we are left to wipe up the bloody remains of those who didn’t have the strength to recover.    

But you have not seen that. Never once have you seen me at my ugliest — my most explosive, sharpest, lowest, meanest, truest point of color. Because I am afraid to hurt your gentle spirit and because I love you. I have shielded you from the damage I’ve always known I could do. Despite what you may think, I do not delight in the hideous flaws of me and mine. But as much as I don’t like it, even if I bite my tongue until it bleeds and never say another cruel word as long as I live, my clan rage is a part of who I am. It is woven into me and I will not lie and say that it is not there. 

And yet, even despite my attempts at tempered words, you cry defeat and run in retreat. You wave your paper cut and claim that it’s fatal in a pout of petty anger and I am left standing alone inside a conversation that you declared a battlefield. I stand here, holding my own bleeding heart and wondering if it was the ragged, oozing hole in my chest that frightened you away, or the guilt you feel for being the one who put it there. You ran when you should have said, “I’m sorry.” You blustered and accused when you should have said, “I didn’t mean to cause you harm.” You never looked back when all I wanted you to say is, “I still love you.”

And now, just like that, you are nothing. You choose to be nothing to me. After years of sweet laughter and confiding our hearts in one another, my life is filled with the physical evidence of you. But where it once filled me with soft smiles and warm memories, I am left with only the icy ghost of a love I no longer possess. You won’t respond to me. What I meant to be a dialogue you made a wall. What I had hoped would prove that my feelings were hurt over nothing, showed me the nothing that is already surrounding me as I grasped blindly for the love of a sister that I no longer have.  

~~~~

Until next time,

Adieu

Wilson and Lauren’s Love Story (so far)

Dear Readership,

This is not my story, but I got to have the immense pleasure and honor of writing it down on someone else’s behalf because it is a story that deserves to be told. For those of you who are lucky enough to know them (and for the rest of you who are missing out) — enjoy!

From the perspective of an outside onlooker, there is something that has always seemed inevitable about Wilson and Lauren. They fit — like two pieces in one of the many puzzles they have completed together during their dating relationship (because they are both secretly 90 years old), they are natural and obvious together. They’re both witty and sarcastic and can take as good as they give, so a conversation with the two of them often sparks and crackles with lighthearted jabs and banter. They compliment each other’s strengths and compensate for each other’s weaknesses, they lift each other up and adore one another. They enrich each other’s lives, but also the lives of everyone around them as they each become better versions of themselves when they are together. If you know them as they are now, it makes sense that they would be together, but it wasn’t always so obvious — certainly not to the two of them. 

Wilson and Lauren first met at Hickory Cove Bible camp seven years ago, but it wasn’t until the summer of 2018 that buds of something more began to bloom between them. Wilson remembers first taking a more serious interest in Lauren in May before the camp season had properly begun. They were both helping at the open house for camp and he was excited to see her even though they weren’t particularly good friends at the time. He heard that she wasn’t planning to work over the summer, which was disappointing because Wilson was really rooting for her to come back to camp. By his own admittance, he liked her as a person and thought she was cute. He also admits that it took him a lot longer than it should have to realize that he didn’t just think she was cute, he actually really like liked her because growing up, Wilson was always like the Tin Man from The Wizard of Oz — he didn’t have a heart. He never had crushes because they were “illogical” and “pointless.” He could easily talk himself out of feelings for someone and never bothered with dating. I’m not sure he would have owned up to his feelings for Lauren if he hadn’t been able to see and talk to her every day over an entire summer.  

But fortunately for our heartless hero, Caleb — the camp director at the time — convinced Lauren to come on as full-time staff over the summer and set the stage for Act One of our little love story (thank you, Caleb, for putting everything in motion). Lauren, by her own admittance is a very friendly and flirty person. She and Wilson had always had a flirtatious bantering relationship, but that summer it intensified. They found little ways to seek one another out, they texted and talked all the time, and they even kept in touch over the weekends (something they had never done before). 

One of the things that facilitated this connection was the activity that summer known as “The Quest” — a role playing game that sent campers (with adult supervision) deep into the woods to find a hidden treasure. Along the way they encountered many challenges and zany characters (all bursting with Christian allegory), two of whom were played by our lovebirds. 

Wilson’s character, The Wanderer, was a mysterious and benevolent fellow who would appear when beckoned by the children and aid them in their mission whenever they asked for his help. Much to the campers’ eternal frustration, Wilson remained rigidly in character and would never admit to playing a role. As far as he was concerned, Wilson and The Wanderer were two separate people. Lauren was a counselor for most of the summer, but because of a terrible tendinitis flare up in her knee, she couldn’t walk around with the kids. Instead, she was posted as a guard, blocking the path unless her demands were met (mostly she just stood around waiting for the kids to show up). Boredom is quick to find anyone posted in the woods with nothing else to do, and Wilson would often use it as an excuse to find his way over to Lauren’s part of the forest to keep her company. All summer he insisted that he, as The Wanderer, was charming and mysterious. Later in the summer when they started to catch feelings for one other, Lauren would text Wilson to tease him and tell him that she was flirting with the Wanderer and that she was going to ask him out. Wilson would play along and pretend to be jealous, although he didn’t always have to pretend. 

Lauren, affectionate though she always is, never really touched Wilson. Being huggy with friends was one thing in her mind, but he was a cute boy she actually liked so hugging him felt weird. What if he didn’t like her back and hated being hugged by her? This lack of touch wasn’t lost on Wilson and even though they often flirted, it made him a little less sure that she liked him. In fact, it was a hug that — in classic rom-com style — confirmed to Lauren that they were supposed to date while simultaneously convincing Wilson that Lauren had no interest in him. 

You see, Lauren had gone into the summer determined not to enter any kind of relationship. She was focusing on God and building up her self-confidence and her sense of identity in her relationship with Him rather than with a boyfriend.  But Wilson was such a solid friend who made her feel like a good person. He saw value in her that she didn’t even see in herself. His compliments were always about her as an individual of worth — about her ideas and thoughts and personality and strengths, not her physical appearance. She realized that despite her decision to not pursue a relationship, she was starting to really be interested in Wilson so she prayed for a really long time about it. She could see herself with him, but she didn’t want to jeopardize their friendship. Finally, she decided to ask God for a clear sign. Like Gideon with his sheepskin before the Lord, she laid out the impossible and asked God to make it possible if it was His will. She thought, “You know what, God, Wilson never hugs me. So a hug would be weird and unprecedented. If Wilson hugs me before the end of the day tomorrow, I’ll take that as a sign that it’s okay to date him.” And that’s where she left it, sure that nothing would come of it.

That night Wilson and Josh were sent to build a fire for the campers and Lauren went along to help. The three of them had palled around together for much of the summer so it was nothing out of the ordinary for the three of them to be working together like that (shout out to Josh, btw, for being the third wheel that made Wilson and Lauren hanging out together “camp appropriate” and facilitated the foundation for their impending wedding. Go you). Once the fire was lit, Wilson, very true to his nature, started playing with the lighter. Lauren told him to stop before he lit himself on fire and tried to grab it from him. He play wrestled her for it then put his arms around her and pretended to light her hair on fire (Side note: Wilson’s brand of affection is very… unique. Luckily “pretend to light you on fire”  works for Lauren. It’s part of why they’re so good together). 

But wait. Here it was, within the time frame that Lauren had laid out before God and WAS THIS A HUG??? His arms were certainly around her. She freaked out. She was shocked and surprised and overwhelmed by what felt like the clarity she had asked for — she was supposed to date Wilson. 

Meanwhile, Wilson had finally gotten up the nerve to initiate physical contact with someone he had feelings for, even in just a playful manner (again, something wildly out of the ordinary for him) and was met with dismay. She violently recoiled. He recalls thinking, Wow. Okay, so Lauren very badly doesn’t want to be touched by me. “It kind of broke my heart” he later said.

So now Lauren was sure about Wilson and he had became far less certain about her, but there was still time left in the summer. They kept texting, the kept flirting, they kept stealing little moments talking together that rode the line of being against camp policy (sorry, Caleb). One night, they texted late into the night even though they both had to get up early for a camp meeting the next day. Lauren was staying in the girl’s dorm and would have to walk by the dining hall on her way to the meeting. She offered to bring him a cup of coffee the next day. He said he would love that, and finally, they agreed to go to sleep. 

The next morning Lauren started to get cold feet. Was it weird to only bring coffee for Wilson? Would it be like making a public declaration of her feelings in front of the whole staff? She texted him: “Still want that coffee?” 

No response. 

Little did she know Wilson didn’t have any cell reception where he and the other male staff were staying in the gym. In order to text with her the night before, he had been standing by the window and holding his phone in the air at an awkward angle for service. So he didn’t see her text about the coffee until it was too late. 

