Side Effects of Dealing with Fuckboys

Y'all, the next time I get super bored on Sunday because I am sullen about how lonely I feel these days PLEASE remind me that that does not mean I should unblock certain fuckboy's who were recently banished to fuckboy island because I was feeling sad and despondent and lonely. Deal?

I am so annoyed with myself and lack of will. I recently discovered (aka was told repeatedly by multiple family members and close friends) that I don't set boundaries and this is why people take advantage and smother me to the point of exhaustion. And because I am on this continual journey of self discovery and growth..I naturally sulked as this truth floated to the surface with arrogant buoyancy. Fuck you truths, can you stop being a know it all for like 2 seconds!

There has been a drastic change in my life these last two years and for the first time in a while I feel...alone. Like I did in college, except worse because I now know what I am missing.  I don't have as many friends as I used to and my free time is endless. Gone are the days where I could barely squeeze in time to eat because I was hanging out with friends and dealing with Sean and working two jobs and going to the city every freaking weekend. Suddenly, there are quiet nights at home, weekend running errands and an occasional dinner date with friends if we can find the time to catch up.

But the level of activity has decreased ten-fold partly by my own doing but also because growing up comes with a lot of losses. People settle down, have children, move away and life just goes on. And while I know this, I live this, I must admit I am fucking miserable in my current state. I don't miss Kat or Matt or Sean but i do miss having plans and things to do and people to text regularly. I do miss being needed even though that meant being used.  In retrospect I was almost willing to accept the disrespect and the smothering and the meanness because they filled a space that was so empty before. I was so lonely and then suddenly I wasn't and for once I felt like I belong.

But those relationships weren't healthy: Kat was co-dependent, Sean was a sociopath and Matt...well Matt has narcissistic tendencies and he valued his time and sense of being more than anyone I have ever met. So I wasn't growing and evolving and living the best version of my life with those people in my life but am I living it now? Sure  I  made a swift exit from those relationships but I am now consumed by boredom. Utter boredom.

My day to day consists of: waking up extraordinarily early so i can make the rounds of all my social media accounts. I then get ready for work which involves giving myself a pep talk in the mirror followed by several instances where I utter " i really don't fucking want to go" before i drag myself to work. Then there are 8 hours of desk sitting, filed by maybe an hour of actual work but mainly just sitting and daydreaming and podcast and then music and desk sulking. Then i go home, prepare my lunch and outfit for the next day before falling asleep to ANOTHER Dateline marathon.

This is my life! And I guess this was kind of okay, when my weekends were filled with activity and interactions and friends but now they are sort of just filled with weekly Target runs and then self loathing. I am in such a transitional moment in my life and I am not adapting as well as I wish. I know that things will get better. I know that I am measuring my successes more harshly because FB keeps reminding me that people are "happy" and "coupled up" and living their best lives while I check my message-less phone and eat popcorn for dinner for the second night in a row because I am too lazy to microwave anything.

I know that there is so much in store for me and I just have to be diligent and also patient. But while this occurs, I miss certain things, I want new things, I crave stability while also wanting to just upend the status quo. And yes these are all contradictory wants but I am bored, oh so very bored. I am annoyingly looking for affirmation in all the wrong places and on Sunday after spending most of my day in bed watching another British cooking show, i started making excuses for Matt's poor behavior and disregard and general lack of respect because I feel...alone.

I know this is not a good reason to make any decision and since that lapse in judgment, I have installed all of the block measures again (except for the FB block because there is a 48 hour grace period to mourn your dumb mistake) because I deserve better.  What i wanted, didn't match up with who he was and what he wanted and he was wasting my time which is a huge offense.

The other day I was listening to the  podcast Small Doses by one of my favorite comedians Amanda Seales. She continually drops life gems on her Instagram page that punch me in the stomach with it's relevancy. So naturally it made sense to subscribe to her podcast for weekly advice and life lessons. Yesterday's podcast was about Fuckboys and the literal damage they are inflicting to the dating world. Until recently I did not think Matt fell into this category. He was a nice guy after all, well educated, culturally and socially woke on the surface, and champion for women.

