I’ve long moved on from my divorce, and my memories of what it felt like to be so full of sorrow, to be brimming to the point that I stole a quick cry every time I bent down to tie my shoe or turned my back to stir my tea at the kitchen counter, are fading.

Before those memories disappear entirely, I want to root for those people one more time, out loud. Brand-new divorcees of the world, I’ve got seven things to say to you:

BE PROUD OF YOURSELF

You’re battling a bogeyman that some people would do anything to get away from, that a lot of miserable people decry with histrionic fervor. Right now, somewhere, a man or woman is tolerating treatment that erodes his or her humanity just to avoid the experience currently hitting you in the face with a sledgehammer.

These people, the ones who still need their lives to be a story that makes sense, say it loudly, so that the monster under the bed will hear: Divorce isn’t an option. Well, you’re making it an option. You’re making it an option like a fucking badass. Maybe you found yourself dumped into an arena against your will, facing that monster gladiator-style while the deadbolt slides into place behind you and you clutch whatever weapon you can find in terror. Or maybe you dragged that fucker out by his ankle and have tackled him out of sheer rage about everything that has happened in the last months or years, everything that made you feel broken, alone, or so bored you could scream. Either way, you are fighting, for yourself and often for your children, and that is hard.

You’re making your world from scratch, and that requires tirelessness and bravery. Be proud of yourself.

DON’T GET NOSTALGIC

I’ve said it before: Two happy people do not wake up one morning, get into a playful fight over the last bagel, and wind up in court. Something got you here, and I’m willing to bet it wasn’t “No, I love YOU more! No, YOU hang up!” Divorce isn’t a masked man who pops up out of the shrubbery and demands that you hand over your happy relationship. Divorce is your relationship, or at least what your relationship has become in this moment. Nothing has been done to either of you that doesn’t happen to couples all over the world. If you want to work it out, work it out — but with honesty and an extremely discriminating eye for eliminating the issues.

And before you moon over those wedding photos, remember that it’s easy to look happy when someone else has done your hair, your new mother-in-law has just given you a really nice rice cookier, and a photographer is waiting in the wings to Photoshop out the zit on your nose. It was easy to look happy when you were still in the youthful business of condensing your happier moments into something everyone could see.

Your life right now is no accident, and you can’t afford to lie to yourself about that. Don’t get nostalgic.

REMEMBER THAT THIS IS YOUR FIRST TIME

Maybe you miss your spouse. Maybe you miss your house or your children. There are a lot of very logical reasons for your distress, for the feeling that you don’t know what to think about or where to put your hands, but remember that unfamiliarity causes a great deal of distress on its own, regardless of context. You’ve never been in pain like this; you have no idea how long it’s going to last; your life experiences thus far have not yielded a map out of this dark maze. Remember your first breakup, how you thought you’d never heal, how you thought you’d ruined everything? Yeah, like that — except this time society agrees with you, because unlike other breakups, this is a breakup we’ve been taught to pretend will never happen, a breakup we aren’t allowed to accept as a standard part of learning and growing.

People have asked me if I’m afraid to get married again out of fear of having to go through divorce all over again someday, but I can’t imagine any divorce being as bad as the one I endured, because at least half of my misery came from the utterly false notion that I had permanently damaged myself and my life, that I was a ruined human being. If I ever get divorced again, I will have an enormous advantage over the last time: Experience will have taught me that I will be just fine.

You are nowhere that you’ve ever been. Remember that this is your first time.

DON’T MAKE ANY BIG, CRAZY DECISIONS

I know you’re going to anyway, but … I just … later you’ll … oh, well. Your hair will grow back, I guess. Just be aware that your opinions will oscillate wildly for the next year, or two. You’ll be so sure of something only to later realize that you were speaking out of pain, or fear, or anger. It’s okay to have those feelings, but try let them marinate for a while before deciding they’re worthy of action. Don’t make any big, crazy decisions.

IT’S OKAY TO BE SOMEONE ELSE NOW

Every day is going to make its mark on you no matter what, unless you’re okay with living a life devoid of personal growth. Every experience changes you — that’s just part of the process of becoming one of those badass senior citizens who fart anytime they want and are willing poke rude people in the sternum on the bus. You’re only stressed about the change now because you think that the new you is the unhappy version, but that’s not forever; grieving always sucks even when it’s time to move on and do just that.

But eventually, you will feel better, and you won’t mind your new perspective so much. In fact, if you’re like many people I know, you’ll struggle a lot less with fear than you have in the past, because you’ve seen firsthand how tough you can be, and you finally trust yourself to handle whatever comes your way.

You will never be the same, but that was never the deal. Every heaven or hell on earth you have ever set foot into has resulted in someone else walking out the other side. It’s okay to be someone else now.

LIFE IS NOT THE SUMMARY OF YOUR CIRCUMSTANCES

Life is not the summary of your circumstances. You can be more. Reach outward, just a little, even if it just means making a point of looking around you. You can be the observer of things that have nothing to do with you. You can be someone else’s good day. I know you don’t have a lot of energy, but even a small gesture, a glance upward, can make you feel better. I developed this practice of reaching outward during my divorce, and I’ve kept it, and it enhances my happiness still. Because I’ve looked around, I know a lot of little things, like the fact that the train I ride to work every day, in my new life, was manufactured when I was five years old.

I like to think of it being made while I went about my business in kindergarten, having no idea that commuter trains existed. I like to think of it shuttling people back and forth long before I got here, its doors opening and closing and people pouring in and out while I grew up and got married and got turned around and suffered the devastating loss of my marriage two thousand miles away. I find it deeply reassuring that reality is defined by so much more than what I feel like today, that it is not my sole responsibility to stand here and make this train real, that it doesn’t have to matter so much how I feel.

Look up. Learn something. Life is not the summary of your circumstances.