When he didn’t respond she assumed it was because he felt weird, he didn’t want the coffee. So she brought only a cup for herself. He proceeded to give her a hard time in the weeks that followed, but it also gave him an idea on how to ask her out.  

He had decided to ask her out on Sunday during the registration period to go on a date the following Saturday. But registration day got crazy and the day quickly passed by without a clear opportunity presenting itself. Before they knew it, it was already 10:30 – 10:45 at night. All the staff were hanging out in the gym together, and Wilson had all but given up hope on getting to ask Lauren out. They were sitting in a group of six or seven people when miraculously they all jumped up and ran out of the gym to go to the kitchen to look for pizza (dear friend Alec led the charge that unknowingly opened a window — thanks, Alec). Suddenly Wilson was on the spot to ask her — the clock was ticking, he felt rushed. Everyone would be back soon so it was now or never. He had planned for it to be smooth, but ended up just sort of blurting his line, “You said you were going to bring me coffee last week and you never did so I think you owe me a cup of coffee still. Do you want to go out with me and get a cup next Saturday?” 

She said yes!  

But it was a little bit awkward. They kind of just sat there after that until everyone came back. 

Later that night, Wilson felt like it hadn’t gone the way he wanted because he had felt rushed to ask her. He started to worry that he hadn’t been clear that it was a date. That week they miraculously decided to leave the wifi on in the gym so (unlike during the coffee debacle the week prior) he had service. Wilson snapped Lauren and after talking for a bit he said,
“Hey, I just wanted to clarify that getting coffee means a date. I want to go on a date with you”   

They admitted to liking each other and wanting to talk more in depth about the nature of their relationship. Finally it was set. 

The day before the date, however, things didn’t go to plan. All of the full-time staffers were really close that summer, so they would all hang out together. They planned to go on a kayaking trip and then to dinner on Friday after cleanup. Wilson went to go move his car and pack up before they left, but his car wouldn’t start. Lauren said she had jumper cables he could use so she drove her car over to where his was parked. She tried to help him charge his battery, but it wasn’t working so they called AAA. It took the technician an hour and forty-five minutes to get there so Wilson and Lauren missed the kayaking trip. Wilson had tried to send her ahead, but she wouldn’t leave him (because let’s be honest, nobody goes kayaking with friends when they can sit alone with their crush instead). They would still be able to go out to dinner with everyone, at least. But then one by one everyone else bailed on dinner plans. They decided that they would still get dinner — they were hungry and discouraged after their long day. The AAA technician told Wilson that he needed to replace his battery, so he went to do that while Lauren went home and changed. When asked, Wilson still describes her as looking stunning when she showed up to dinner later.  Wilson — the automaton — in his own words, was overwhelmed by her beauty. At dinner they talked about how she hadn’t seen Rogue One so they went back to her house and watched the movie. If you were to ask Lauren, that was their first date. It was dinner and a movie after all. If you were to ask Wilson, however, he very admittedly insists it was NOT a date. He had worked really hard to plan and get up the nerve to ask her out for their date on Saturday, so no matter how date-ish it may appear, Friday night they were just hanging out as friends. 

The next day they got the coffee (for over three hours) and then Wilson took her to Glenn C. Hilton park where they did the boardwalk and fed the ducks. They wandered through the park for five or six hours and finally talked about what they were to each other. They agreed that they liked and wanted to date each other, but there were a lot of dating obstacles– Lauren was graduating in December, Wilson had several more years of school, and they would have to long distance. They decided that obstacles aside, they were going to try it. At that point it was approaching 6pm so they decided to get dinner. After dinner they still were not ready to stop hanging out so they went back to the park to walk around and look at the stars. In the end, it was a full on twelve hour date (breaking the world record for longest first-ish date ever). What they both distinctly remember about the day is that there wasn’t a single minute when they were unhappy or bored or ready for the date to be over. Even during the times when they sat in silence — there was no awkwardness or need to break the silence. They were content to be together. 

The other distinct memory that lingers from the date for them both is that Wilson opened the car door handle for Lauren and there was a big fat hairy spider underneath. It fell down its web just long enough for them to see the bushy monstrosity before it quickly scurried back up under the handle. Wilson fearlessly (but also screaming like a little girl) grabbed the handle again, knowing what was underneath, and knocked it to the ground where it was violently stomped to death — both remain traumatized to this day.

The next day they both went back to camp and could no longer be “dating” because it was against the rules. They had to spend the rest of the summer playing it cool and keep their now brand new baby romance on the down-low. By the time the camp season ended and they could announce their relationship, it was time for them both to head back to school and begin the long-distance leg of their journey. Over the past year and half of doing long distance, Wilson and Lauren have faithfully traveled back and forth to see one another, or at least made time to meet in the middle for dates. One such place they often met was Amélie’s French Bakery & Café. Their most notable date at the cafe was also their  first date after Wilson had gone back to school.

They got coffee and macaroons to share as they sat down to answer The New York Times’ 30 questions that Lead to Love. The questions were based on a study Lauren had been learning about in school that postulated that two total strangers could ask each other these questions and by the end would “fall in love” or at least feel closer. The participants are supposed to take turns asking and answering first, and the whole thing is supposed to take 45 minutes. True to their nature, they spent 5 hours on it as they went into crazy depth to get to know each other. Close to the end, there was a question that said, “If you died today, what is something you would regret not having told someone?”  It was Lauren’s turn to answer first. She really wanted to say “I love you” but she was worried Wilson would think it was too soon and that it would freak him out. She deliberated on and off for a long time before deflecting and somewhat lamely picking a quaint platitude she would want to tell a friend. Wilson thought it was a bit of a weird answer and that it took her a long time to get to it, but didn’t mention it. 

When Lauren asked him the question in return he answered, “I think I’m in love with you and I would regret not telling you that.” 

Lauren was shocked.  “No way!” She said, ”That’s what I was going to say too!”

 Wilson, somewhat saucily, replied, “No, too late. You had your chance. You totally chickened and I said it first.” Rather like the incident with the coffee, it has remained a point of well meant, but rather merciless teasing to this day. 

Their dating relationship continued on in a similar way — each driving to visit the other — as their love and devotion for one another deepened. It wasn’t long before they began to discuss the idea of marriage somewhat in earnest. Wilson spent hours looking for the perfect ring for Lauren, finally finding it online with a Ukrainian jewler. He ordered the ring in time for it to arrive by Thanksgiving break — when he hoped to propose. Only, the ring didn’t come. Slightly annoyed, he figured over Christmas break would be just as fine. Only, the last day of exams came and went and the ring still didn’t come. 

He came home from school in something of a panic. Where was the ring? Finally, finally, he got a notification letting him know the ring had been delivered — to his school mailbox — three hours away. He found the phone number of the woman who worked in the mail office and apologized for the intrusion on her privacy but explained his situation and his need for the ring. She happily agreed to help him. On December 23rd he asked Lauren if she would like to roadtrip with him to pick up one of her Christmas presents that had been delivered late and ended up at school. They made a day of the journey — stopping in Rock Hill at one of their favorite restaurants and doing some last minute shopping. All the while, Lauren secretly wondered if this could be her ring (she had teasingly asked Wilson one too many times when he was going to propose and he had snapped at her that he would when the ring came). Wilson, not remembering he had let that detail slip, kept weaving the lie that it was a Christmas present. When they got to CIU Wilson told her to wait in the car while he got the package. Much to his dismay, the box was damningly ring sized. He hunted around the empty student union until he found a bigger box he could hide the smaller box inside of before bringing it out to the car. 

Lauren’s confidence wavered only slightly on seeing the size of the box before asking if she could open it early. Wilson replied that she could not open it early because it was something for her to use at the beach (where they were heading Christmas afternoon to spend the rest of the holiday with Lauren’s family). Now her certainty was really beginning to waver, but she kept it to herself as they made their way back to Lauren’s apartment, tired from their six hour drive. 

Wilson had decided that to propose he would recreate a moment from early in their relationship. Back when they had first started discussing marriage Lauren had told him that she wouldn’t appreciate subtlety in a proposal — she needed it to be clear. The parameters she laid out for him were this: he had to have a ring, he had to say her full name, and he had to get on one knee. Being the cheeky fool he is, he immediately started looking for loopholes. While they were laying on the bed talking, he rolled over so that he was laying on one knee, he took his own ring off his finger, and he asked her, “Lauren Beth Rudisill, will you marry me?” To which she (obviously) responded, “Um, no.” Wilson often teased that he wouldn’t propose again because he had been so rudely rejected the first time and it became an ongoing joke in their relationship (at this point you may have noticed that ongoing teasing is a staple of both of their love languages).  