But now that I look back on all of our interactions, I think Matt was the epitome of a Fuckboy because of his nice guy Schick. He'd talk openly about the #Metoo moment and respecting women but than would go into an hour long spiel about he couldn't really like a girl until he had sex with her. He constantly described what he didn't like in women which almost exclusively was looks based. She couldn't be too short, she could only have long hair, she couldn't wear rings (because he preferred bangles), she had to smell a certain way and wear specific colors, she had to also be a brown girl who didn't want to have children nor cats.

Under his "i'm a feminist" facade he constantly crossed sexual boundaries with me, that I let slide. He was never EVER physical but now that I look back on it, we talked about sex inordinately. And don't get me wrong, I love talking about sex but the only person who needs to know how many sexual partners i've had and whether I like "going down" should be a person who I am or will be in a relationship with. My platonic male friend should not ask the questions Matt asked of me and I regret that instead of shutting the inquiries down, I laughed and mistook it for affection. I mean he once asked me (in the  middle of watching a movie)  how many holes i'd be open to having filled in a sexual encounter and when I showed general discomfort at the question he laughed and said he liked girls who didn't embarrass so easily. 

He talked openly about his physical love for minorities and mainly brown females but expressed little sympathy for brown skinned men while also reverting to typical stereotypes to show superiority. He used to tell me all the time that he loved {insert specific dark skinned race] because the men in [insert same specific dark skinned race] don't treat them well. He'd say Asian men had small dicks and Hispanic men were not smart and African American males were prone to laziness. All of "these" men treated their women so poorly he was in theory "saving" brown women by loving them so much.

 It was always "god, I love black women BUT i don't understand why black men aren't smart and rely only on {insert black male stereotype} to get by. He made me as a black female feel like I should be grateful  that he took an interest in my beauty which society has been slow to accept. But his interest seemed more like a fetish than anything else.

I am fuming over these realizations now. It's been a month since I last talked or saw Matt but I clearly saw the signs early on but  i sort of just (as I always do) made excuses. I am still making excuses.  Once I have made up my mind about a person (either good or bad) I am too stubborn to change that initial perception even when presented with that facts. And I wanted Matt to work out for my own selfish reason.  My mom was happy that i found a guy and my friends were excited that I was finally about to be coupled up. And seeing that happiness from my friends and family were overwhelming. Like the only thing I was missing in my already decent life was a man. So i was willing to try and have him fit that mold until...well it and him crumbled under his fuckboy reality. 

But I cannot place all the blame on Matt. I have to take responsibility for the fact that I saw  past obvious red flags. It was weird enough that he reached out to me after a 5 year silence. Especially since we weren't that close at the store and had had several miscommunications while we worked together. It was strange when he called me his best friend after hanging out for a month. It was also weird that he wanted to regularly hang out at my house for 12 hours straight but had no interest in dating me. He was a time waster and it is not only clear that he reached out to me out of desperation but because he knew I'd respond. Like I always do because that is who I am an emphatic person who loves a good sob story.

But moving forward, I have to set boundaries and have standards and hold people accountable when and if something is crossed. I have to stop being so damn accommodating. For someone who can be opinionated and forceful with her words when I need to be...I tend to give romantic prospects the benefit of the doubt. I become submissive and passive and unlike my real self out of fear that they will reject me if they knew how strong I was. But who gives a fuck? Especially when this passive approach makes me susceptible to assholes.

So I am making a list. An Oh No list to figure out what my boundaries are so that I can be more explicit about them moving forward. I am sort of a a boundary-less person because I am a people pleaser and I want to be accommodating because I have mistaken it for showing devotion. But fuck that life. No more going out of my way to live up to someone else's expectation when all I am given back is scraps. Or worse....they do not live up to my own expectations.