YOU REALLY ARE GOING TO BE FINE

You really are going to be fine. Look at the divorced people around you. Are they living in some urine-scented alley somewhere, drinking whiskey for breakfast and spending the rest of the day sitting on the sidewalk with their backs against the wall, staring into the middle distance with bloodshot eyes while they hold up a sign that says WILL WORK FOR LESSONS ON HOW TO CHANGE THE FILTER IN THE FURNACE BECAUSE MY HUSBAND ALWAYS DID IT SO I DIDN’T KNOW HOW AND NOW I’M HOMELESS? If you don’t know any divorced people, consider me your token divorced person; feel free to refer to me that way at parties. I am fine.

I am better than fine, actually. I am healed, and happy, and excited about the future. And I have faith that someday, not so far away as you think, you will be, too.

I will be happy when I’m not so cursed. Why does the universe insist on subjecting me to my own individual laws of thermodynamics in which my life is empirically more difficult than everyone else’s? I don’t understand why I had to be born into this particular body, with this particular life, in this particular first-world hell. My existence is rife with misfortune. I’m starting to get another canker sore, for instance. And my shoelace broke. And my brand-new iPhone screen is cracked. Great. Why can’t I just be a blind orphan leper or something?

STAGE TWO

I will be happy when everyone else becomes as enlightened as I have become. Life is a festival of wonders for which we should all be grateful, idiots, so what’s with all the bitching? If the world’s population didn’t amount to a giant conspiracy to drown me in negativity, life would be perfect. People need to stop gouging out my poor defenseless eyes with their unsavory Facebook statuses and snobby Tweets. Why does everyone else have to make my existence so unpleasant when it doesn’t need to be? Also, does it count as genocide if they’re Republicans?

STAGE THREE

I will be happy.

You probably think I forgot about this, but I didn’t. I unexpectedly inspired myself, is what I did, and am working on a project that I hope to tell you about eventually. I’ve done the opposite of forget about it. I walk around with it continually now, this thoughtful little rock in my shoe: not painful, but a little uncomfortable, at least until I know I’m finally making good on it.

In the meantime, this blog might be shifting around a bit and/or burning to the ground. If you loved any particular post, kindly copy and paste it, just in case it disappears. I know, I know, but surely you’ve learned to expect this sort of thing from me by now.

Wishing you the happiest of 2012s,
Jen

First things first: Criticize the timing of the argument. This clever ploy distracts your opponent by forcing them to focus on something they can do nothing about, instead of the problem they initially complained about. The trusty standby is “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” or “Why am I just hearing about this now?” but feel free to lay it on a little thicker: “You could have brought this up before I moved all the way to Iowa with you six years ago.” If you can imbue the current time frame with an emotional significance that implies your opponent should have been especially considerate of your feelings on that day, that’s also helpful: “I can’t believe you want to talk about this on Arbor Day.” People are always choosing the absolute wrong time to bring up your flaws; any caring human being would have the decency to wait until you were in the mood to hear that you’ve fucked something up. Encourage them to remedy their infraction by building a time machine, a laborious and consuming task that will leave no time for conflict, nagging, or snide quips about your inability to shower regularly.

Feign amnesia. You can’t be guilty of what you don’t remember. Who knows whether that statement is logically true or not, but it sounds good, like something someone would put at the bottom of a movie poster depicting Jason Bourne and some explosions. When faking amnesia, it’s important not to seem incompetent or dysfunctional, as that might cast you in an unfavorable light as an unreliable historical witness. A simple, but elegant way to sidestep such a pitfall is to pretend it is completely absurd to be expected to recall a dead-baby joke you may or may not have made in front of a certain someone’s parents at the dinner table twenty-four entire hours ago. Accuse your opponent of holding grudges, keeping score, or any other activities that associate a clear factual recollection of historical events with petty spite.

Simply put: lie. That screaming call to your wife from your mistress? Wrong number. That $500 you spent on shoes? There’s obviously a decimal point missing on your credit-card statement. Lying is such an obvious antidote to reality that some people foolishly forget it even exists. It’s also perfectly legal unless you’ve been sworn in by a bailiff or are provably damaging someone’s livelihood or reputation. No one ever said anything about criminalizing your ability to lie in your own damn kitchen, which is one of the thousands of inalienable rights America’s troops continue to so bravely fight for, probably. Free yourself from the shackles of the truth; they’re only holding you back in your thundering charge toward victory. Square your shoulders, stand up tall, look your opponent in the eye, and say bravely, “I have never seen those panties before in my life.”

Escalate the drama with a meta plot twist. Oh, someone is angry at you? Dazzle and confuse your opponent by getting angry at them for being angry. If your partner is a dignified individual, your willingness to embarrass yourself with this ploy can only be advantageous, like a magical trapdoor that cuts right through the hard deck of tactical engagement. They’re hurt and horrified that you emptied the checking account? Well, you’re even more hurt and horrified that they suspected you enough to snoop through bank statements when you hadn’t ever once given them any reason not to trust you that they could confirm with 100% certainty at that particular point in time. Ensure that your wishes are respected in the future by reminding them that it makes you really upset when they criticize you and that you’ve asked them repeatedly to stop doing it. If you own any fire hoses or tasers, consider augmenting your request with aversion therapy.

INTERMEDIATE

Deflect responsibility by blaming the other person for your actions. Your partner should love you, trust you, and continually monitor you for misbehavior, correcting you immediately and boldly should an unfavorable tendency arise, instead of just letting you do what you’re doing like some kind of pussy. Remember: Anytime anyone lets you get away with anything for any length of time before starting lame arguments, that person has essentially acted as your accomplice, and everyone knows that the only thing worse than a jerk is someone who puts up with a jerk. Make sure you remind your opponent of his or her failing in this regard with comments like “You should have pulled me aside and explained to me that you don’t enjoy being humiliated and degraded at dinner parties,” or “Look, no one made you go on a police chase with me” and “Well, I don’t remember anyone knocking any guns out of my hand back at the liquor store.” For emphasis, never forget to add, “I’m not a mind-reader.”