But now with an actual ring, it was time to recreate the moment. Wilson told Lauren that he left his phone in the car and went down to retrieve it. While down at the car, he pulled the ring from the box inside the box and slipped it into his pocket. He went back upstairs, laid on Lauren’s bed, and — as nonchalantly as possible — asked her to come lay down and cuddle with him. 

“Let’s take pictures in our new matching pajama pants first,” she said, “If we lay down now we won’t want to get back up.” 

Wilson thought about the ring in his pocket and about the pocketless pajama pants she wanted him to put on, “Uuuuhh, just, just come cuddle me first” he insisted. 

Finally she agreed. They cuddled for a minute before Wilson rolled over onto onto one knee, and whispered, “I tried this once before but you rejected me so I thought I’d give it a second shot,” he pulled the ring from his pocket, “Lauren Beth Rudisill, will you marry me?” To which she (obviously) responded, “Yes!” 

And the rest, of course, is history! That which seemed fated, happened. On May 16th they will make their eternal vows to one another and they will live jokingly, lovingly, devotedly, and happily ever after. 

I hope you enjoyed this I much as I do.

Until Next Time,

Adieu

Opinion Piece: I Did Not Ask for Your Opinion on My Ex Fiancé

Dear Readership,

The following post is meant mostly in jest. By that I mean I am deadly serious about the content, but want you to imagine it delivered in a humorous tone since tone doesn’t always come across in writing.

Let’s play a game. I’m going to give you four sentences and you have to tell me what they have in common:

“Don’t you think you spend too much time together?”

“I think it would be better if you guys had some space from each other.”

“Won’t it be weird to explain when you start dating other people?”

“Your breakup would be easier if you just stopped talking to each other and moved on.”

Is it:
A) Crappy, entirely unsolicited things people have said about mine and Bryce’s relationship since we called off our engagement
B) Busybodies staying busy
C) Frankly none of anyone’s business
OR
D) All of the frickin’ above!

Now I know what you might be saying right now, “Wowie, Gosh almighty, Jeez Oh Pete, Sierra. Looks like someone took too many passive aggressive pills with breakfast today and is coming on a little strong. Tell us how you really feel, crazy.”

To which I’d say, “Fair enough.”

But to those of you who have wondered (be it rudely, directly, to our faces, behind out backs, with good intentions, as a means of looking for fresh new gossip, out of genuine love and concern, or anywhere in between) HERE is exactly how I really feel – wonder no longer.

I love Bryce. I care about him. He’s important to me and, as a general rule, I like to keep the things I care about close at hand and in my heart. Also let me just go ahead and take a moment to emphasize that I am not concerned about what the the mythical feelings of a currently non-existent future S.O. might be, and I will not let how they may or may not some day feel about mine and Bryce’s relationship dictate my behavior (because, damn! That was exhausting to type, much less live by. Life is too short for that mess).

Further, let it be known that Bryce and I didn’t fall out of love. I say that mostly because I don’t think falling out of love is even possible. If anything, people fade out of love. But as it happens, our love hadn’t faded when we called off our engagement. As previously stated, I still love him. Very much.

But over the last four or five months of our engagement, some fairly serious issues cropped up. We sat down and looked long and hard at the trajectory of our relationship and we didn’t like where it was headed. There were certain things that had to change and certain other things that had to be emotionally dealt with in order for us to have a happy, healthy, marriage and it wasn’t immediately clear that either of those were guaranteed to happen. Could we change? I don’t know, maybe. Could we emotionally process the stuff that needed dealt with? Again, unclear. But both of those things had to happen for us to feel comfortable getting married and both were going to take time.

So we were then faced with a decision — do we postpone our wedding but stay engaged and hope that we can fix what is broken? Or do we break up?

We chose to break up.

We broke up to get clarity and space and remove the time constraint of fixing our problems before a new wedding date. We broke up because we thought it would be the emotionally healthier way to move forward.

We did not break up because we hated each other, or because we wanted to move on from each other, or because we were unhappy. And we did not break up because we wanted to see less of each other.

Bryce didn’t stop being my best friend when we broke up. I didn’t stop wanting to call him whenever something frustrating or funny or exciting or sad happened to me. I didn’t stop wanting to hear his thoughts on the world or stop wanting to lay around and watch TV with him. I didn’t stop missing him when we were apart.

I did, however, stop caring what people thought. Calling off an engagement is agonizingly embarrassing — and that’s coming from someone who has experienced a remarkable amount of social discomfort over the course of her short, awkward, life. Have you ever walked around at work with your skirt tucked in your underwear so that your butt hangs out for god only knows how long before your boss finally tells you? I have. Pretty recently, actually. It was mortifying. NOT as mortifying, however, as having to recontact all of the people who I had just asked for addresses from so I could send them wedding invitations only to then say, “JK! Never mind. We called it off.” I cried from embarrassment. More than once. But it was what was best for us, just like staying an active part of each others’ lives is best for us.

Will we get back together? Um, none of your business. That’s for us to work on and figure out. Maybe. If we can. If we ever reach a point of believing that that is what is the best for both of us and our friendship in the long run. In the meantime, I want him in my life as much as possible.

I broke up with Bryce because I didn’t want to lose him to a bitter marriage. If I cared what people thought, I would have just quietly married him to save face and endured the consequences. Instead, I did the most uncomfortable thing I’ve ever done because I wanted to fight for continued access to a person that I deeply adore. Now, rather than attempt to understand something they haven’t seen before, so many people have had the audacity to criticize it because it doesn’t follow a “traditional breakup narrative” and what they believe is “right” or “normal.”

My goal in life is not to behave in a way that makes sense to people. My goal is to live a life that is full, fulfilled, wild, beautiful, authentic, joyful and uniquely mine. I know without a doubt that Bryce is an integral part of achieving that for me, even if the exact nature of his role is still unclear. Our journey for answers is messy, but it is our own and I cherish that.

Let’s return now then to our original four sentences from the beginning and respond to them the way they deserve to be responded to:

“Don’t you think you spend too much time together?”
On the contrary, we don’t spend nearly enough time together. He gives my life purpose and direction and I can never have enough of that.

“I think it would be better if you guys had some space from each other.” Oh, do you? The day that space from Bryce is better for me is the day that one of us stops breathing… Because, you know, hanging out with a corpse is never good for you, really.

“Won’t it be weird to explain when you start dating other people?” Idk, but that influences literally 0% of my decisions. And we did try to start dating other people. It didn’t really take. For now, we’re happy to work on ourselves and enjoy each other’s company.

“Your breakup would be easier if you just stopped talking to each other and moved on.”
I’m not really looking to do what’s easier, I’m looking to do what’s best for me and Bryce. And as it turns out, we’re actually the best qualifed people to make that decision for ourselves.

I guess what I’m trying to say to the people who have felt inclined to judge what they don’t understand or tried to force us to behave in a way that fits a small minded perspective — in the most loving and gracious way that I can manage — get bent.

Until next time,

Adieu

A Likely Concussion and A Study in Toxic Masculinity

Dear Readership,

I recently had the interesting experience of being hit very hard in the head while also simultaneously witnessing some of the most refreshing displays of healthy masculinity that I’ve ever encountered (and yes, those are related).

Allow me to back up — last weekend a most beloved friend of mine got married (this is not related. I am just giving too much context like the oversharer I was born to be). Because I was the bridesmaid with the most flexible schedule, I helped with wedding prep and cleanup which made for three very long (and very joy-filled days) that I wouldn’t give up for the world. My feet, however, may never recover. They were swollen, aching, and blistered from adorable but merciless shoes. After it was all over, I sat on the floor of my mom’s house and massaged them pitifully while exchanging pleasantries with the parents of some longtime family friends who were in town for the wedding.

The youngest son of these friends approached me at around 10:30 (a mere 10 minutes after I had arrived home post-wedding cleanup) and asked ever so sweetly if I would consider playing a game called King’s Base with him and the other young siblings (think a mixture of capture the flag/tag played in the dark). Now, as dearly as I cherish the older siblings, I hardly know this youngest child at all and I was completely taken aback by both his forwardness and politeness in asking me to join their game. I looked around me at the semicircle of pleading eyes (my three youngest siblings and the brother who is only slightly older than him having joined him in the asking) and I caved. How could I say no to such sweet faces? “You can say no” my step-dad reassured me. Nevertheless, I agreed to play.

Now, for further context, I’m not sporty. I mean really not sporty. My whole life I have been the klutzy girl (see title of blog). It doesn’t matter how hard I try, how many times I am shown, or how earnestly people try to engage me in sports or group games — I can’t do it.

