reflections on my twenty-third year

My birthday is coming up in a few weeks and instead of focusing on the awful bits (namely that I'm working the same job with but now with more hatred and frustration) and feeling like another year of my life simply wiled away, I am going to reflect on all that happened month by month. Events and personal growth and all that. Perhaps after I've done this I'll still feel like it was a wasted year but the unexamined life etc etc. Trigger warning: this is boring.

2013
October
Boy, it got off to a truly awful start. About a week before my birthday my boyfriend of over 2 years broke up with me. It wasn’t totally unexpected but unexpected enough. I have a vivid memory of saying to him, through dripping tears and a sloppy voice, but it’s my birthday next week!! Anyway. In an act of sisterly love, my big sis planned a last-minute trip up to Boston to celebrate with me. That morning at work my boss yelled at me for a small mistake I made the previous day. It turned into one of those conversations about a lot of things I’ve done wrong and other (small! miniscule!) things I had done to disappoint her and that sorta thing is really the true mark of passive aggression. I don’t think I’ll ever forget how absurd the whole ordeal was, and how shitty it made me feel. I take it as a real badge of honor that I didn’t cry in her office. Afterwards a couple coworkers took me out to lunch so I could bitch about it. That evening I picked my sister up from the bus station and we went out to a fancy dinner in my neighborhood.

I spent most of the month as an open wound. The pain from a breakup is like biting your tongue over and over again—the hurt is exquisite, sharp, and deep but there’s very little to sooth it. A few weeks after the breakup I went to his apartment to perform the requisite act of “here’s your stuff” and that was the last time I saw him.

Near the end of the month I developed a burning crush on a man I saw at the DTX platform every day after work. Slight, bespectacled, bearded. I still see him sometimes and it still makes me feel light.

November

I think by November I had stopped crying every day. I organized a big event at work that went well. A friendship between me and the intern with my program began to solidify. By this time it had been a year since I started working at my job and I really started to feel the itch to get out. I had a nice Thanksgiving? I dunno I guess I was just slogging through the days. Ah, I think I may have masturbated for the first time since the breakup. This, I thought, was a big step toward moving on…

December

Still ticking off each month as 1 2 3 since the breakup. I went to Craigie on Main for the first time with a good college pal and ate one of the best meals of my life. Six courses of food inspired by the Alsace region of France, a bottle of white wine and it was maybe the best $180 I’ve ever spent. A few evenings I trekked through the snow with an old work pal to a dark and cramped Irish pub and we got drunk off of beer and whiskey. I traveled home for Christmas and the New Year and felt recharged.

2014
January

Hoo boy. For whatever reason ($$ presumably) my office has their holiday party in January. I got wildly drunk and hooked up with a coworker. It was an awful, sloppy mess. We hooked up in the playground in the Boston Common (lol), took a cab back to my place, and then….merp. No need to go into details; I just tried to type them out and it was atrocious. I also wrote about it in an earlier blog post. So! This incident made work a bit difficult for a little while but I certainly do not regret it.

By January I was (obviously) as horny as a thirteen year old boy. It was exhausting, sizing up dudes everywhere I went. The T was a meat market. I realized how easy it is to spot a man’s bulge through his pants when he’s standing in front of me on the train; it made my commute a lot more interesting. My holiday hookup did little to satisfy my needs as a woman and we had a silent mutual agreement to never speak of it or repeat our actions so I was left to my own devices. Unbelievably, I still don’t own a vibrator :-/

February

February was bleak. Weather wise, life wise. Beginning Middlemarch was my only solace. I cried over my ex on President's day, probably the first time I had done so since November.

March

Oof March was also bleak. I don’t usually take much stock in horoscopes but each one I read said Libras would have a tough month because Mars was in retrograde (wut!). I found out my ex moved to Brooklyn and the news knocked the wind out of me. I felt like my life was at a standstill and going nowhere but he picked up everything and moved to the city he’s wanted to live in since forever. I spent most of this month stewing in self-pity. I started this blog.

(And while it’s not really a month-by-month thing, I spent a lot of time thinking about loneliness, friendship, and my relationship. I spent a lot of time alone. Sometimes I was OK with it; sometimes I wasn’t. I went on a lot of walks and got to know my neighborhood. I finally started to feel at home in Boston. These, I think, are good things.)

April

Maybe April was a turning point. I visited a few good friends from college in LA and had an incredible time. I thought I would hate the city, but I truly enjoyed it and it was so nice catching up with my pals. Must mention that I’m (pretty sure) we went to Bryan Singer gay sex party. And at this party an unbelievably hot and muscular man in a speedo made out with me for about 45 seconds. Must also mention that right before he kissed me I had been snacking on Chex Mix.

Later in the month, when I returned home a little buzzed after a few drinks with a friend, I checked my ex’s twitter feed and found out that he had an OKCupid account. Fuck this, I thought, and then immediately signed up for OKCupid, created a profile, and answered roughly one million questions about my opinions and worldview and all that. I spent the rest of the month obsessing over the site. I went on my first date the last day of April.

May

My mother and sister came to Boston for my cousin’s college graduation from UMass Amherst. This is our family’s youngest cousin and I got sentimental watching him receive his diploma. His college band, Pocket Lint (!!), performed for the last time at a house party and after much back and forth and drama with transportation, my sister and I went to the party. They played in the basement of a dirty and dingy house; drunk college grads took glugs from bottles of vodka, wine, and growlers of beer. I wish I could describe the experience better than saturated college but oh well. That's what it was.

But lo, the highlight of the month was my first date with my current boyfriend. Our first bit of interaction was a little awkward--we were in a crowded bar, we couldn't find seats and at 6'4" he towers over me so anything I said to him had to be repeated after he bent down to my level. But we found a spot at the bar and despite all that initial fuss I was at ease around him and a I felt a sort of warm reassurance that we'd have a good night.

June
June is a blur. The only focus I can muster is Aidan. After our first few get togethers and hookups it became obvious we liked one another, that we were exclusive. (I should mention [to whom?? w/e] I am still at my godawful job and I am always sad and depressed and downtrodden about this.)

Right before I left for a big family vacation, we stamped official names on our relationship. It was inevitable but it still felt...unnatural. With my previous relationship we had a solid friendship under our belts before things got ~romantic~ With Aidan, we were strangers and then very quickly we weren't. It took a little while to comfortably settle back into the girlfriend role.

July

Big family vacation. Slowly starting to apply to more jobs. Getting to know Aidan.

August
Slowly starting to apply to more jobs. Getting to know Aidan.

September

Ah so here we are. The last few months were pretty uneventful (and I started to feel pretty lazy). Still applying for jobs but they're few and far between and I've heard back from NO ONE. 

Soo...

After this lil memory experiment (or whatever I just did!) what do I think of my twenty-third year?? It was perhaps the most introspective year I've had, what with being single (for most of it) and having so few friends (for all of it). Spent a lot time by myself and in my head. And I feel good about that! It certainly wasn't perfect or exciting and there's still so so much about my life that makes me anxious and frustrated but. This past year wasn't wasted or wiled away WOW THANK GOD.

As a gift for reading through this mess, you are now allowed to follow me on Twitter--hey thanks!