Ask for examples/criticize your partner’s inability to forgive and forget past infractions. This is an especially clever one-two punch of strategy. The beauty of this tactic: If your opponent refuses to honor your request for past instances of this “pattern” of bad behavior they’re claiming, their accusations seem baseless and unjustified. If they do honor your request for examples, they can be painted as unreasonably bitter and resentful people who tally up your every mistake to be used against you later. This move was probably invented by Chuck Norris; it’s that triumphant. “Name one time I murdered any of your friends and buried them in the basement,” you can say adamantly, and the minute they take the bait, that’s your cue for sarcastic jokes like, “What, you’re the district attorney now? Got an entire legal brief all filled out, do you? Excuse me — I didn’t realize we were in a court of law!” [Note: Does not work in an actual court of law.]

Pretend you were just about to criticize them for something even worse. “I’m glad you brought up my lack of punctuality,” you can say, leaning forward in your chair and pulling off your glasses for emphasis, “because I’ve been meaning to talk to you about your halitosis, which smells way worse than my lack of punctuality.” If they say something like, “Can we stay on topic? I was trying to talk to you about how late you were for my mother’s funeral,” say sarcastically, “Oh, so we’re just going to talk about what I do wrong? How convenient.”

Agree enthusiastically … and very melodramatically. Nothing confuses an opponent like wholehearted agreement: “You’re right. I guess that sometimes, I do leave the little foil cap from my yogurt container on the countertop until it curdles. I guess I’m the worst spouse in the entire world. I guess maybe I should just give myself twenty hangnails or slam my face in a door a thousand times. I guess you deserve somebody better than a pathetic loser like me. I don’t even know why you’re still here. Maybe you should just leave.” Your annoyed opponent will reflexively attempt to disagree with you … which they can only accomplish by telling you that you aren’t so bad after all! Abracadabra, motherfucker.

Apologize … but for the wrong thing. Not everyone is a careful listener. Try your luck with a bait-and-switch apology, like, “I’m sorry … that I’m not perfect,” or “I’m sorry … that you’re a nitpicking whore.” Mumble the last few words if necessary. For extra style points, throw in the mind-bending “I’m sorry my apology isn’t good enough for you.”

ADVANCED

Listen. Review your internal footage and realize that you, without fail, assume you are right. Recognize the alarming uniformity of this assessment. Consider the problem at hand, which likely represents a minor cultural, philosophical, or personality difference, and suggest solutions. Form a plan of action, and thank your partner for being candid and for caring enough to work on this relationship with you. If the cultural, philosophical, or personality difference does turn out to be major, you should probably break up and find someone who agrees with you on the important things, so you can be happy in your relationship. Downsides include a lack of claim to victimhood, the painful acknowledgment of personal flaws, and limited opportunities for theatrical flair.

IF ALL ELSE FAILS

Threaten to kill yourself. It’s a bit of a non sequitur, sure, but when you think about it, suicide is the ultimate tantrum, and its advantages are legion. For starters, dead people can’t lose arguments, so your opponent is likely to feel threatened by your guaranteed (if costly) victory. Second, your threat to kill yourself will convince the other person that you care a whole lot — that this is not just a relationship that’s important to you, but a relationship worth dying for. Meanwhile, their caring for you will cause them to fight even harder for the life you are so selflessly abandoning in the name of love. It’s like a Catch 22 of caring, and logic puzzles like that can keep people conveniently and frantically occupied all night long, you sly dog. If you’re the type to fling yourself to the linoleum and sob, railroad tracks are the logical choice. For a more sophisticated poetic metaphor about being pushed over the edge, any tall structure will suffice. Staplers should only be used as a last resort.

After dinner, we curled up together under the swaying lights and sipped wine as the train horn blew and the lights of towns and farms and factories rolled by outside our second-story window. It was, in a word, perfect.

If this were a lifestyle blog, I would have accompanied the above story with a smattering of darling pictures full of polka-dot ribbons and neat handwriting, and that would be it. But I don’t want that to be it.

I want to be more than my own dollhouse.

I even think I have an obligation, as a human being, not just to try to be more, but to tell you about it here, even if that’s uncomfortable for both of us.

With the life I’ve lived, I might as well have been shot into outer space, climbing into a gleaming rocket and offering that grubby cluster of open-mouthed kids a salute before I took off. I have enjoyed beauty beyond what any of us could have imagined when most of my friends were prying switches from trees in the front yard and peeling off their leaves while the adults stood in doorways, waiting to wield the weapon on its weeping deliverer. I once swam in the pool at the top of the Tokyo Park Hyatt (better known as the Lost in Translation hotel) while the sun set around me. And then there was the gigantic Jacuzzi tub in New Zealand, the one with my breakfast plate balanced on its edge and the gorgeous view of sheep-dotted hills rising up outside its window. And that dinner in the enormous square, at night, in Spain, with all of its balconies and the hundreds of dioramas behind them—some partially shuttered, some flung wide open for all to see. The hotel in Chicago where a maid delivered freshly baked cookies in the afternoon. The first-class suite on the airplane to Los Angeles, where I had my own bed and my own little salt and pepper shakers.

These are extreme examples, of course, rare and unusual gifts or perks that I never could have afforded if I were footing the bill. But that’s the thing about cultural and intellectual privilege: people start giving you advantages that the poor don’t have access to. The dynamic of life favors you more heavily without you noticing, because it doesn’t occur to you that the doorman doesn’t offer the same expression to everyone.

Even in my ordinary life, I’ve funded plenty of my own smaller, more common indulgences, whether I paid for them with cash or time: lattes, salon visits, gym memberships, throw pillows, cupcakes. The kind of indulgences that arrive topped with whipped cream or in a pretty box. The kind that almost anyone I’m likely to associate with can and does routinely afford, even as most of us lament how broke we are. The kind we barely recognize as indulgences at all, because not everyone can afford to choose the color of their walls.