And it doesn’t matter what the sport is: disc golf, basketball, baseball, kickball, soccer, ping-pong, tennis, croquet, jump rope, volley ball, running, even quidditch — yes, quidditch for a semester in college — I really can’t do it. And yet, as a child that was raised to play outdoors in a community of friends who had limited access to the internet or TV, I was often forced to participate in group games and sports over the course of my life. As a result, my childhood is littered with memories of not measuring up, of always feeling like I was disappointing my teammates, and of feeling embarrassed and ashamed.

I’ll never forget being held back in my summer swim lessons as a very young child and having to repeat the guppy level (you know, where you swim on paddle boards and blow bubbles on the side of the pool) because I had the swimming ability of a literal rock. I’ll never forget the day in middle school when I got picked last for kickball — after the kid in a cast. He couldn’t even play half the game and my friends still considered him a better option than me. I’ll never forget the look on my father’s face in early high school when, after showing me the proper way to throw a disc for the millionth time, I spiked it off the ground four feet in front of me. He was so utterly disappointed that I hadn’t inherited even a shred of his athletic skills. And I’ll certainly never forget the years of playing capture the flag with my friend and her older brothers and the many times they argued over who would be stuck having chubby, slow, and easily distracted Sierra on their team. Even now, these memories kind of sting and they are just a sampling of thousands of others just like them.

Big whoop you might say. Lots of people weren’t good at sports growing up but you don’t see them crying about it online in their mid 20s. And to your point, fair. But I think what made it especially poignant for me was growing up in a community that emphasized gender roles to a very extreme degree. I was constantly being told that my role in life was an inferior one. The Biblical idea of wives submitting to their husbands got lost in translation somewhere and began to mean women submit to all men. One time my friend and I were called into her kitchen to help prepare lunch for her brother who would be home soon because “it would bless him” to have lunch ready for him when he got there. I remember thinking, “Let him make his own damn lunch. I’m not his maid.” To this day I stand by that. If I had already been making lunch for myself that day I obviously would have made enough to share with him. But being called away from what I was doing to specifically attend to the task of making his lunch infuriated me.

Unfortunately, this kind of thing wasn’t even an unusual occurrence. As it was, us girls were already allowed to do less, our parents came down on us harder, and we often had to yield to the boys in matters of play. When our parents were around the boys were often forced to display acts of gallantry towards us and we were forced to let them as a way for them to (begrudgingly) practice the proper way to treat a woman. But being young and immature as well as given differential treatment, many of the guys I grew up with began to form something of a god complex and would take it out on us girls when left to our own devices. They made sure we knew that we were beneath them and an easy way to express it was to dominate us in play.

The angry feminist inside of me — the one I think I must have been born in possession of because she has always been there — would always feel the extra searing heat of shame in the face of defeat. She screamed inside my chest each time I lost or was picked last or didn’t run fast enough because I knew I was mired smack dab in the middle of a stereotype about girls and there was nothing in my power I could do to thwart it. It didn’t matter how hard I tried, when the boys taunted that I was just a girl and could never beat them it hurt because they were right and I knew it. I could never beat them. But, being children, they were always monstrous about it and the standards of our community let them — even encouraged them to be. Knowing that my hands were tied by my own inadequacy and that my mouth was gagged by the harsh gender roles that had been meticulously stacked against me, a seed of self-loathing wrapped tightly in bitterness began to form inside of me.

As a result, I spent years of my life and hundreds of hours in therapy trying to prove my worth to myself in the face of having been measured so harshly by my community. I fiercely and faithfully refuse to play team sports to this day to avoid putting myself in the kind of situation again where I can be so degraded because I know what it does to me. I end up in a depressive funk where I mull over every mistake and disappointment. I take every taunt to heart and learn all over again how it feels to hate myself and project that loathing onto the people around me (whether or not they actually feel it). I have to spend weeks all over again reminding myself that I am happy, that I am worthy, that I live a fulfilled life that I am proud of, and that I don’t measure myself by the same metric that I fell so short of during my childhood.

So back to the story at hand. After all that very long interlude you may be asking, why, Sierra, did you agree to play King’s Base at all with a history like that? Well, because I thought I was playing against a bunch of kids ranging in age from 10-15. I figured my 15 year old brother could be on one team and I could be on the other and we would be about evenly matched. And because they asked so nicely, let’s not forget.

You can imagine my surprise, then, when both of the college-aged sons of my parent’s friends stood up to go outside and play with us. My heart sank to my toes — suddenly my fears bubbled up and grabbed me by the throat: loser, not good enough, klutz — all echoed in my head. But I had already agreed to play and I had vocally and consistently refused the outs that my step-father had given me. I had to play. But I also suddenly feared the ridicule of my peers in a way that I hadn’t for years. If I had known that they were going to play, I never would have agreed.

I tried to tell myself that this time would be different because this time I would hold my own (why? Literally no reason. I haven’t become faster or stronger or more coordinated so I had no reason to believe anything of the sort beyond the fact that I am super good at lying to myself). And let me tell you — it was a big, fat, steamy lie. I did absolutely horribly. In the first round of the game my ten year old sister and I (teammates, I might add) both ran to tag the same guy and cracked heads so hard my teeth slammed together and I saw a burst of light. I hugged her to my chest and apologized (to her for headbutting her and to everyone else because our team lost when she and I went down). I kept seeing spots in my vision and felt the curling finger of nausea in my stomach for a good thirty minutes after impact, but I was determined to keep playing because I wanted to prove that I was better. I needed to prove that a little mild brain trauma wouldn’t stand in my way.

Honestly I should have quit while I was ahead though (or rather, less behind). A few rounds later I was chasing someone and ran headlong into one of the college-aged guys (again, he was my teammate. Only this time we cracked knees, not heads, so it was an easier pain to shake off). Then just a few rounds later we switched teammates and, confused, I very aggressively tagged several people who had previously been my opponents but were now on my team. With one exception, these “friendly fire” tags remained the only people I tagged throughout the five or six rounds that we played.

To put it simply, I made an utter fool of myself through and through. Later that night I sat in the shower (literally sat, too sore to stand) and surrendered myself to the shame and self-loathing that I expected to wash over me. I braced myself for the play by play of every dumb move in agonizing slow motion to grind my self-confidence into a powder as the angry part of my feminist spirit roared in self-defense. I expected to grapple with that anger for weeks before I tamped her back down and reminded myself that anger is not an appropriate response to pain, before I reminded myself that the feminism I want to maintain is driven by a longing for mutual respect, that just because I had embarrassed myself didn’t make me less of an equal to my male counterparts who had beaten me so thoroughly in a game of speed and agility.

And yet, despite my openness to it, the shame didn’t come. I was shocked. Instead, the playback that hovered in my mind’s eye was centered on the number of times my teammates had high fived me and congratulated me for my little successes. I remembered how every time I hurt myself they stopped the game to make sure I was really and truly okay (the guy I plowed into even unnecessarily took the blame for our collision when it was calculably my fault). I remembered how that despite all of the smack talk and competitive airs, no one had ever targeted me. I hadn’t been made to feel small and useless, but had been verbally confirmed as a valuable part of the team. Now, for the record, that could not be more untrue and I know it. All I had functionally done to “help” was make the teams even, but even so, I had been graciously and lovingly included. Any smack talk that was directed towards me was in good spirit and tactfully dodged the subjects of my clear inferiority or any mention of my gender as a possible cause.

And that’s when it hit me: competition in team sports that is driven by gender shaming, by pointing women out as the “lesser” sex, by excluding, or by hassling is a picture of broken manhood. A real man (be he 11 or be he 21) is a man who high fives his klutzy teammate and tells her he’s glad she decided to play. I’m not saying coddle me or lie and tell me I’m good, but be made to feel like I was accepted — warts and all — literally saved me from a month long emotional spiral.

Now, I know that my revelation that sexism exists in sports is hardly new — professional athletes deal with that kind of crap all the time, so why do I feel like I should be exempt from the heckling? I guess the difference in my mind is that unlike Serena Williams or Megan Rapinoe, or Billie Jean King before them, I can’t just win the crap out of my sport to shut the haters up. I fit all of the stereotypes about females in sports that every knuckle-dragging misogynist has ever wielded to try to delegitimize a queen and I really hate that about myself. I want, like in so many other areas of my life, to be able to rise above the criticism through hard work and excellence.

So to then be graciously included in the face of my deficiencies reminded me that there are real men with a real understanding of masculinity who don’t feel the need to shame me when they win or blame me when they lose. That those who fall short of grace are themselves the deficient ones. It was a very liberating realization (albeit not a terribly profound one on the large scale of social insight).

