I walked on set, saw him, and said hi.
He gave me a huge hug and told me I looked beautiful. After I said thank you, he moved aside to reveal this gorgeous, brunette, Brazilian model. Let’s call her Amber. I said hi and Dan said, “This is my girlfriend, Amber.”
GIRL-
FRIEND?!
WHAT!
My heart fell all the way past my feet and to the underground where Satan himself stabbed it over and over.
With a knot in my throat I just couldn’t swallow, I tried to smile.
“Nice to meet you!” I exclaimed.
“I’ve heard so much about you!” I said, although I’d heard nothing of her.
Was this how Dan was to everyone? Did we ever have a special connection? Or was he just that intensely interested in every girl?
And AMBER?! How did he just not mention he had a gorgeous Brazilian model for a girlfriend?!?
As soon as the polite introductions were through, I headed back to my dressing room. Gwen followed me there, but I locked myself in the bathroom to sob. I didn’t want her to know how sad I was.
Eventually stopped crying. I understood why he wanted Amber. She was flawless. I just thought I meant something to him, for some reason.
I spent the next year pining after him.
Praying he would realize what he was missing and would fall in love with me. When he broke up with Amber, I even fought over him with another friend. Until I realized . . .
He didn’t want either of us.
That was the hardest pill to swallow.
Sometimes, you think you have this great connection with someone. And sometimes (maybe even most of the time) you’re right.
But sometimes that connection is one-sided.
That’s what we call unrequited love.
And it sucks. It’s agony.
Unrequited love makes you
feel like your heart has been
ripped out, chopped
up, and fed to a dog.
But here’s the weird thing: It’s also worthwhile.
When you’re in the throes of unrequited love, it seems impossible to EVER move on. How could you want someone else the way you want them?
But in some ways these are the kindest loves. You have nothing to lose. The relationship can be anything you can imagine. No one’s heart will really be broken because it’s not really real. Well, okay, that’s not entirely true. If you really liked someone, that’s a feeling. You felt that. And no one can take it away from you. Whether you’re actually dating that person or just admiring from a distance, it is a kind of love. I remember thinking how unfair it was to hang out with him, knowing I couldn’t have him. I remember crying all night listening to “The Chain” by Ingrid Michaelson and flipping through pictures of him on Facebook at Amber’s birthday party. It was HELL. DON’T DO THAT YOURSELF. REREAD “CHAPTER 1: REASONS TO NOT STALK YOUR EX” IF YOU DOUBT ME FOR EVEN A MINUTE.
After Dan, I literally thought I’d never love again. But that was so so so NOT true.
The love I felt for Dan was a totally different kind of love. In some ways I think love is like snowflakes—casually working in a winter/Christmas reference HOLLA—each one is different and each one FEELS different when it falls on you. But every snowflake—no matter how fast it falls or where it lands or how it tastes on your tongue—is still a snowflake, just like every love—no matter who it’s with or if it’s unrequited—is still love. That’s why love is so exciting and impossible to resist.
With Dan it was the highest highs and the lowest lows. I loved every moment I spent with him, and hated every moment I wasn’t around him. That kind of love isn’t healthy.
It’s one-sided and ultimately it’s kind of empty. In time, that’s what I learned. That kind of love doesn’t work for me. Honestly, unrequited love doesn’t work for anyone. It hurts. You deserve love that’s returned. Everyone does.
A few years later, Dan called me out of the blue. It was the exact phone call I’d always wanted. I remember thinking, “I’ve waited for this day since I was fourteen years old. I prayed for this day, I wished and hoped and willed this to happen and here it is happening and . . . I don’t want it.”
I KNOW IT’S CRAZY,
RIIIIIGHT?
But it’s true. I had realized I wanted a love better than that. I deserved one that wasn’t just, “I’m suddenly single and lonely and drunk right now and your name is one of the first in my phone because of alphabetical order so I’m calling you because I want you to remind me how great I am.” Obviously he didn’t say that but I’m giving you the real-ass subtext.
I wanted someone who wanted ME for me. For who I was, not for what I did for his ego.
And you know what? I found it.
Then I lost it.
Then I found it again.
And lost it.
And found it, again.
And recently I just lost it—again.
And yes, I am heartbroken. But what my time of unrequited love taught me, what any love taught me, is that love WILL find you. It WILL come back to you. You WILL meet your someone and maybe you’ll lose your someone, and you WILL survive it. All of it.
Don’t settle for being the best friend.
Don’t settle for less.
Be the romantic lead.
16
THE DANGERS OF BEING IN A NON-RELATIONSHIP RELATIONSHIP
In this book, I reference what I like to call a Non-relationship Relationship, and I thought I should clarify what this is—even though I missed my deadline to write this and my editor is going to murder me. (Sorry, David. .)
To get straight to it, a Non-relationship Relationship is when you are seeing someone but the other person doesn’t want to “label” what the two of you together are. I have been in Non-relationship Relationships a couple times, but the last one was the most intense and, at this point, it’s the last time I’m willing to do it for a while. *sigh*
This is a really tricky subject because there are a lot of people, both male and female, especially at my age, who have no problem with this kind of non-status. There are people who can successfully and happily just date someone without a commitment and be cool with it. And that’s awesome. And I am super jealous of that.