I just wanted to be happy. No matter how much money you have or what you spend it on, I’m sure you do, too. Almost all of us have assumed, correctly or otherwise, that our happiness is the point, or that our children’s happiness is the point.

My life experiences have certainly not been fruitless. I was happy. I am happy. Hell, I’m often drunk on a complex cocktail of profound gratitude, enjoyment, wonder. I’m not here to present my life or yours as meaningless. I’m not discounting our search for beauty, our ability to foster tiny joys by way of coat buttons or key hooks. At least we are joyful. Plenty of privileged people aren’t, choosing instead to exist in a state of astonishingly steady outrage, paired with an amusing but unflattering air of disbelief, as if the rest of us climbed onto the bus to utopia this morning and left without them.

So, no. None of us are monsters. Many of us have used the significance of matrimony as an excuse to spend more money on one evening of our lives than it would have cost to buy my brilliant childhood friend an entire associate’s degree at the community college. But we still aren’t monsters, not really. That’s how complicated this is.

We do make choices that we don’t recognize as choices. We do use “need” in a way that would baffle or disgust anyone still stranded in my old stomping grounds. Some of our bucket lists don’t have a single item on them that isn’t about getting something we want. Some of us don’t even realize alternative options exist, because we have, often with the best of intentions, made universes out of ourselves.

But I think we could be more. I think we could climb out of our own stories if we realized our allegiance to those narratives, our servitude to that photo of a kiss at sunset.

Listen, I get it. I once slept in an $800 hotel room in Tokyo. I understand. I just want to be more than my own life. I want to walk out of the dollhouse and make stories that aren’t about me at all. If you want to be more, too, we should talk about it. If you don’t, the rest of this series is probably not for you. I’m not looking for a fight, I’m not interested in making you feel guilty, and I’m not here to convince you of anything you don’t already know. I just want to be more.

I always thought this was the creepiest house, but there were certainly other contenders.

The neighborhood baby, the one we carted around in a stroller and cooed at to make her smile, died when her mother’s boyfriend beat her in a fit of rage. In the house up the street, my childhood friend’s father shot her mother to death mere feet away from her. A bit farther around the block, a two-year-old child died when his siblings shut him in a car in the middle of summer. No one had been watching them. No one ever was.

I remember once looking out the window and seeing one man whaling on another man with a pipe, across the street. The pipe-wielder was already somewhat notorious, as he had bitten off a man’s nose in a previous altercation. As one does.

And then there were the neighborhood children who would disappear and come back around in cycles, as protective services transferred them to foster care and back out again, and the ones who wandered the streets all afternoon with their pants filled with shit. I would often look out the window to see some random ragamuffin using my tree swing or my toys; a lot of the kids weren’t big on manners, and a lot of their parents weren’t big on caring what they did.

The first girl in our neighborhood to get pregnant was ten at the time. Ten years old. Need I go on?

This is the closest house to my old one that’s for sale. And here you thought $241 was a car payment, not a mortgage.

Me, I had good parents who invested heavily in me, both financially and otherwise, and I also had good neighbors–the elderly ones who had refused to leave even as the neighborhood degenerated–who kept an eye out for my welfare. With the exception of one rather alarming evening that I spent being held at knifepoint by a paranoid older neighborhood boy who was high out of his mind, I don’t know that I was ever in any serious danger.

Yes, knifepoint, though all he did was talk a lot and refuse to let me go home until after dark. I was too young to realize how much differently that could have ended. Years later, he would get shot in a botched robbery. I don’t know whether he lived.

For a few years, my family was as poor as everyone else. We rode around in an ancient blue boat of a car that we named Blue Bessie. Bessie’s seats were pocked with cigarette burns, and she didn’t smell so great. We ate pancakes for dinner, or egg sandwiches. I can still remember the disappointment and confusion of choosing a pretty outfit for myself only to hand it over to the layaway lady.

But eventually, my parents dragged themselves out of their financial rough patch, and each became the owners of their own successful businesses. As my parents joined the lower middle class, I became more of a pariah as, hilariously enough, a “rich kid.”

It’s amazing to think I once knew anyone who thought two relatively new cars in the driveway, a house that wasn’t peeling with old paint, and a pair of Guess jeans made you rich. The notion is even a little refreshing.

From their Have-Not perspective, I was a Have. Kids stepped on my new shoes on the bus to dirty them up, and I came home crying; the situation got so bad that my parents wound up driving me to school until I was old enough to drive myself. I was teased because I was one of the only kids in my school who didn’t smoke–in fifth grade.

My expansive vocabulary was certainly not appreciated. I can remember getting harassed once because I had used the expression “bound to,” as in, “that’s bound to happen.”

A neighborhood girl said, “bound to? What the fuck does that mean?”

“It’s a figure of speech,” I told her.

“What’s a figure of speech?”

“A figure of speech is … it’s … just something people say.”

“You’re making that up,” she responded angrily. Then she hit me in the face with her fist with an odd sort of gentleness–almost like a chin-chuck to the cheekbone–to see whether I’d fight back. I didn’t, choosing instead to use the brilliant military strategy of standing stock still and praying it would end peacefully; I knew a losing battle when I saw one.

She was so amused that she called a friend over to watch and then hit me again, but harder this time.

My parents drove me to school, but I still had to survive the bus ride home. Once, when I was still in elementary school, a group of kids told me they were going to smash my face and then chased me all the way from the bus stop to my front door. I didn’t have the key–my sister did. I twisted the knob in a panic and begged her to open the door while the kids behind me called out sarcastically that they “just wanted to talk.”

By the time I managed to fling myself inside, I was so terrified I could taste it.