Now, will I start engaging in more team sports with my new enlightened perspective? Probably not. I’m still a hazard and a general embarrassment to myself. But I do like to think I can start to gently let go of the barbs of my childhood and have grace for myself in the face of that embarrassment because someone finally set an example of healthy manhood in competition that I can look to as a litmus. I will never be good at sports, but somehow it took 23 years before a guy outside of my immediate family made me feel like I didn’t have to be — that I could play for fun and the company I provided is what made my presence desirable. Basically, it took 23 years for me to experience what it felt like to be treated like a human being in a sports environment and that long overdue contrast freed me from the binds of toxicity. I hope it will liberate others as well.

Until next time,

Adieu

Why I Don’t Believe In The ‘Thank You Note’ (And Why You Should Never Expect to Receive One From Me)

Dear Readership,

I realize that what I am proposing (especially as someone who has lived in the South for most of her life) is rather inflammatory. My stand against the thank you note may be taken personally by those who love to abide by and perpetuate long-standing traditions, of which the thank you note is certainly one. To you, I am sorry. I know you must think of me as the embodiment of abandoned decorum or as someone who is utterly without manners. I am, “what is wrong with the world these days” as some would say, but be that as it may, it does not change my mind.

Let me say too before you are really ready to crucify me, I am not anti-gratitude in the slightest. I think being able to feel and express thankfulness is one of the greatest aspects of humanity. Gratitude is a feeling that strikes you low in the gut and wells up inside of you until it fills your body. When deeply felt, it climbs out of your throat, burns through your arms, shines (and even sometimes pours) from your eyes so that it is seen and heard and known simply because you cannot contain it. Gratitude is knowing that someone has changed your life in some way — saved it or made it better — and you feel overwhelmingly compelled to express that truth. Sometimes, too, gratitude comes mixed with other emotions — humility, joy, awe, excitement, even sometimes shame (like when you’re given forgiveness you know you don’t deserve).

But one emotion that gratitude should never be paired with is resentment. It’s an oxymoron. If I resent having to show you my gratitude, I am not really grateful. And if you insist that my gratitude be shown to you in a certain way (say, in the form of a thank you note) then you are stealing my gratitude from me.

I want it to be said and now be known that I resent–I mean truly from the bottom of my heart–resent having to write thank you notes. I think if everyone was being honest with themselves, most people do. It’s a chore that people have to make themselves sit down and do. Or it’s something that they keep offering up apologies and excuses for having not done yet. I can think of tons of times when I have seen a post or received a text or had someone say, “Sorry I haven’t sent you your thank you note, yet. I’m behind, but I’m working on it.”

Don’t apologize to me for not sending me a piece of mail that was likely written in template form so you could get through it faster and that I will definitely throw away. Just tell me right now that you’re grateful I came to your party. Tell me that you enjoy my company and my friendship — better yet, hug me at the party and tell me then. Or best of all — keep inviting me. Keep texting me and loving me by being present in my life. That is gratitude in action and the only thank you card I ever need or ever plan to send.

“But what about people who expect you to send Thank You’s? What if they are offended if you don’t?” a friend asked me a few weeks ago when I told her I wasn’t planning to send thank you notes after my wedding. “Then I hope they don’t come” I said.

That sounds a little harsh, but to me it is simple. If the only reason you would come to my wedding or give me a gift is because you expect to be formally thanked, I’m asking you now — do not come and do not send a gift. And this applies to all future parties, baby showers, anniversaries, etc. I want to fill my life with gifts that were given to me in love from people who don’t keep a running tally. I don’t want my life cluttered up by fake generosity.

I think the heart of this sentiment may stem from an experience I had in high school. One summer a church that I didn’t even go to raised money for me to be able to attend a Bible camp. My family didn’t ever have the funds to send us away in the summer so this was the first time I had ever gone to camp. I was elated! I couldn’t believe their generosity and was grateful beyond words. I made sure I told the pastor (who was a friend of my mom’s) how thankful I was. That week I had a ton of incredible experiences — I made lots of friends, but one in particular that was such an amazing kindred spirit he and I would continue to be friends for years (and still are). I also heard the Holy Spirit speak for the first time as I was dragged out of my comfort zone in ways I hadn’t known I could be. God’s message for me that week was to live boldly for Him — He called me to dance like David before Him and not care who saw me (something that was very hard for me at the time, but was an important first step in a long journey to liberate me from my crippling social anxiety). It was life changing in all of the ways that Bible camp really should be.

But fast forward a few weeks and I received an unsettling message from the pastor of that church. Sheepishly he implored me to write a thank you letter to his congregation because some of the members who had helped pay for me to attend the camp were upset, angry even, that I had not formally thanked them. I was shocked. I had said thank you. And I was thankful! Enormously. But why were they angry? Because it wasn’t on paper? Because I hadn’t groveled enough? It would be different if they had asked for an update — if they had said they wanted to hear from me about what God had done for me that week. But to demand that I thank them more? My shock became resentment as I penned a letter totally numbed by obligation.

It took me a long time and a lot of prayer to forgive the members of that church for shaming me for my “lack of gratitude.” It took a lot of effort to not let my joy be stolen and to remind myself that the actions of fallible humans don’t represent the heart of a perfect God. God still used that week to work in my life, regardless of the motivations of the people who sent me.

But I haven’t forgotten how it felt to be made small, to be scolded, to be the target of anger and judgment for not writing a thank you note. And since then I have been quite sure that I would not ever waste my time saying thank you’s that I didn’t mean, or force myself to write thank you’s that would make the sentiment disingenuous. People who are angered by this are merely identifying themselves as people I can happily prune from my life.

I guess you could say that this post is my official warning to all of those who are ever invited to future events that I host to not expect a card in the mail from me. Specifically those of you who do attend my wedding, if you find that you can get over my impropriety, I want you to know that I am thankful. If you give me a blender, know that I will be thankful every morning when I make a smoothie for breakfast; I will be thankful for my sheets every time I crawl into bed; I will be thankful for my measuring cups when I bake cookies; and I will be thankful for my dishes at literally every meal. I love the tradition of filling the house of a newly married couple with the things they need from the people they love (I personally have always enjoyed blessing my own friends in that way). And whether or not it is ever said, I know that they are always thankful.

And if you want a thank you — a real and proper thank you — listen for it. Our unspoken thank you echos in all of the trips and concerts and nights out that Bryce and I skipped in order to save money to make our wedding fun for our guests. Our thank you will be there in the delicious food we’ve paid for you to be able to eat and it will be there in the decorations. You’ll hear our thank you in the music, you’ll feel it in the hugs we give you and you’ll likely see it in our eyes and even hear it from our own mouths as we delight in having the people we love share in our joy.

I love to be thankful, it’s my favorite way to live. But not on paper. Not in a uniform stack of identical cards that I will try to race through to get over and done with. That’s simply not what thankfulness means to me.

Until next time,

Adieu

Love in the High Country: In Which Two of the World’s Most Awkward People Stumbled Their Way Into an Epic Romance

Dear Readership,

This is a saga — I’ll apologize in advance for the length. I have shortened it in every way I can, but like any story worth telling, our lives and love were formed in the details. Our story is one of repeated near misses, bad timing, and conveniently crossed paths that could give any decent Rom-Com a run for its money. So buckle up and enjoy!

Bryce and I first met when we were little Freshman babies at Appalachian State University back in the fall of 2014. He started talking to this girl who lived on my dorm floor, and once they began officially dating, he became a regular “lobby kid” (which is what those of us who bummed in the public space on the 5th floor of Coltrane unofficially called ourselves). I very vividly remember the day Bryce asked my floormate out because I bumped into him in the elevator just before he did it. He had bought her a box of gourmet cookies and written an adorable pun in the lid of the box. My friend and I wished him good luck and went on our way. Once Bryce was out of earshot I told her, “Man, if someone asked me out with a pun like that I would say yes in a heartbeat!” 

This, of course, was some pretty crazy cosmic foreshadowing.

Fast forward a little and Bryce and I happened to join the same campus ministry (he joined because a friend from high school was already a part of CCF and had spoken highly of it. I joined about a semester later because this girl who lived on my floor — and would later become my roommate, one of my best friends, and eventually a bridesmaid — kept nagging me about trying it and I wanted her to leave me alone).

Through the mutual space of our campus ministry, he and I kept in touch and began to become friends. When Bryce returned Sophomore year freshly single, my interest was officially piqued. I didn’t realize it though until he started talking to someone else and I became outrageously jealous. Not being much of a seductress, I settled into the comfortable distance of casual friendship and continued to admire the man of character that he is from afar.