So outside of the general "Oh no" deal breakers like: someone who is mean to children or animals, someone who expresses any sort of racism or discrimination or general cruelty to people, someone who is nasty to hospitality workers AND anyone who is a Trump Supporter (this does not mean conservative, this just means Trump supporter), I need to have a concrete list of unacceptable things that cross a boundary for me. I can only hope in doing so I can avoid these landmine of assholes in my periphery and maybe even pave the way for something greater. 

H O M E

There are very few things I actually miss about working in retail, cause lets be real....once an old lady with what can only be surmised as Alzheimer tries to physically fight you at the cash register because you remind her of some bitch from 1920's who stole her boo at the speakeasy, the minimum wage and employee discount really don't seem worth it.

I haven't worked in retail in almost 4 years and it's insane to think that I slaved away in the aisle of the bookstore for as long as i did. There used to be this time, not so long ago, when I worked two jobs, the latter at crazy hours with customers who included a guy who smeared shit on the bathroom mirrors so frequently we donned him the phantom pooper. The 3rd time it happened, I remember we all just stopped working so we could run to the bathroom in disgust and fascination at the balls on this guy for having poop as his calling card.

Now that I am a slave to the cubicle life, I sometimes look back at my time at Le Sad Store and wonder how i did it for so long. Especially because there were almost no perks to the job.

For one, minimum wage is a bitch and anyone who complains that we shouldn't raise it have never worked a "real job" a day in their life. While working a cushy office gig pays your bills and weekend off ....you get a warrior badge if you survive working retail. Because a lot of people don't.  I started at Le Sad Store making $9 per hour and post college, this seemed like a gold mine of a hourly wage. I had just come off working $5 at my school library which allowed me to buy weekly foot-longs from Subway while I played the sims to kill time. So of course the $4 bump seemed like my first real step towards financially security. I was a fool!

Realistically $9 aint shit when you have actual bills to pay and add rent on top of that I barely had enough money for food at the end of my paycheck. Despite this I still went out regularly, was a frequent buyer of tattered Forever 21 clothes and abused the shit out of that employee discount by funneling most of my paycheck back into the company with all my  unnecessary book, dvd's and cafe purchases.

Secondly, working on the weekend should be banned! You go through most of your life taking advantage of Saturday and Sunday that when it is stripped away from you it feels like a death. For almost 8 years, I worked on weekends to the point where Tuesday and Wednesday's were my day of rest. But there is something sacred about Saturday and Sunday. It's hard to explain. Saturday just feels like a Saturday. As does Sunday. The two days are supposed to be about relaxation or fun if that is your choice. Working should not even be a thing one has to do.

Towards the end of my time at the bookstore I was clocking in only around 28 hours a week. EVEN THEN, most of those hours were spent working on the weekend. And idk, it's just sort of awful. Saturdays should be for errands and hanging out and movies and naps. On Sunday, I should only have to wake up enough to maybe put on pants and find something binge-able on TV. I should not have to work for 8 hours surrounded by people who openly choose to be at my place of work! it's offensive.

But the real crux of working in retail is the customer because most people are trash. I am an insanely accommodating shopper because of my time spent being harassed, embarrassed, demeaned and once again PHYSICALLY assaulted by the general public (she brought the cane out!). I try to buy things only online so I don't even have to set foot in any retail establishment (except Target. I love Target) because I know how awful people can treat retail workers. I also judge potential friends and romantic partners by how they interact with severs, cashiers and other "hospitality" workers. If you don't say "thank you" or are dismissive or leave a shitty tip you are a trash person who i do not want to know. There are way too many awful customer stories to detail but just know that it's worse than you could ever imagine.