I’m not sure I can really blame them. They had nothing, not even decent shoelaces to keep their shoes on their feet; my mother would quietly replace those shoelaces anytime they came over. One of my neighborhood friends in particular was just as bright as I was, but without any of the opportunities. My parents would ultimately scrimp and save to pay for me to go to one of the top five journalism schools in the entire country. Meanwhile, her parents wouldn’t even take her to our elementary school’s awards night, even though she was being featured prominently.

She won enough awards that the awards presenters eventually just got her a chair near the stage, so she wouldn’t have to keep walking up and down the auditorium aisle. My parents, who had driven her there, were the only ones there to see. I’m glad they could do that for her. Later, they would take her out for ice cream to celebrate.

I doubt her own parents knew or cared where she was that night. She wound up in foster care permanently once their rights were terminated.

When I was in college, my parents finally moved out of my old neighborhood and into a nice subdivision more typical for someone of their income. I walked out of my old house, went away to school, and simply returned at Christmas break to a different house altogether–one with vaulted ceilings and a Jacuzzi tub in the master bathroom. I’ve only been back to the old neighborhood a handful of times, and it’s been years now since I’ve laid eyes on it.

Part of me, though, never really left. And now, it seems, that part of me has a few things to say.

In dating, you’re considering candidates and choosing the best one you can. In job interviews, the exact same thing is happening. But only in the business world are the economics of this endeavor routinely considered.

There’s an anecdote about a human-resources worker who felt overwhelmed by the stack of resumes sitting in front of him. When he complained to his boss about the grossly unprofitable amount of time it would take to consider such a large number of candidates, his boss picked up the stack, split it in half, threw half of the resumes away, and said, “We don’t want to hire unlucky people.”

In the business world, this is rational for reasons that become clear when you give the notion some thought: a cost-benefit analysis tells you that at some point, the quest to review every single applicant becomes more expensive than hiring someone out of a pool half that size.

But in the dating world, I’m not sure I’ve ever heard of anyone deliberately rejecting perfectly viable candidates even while actively seeking a mate.

Meanwhile, the economics are pretty similar when you think about it … and after being smothered by the OKCupid resource-draining avalanche of messages and winks and chats, I was finally thinking about it. Hard.

Tangentially, there’s another reason to purposely set out to reject as many people as one can: the quest for a happy ending creates a dangerous bias. I’ve argued before, in an old post I can’t find anymore, that our desire for real-life narratives (“They lived happily ever after!”) can be incredibly destructive in romantic situations. The need to feel like the main character in a love story causes people to tell themselves outright lies about themselves and about their relationships—lies that form this wishful mythology that continually reinforces itself toward the conclusion that all of this is meant to be, that they’re making the right decision, and that what they have with their partner is a unique, once-in-a-lifetime, unusually compelling situation.

The obsessive future bridezilla who thumbs through bridal magazines even while single, or the slightly reluctant, mostly accidental girlfriend: whom do you trust more? I can’t imagine not having more faith in the romantic feelings of the latter.

Anyway, my point is, after my harrowing OKCupid experiences, I realized that dating budgets totally exist, and mine had gone into the red about 200 messages ago. It was time to downsize.

My old dating profile was quite long, if you remember.

This was my new dating profile in its entirety, under a completely new name.

Trapdoor Spider Mode: activated.

I winced in anticipation the next day–with my luck, invisibility would turn out to be a wildly popular fetish of some kind–but a peaceful, tranquil inbox greeted me, with nary a “LOL” to ripple its placid surface. Ahhhhh. Now I could concentrate on the task at hand.

Here’s the thing about me: I’m kind of an overachiever. When I settle on a goal, I pursue it with a dogged singlemindedness that is either deeply inspiring or achingly pitiable, depending on the context. My new dating goal was to reject and/or avoid as many men as humanly possible, and I went after that goal with my whole self.

Have you ever noticed the Hide button on OKCupid?

They should make that button bigger. And glowier. And maybe “I Believe I Can Fly” could play on rollover. I don’t know. I’m not a web designer.

My new goal was to find a reason, any reason, to push that button until every single man in a fifty-mile radius had disappeared. If I failed in my quest and stumbled onto some accidental romantic success, so be it, but I was going to do my damnedest to die an old dried-up crone.

I worked on this goal off and on for weeks. It was strangely, soothingly meditative, like popping bubble wrap, if bubble wrap came with built-in affirmations of one’s standards.

There are a million reasons to say no to someone. In dating, we frequently ignore those reasons. What if this one niggling little wrongness in their profile is just a fluke? What if we’re being too judgmental, too rigid? What if we’re harming our chances of finding happiness? So, in the spirit of the old college try, we explain it away with some theoretical excuse and utter the two most ill-fated words in dating history: “Why not?”

Fuck that. You know perfectly well why not. You knew why not the minute you saw why not. 90% of the time, you have been right and will be right in the future, and your mistake is chasing after that 10% possibility. Give up on the other 10%. A corporation would. A niggling wrongness in a job interview rarely causes an HR person to press harder or investigate further. There’s a solid economic reason for that.

I started with my search results and hid as many people as I could based simply on the few lines I got next to the preview thumbnail. This wiped out about half of the candidates.

Then I read each profile with great scrutiny. Sometimes, as I scanned the lines of text, I would panic a little, because I wasn’t immediately seeing any reason to disqualify the person. I was playing the OKCupid version of Supercollapse, and I really like to win at Supercollapse.

But then I’d discover some lurking incompatibility and my face would light up. Aha! Christian and serious about it! HIDE!

Sometimes, I couldn’t put my finger on what was wrong, but something was, all the same. I would confront the profile, standing stock-still in my little hidey-hole, all eight of my black shiny spider-eyes focusing, motionless except for my little spider-hairs trembling minutely in the breeze, and some instinct would tell me no.

I listened.

By the time I’d finished that process, I was down to three. Three, out of hundreds.

I scrutinized their profiles again, grumbled under my breath at their wily ability to evade all of my defenses, and sent each of them a detailed message, complete with photographs, that essentially amounted to a customized dating profile on my behalf.