Then, in the spring of Sophomore year, fate threw me a bone by sending me Hannah (Bryce’s sister) who transferred from ECU. When Bryce first told us his sister was transferring to App, I decided I wasn’t going to like her on principle (aren’t I evil? I had grown up with a dear friend who got regularly befriended by girls who were crushing on her older brothers. I knew how much it hurt her to be a tactical vantage point instead of a person with friends, and since I am nothing if not a woman of delusions and extremes, I decided to spare Hannah that fate by simply not liking her at all).

This, of course, went very poorly. I think I managed to dislike Hannah for roughly 2 hours? Maybe less… Her vivacious personality and raw endearing humor quickly flagged her as a kindred spirit and someone who I was incapable of avoiding. As our friendship blossomed, I remained determined to never ask about Bryce or bring him into our friendship. And yet, there he was. She would mention an endearing detail about him from their childhood, or would invite me over to his apartment where she was hanging out with him (since I lived across town and she still lived in a dorm with a somewhat weird and unnerving roommate, his place was the easiest meeting point). I found out from her that he was once again single and I tried to not get excited about it. But the more time I spent with her, the more time I seemed to end up spending with him, and the harder I fell.

I started to send out flirtatious probes (yes, probes. What an un-sexy word… once again, seduction is not my strong suit). I pulled out all the stops that my sheltered self could think of: the occasional brushed arm or bumped knee, regular texting, teasing, deliberate eye contact… I even tried the age old eye contact bounce between his eyes and lips when he spoke. Nothing. I couldn’t tell if he was picking up on any of it.

Then, at the end of Sophomore year, I drove him back to his apartment on the last day before the summer. It was just the two of us in the car and I thought maybe this would be the moment something finally happened. All my hopes were dashed in one cruel moment, however, when he reached out and gave me a goodbye fist-bump (not even an awkward in-the-car side hug). It was then that I was sure he didn’t like me.

Momma didn’t raise no quitter though, so I gave it another try over the summer when I texted him to see how he was doing. Despite my best efforts to keep it alive, the conversation quickly died. It was the final nail in my fragile ego’s coffin. Now I was sure that not only did he not like me, but maybe he didn’t even want to be my friend. I was Hannah’s friend who was around sometimes. That was all.

So I started dating someone else.

Little did I know, Hannah had been name dropping for me over the summer (even though Bryce had never picked up on my interest in him, she certainly did). She even went so far as to ask him if he would consider me as someone viable to date. That off-handed question managed to plant a seed in his head that all of my best attempts at flirting had never been able to do: Bryce started to notice me, to think about me, and to consider me as an option. As the summer wound to a close and we headed back to Boone for Junior year, Bryce began, for the first time, to really like me.

Just a few days into the fall semester, Bryce and I both volunteered to work the CCF table for the club expo (where new students could learn about/join clubs) and we found out that we had been assigned to work the same shift at our ministry’s table — just the two of us. He was elated when he found out. This would be the perfect chance to spend some time one-on-one with me. I, on the other hand, was devastated — I hadn’t stopped liking Bryce, I had just given up on being liked back. I couldn’t spend time with him like that. It would be awkward, not to mention unfair to my new boyfriend.

I told myself to put on my big girl panties and do it — we were in the same small ministry. It’s not like I could avoid him. Besides, we were there to do a job. I went in planning to be cordial but distant and instead ended up having a wonderful time. Our table had been placed in a back corner that didn’t get a ton of foot traffic so we spent most of the time talking, and Bryce proved to be a wonderful conversationalist.

He went home and told Hannah (his now roommate) that he was going to ask me on a date — and she told him that I had a boyfriend. Crushed, he resigned himself to our sudden role reversal and decided to continue to be my friend and like me from afar as I had done the year prior. With these intentions, he and Hannah invited me over a few nights later to see their new apartment and watch a movie. Once again I had a lovely time so naturally I decided by the end of the night that I would need to avoid Bryce in order to remain emotionally faithful to the guy that I was dating.

Despite my best efforts, he and I kept getting thrown in together — we joined the same support group, ended up at the same table for our campus ministry’s Thanksgiving (it was the first and only year they enforced assigned seating for the meal and I bet you can just guess who I got seated next to), and we often times ended up in our friend group’s hangout spots on campus at the same time. Even with all of our elbow bumping, we spent very little meaningful time together that semester and he was far removed from my mind when I ended my relationship during finals week that fall.

In fact, I really didn’t give Bryce a ton of thought at all until I returned to school for my spring semester Junior year and we started chatting at our campus ministry’s kick-off meeting. The conversation spilled over into text and we began to banter flirtatiously. All of my feelings from the last several years came rushing back out of the deep dark corner that I had hidden them in, and for the first time in a long time, I started to have hope that maybe he liked me. It all came to a screeching halt (again) when I jokingly threatened to hold him to a promise that he was making and he responded with, 

“10-4, good buddy.”

I died on the inside. Absolutely died. Good buddy?? The stinging shame of being blatantly friend zoned burned so hot in my chest that I couldn’t stand to bear it alone. I took a screenshot of it, blacked out his name, and sent the picture to several of my nearest and dearest friends (one of whom was obviously Hannah). I captioned the image with something along the lines of, “When you’re trying to flirt and you get friend-zoned so hard you get whiplash.”

In a matter of minutes she responded with, “who friend-zoned you?”

This was a question I wasn’t ready for (because I’m an idiot) so I said the most incriminating thing possible — “Don’t worry about it.”

She then did the most low-down dirty thing that I will forever be grateful for: she screenshotted my message and asked Bryce, “Did you recently tell Sierra ’10-4, good buddy’?” He admitted that he had and she showed him the message in which I confessed to feeling friend-zoned. He insisted that that wasn’t his intention, that he had been joking.

Sometimes I wonder how long Bryce and I would have been trapped in our cycle of missed opportunities and bad communication if Hannah had never intervened. Because even though I didn’t know at the time that she had shown my text to him, it changed Bryce’s intentions. He had confirmation that I did, in fact, like him. That I had been flirting with him. It gave him the final push he needed to make his first move — he invited me over to watch Futurama. After a few episodes we switched to Stranger Things (because I had said that I was too afraid to watch it by myself and he kindly offered to watch it with me and protect me from the scary bits). This, of course, led to some low-key cuddling which led to another planned date to finish the show later that week, and this time some unashamed high-key cuddling.

Then, on February 13th, 2017 I asked him if he would like to join me at the library where I was writing a paper. To my surprise, he said yes! It was already pretty late and Bryce didn’t tend to prefer the library as a study space, but he said he had a test to study for and could use somewhere quiet to work on it. Unbeknownst to me, at the time of my invitation, he was furiously drawing a Stranger Things themed Valentine’s Day card to give me. On the front was a drawing of Eleven holding a box of Eggo waffles along with the pun, “Leggo out?” written above it. Inside the card were several more ST-themed puns asking me to be his girlfriend. He brought it with him to the library and as the clock struck midnight he slid it across the table and whispered, “Happy Valentine’s Day.”

Naturally, finally, inevitably, I said yes! Or rather, I nodded yes to being his girlfriend. I had, unfortunately, not known I was going to be asked out that night and had set up to study on the “no talking” floor in the library (my favorite place to get work done). So, having lots of things to say to one another in a space where we weren’t allowed to talk (and me still having a paper due in 6 hours), we continued to work in silence. However, I could barely stop smiling and I can say with confidence that that was probably the worst paper I have ever turned in.

As it got late, Bryce finally stood up to go. It had been my intention to stay later than him to finish, so I figured I would walk out to the car with him so I could finally say something and kiss him goodnight. Much to my surprise, he hugged me goodbye and before I could think to say anything, he walked away. I stood there torn for almost 30 seconds before frantically texting him not to leave yet because he had forgotten something and then raced down the stairs after him. I caught him in the lobby and (before I could have time to think through how much I hate PDA) I reached up and planted a big, breathless kiss on his mouth right there in front of God and the library staff and every procrastinating student on the first floor. “There” I said, “You forgot to kiss me.”

And from there, things were always pretty simple. Our relationship style has always been quirky and a little out of sync, but I have learned to love us that way.

The first time we said “I love you” I sat in silence for a long time trying to build up the courage to get the words out. Finally, feeling like I would burst, I managed to force out the question, “Guess what?” as an awkward transition from silence to professing my undying love for him. Instead of responding with your conventional “What?” my precious man didn’t miss a beat before replying “Chicken butt!” I spluttered for a minute, my brain unsure how to proceed before sheepishly saying, “Noooo… I love you.” Shocked, he hugged me fiercely and whispered in my ear, “OH! I love you too!”