But what I’m talking about is something really specific.
A couple days after I turned seventeen, I met this guy. Let’s call him Greg. We became really good friends, and eventually I developed feelings for him.
It’s weird cuz it wasn’t that immediate, like,
“Oh my god, I’m in love with him”
thing.
It was a really slow progression, but I knew we were becoming more than just friends. We never even spoke about dating. I thought maybe he liked me, too, because even though we didn’t see each other often, he would still try really hard to keep in touch. But at the same time, I thought maybe he just liked me as a person, which is (~weird~) possible.
I dated someone else while Greg and I were just friends, and I talked to him about those relationships, which is a very friendzoney thing to do. I told him about bad dates I’d been on and weird things guys said to me, and he always listened and made jokes and gave pretty bad advice. But still, it was appreciated. Things started to change, though, after about nine months. We started hanging out a lot more. He was someone super fun to bring to movie premieres I had to go to. Movie premieres may sound exciting—and they ARE; I mean I’m super grateful I get to make movies and go to these kinds of events—but they aren’t just fun. It’s kind of super stressful to go out and have a ton of photographers take your picture. It’s a lot of work, and I’m not gonna lie, more people end up talking about what my shoes looked like with my dress than how the actual movie was, which is something that will hopefully change soon.
Lolz.
But he always somehow made it fun, and we could joke and hang during the after-parties, which really ARE fun.
Anyway, after a while I started to get super confused. Sometimes he
’d act like he was my boyfriend entirely. Just giving off that VIBE, YA KNOW. It wasn’t in any specific thing he did or said, but more just the way he acted toward me.
It was freaking me out, because I was starting to seriously like this guy. But we were such good friends and I didn’t want to lose him as a HOMIE—but I also kinda liked him as a BOYFRIEND. We ended up having a talk, and he said he didn’t want to label things. He said he did like me, but he didn’t know if he was ready for a relationship but he kind of wanted to be in a relationship and could we just keep going how we were. UGH. CONFUSING. IT SUCKED. And we had the same talk a bunch of times after that. And it always ended in us arguing and me crying and drama, and then we would always end up going back to just being friends.
Now that you know MY story let’s break it down:
I don’t know that I’m always going to feel this way, but for now, for me, the Non-relationship Relationships do not work. I’m the first to admit that I’m a hopeless romantic. I always see things as a movie where eventually the guy will stand outside my house holding up a boom box and blasting a love song. But the reality is we don’t live in the eighties and life isn’t a Cameron Crowe/John Hughes movie. TRAGEDY.
Sometimes what you want isn’t always what somebody else wants. I think it’s really important to be fully aware of what it is you’re looking for in a person and to be brutally honest about it with yourself. As much as you may think you’re fine with someone not labeling your relationship, realize that kind of gives them license to go out and do whatever. And if you’re fine with that, by all means go ahead. But if you’re like me and you tend to realllllly fall for someone and every song you hear suddenly reminds you of them and you find yourself trying to work their name into every conversation and you wake up in the morning scared to check your phone because you don’t want to feel that weird aching disappointment in your stomach if you don’t see their name on your home screen and all you wonder about every day when you’re walking home is “Why am I not enough for him?” . . .
Then I think you should rethink it. Everyone deserves to have someone who wants to be with them, just them. We all deserve someone who’s proud to call you a boyfriend or girlfriend. And if you don’t want that, that’s cool. But if you do, be honest about it. Life is too short to be anxious about your relationship status. Relationships should be fun and comforting, not confusing and terrifying.
As for me, right now, I am just trying to maintain a healthy relationship with my cat, Gizmo, who is currently, definitely, emotionally manipulating me. Some days you cuddle me, Gizmo! Some days you scratch me! What do you want from me!
Why am I
single?!?!
Okay . . . Well . . . Maybe I know why.
2 A.M.
(A She Poem)
He loved her when he needed to love her
When the spaces between his fingers grew lonely
And his lips too cold at night
When the space in his bed was free of visitors
And her phone was still on
When 2 A.M. drew near and the fear of waking up
alone startled him
He loved her out of fear
The terrifying prospect that the others who
amused him
Would have others who amused them
The thought that she would be the only one there when his charm couldn’t get him by
Because she was
Because she loved him
All the time
Because the spaces between her fingers were
always lonely
But they only longed for his touch
Like a puzzle
Every other set of fingers before him
Fit like the wrong key in the right door
Because the space in her bed was reserved
Only for the shape of his body
Next to hers
Because when 2 A.M. drew near
She turned off her phone
Because the fear of not hearing it ring startled her
She loved him because she needed him
He loved her
When he needed to
And the difference startled her
17
LET’S MAKE A NEW BEGINNING
There’s a quote from a Semisonic song that has always meant a great deal to me. It’s from the song “Closing Time,” which is VERY important and nostalgic to me. It came out when I was only two, but it’s been on so many sound tracks to so many rom-coms and I used to be super into the nineties and all emo so . . . ya. Anyway, one of the lyrics is about how every new beginning means something else has to come to an end.