All three men responded.

Two of those messages included a downright obvious reason to remove the sender from the running.

That left only one.

Just a few weeks. Zero dates. Zero gross messages. Zero stress. It couldn’t possibly be that easy.

But it was.

A few days after my new roller-derby league’s first practice at the rink, I moved into my new apartment, a decrepit studio roosted atop the tiny row of shops on Main Street. My mother had been right: it was exactly the sort of outdated decor I’d find endearing, complete with hideous linoleum. (Floral and geometric? How exotic!) The place had no shower and a kitchen sink that sprayed water in three different directions (none of them “downward,” sadly). But my parents had kindly applied a stunning new paint job to it, and I noted its crystal doorknobs, arched doorways, deep cast-iron tub, and built-in cabinetry with approval.

I scored this wee residence for a pittance of $500 a month, including heat and water.

At the time, I was trying to take a picture of my bike, not my apartment. That’s probably obvious.

This felt like home, for sure. It was the realm outside those walls I was less certain about.

In the movies, smaller-town life is often portrayed as charming and quaint, and it certainly can be. Take the airport, for instance. You can just … park right there, in the lot in front of it, like it’s Target. Finding your gate shouldn’t be too hard, either—there are only seven of them, lined up in a row. The most awkward part will happen once you’ve been led outside to your plane, as it can be difficult to clamber up that funny metal staircase-on-wheels while clutching your carry-on. (It helps to pretend that you are the president of the United States, or perhaps a very successful 1960s musician.)

So yes, it’s quirky. It’s endearing. But sometimes, it’s also heartbreaking.

When I was young, someone I loved, someone I associated with sweet tea and summer and perfectly buttered mashed potatoes, turned away from her stove, looked me up and down, and asked me to promise her that I would not grow up gay. I sat there, perched on one of her kitchen chairs, and I promised.

She did not ask me to promise that I wouldn’t grow up black, but I’m guessing that’s only because I was a safer bet on that one.

I think it’s probably easier to pass judgment on the Midwestern universe if you don’t associate it with lightning bugs and pie, but trust me, I’m painfully aware of its shortcomings. The only two black kids at my high school dated one another in the most foregone conclusion in prom history. A few Latino kids roamed the halls as well, always together; we referred to them collectively as the Spanish Armada. I was in my twenties before I realized that Buddhists were not in the habit of worshipping a fat golden idol, as I had been taught.

And then there was the “hell house,” the Christian version of a haunted house offering its patrons a montage of all the misdeeds that can send one to eternal damnation, including the infamous abortion scene. Let’s not forget “Heaven’s Gates and Hell’s Flames,” a popular play I attended completely unironically as a teenager, which depicts Satan yanking people into hell, including small children who had died in a car accident after choosing to go fishing with their father instead of attending church with their mother that Sunday.

If none of that impresses you, I can tell you that when a bride I know chose an ivory dress for her wedding, she was asked, with great concern, how anyone would know she was a virgin. I guess she was kind of asking for it, though, strutting around in a color the manufacturer had labeled “Candlelight” like some kind of two-penny whore.

By the time I returned last year, things had gotten better, and yet.

I froze when I heard the phrase “openly homosexual” used to imply audacity, and I excused myself entirely when someone my age dropped the n-word at a party (though I wasn’t surprised; on a previous visit home, a young man at a similar gathering had explained to me it wasn’t that he was racist—it was that Mexicans were lazy). I just quietly hoped for the best when one of my skaters would acknowledge that her boyfriend or husband, the same one who would call her ten times an hour anytime she left the house without him, felt threatened by her desire to pursue their own interests. I tried to control my temper when people asked me whether any of my skaters were gay.

“Some people ask if we’re a bunch of lesbians,” one skater told me worriedly.

“The next time someone asks you that, ask them why it would matter if you were,” I responded, once I had managed to quell my inner rage well enough to avoid alarming her with the vehemence of my reply.

The question so common, they even made a T-shirt about it. (The “Yes, Mom, roller derby made me gay” shirt is even better, but alas, it no longer appears to be sold anywhere.)

The promise to not grow up gay, the one I made before I had any idea how horrified my adulthood friends would be to hear of it, highlights the paradox of Midwestern childhood. You want that woman at the stove to be evil, to be hateful, but she isn’t. She is profoundly lovable. They are profoundly lovable. They’ll pull the beaters out of the cake batter and hand them to you to lick clean before shooing you out of the kitchen. They’ll turn on the sprinklers for you to run through, and they’ll put the chain back on your bike even if you’re just the neighbor kid passing by. When the streetlights wake up and call you home, they’ll usher you in and bandage your scuffed knees and scrub your hands soapy clean.

And then, after they’ve passed the plates and broken the bread, they’ll share their wisdoms earnestly, with the pitch-perfect believability of people who have no idea they are wrong.

I was wrong, too, it turns out. I thought I would one day be able to look back on that promise I made as a child and see it as more intolerant than anything that happens anywhere else. I hoped to escape the suspicion and hatred that so many people around me expressed anytime they encountered someone different. These aspirations, of course, conveniently ignored my own capacity for widespread disdain and my own continual compulsion to sort everyone into an Us box and a Them box. Oops.

When I left to find this utopia, the inhabitants of my small town were the nicest people I knew. That’s not so strange; I hadn’t met anyone else. But it would have given me pause, back then, to know that this past year, sixty-nine cities and eleven countries later, I have confirmed that they still are.

I think I might owe them an apology.

These women, my skaters, worked so much harder than I expected, and with an astonishing level of humility and integrity. They weren’t too insecure to accept feedback. Having become used to dealing with the sort of identity-oriented fanaticism that can cause people to defend their choice of bicycle-gear style with rabid ferocity, I couldn’t believe how easily they would accept a suggestion, and even thank me for it.