Our off-beat style continued through the ups and downs of dating and almost a year after our first “I love you” we began to discuss marriage in earnest. We had talked about a lot of different timelines to get engaged, but never set something in stone. Unfortunately, I’m not a terribly patient person, so when each of the mile markers I had suggested came and went without a ring, I bought an engagement ring of my own. It was a simple wooden ring (because Bryce has such a deep love for all things rustic and wood grain) and I began to lay plans to ask him to marry me. He and I planned a picnic for the weekend after I got home from my study abroad and I figured that would be the perfect time to ask him. I’ll never forget telling my brother my plans and him cutting me off, “Wait, did you plan the picnic or did he?” he demanded.

I thought for a second, “Well, he did” I finally said.

“You stupid idiot!” he shouted, “He’s planning to propose to you that day!“

“Not if I beat him to it” I said.

But as the picnic drew nearer, I decided to give Bryce the chance to ask first — it was his picnic after all. Then, if by the end of the day, he didn’t ask me, I would give him my ring instead. 

On the day of the picnic we drove up to Boone and headed for Howard’s Knob — an overlook of the mountains that also gives a stunning view of App’s campus. We set up our blanket on a nearby rock and enjoyed a delicious lunch (unsubtle plug — it was from Kindly Kitchen on King Street. It is one of my all-time favorite restaurants and everyone should go eat there). The day was gorgeous so there were a lot of people around us, also enjoying the view. Bryce kept commenting how he wished everyone would go away. Finally, they did.

“Everyone’s finally gone,” he said, “Let’s go look at the view from closer up while it’s just us.”

“Okay” I said, pretty sure I knew what was going to follow, but giddy nonetheless. We walked over to the edge and surveyed the little kingdom that had contained the entire length of our love story so far.

“Look,” he said, “You can see Coltrane from here. I can’t believe we met there four years ago. It’s so cool how we’ve come full circle becau–” he cut himself short. Just behind us a hiker had come over the ridge and was making his way down to the edge of the overlook where we were standing. Bryce let out a nervous and exasperated sigh. He turned back to me and reached into his pocket, “Before that guy gets over here” he said, pulling out the ring box, “Will you marry me?”

“YES!” I gushed as he put the most beautiful ring I have ever seen on my finger. “As it happens” I chuckled, reaching into my own pocket and producing the ring, “I have a ring for you too.”

He agreed to marry me back.

“I hope it’s okay that I didn’t kneel” he said, as we stood admiring our new bling and all the promises they held, “I wanted to ask you to marry me while I was standing beside you. You know, to ask you as my equal.”

This, of course, earned him a kiss. If I hadn’t been sure that I wanted to marry him before that statement, I was now. And I continue to be. Every day since then — good, bad, and ugly (and there have been some very ugly days) I have become more and more certain that despite our rocky start, Bryce is my perfect match. I continue to realize that I could never have asked for or even imagined a better happily ever after than the one I’m living with him. And in 144 days, I get to become his wife.

Until next time,

Adieu

Give Me The Same Cover Charge Or Give Me Death: A Rant

Dear Readership,

I have wrestled with knowing how exactly to write this post or what direction I want to take it (and have even written it 3 times over), but have ultimately decided that the best way to begin is with the most condensed version of the truth: last Friday night I went to a club in Asheville with some friends and proceeded to get the angriest I have been in a very long time. Angry enough to yell “I AM A WHOLE PERSON, NOT JUST BOOBS!” in a very crowded room. Angry enough to confront an employee of the establishment, and angry enough to part unnecessarily with my money — something I would never otherwise do — because I came face to face with a sneaky form of sexism that had snaked its way into my otherwise pleasant evening, and I was not going to stand for it.

Allow me to explain a little further.

Like I said, some friends and I went to Asheville last weekend and I really had a grand old time; they are some of my absolute favorite travel buddies and I love that we’ve started to form the habit of vacationing together. Friday night when we all got into town we went to Wicked Weed for a few drinks which was simply fantastic. Then some of the members of our group got that deep-down-in-your-brain energy itch that only dancing can ever properly scratch (obviously I was not among their number because I have about as many dance moves as a sock puppet and had not yet had enough to drink to make me forget my inhibitions…so far that limit does not exist). Fortunately, drunk people make for some of the best people watching, so I was happy to go along.

Someone looked up where the nearest nightclub was and we all braced ourselves to step out into the cold mountain wind that our flimsy “Winter in Raleigh” clothes were doing little to protect us from. Now, I’ve probably only been to 2 or 3 clubs in my life — none of which were in the U.S. — but I figured I knew the drill pretty well: pay the cover fee, buy one absurdly priced drink, complain about how expensive the drink is, hold my friends purses while they dance, and try not to get stepped on, creeped on, or puked on in the meantime — easy peasy.

So there we were, standing in line, whipped into the kind of obnoxious frenzy that stems from trying to follow the bouncer’s instructions (about handing over IDs, signing in, and getting checked for weapons) while also trying to maintain our own conversations in disjointed and breathless bursts. Eventually one of the girls in our group who was in the front of the line called back to the rest of us,

“Hey, the guys have to pay a cover of $10 but girls get in free. Do y’all still want to go in?”

We stood there in a confused cluster and clogged the doorway for a minute before ultimately deciding to go in. The guys begrudgingly fished the money out of their pockets and wallets while the girls stood on the sideline watching the transaction go down. My first thought was to be relieved and a little giddy: I didn’t have to pay! Yay me! But that thought was quickly overtaken by a flood of skeptical and angry thoughts: why not me?

Of course, to fully understand why excitement was my first reaction (but not my strongest reaction), you have to know that the part of my brain that was happy has been shaped and strengthened by being lifelong bedfellows with poverty. I like to think that I have never been entirely destitute despite always being poor, but financial ruin has been looming just behind me and breathing down my neck for as long as I can remember — one poorly timed late fee or car repair or lost cell phone would be all it took to send me into an uncontrolled spiral. Living with that constant threat has established in me certain “thrifty” behaviors that collectively formed a barrier against the threat of ruin. It’s a barrier I find I need less and less these days, but one that is hard to dismantle.

I still do things that a normal, thriving person doesn’t do — like accepting anything someone offers to give me (clothes, furniture, dishes, etc.) regardless of whether or not I need them because someday I might. Things like eating all of my food (and even other people’s if they offer their leftovers) if I go out to eat — regardless of whether or not I enjoyed the meal or even whether or not I’m still hungry, because anything that is paid for cannot be wasted. Things like cutting mold off of expired food and eating it anyway; like shopping with a calculator to factor for sales tax on a budget that has no margin of error; like always walking with my head down to pick up loose coins; like not correcting a mistake on a receipt if I’m being undercharged (which morally I have a problem with, but I’m not proud to say I’ve done anyway). Things like religiously shopping with coupons/sales; like bumming rides to save on gas even though I have a car; like sitting in the cold and dark to save on the heating and electric bill; like generously tasting every food sample in a grocery store because walking past free food is stupid and short-sighted; and on and on and on.

Being constantly forced to make choices to keep yourself financially afloat (like whether you should leave your insurance info on a car no one saw you hit or be able to make rent that month) brings out the ugly, animalistic survivor in everyone (which is why I hate and will always have a problem with the saying “poverty builds character” because it honestly, truly, really doesn’t. But that’s a soapbox for another time).

All that to say, that’s the part of me whose knee-jerk reaction was to feel a little smug and excited to not have to pay the cover fee. I knew I could afford the $10, but old pinchfist habits die hard. And under my initial celebration, feminist alarm bells began to sound in my head. Why would they only charge the men? My mind started to race.

On first glance, it seemed unfair to the guys — why should they have to pay when we didn’t have to? If you looked at it from the angle that women were being treated like VIPs who were granted free and immediate access, it did seem like the guys drew the short straw on this one. But I think anyone who knows anything about how we as a society place value on things would find it difficult to defend that position in earnest.

We live in a modern age that is driven by consumerism, where we often buy membership or the right to belong, and where the customer is always right. VIP access is never given out for free because preferential treatment goes to the highest paying customer (think about the difference between flying coach and flying first class — you know I’m right).

And what were the customers (men) of Room Nine paying for? Certainly not the environment — a small dark room, hot bad-smelling air, sticky floors, a so-so DJ — no, they were paying (whether they thought of it this way or not) for access to dance partners. For access to us. We weren’t customers at all, we were commodities that added to the package deal that the men were paying to use, and because we were free, we were also replaceable.