And while the actual customers are terrible what's even worse is the entitlement people hold over you. People assume you work in retail because you aren't qualified to work anywhere else. That you should just get a real job. That looking for books and ringing up customers is super easy. And to give them credit, a lot of it is easy but that doesn't mean anyone who works in retail isn't busting their ass. I was in the best shape of my life at the bookstore because I was on my feet all day. Between shelving books and finding books and chasing teenagers out of the store, I burned more calories at work then I ever did in mandatory PE classes. I also had to sacrifice holidays because people love to shop. We worked all the Eve's and never got any government holidays off just so you could buy the latest New York Times bestseller.

Also, working parents would often leave their kids (babies) at the store as if we were a personal daycare center and while it wasn't our responsibility to watch them we legit kept watch over children left to fend for themselves at the store. We also had to deal with "regulars"...well on the regular. People who frequented the store so often they might as well have lived there. They talked to us repeatedly as if we were their friends and most times we were empathetic ears to lonely and worn down individuals. So yea, finding someone the Secret for the 7th million time isn't that hard BUT spending 7 long hours on your feet, making less than $10 an hour as people continue to berate you because you can't find "the book that has a red cover" can be a daunting if not noble venture.

I must have a form of PTSD from my time in the bookstore because even though it has been four years since clocking in, I do have a tendency of watching Youtube videos of customers freaking out in public. My Youtube history is full of videos of customers behaving badly while people stare on horrified and appalled and yet still paralyzed to do anything.  At first I thought this was just me being a huge ass weirdo, but I confirmed with another former bookseller worker that I am not the only one who does this! I did not become a lifelong retailer worker but there is a smidgen of guilt for the life and friends I left behind and maybe having a reminder every once in a while is how i leave pay my penitence.

Because if I can be honest, while almost every fucking thing about retail was awful and dreadful and stress inducing....I miss my coworkers tremendously. I miss my friends who I will always consider family even if I no longer speak or see them. There is something about working in a shitty retail environment that creates a bond between the people that is impenetrable. It is Us (employees) Vs. Them (customers, corporate, managers) that inspires the same level of teamwork as an old school Field Day event.  My coworkers and I used to work in near perfect tandem because we liked working together and being around each other and supporting one another.

Someone having a bad day? We'd pill them with hugs and snacks from the vending machine and jokes until the person felt a little better. I once was so poor I couldn't afford lunch at le sad store, so my friend brought me sandwiches from home until our next pay period. When I offered to pay him back he was offended. It is the first time I have ever tackled someone with one of my hugs. Our friendships (all of them) were definitely messy, overwhelming, annoying and of course when we all started dating each other very incestuous but I am convinced it was the most authentic love I have ever had with my peers. We were a team in and outside of that store and anything less than that feeling of fidelity feels like a disappointment now. 

The next time you go to Target or Walmart or hell even that little clothing store in mall, look at how the employees interact with each other. Sure they are rude towards customers and flee in the other direction when the see a dumb question coming their way....but i bet your ass you will almost always see them smiling and laughing in interactions with each other. I'd put my next paycheck (not really, i have to get my car fixed) that they are friends and want to see each other outside of work. Retail teaches you about teamwork and camaraderie and dare i say...friendship the way it should be.

So yea, I don't miss the late hours or the low pay or the customers who think you are property along with the things your store is selling. But i miss the shit out of walking into work and checking the schedule to see if my favorite people are working with me. I miss walking into the break room and being greeted with "hellos' and "I missed you" and continuation of conversations that happened only hours later.  I miss looking over at one of my friends as a customer is acting a fool and sharing a look that only the two of us understand and will no doubt discuss in length afterwards. I miss my people, my tribe, my ride or dies and lifelong friends. I miss them painfully.

I bring this up because honestly outside of a handful of people at my current job, I loathe the majority of my co-workers. This isn't to say they aren't fine people but they aren't "my" people. They aren't watching great TV shows or reading interesting books of finding new and dope music they have to share immediately. They are investing in stocks, talking about mortgages ,placing illegal bets and playing a legitimate game called CORNHOLE during work hours. Do you want to know the point of the game? You throw a ball in a hole. That's it. They have spent hundreds of dollars betting each other on who can win the game. How do you even have enough money to place such bets? I have bills to pay and rent to pay and any extra money is not going towards winning or losing a game called Cornhole. It's going to Target.