And holy smokes, they made me laugh. Even their gratitude had a sense of humor, judging from the unicorn head on a stick I was offered as a token of their appreciation.

That picture was taken at a surprise birthday party they organized for me upon realizing that I knew hardly anyone in town besides them. Not a single one of them was vegan, but my birthday cake was. When I had decided to take the coaching position, I had been adamant that I would not tolerate bigotry or discrimination in my league, but in retrospect, I had little reason to worry about it. At practice, it was not unusual to see a Mormon skater standing next to a Wiccan skater standing next to a butch woman in a COUGAR BAIT T-shirt.

The Midwestern stereotype still exists for a reason, of course, but guess what? It’s just a stereotype, and it’s not the only one out there. On average, perhaps big-city folk are less likely to judge you for being gay than their rural counterparts, but an alarming number of them will judge you for almost everything else you can imagine, including visible pantylines and meals at chain restaurants. They are more progressive, but they can also be more shallow and almost exhausting in their hatred of any fashion trend or any style of tattoo or any other gesture that could be seen as conformist or contrived or played out.

I know Midwesterners who would not be caught dead at a gay wedding or at a rap concert. I know city dwellers who would not be caught dead eating at Olive Garden or wearing a scrunchie. In either scenario, the person in question has an overblown sense of impropriety. In either scenario, a sense of prim virtue is maintained. In either scenario, someone has to be inferior.

I mean, really, “the flyover states”? I know people who will defend the rights of animals and ethnic groups and drag queens but will still use that expression in mixed company.

Before the credits rolled on my cinematic year, I didn’t learn that home is where the heart is. I didn’t find where I belonged. I didn’t tear up any plane tickets or stick a SOLD! sign in the yards of any picturesque houses or make any other dramatic declarations that the Midwest is the place to be. Much to my regret, I did not deliver a baby cow and then name it Norman and adopt it, Billy Crystal style.

But I did confirm that kindness and positivity get more done than a subscription to any particular creed or belief system, and that intolerance and bigotry are both more widespread and less uniformly present in any given group of people than a lot of us enjoy believing.

“Man, I bet you’re glad to be out of there!” is a sentiment I hear frequently now that I’ve moved to the Bay Area–a subtle, sometimes anxious request for confirmation that I don’t have a Glenn Beck poster on my bedroom ceiling. I don’t really mind, but I can’t help but laugh at the irony: if I wanted to walk around promising people that I’m just like them and always will be, I might as well have never left home.

We’re not so different after all? Make love, not war?

I guess these do kind of sound like themes from a cheesy movie. I may not be Emilio Estevez, but I don’t call it my cinematic year for nothing. And I have to warn you … it gets worse.

you will work so hard.

You will topple your chair without hearing it clatter to the ground,
you will pump your knees,
and you will see only one thing in this world.

All of you will move in the same direction at once,
more quickly and more slowly than ever in your life,
all of you on fire,
none of you caring whether you put on makeup today
or whether you dropped your ATM card down the storm drain this morning
or whether anyone loves you.

There is no effort,
no slap of your feet against the concrete,
no twang in your hamstrings,
no thump in your chest;
nothing of that you can exist where you are.

You have dropped every mask and cloak and box
you have ever hidden or trapped yourself in;
all have burned away as you launched yourself
toward this one thing,
forever toward it,
this one and only thing you can remember ever wanting.

You could sprint right out of your clothes
and you wouldn’t care, not a bit;
you are, in just this one moment, free
of almost everything you have ever learned
or worried about
or been led to believe.

Not just the petty problems, but bigger problems, too,
are gone from you.
Hunger, poverty, war, torture:
you have heard of none of them.
You have rendered them nonexistent
with a power that you had not been able to find
until just now,
when a child picked up her foot to step off a curb.

Out of concern for the potentially dead child,
whom I assure you I have completely made up,
you may not yet have noticed that what I am describing
is not only remarkably easy,
but also wonderful.

So perhaps instead I should tell you,
even if it is a far less illuminating example,
that a baseball is falling from the sky
toward your spot in the bleachers,
and you are rising up to meet it.
You are not breathing with the lungs you don’t have,
and you are unfurling a pair of legs that your mind has disowned,
and you have forgotten how much you weigh,
much less that bayonet of a remark
that your own mother ran through you
just ten minutes prior, when you ordered nachos.

The ball is dropping,
and you are reaching,
and this will never be over,
nor should it ever be over,

because the slap of that ball in your hand is not the climax
but the resolution begun,
at which point the world and its mess
will spring up around you once more,

unwieldy and bittersweet all over again.

The key to peace, I have decided
is not praying,
or thinking,
or sitting still,
or humming,
or chanting,
or lighting candles.

The key to satisfaction, I have discovered
is not a new kitchen countertop
or a new pair of shoes
or a faster car
or–dare I say it?
any given cellular phone.

It is to find within yourself a desire so intense
that it drowns you out and washes you clean,
and yet so simple
that even if you fulfill it,
the result will be nothing more costly
than the back of a child’s shirt clutched in your fist
or a dusty baseball in your hand.

I only know this because

(despite the nonexistence of a potentially dead child,
who, again, I assure you I have completely made up)

all of me is moving in the same direction at once,
more quickly and more slowly than ever in my life,
all of me on fire,
none of me caring whether I put on makeup today
or whether I dropped my ATM card down the storm drain this morning
or whether anyone loves me.

a) Like animals? I LOVE animals!

b) I’m an asshole.

***

2. Do you support yourself?

a) I like to think of myself as a professional live-with-my-mom-er. The pay sucks, but the fringe benefits include meatloaf and also never having to take any responsibility for myself ever.

b) Yes. Duh. I’m an adult.

c) I will be happy to support myself just as soon as I find a way to magically make work not suck. (This is not to say I’m not industrious–I have nine graduate degrees! So far!)

d) I do support myself, but it’s terrible. Like, we’re talking “coal mines” terrible, except more memos and less dying of black lung. My job is like being stuffed into an iron maiden that has been doused in lemon juice and then salted for maximum sting, and then having the door slammed on me again and again and again and again. The only silver lining to any of this is that it makes for absolutely fascinating dinner conversation. You’re welcome.