{
That’s something
that has always
stuck in my mind.
}
I am a hopeless romantic. I choose to see the good in people. I love the idea of love and of being in a relationship. I love the comfort of having someone there all the time. I am a masochist when it comes to nostalgia. You know that feeling you get when you hear a song that reminds you so perfectly of a certain time in your life? The kind of song that whenever it’s on it brings back so many waves of memories that it almost makes you nauseous? Racing through your mind, suddenly, are all these images of you and the people who once upon a time meant everything to you. I listen to those songs on repeat cuz . . . Well, IDK why . . . I guess I just ENJOY making myself miserable.
For me, another song that trips the synapses is “Texas” by Magic Man, which I was actually in the music video for—though that’s not why I love it. (I fell in love with it first and tweeted about it so incessantly that the lead singer DM’ed me on Twitter to ask if I’d want to be in the video. And obviously I was like, “OH MY GOD! YESSSSSS!”) I can listen to “Texas” and the happy memories just start to stir. I can remember the times we had—Summer, Joel, Adam, and I—and think, “Wow, we were such idiots” in the best way possible. Then there are other songs that bring back this weird-messed-up-shakynauseous-all-consuming-sadness-cut-with-the strangest-happiness-I’ve-ever-felt feeling.
It’s this feeling that this song reminds me of the happiest time in my life—and now that time is over. And I miss it—all I can think about whilst listening to those songs is how much I miss that happiness. It’s songs like “Oblivion” by Grimes and “See You Soon” by Coldplay. Also “When I’m With You” by Best Coast—but Bethany from that band is HELLA dope, so I still listen to her music ALL the time (except for said super-sad song that makes me ugly cry in bed at four in the morning). Every time I hear those songs start to come on I skip through them. Even just the opening chords can send me into a downward spiral. Which reminds me of a quote by Dante, “There is no greater sadness than to recall in misery the time we were happy.”
That’s not to say I haven’t been happy since my time in London. I have. I am happy right now. But it’s a different happiness. Because I still crave this thing I cannot have.
I miss that time in my life. I miss the beginning of 2014. I miss who I was before everything that happened. (Ignorance is bliss, right?) Sometimes I get so sad about how different I am now. I used to only believe there was good in the world. I still do see life that way. I still believe . . . But I also see it differently.
I also know that I romanticize the past, and I know that it wasn’t as good as I remember it.
I also know I fall too hard for people and think they are the ONLY people in the world I could ever love. I still feel that way sometimes.
But I would rather be that way. I would rather feel everything TOO intensely than to not feel anything at all. I’d rather be a hopeless romantic and get hurt a million times, pick up the pieces, rearrange them, only to have someone break me again rather than believe there’s nothing romantic about the world.
There is so much romance in life that has nothing at all to do with ~romance~. Let me explain.
I have fallen in love with strangers in coffee shops. I’ve fallen in love with the stories I read behind their eyes.
I’ve fallen in love with couples I’ve seen on the streets of New York City. The way they fight on the corner of Park Avenue, screaming at one another in the cold December air before succumbing to the warmth of one another’s arms. I’ve fallen in love with Christmas and Thanksgiving and Halloween and New Year’s and the traditions they hold. The familiarity of celebrating the same thing the same way every year. I am in love with the cappuccino from a restaurant called Supper on the Lower East Side. I fall in love with songs all the time—“Holocene” by Bon Iver being maybe the first love of my life.
I’ve fallen in love with New York City eight hundred times over. I can’t describe how much love I have for my hometown. When I’m away sometimes, I think about New York. I imagine myself back home. I travel down her avenues, down her crooked downtown streets. I miss New York with my whole body when I’m away from her. Nowhere else in the world can I roam freely knowing eventually, no matter where I get lost, I’ll find myself again. At the edge of Harlem or over by the concrete dividers on the West Side Highway. Madison Avenue or Union Square. Central Park or the center of SoHo. I can get home. I AM home. I can be wherever I want, whenever I want. And that’s the closest thing I’ll ever get to time traveling, I think. I feel so blessed to have been able to grow up and fall in love in my town, in my city, in New York.
I’ve fallen in love with my friends. I have fallen in love with nights on Lily and Raya’s living room floor. Sweatpants on, my hair in a bun, no makeup, hot tea, gossip, advice, stories, anecdotes, and happiness, and hours of Cards Against Humanity. Lily, Raya, Denise, Kaleigh, and Jenni . . . I LOVE YOU.
The point is, love is so much more than just dating. Yes, I still believe in “The One” and I still hope to meet him. I hope to meet MANY loves of my life. I mean I’m nineteen so no need to settle down, even if right now I’m sitting in a robe drinking an espresso and reading a Gluten-Free Living magazine. I’m actually fifty-three. Jsyk.
This May Sound Crazy Page 7