Once he was asleep, I snuck as far away from our room as I could go without having to end up on Nancy Grace’s show and would crap my head off in the Guatemalan jungle. The third day I got a system down of going into the jungle and releasing the horror show in my belly. One night, we came back to the room from eating yet another diarrhea-inducing dinner to find a giant bobcat asleep on our front steps. After much cajoling and praying in two different languages, we managed to scare it away, and I wondered if this was the night I’d have to forgo my secret jungle routine. But no, my fear of exposing myself as human to a guy I was dating was way stronger than my fear of being mauled by a bloody-toothed feral animal. So did I go out into the jungle that night knowing a wild bobcat was afoot? You bet I did. But the episodes were over much quicker because it turns out that worrying about a wild bobcat mauling you literally scares the crap out of you.
On our way back to Florida, we waited for our flight in the Cancún airport after driving back over the Guatemalan border. He had been acting paranoid and was sweating profusely, which is usually more my thing. Even for Guatemala in August, there was a comical amount of sweat on his forehead. Now, if any guys are reading this, first of all, God bless you, and second, I know how much you hate when we go through your stuff, but please know that we do it because our reptilian brains tell us it’s a great way to keep us from getting hurt: Our amygdala (the fear center of our brain) tells our hippocampus (our memory center) that we’re in danger, and when the hippocampus corroborates with our frontal lobe (our decision-maker), our frontal lobe is, like, “Hey girl, I sense some weird shit going on. He’s shady as hell and the only logical solution I have right now is for you to go through his personal items so we can get more intel. Godspeed!”
French guy went to the bathroom and my primordial survival instincts took over. My hands went into his bag and opened his wallet before my conscious mind could even process what was happening. I don’t even know why I chose his wallet to go through, given he was a bartender two nights a week and his credit cards were all fake; I’m not even sure why he needed a wallet in the first place. That said, my primordial brain was on to something, because inside the wallet I found three little Ziploc bags full of white powder.
Was I furious? Yes. Could I have been arrested at the Guatemalan border for possession of drugs and never have seen my Myspace top eight friends again? Yes. Could I have been killed by a teenage machete-happy Guatemalan who had an excellent excuse to kill me? You bet. Did I say anything to him about it? Of course not. I put the wallet back into his bag and pretended nothing happened, because, well, God forbid I do something that could lead to a breakup with a drug-addicted, sweaty bartender who I couldn’t even have a lucid conversation with.
Annoyingly, I can’t chalk this behavior up to being a stupid teenager because I was still martyring myself for dudes in my late twenties. I’m not proud of this, but I once pretended I knew how to snowboard for a guy. He was great at it and I wanted so badly to be the cool girl who knew how to snowboard, but you’ve seen my body—I’m a gangly mess of tendons and have no business being anywhere near ice. Or even marble floors for that matter.
The first week I was in Los Angeles, someone invited me to a party at Val Kilmer’s house. I know, weird brag. Anyway, to get ready for my big Hollywood party debut, I went and bought myself a hot pair of pumps from Nine West. Unfortunately for me, Val Kilmer’s floor at the time was made of some kind of impossibly shiny marble that could only have been made from porcelain doll eyes. In an attempt to make a sexy, dramatic entrance that was sure to catch the attention of a powerful Hollywood agent (back then I thought this was how Hollywood worked, not that I have any idea how it works now), I stormed into this party like an ostrich auditioning for America’s Next Top Model. I’d say I made it about seven feet or so before I found myself on the floor, in a sideways Warrior 1 pose, trying to get up like a newborn deer on ice. I split my probably Wet Seal pants in half, revealing a red thong that made me look like I had a horrible accident in my nether regions. The point is, I can barely walk on fancy floors, much less do snow sports that require skill and balance.
I didn’t grow up skiing or any of that, and when you don’t have health insurance, going eighty miles per hour down wet ice while standing up certainly doesn’t crack the top thousand on your to-do list. As kids, if we wanted to slide around on something slippery, we would put Palmolive dish soap on a laminated picnic tablecloth or my sister and I would roll ourselves up in a comforter and slide down a flight of stairs. That may sound insane, but I promise it’s worth the rug burn and risk of death. Basically anything that was free and super dangerous is how we kept ourselves entertained. So, without snow sports, we still managed to have a total blast as kids, even though I occasionally ended up with splinters in my teeth.
Anyway, I may not know a lot about winter sports, but one thing I do know for sure is that you can’t just pretend you know how to do them the way you can pretend you know what a movie’s about based on the title. After telling my boyfriend I needed to “brush up” on my snowboarding skills with a refresh lesson (it was my first and only lesson ever), I begged the instructor to make me a pro in two hours. I remember him looking very panicked by my ambition and my complete denial of how learning a skill works. He just kept repeating the phrase “In snowboarding, you go where you look.” I froze. Not just because I was genuinely freezing (I didn’t have on enough warm clothes, having prioritized cuteness over warmth) but also because I felt it was the most profound advice I’ve gotten about life in general. You go where you look.