And who would have thought that liking the people you spend more than 40 hours with throughout the week is super fucking important.  But holy shit it is almost pivotal to my work life balance....and happiness. Outside of the Matt fiasco my personal life is pretty okay. Sure, there could be improvements to my every day but for the most part I am in love with the baby steps I am making. Last week I went to Whole Foods (like an actual adult), purchased some healthy meals, stood in an indiscernible aisle and stared at the nutritional information on the back of the cookie box I was holding. I'd seen someone do this earlier is a more appropriate and less snack food aisle and I figured I'd mirror her actions too because this is what adulting is like. Though i walked out spending way to much on "organic" food there was something very mature about the whole trip. Only four years ago I was slaving away at le sad store, renting a room in some lady's house and buying frozen meals that couldn't adequately feed a toddler. And there I was on a Saturday in a Whole Foods that I drove to  in my own car buying food for my REFRIGERATOR to eat during the actual work week. Ya'll i have a fridge.

But there are only two days during the weekend and my organic cookies and almond milk can't make up for the fact that I spend the bulk of my time and life at a job that hate with people i'd openly ignore in public. And it's weeks like this when I am feeling extra nostalgic and homesick for my old life. I'd almost take another near asswhooping from a gal name Betsy too deep into her Alzheimer to realize I am not in fact her childhood rival as she manhandles me to the shock and fear and even amusement of my co-workers nearby. I'd relive that moment once again, just for the comfort of seeing my friend turned families contorted, anxious but familiar faces again that were as home to me as home gets.

Nice Girls Don't Finish On Top

I am unabashedly a nice girl and I am starting to think this title is doing nothing for my social life. Don't get me wrong, my mamma didn't raise no fool. I am not a pushover and have surprised many a people who thought my bite wasn't as big as my bark. I can be a fearless girl and I have not always been an incredibly nice woman when backed into a corners.

In high school I was angst filled and aloof to the point of coming off cold to my peers. Marie and I were queens of sulking and side-eyeing anyone who did us wrong and I was told more times that I can count to stop being "mean" to [insert names here]. When you are young, the moment you learn you are quick witted, it's hard to contain the sass. So even though I was a nice girl, I am also a smart ass to a fault. I said and did dumb things to prove points that didn't need proving. 

In college, I was hard-headed and stubborn. I was often accused of thinking I was "better" than my peers because of my disdain for commonality and small talk. Having anxiety didn't help disprove this misconception. I'm not going to lie, even with this blog detailing my most embarrassing years, I don't think I can stress enough how weird and awkward i was. Because I was really fucking awkward. I really didn't try enough to make friends  and was unable to openly just be myself like i craved....so I would come off as weird and brooding and full of tension, despite the fact that I was listening to Shawn Colvin on my CD player and reading romance novels in-between classes.

Being less anxious these last few years has definitely increased my self confidence and how i present myself to the world. I am still awkward but in a fumbling, comical and delicate way rather than mouth breathing, sweaty and off putting counterpart.  I am much too old to constantly worry what people think about me (as I write a post about what people may think about me. The irony is ever present) which has allowed me in many ways to be just be who I am without fear of embarrassment. But now that I am less anxious, the layers that have been stripped away just reveal that I am an incredibly kind and nice human being. And it's nauseating.

While I do have moments of sassiness and "bitch-like" bravado.  I am  your quintessential good girl. People NOW tend to find me adorable and relatable to a motherfucking fault (oh, and I curse a lot...which is probably not a good girl thing but whatever). I am called sweetheart by damn near everyone i met, children are not intimated by me and one time a dog feed me a treat. I wish I was kidding but perhaps thinking i was in need of it's care, my friends dog passed up her treat and brought it to me...as if she were doing me a favor. Le fucking sigh.