I know that may sound like a bit of an extreme interpretation, but hear me out — financially, what could the club hope to gain from only charging half of their patrons to come in? Wouldn’t they make more money if they charged everyone a cover fee? Yes, but only if they were creating an environment that encouraged repeat patronage for all of their customers. It occurred to me after we left to look the club up on Yelp and I was not surprised to find that most of their bad reviews came from women. Many of the reviews read the same — she was having a good time, but complained that some guy was dancing on her or wouldn’t leave her alone and the bouncers did nothing to stop it. And why would they? If she and her friends never came back they could easily be replaced with the next wave of women who had invested nothing to be there. Meanwhile, people who paid would insist on getting their money’s worth.

The more I thought about it, the angrier I got. the men were being offered a type of citizenship — albeit one they didn’t ask for — when they paid for entrance. And the rights of that citizenship (the bouncer ensuring your protection, for one) were being denied me because I was not the club’s target clientele. Rather I was the bait in the trap to bring them in. The club had lots of women — women that men would pay to come dance with.

I just couldn’t shake the idea that I wasn’t paying for goods, I was the goods.

“This is bullshit!” I said, “I’m not here to make the club experience better for some random guy. I’M A WHOLE PERSON, NOT JUST BOOBS!” I marched my way back through the crowds of people to the front desk where a woman sat. I slammed a $20 down on the counter in front of her.

“I would like to pay the cover fee for myself” I said.

She blinked at me.

“I would like to pay the $10 cover fee for myself, please” I said, nicer but still firm.

“Why?” she asked, still taken aback.

“Because it’s dehumanizing. If the men have to pay for the right to be here, then I have to pay for the right to be here. I’m a person, just like them.”

She stared at me for a minute more. “Okay,” she said, “I respect that.” She opened the register and gave me my change.

“Thank you” I said, putting it in my purse and making my way back to my group.

The rest of the evening was fairly uneventful: I bought my overpriced drink, I complained about it, and I held my friends’ purses while they danced. I felt a certain amount of satisfaction — both in having spoken my peace and in knowing that I had grown enough as a person to choose moral principle over fear-driven frugality, but part of me was still upset. Just because I personally paid the cover fee didn’t mean that the club was going to change their policy. I had taken a stand, but what about all the women who wouldn’t, or who didn’t realize that they should? What about all the women who would ignore the uncomfortable feeling in the back of their minds when they accepted the free admission, who would leave bad reviews for the club when they didn’t feel safe, and who would let the cycle continue? How could I stop that?

I don’t actually know if I can. But I do know that the experience solidified even more for me my own definition of the equality I will continue to fight for — I don’t just want equal social perks with men (things like voting and salaries and being CEOs) I want equal access to be able to pay the price for those benefits — from nightclub cover fees to registering for Selective Service. I truly believe that women won’t be able to reap the same social benefits as men until we suffer all the same costs, because that’s what it means to be equal.

Until next time,

Adieu

Valentine’s Day – Bah Humbug!


Dear Readership,

Happy almost V-day! In celebration of a holiday that apparently nearly half the American population hates (and what feels like more than half of the people that I know), I thought it would be fun to break down some of the most common complaints that I’ve heard against the day and why I find these excuses problematic. If you’re one of the love-hating bellyachers in my life, listen up! This is for you.

Firstly, I am someone who is terribly fascinated with human ritual — especially holidays —  so I did some research on the origins of Valentine’s Day and thought I would share. If you just want some interesting facts about the day, this list was an engaging, quick read (and I was able to fact check a decent bit of the info): https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/holidays/valentines-day-ideas/a26863/valentines-day-facts/

Or if you care a bit more about the history, I thought this was a good read as well:  

https://www.historyextra.com/period/modern/a-brief-history-of-valentines-day-cards/

My obsession with long-standing traditions aside, I really do have a problem with people who have a problem with Valentine’s Day. Even in my many years of singleness, it always perturbed me when people would go out of their way to crap on the holiday; please don’t think that my frustration is born out of the fact that I love a good platform to brag about my man. This beef predates his presence in my life by many years.

All of that to say, here’s my list of most common complaints about Valentine’s Day and why I think they are doo-doo.

1) “I hate Valentine’s day because I had a really terrible experience once.”

And? I had the Norovirus for Christmas once, so don’t even get me started on terrible experiences! It was rough. Me and every single other member of my family was the sickest I think any of us has ever been. Every bathroom, bowl, bucket, and even the backyard were being used to try to contain the physical manifestations of our misery (if you know what I’m saying). But we don’t sit around every Christmas thinking about that one time we nearly barfed and shat our brains out and then go out of our way to tell everyone else how much we hate Christmas. Bad experiences only have the power to ruin aspects of life for us if we let them. Be the kind of person who chooses to replace bad memories with good ones, not the kind of person who lets their joy be stolen and uses that bitterness to steal other people’s joy.

2) “Valentine’s Day sucks because it’s just a day for couples to rub their happiness in my face”

Again on the topic of bitterness — it’s an ugly shade on everybody. Don’t be that way. Nobody is going out of their way to be happy just to make you miserable. And frankly, if other people’s happiness does make you miserable, you should probably do some self evaluating because that’s a you problem.

3) “It’s just a commercialized holiday so companies can sell stuff”

That is literally true about every holiday ever in our modern consumerism-driven world. You can’t single out Valentine’s Day to not celebrate because of commercialization. Now, if you are one of those people who boycotts all holidays on the grounds that they’re just a giant marketing ploy, then I applaud your consistency and commitment to principle. However, I will also probably never invite your party-poopin’ butt anywhere because you kinda suck. Live a little.

4) “If you really love someone you’ll celebrate them every day, not just one day of the year”

This excuse makes my blood boil more than any of the others. It is the Battle Cry of the neglectful lover.  I think people rally around this particular saying because they believe it makes them sound more loving, but here’s the thing: if you really love someone you WILL celebrate them every day INCLUDING Valentine’s Day. People who truly cherish their partners take every opportunity to show them love. Daily celebration is love in the little things — like taking out the trash or sending them sweet texts or watching their favorite movie with them even if you think it’s stupid. That kind of love and celebration is beautiful and necessary in all of its ordinariness.

But it is also important to pamper the people that you love with large gestures of affection. Pampering looks different for everyone though, so I’m not saying you have to subscribe to the chocolate and roses method. Maybe pampering your S.O. is building them new shelves in the pantry or going camping or getting them concert tickets or whatever will bring them joy. Of course I think you can do those things any day of the year, but why would you go out of your way to refuse to do it on a day that is literally set aside to demonstrate your love?  

You should seize the moment — seize every moment — to love people well. You are not being counterculture when you refuse to celebrate Valentine’s Day, you’re being dismissive. And maybe there are exceptions to the rule, but my experience has always been that people who claim it is better to celebrate your partner every day, not on Valentine’s Day, are people who are trying to justify their emotional laziness. Those people aren’t ever going out of their way to love their partner well. And when you are being equally un-celebrated every day of the year, it is much harder to tell that you are being neglected than if there is a rise and fall to the patterns of affection displayed by the person who claims to love you. Again, there may be exceptions, but I have yet to meet one. If you are the kind of person who uses this excuse, I implore you to think of a time you did something big for your significant other. If you can’t think of a recent example, you really should reconsider your approach to loving well because I doubt you’re doing it.

5) “I don’t believe in Valentine’s Day because women say they want equality and then turn around and expect to be pampered on V-day. How’s that equal?”

I’ve heard this one a couple of times, but my most recent conversation about it got me the most riled up. I tried to interject that I love to pamper my fiance. I love to give him gifts and plan sweet surprises for him and write him letters so he knows exactly why and how much I love him. And if he gave me any indication that he wanted them, I would buy him flowers in a heartbeat, so what gave this guy the idea that V-day was only for pampering women? “Well, it’s implied. Especially in movies” was the response. I said, “Okay, but media professions are over-saturated with men. So men are the people telling you that Valentine’s Day is about women and I think you might need to take that complaint to the inner circle.” At this point, the subject was changed. But here’s the thing that really bugs me about this particular dismissal of Valentine’s Day: not only does it make the huge generalization that women are both superficial and hypocritical, it also enforces the false idea that men shouldn’t be pampered. As a woman who DOES want equality, I feel like the gender I need to fight for on this one is men. Love (or the celebration of it) is not inherently feminine and Valentine’s Day should never be only about women.  Ladies, if you aren’t going out of your way to love your man so that he also feels equally cherished on Valentine’s Day, step it up!

I know there are other excuses, but these are the ones I hear the most that I felt like needed to be addressed.

In summary, CELEBRATE! Be the kind of person who enjoys showing love (if not to a romantic partner this year, to friends and family and to yourself!) Delight in other people’s joy, go out of your way to spread love and remember: if you aren’t buying butt loads of discounted chocolate on February 15th, Valentine’s Day is being sadly wasted on you. Make 2019 the year you do better.

Until next time,

Adieu