The at once wonderful and horrible thing about snowboarding is that you have to be completely in the moment or else you’ll eat (hopefully white) snow. This made me particularly terrible at it, since I’m someone who multitasks and am usually torn between regretting what I did ten minutes ago and fearing what’s gonna happen in ten years, so being in the moment is not my forte.
After practicing for about two hours, I lied to my boyfriend and told him I was ready to “board.” The look on his face told me board is not a verb used by anyone who actually knows how to snowboard. He then responded with the news that we were going up to a black diamond, and unfortunately that had nothing to do with the ring Big got Carrie Bradshaw in Sex and the City. Because of my codependence, it didn’t occur to me that I could protest or request a smaller, less murder-y hill. I had been so many things for so many guys, it didn’t occur to me that “expert snowboarder” wasn’t one of them. The idea of his thinking we weren’t compatible was much scarier to me than cracking my face open on a giant mountain made of sociopathic stalagmites.
We finally got to the top of the black diamond, which they should just freaking call a blood diamond already. I had learned to snowboard, like, ten feet, so I figured I just had to do that ten-foot stretch about a thousand times and I could get down the mountain alive. Codependence has this magical ability to spin fear into confidence because the fear of seeming incapable eclipses your fear of hurting yourself, so off I went. My scam was actually working until I started doing so well that my inner voice crept in and said I wasn’t doing well enough. I had mastered a toe turn, so my self-flagellating brain had the audacity to heckle me: “You can only do toe turns? You should be doing heel turns! You suck! No wonder your show got canceled!” Alas, you go where you look.
As I glided down the mountain, my boyfriend yelled something inaudible at me. Looking back, I’m sure it was something encouraging or supportive, but when I can’t hear the words someone says to me, I make up what they’ve said based on what I think about myself. It becomes a real live fill-in-the-blank test where I insert something only a verbally abusive person would say. In my head, I heard him agree with my nasty inner monologue—“Do a heel turn!”—which I am now certain he would not have yelled. Unable to say no or acknowledge any human limits, I tried to do the move I had learned only a couple of hours ago, at a speed I had never gone before, on a mountain you ca
n see from space. I looked down to see if I was doing it right. The thing is, you go where you look.
You know those giant body-shaped balloons in front of car dealerships that collapse, blow up, then violently collapse again? They fall sternum first and head last, which I guess for some reason is supposed to make you want to buy a new vehicle? Well, that’s how I looked as I fell face-first into the snow, except the incline was so steep that just when I would have blown back up, I smashed into the icy ground. It happened too fast for me to fathom. All I could hear were snowboarders ripping past my head, filming one another with GoPros, since I guess there aren’t already enough shitty snowboarding videos on YouTube with six views.
Perhaps it’s the female predisposition of having a high tolerance for pain, perhaps it’s not being coddled enough as a child, or perhaps it’s the brain damage I got from years of gel manicures, but I promise you, I felt no physical pain after I fell. All I really felt was shame, so I tried to get up as quickly as possible in order to laugh it off and pretend I was fine. No dice. When I tried to lift my right arm, I simply couldn’t. It wasn’t painful; it was more like my arm wasn’t responding, like it was “rebuffering stream.” I pushed my ass up in the air, trying to roll onto my back with a very sad twerking motion.
When my guy finally got up to me, I had a smile on my frigid face and made a joke (probably a corny joke about cocaine/white powder in my nose if I were to guess). I promised I was fine and that I could snowboard down the hill myself, even though I not only still couldn’t snowboard but was also seriously injured. But that wasn’t going to stop me from being fine! I did snowboard the rest of the way down the hill, falling many times, this time mostly on my ass but catching myself with my arms. With each fall, my shoulder hurt more and more, but that pain paled in comparison to the thought of possibly being considered someone who needed help.
Back at the house, I started taking my gear off, only to realize I couldn’t do anything with my right arm. Lift it, push with it, take a bra off with it, even gesticulate for comic effect—which my shoulder injury made me realize I do way too frequently. To distract everyone from how much trouble I was having putting clothes on or lifting things up, I did impressions of Kristen Wiig’s tiny hands character on SNL, which I must admit, I am excellent at when my shoulder is intact.
Two days later, when I finally went home, I couldn’t lift my right arm more than four inches or so and I couldn’t put a bra on to save my life. I finally gave up and went to a doctor, who told me I had broken my humerus, which felt like a cruel prank the universe was playing on me, given all the ways I was trying to use humor to minimize the gravity of the situation. I had also bruised my rotator cuff, which as far as I knew, was a car part. Long story short, I needed three days a week of physical therapy for six months. He also told me my shoulder would “never be the same.” The only thing more unsettling to me than a doctor saying something that dramatic and vague was that all of this could have been avoided had I just said no thanks to the snowboarding offer.
It just didn’t occur to me that I could say no to men until very recently. I’ve gone on countless dates with guys I had no interest in because I felt guilty or didn’t know how to turn them down without hurting their feelings. I’ve slept with guys I wasn’t even attracted to because they “drove all this way” or “they split the bill at McCormick & Schmick’s, and I did order the fancy salmon.”