***

3. What are your flaws?

a) The only flaw I can think of is that I am sometimes followed around my bathroom by a man who looks like me and mimics my every behavior. He even brushes his teeth at the same time that I do. It’s really weird. Anyway, other than that, I guess I hadn’t really given my flaws much thought before.

b) My biggest flaw is that I suffer from an all-consuming fetish for crazy cat ladies.

c) My main flaw is that I am very sensitive about my flaws, okay? Are you happy now?

d) My parole officer says it doesn’t count as a flaw anymore if you’re already paid your debt to society.

***

4. I’m extremely absentminded and forgetful. Can you cope with that?

a) That incident where you forgot something is already forgotten by me in turn, on account of you being so damned brilliant. Not to mention pretty. Let’s make out.

b) Not only can I cope with that, but I am full of helpful and very earnest suggestions. For instance, did you know that you could hang your keys on a hook? Or use a day planner to schedule your daily activities? Or, I know! I will just cheerfully supervise to make sure you don’t screw up. Does your pained expression mean that you are uncomfortably turned on right now? I suppose that patronization IS sexy, now that I stop and think about it. C’mere, you.

c) I can’t answer this question because I’m too busy seething with resentment about the fact that we are twenty minutes late to dinner because you managed to lose your left shoe while traversing the seven feet between your front door and the car–even though you were wearing it at the time. I mean what the FUCK.

***

5. What are your feelings on children?

a) I should have named my twin girls Lub and Dup, because when you have kids, your heart really does walk around outside of your body. I never knew love until I had those children. Nor did I do anything else of significance that I can remember.

b) I enjoy other people’s children … sort of. In theory. When we aren’t on an airplane. Or in the grocery store. Or on vacation. Or trying to accomplish anything. Actually, if that kid over there says “Mom? Mom? Mom? Mom?” one more time and receives no answer, I will pay you fifty dollars to give me a salad-tong vasectomy right here in this restaurant.

c) I owe the world my children; it would be downright cruel to deny humanity my genetic material. What kind of lazy, selfish slacker doesn’t reproduce?

d) I rarely even think about children unless I actually trip over one when I’m sprinting toward the ice-cream truck. Bomb Pops are the best.

***

6. How would you describe your political stance?

a) Coincidentally enough, I am single in the first place because the homosexual agenda destroyed my American family in particular.

b) I’m actually very well informed in politics and I know exactly what everyone in Washington is doing wrong. I’d be happy to outline all of it for you just as soon as I’ve finished telling you how terrible my job is. You aren’t in a hurry to get home or anything, are you?

c) I wish we would nuke almost everyone else in the world and then bring back the electric chair in case there are any survivors.

d) I find it baffling that both the rights of the individual and the will of the majority are cited as the logical basis of decisionmaking in our government, which doesn’t actually make that much sense, as the two become mutually exclusive quite frequently. For the most part it hurts my head, but I generally don’t feel the need to be the boss of everyone and wouldn’t have voted in favor of Prop 8, if that’s what you’re asking.

***

7. Is it important to you that we live together/get married?

a) This conversation is already hurting my feelings.

b) Yes, desperately important and all I have ever wanted, but the fact that you are the first girl I’ve met who doesn’t want me to buy her a diamond actually fuels my infatuation with you and is, in fact, the only reason I’ve kept you around this long. Whatever you do, don’t give in, no matter how much I beg. Speaking of which … can we move in together yet? God it’s so hot when you break my heart like this.

c) Not really, no.

***

8. Are you happy?

a) No, but I can tell from your whimsical manner and joie de vivre that you could help me get there by taking me by the hand and leading me on a journey of self-discovery that will ultimately reveal the magic of the world around me, just like Natalie Portman in Garden State. Good grief, it’s about TIME that sort of thing happened in real life.

b) We all have our days, but most of the time, yes, I am.

c) Yes, but then again, I’m on a lot of drugs. No … like … a lot of drugs.

d) No … but in my defense, I am cursed. Judging from a wealth of empirical evidence, my fate is to wade through an endless stream of petty inconveniences designed specifically to obliterate any chance I might have had at experiencing joy or contentment. My existence is one continuous Nerf dart to the face. Do not get me started on papercuts.

***

9. Has life humbled you yet?

a) Of course life has humbled me. Nobody does humble like I do humble. I’m probably the humblest person you’re ever going to meet. Just the other day, I was probably more aware of my flaws and my insignificance in the scheme of things than anyone else. I make a point of winning at humble because otherwise someone might get confused and mistake me for a raging egomaniac.

b) Is this hearty burst of rueful laughter enough of an answer for you?

c) No, but that makes sense when you take into account that I am really, really special. Would my mom have spent so much time cutting all the crusts off my sandwiches if I weren’t? EXACTLY. Anyway, don’t take my word for it–the quality of the novel I’m writing will speak for itself. It’s about an underappreciated protagonist whose above-average attributes are finally recognized and validated with fame and fortune.

***

10. Hmm … you actually seem pretty awesome so far. Uh oh … are you crazy?

a) Shhhh. They can hear you … they can ALWAYS hear you.

b) I’m crazy for you, baby–like the Madonna song, if the Madonna song had been about stalking. Are you even getting these answers? I’d better resend them fourteen times just in case your comment form was on the fritz or your computer screen had been smashed in a jealous rage.

c) Yes, but as soon as I get rich, I’ll just be “eccentric.” The good news is, I can still be “charming” in the meantime.

d) No … but I’m kind of boring, it turns out. Whoops.

***
YOUR SCORE
1-3: Don’t date anyone.
4-6: Don’t date me or my friends.
7-9: Don’t date me.
10: You’re such a liar.