The problem is....because people mistake me for being a good girl, I am not often met with the same level of respect from men and and often infanticide by my some of my female peers. It doesn't matter that I can rap to Cardi B lyrics like a motherfucking boss or that i rehearse arguments in the shower on a regular basis (you must always be prepared)....at the end of the day, the secret about me is always at the surface. I am incredibly nice and soft which often comes across as naive, gullible and lacking experience.

And to be fair I am a fault for my nice girl image. I am the most accommodating person you will ever meet and I am not even admitting this fact to toot my own nice girl horn. I am annoyingly optimistic and never openly judgmental of anyone. People have admitted some weird shit to me but instead of shutting them down, I want to take the time to learn more about their interest.When I claim you as a friend I will go above and beyond to shower you with love and affection. And while this has it's benefits, I am also too trusting, too forgiving, too polite and thus susceptible to shitty people. It's as if my kindness lures them in and then WHAM, I have to go through another blocking spree because I cannot have such negativity in my life.

Today was that such day and another crushing realization as I went to Matt's FB page and Instagram page and blocked the crap out of him. I used to think blocking individuals was a un-good girl aspect of my personality but honestly it's a necessary tool for me to accept the end of something. Sometimes I do so out of a necessity (Sean and his family), other times the decision is hasty but still with my best interest at heart (Kathleen). Matt is a combination of both. Despite how shitty he has become, I am a person who forever holds on to what if. What if, he eventually comes around and realizes he has been treating me terribly because he is deeply in love with me. What if he has been ignoring me because life has become super busy but I am still at the forefront of his mind. What if he really does want to be my friend but just doesn't know how to be in my life they way I want friends to be in my life.

The problem is these "what if's" don't matter because they never came into fruition. If he wanted to be in my life, he would be and if he just wanted to be friends he wouldn't be a complete and utter asshat and towards the end he was less and less present but more of an asshat. So I blocked him. I removed myself from the situation. I packed my good girl qualities into a suitcase and sashayed out of the equation.

And while I feel okay about using my block powers to remove myself from the situation, I am beginning to worry about the relationship patterns I find myself in.  Cause it feels like an "Oops I did it again moment" but less cooler. I often connect with a people immediately.  We become inseparable and super reliant on each other and then before you know it the crazy starts. People tend to own my time and my space and want 100% access to me. And because I am a good girl I allow this even when I shouldn't. There were many times when Matt has said or done something inappropriately that I didn't call him on his shit because I didn't want to come across like a bitch. But I should have, thinking back on it.

I don't know how to stop being such a good girl but as I replay what has gone wrong in the past with friendship and romantic possibilities and my current falling out with Matt I can't help but think my niceness is a huge part of the problem. I come across as impenetrably delicate because I am impenetrably delicate so people take advantage and I let them. 

This doesn't mean I want to stop being a nice girl cause lets be real the idea of being unkind gives me all sorts of agita. I just feel like I need some alter ego, a non nice girl entity who comes out when i need her most. I need to go from Sandra Dee to "Sandy! asap because Sandra Dee is mocked and pilfered and almost always damn near feathered because of her nice girl ways.  You know how Beyonce created an alter ego called "Sasha Fierce" who takes over when she performs on stage? A sexier (as if she can get any sexier), Fiercer (as if she needs and fierce mojo) and more Dominant  (I bow to her willingly) persona? I need her.

Anytime, I am being excruciatingly nice, I need that bitch to put her stilettos heels down (bad bitches wear stilettos?) and stop me in my tracks. I need her to be more assertive and forthcoming and dare I say...even a little mean when it's appropriate. Because this nice girl stuff is no longer working in my favor. I just don't know if I have the energy to be Sasha Fierce when all i want to do is keep being me which includes a lot of annoying necessities and cat naps.