I regularly put my sexual health at risk because I was too insecure to say no or stand up for myself. I was so afraid of abandonment that I couldn’t ask for simple things: “Hey, dude, how about we wash that before you put it inside my body?” or “Let’s use the hole that’s specifically engineered for intercourse instead!” and let me tell you, the sooner you can say these things, the sooner you’ll stop getting UTIs.
It’s healing for me to make light of it, but I also feel sad for the person I was back then, for that girl who had no boundaries and was terrified of being thought of as annoying or weak. The irony is as soon as I stopped pretending and performing for people, I started attracting way more amazing ones. When you’re authentic, you attract people who want a self-actualized person, not some Mrs. Potato Head who is customized based on who she’s with. I started meeting guys who were excited about the prospect of being with a girl who has her own identity instead of some blow-up doll who acquiesces to whatever they’re into. To figure out who I was, I learned to look inward instead of outward. Folks, you go where you look.
So how did I stop focusing on what other people wanted and figure out what I wanted? I got to work with Vera. You already know she wears shirts with wolves on them, but her personality is just as awesome as her clothes. Vera is the epitome of self-actualized. She knows exactly who she is, a person who upholstered the chairs in her office with fabric that has tigers on it, which elevates her to luminary status. Since she does her own damn thing, I knew I could trust her with helping me figure out what my damn thing was. Vera realized I had never been specific about what I wanted in a partner, so she had me make three lists so I could get focused and stop letting codependence be my matchmaker. Read closely because you’re about to make one, too, cutie.
She had me draw three columns and head them with MUSTS, WOULD BE COOL, and RED FLAGS. The musts are things you absolutely need from a mate—for example, wants kids, doesn’t want kids, or has a credit score above 5. The traits that “would be cool” are nice but not essential—for example, plays tennis, is taller than you, hasn’t been married, has a Pez dispenser collection, etc. And the last column contains the “deal breakers.” I know for some of us red flags are actually an aphrodisiac, but that had to change for me so I didn’t end up a bag of battered bones on the side of a mountain. Here are some examples of red flags in case you’re as confused about them as I was: cups his screen with his hand when he texts, always has a just-cleared browser history, or has two cell phones. If you’re a guy, some red flags for girls could include being engaged, sending private Snapchat photos, and being a fan of my stand-up.
I wanted to include my list so you could see how specific you should be when you make yours. And now that you have my list, I’m asking you to hold me accountable! If you ever see me with a guy who does crystal meth and hates dogs, I give you permission to throw trash at me in public. Unfollow me on Twitter, leave an old-lady emoticon as a comment under an Instagram selfie—whatever you think will hurt me the most.
You can also make a list like this to manifest friends, jobs, or anything you want in your future. Many of us have been conditioned to chase unavailable people, settle for bad relationships, and stay in uncomfortable situations, so you should all use this as a guideline. You don’t go to the grocery store without a list of what you want to get, so don’t go out in the world without an idea of what you want from your life.
Today I still have codependent impulses and thoughts, but I rarely act on them. After doing a lot of work trying to rewire my brain and update the old software concerning what I thought was true, now when someone asks me what kind of takeout I want, I actually know the answer. If someone wants to set me up with a guy I’m not interested in, I don’t go out of obligation. And when I do say no, I don’t apologize ten times or make excuses because that’s boring for everyone. If I change my mind later, I replay in my head one of my favorite sayings from Derek Sivers, entrepreneur and all around badass: “If it’s not a hell yes, it’s a no.”
Since saying no can still be challenging for me, especially if I haven’t eaten, I have some stock answers so I don’t end up giving in, because when I do that, I usually end up at Build-A-Bear for a birthday party of some kid I hardly know. Some of my go-to’s include “I need a couple of days to think about it” and “Can we circle back tomorrow?” If I know I can’t do something, I’ll say “I’m overcommitted at the moment and can’t take on any more plans for a couple months. I’ll reach out when my schedule clears up.” Or if I downright don’t want to do something, I say,
“Thank you for thinking of me, but that’s not really my speed. Let me know if you want to schedule something else, like an easy dinner.” If you’re codependent, it may sound like a nightmare to say this to people, but I promise that if you do, not one person will catch on fire. Almost everyone is grateful for honesty and directness, and the people who aren’t? Well, that’s why we have the option to “block this caller” on our phones.
I take a lot of pride in the fact that people can trust me now. They can trust that when I’m with them, I really want to be there, and that I don’t do anything I don’t want to do. I’m so grateful that because I give off an authentic vibe, I now attract people on a similar frequency who create that same safe space for me so I’m not consumed by self-doubt or insecurity about how they really feel about me. Today my relationships aren’t laced with guilt or fear. These days I do only 50 percent in my relationships, whereas it used to be if someone gave me 20 percent, I’d overcompensate by giving back 80. If you feel yourself doing more than half your share in a relationship, maybe try pulling back and investing that time in more useful things, like stretching and creating dog memes.
I occasionally still feel my default wiring kicking in, telling me to mirror the people around me and give more energy than I have, but I can usually course-correct before I end up injured, engaged to a narcissist, or imprisoned in South America.
I'm Fine...And Other Lies Page 6