First Responder

I work for a civil litigator. She emails me, on average, fifty times per day, and expects an immediate response to each one, even if it is just the word, "confirmed" to which she usually replies, "tnx". If I don't respond quickly enough to let her know I have read and understood one of her emails, she yells out from her office, "Did you understand that?!" because as someone who is operating under 100+ deadlines at any given time, she needs to know that I am paying attention to everything as much as she is. I have become conditioned by working for her into thinking that this is normal, that when someone texts me, they want a response as quickly, no quicker than that, as my fingers can type it out on a virtual screen. It's hard to switch it on and off all the time. I have to be hyper-vigilant for eight-ten hours of the day and then go back to acting like I give zero fucks the rest of the time. It's transferred over into how I react when someone takes too long to reply to me. I was talking to my dear friend Gabriel about this. We are similar in terms of how quickly we respond to people. Turnaround time for me on a message is usually within 1-5 minutes. Gabriel is just as prompt, usually. Any longer than that feels rude. It's partially due to my job, but I have always been pretty prompt. I asked him why his wife, my best friend, who I love more than anything (no lesbo) hadn't yet answered a text I sent her days before. "It's been two days!" I said
"She is in New York," he offered, "Working."
I knew that she was in New York on a buying trip, but I was still indignant about it. "No excuse," I said, because I don't see why she can't Swype me a quick LOL while checking out accessories.
Most people are not this way. I asked my co-worker why it occasionally takes boys a full 24 hours to respond to a text, and he said, "Guys don't do it to hurt anyone- we just start watching Games of Thrones or playing Angry Birds or something and we forget that literally anything else exists."
I think I'm just too used to multi-tasking. I'm not actually just sitting by my phone, staring at it and waiting for a reply, I'm knitting something, watching an episode of Community, making dinner, possibly reading an article on Jezebel, AND checking my phone every few minutes. When I finally get a reply, I respond too quickly, and I know I probably come off like this:


And then the other person is probably all, "BITCHES BE CRAZY!!!!!".
I try to lock down my neuroses- if I can. When I was seeing Mike, I would leave my phone in my car when I was at work because if it was near my desk, I would text him just out of habit or if I was bored or if I thought of something funny, and nobody needs all that noise. Once it was clear that I had changed from a cute girl to a buzzing irritation to him, I didn't want to give him the motherfucking satisfaction of getting annoyed with me. I still sometimes just turn my phone off because I will keep checking it and not even realize how many times I have. It's the modern-day nervous tic, checking your screen to see if anything new has happened, if you have a reason to keep smiling today.
It's especially hard to not look like an overeager puppy when it comes to someone I think I like but can't see in person because they don't live near me. It's trying to build something on the fragile foundation of Facebook messages and Instagram likes, even if it's a friendship. I keep trying to be a really cool girl and pretend I have better things to do than respond to every message they send me as quickly as I can, but I'm not, not if I like someone and I don't care if they know it. I'm not subtle, and I'm not good at hiding how I feel. I know I come off as overenthusiastic because I am overenthusiastic. I do have more important things to do than send someone a video of baby sloths while I am also typing up a cover letter to the court and responding to one of my boss's emails, but I will send it while I am in the middle of this and probably fifteen other things, because I just want them to see it. And because everyone needs baby sloths.

When You Decide To Love Your Curves

Before:
1. Your journey will start when you are eleven years old. The 34-C's that you will appreciate eventually will sprout up on your chest in sixth grade like unwelcome guests. You will spend most of the year trying to force a grown woman's breasts into a little girl's training bra, watching them spill over the tops and sides like marshmallows expanding in the microwave. Your flat-chested friends will hate you a little. Boys will always be trying to put their hands under and over and inside of your shirt just to say that they got there first, and this will never be about you. It will be about tits you still don't even think of as being yours. And when you tell on the ringleader, like you have been trained to, you will be called a liar. And a troublemaker. And, somehow, worst of all, a tease. You will not own your body yet. You have barely even been introduced to it.
2. Men like you-for a little while. Up until they realize that this is the way you always look, that this isn't just your going-out body, that you cannot just get rid of these hips, these thighs, this everything that was made to be held onto for dear life. You are an adventure. You are a bouncy castle at a kid's birthday party. He knows he will have a really fun time with you but he isn't sure if he wants anyone to see him do it. You are vacation sex. Men will come at you hard just because they have to see what it is like, especially if their last girlfriend was skinny and not very nice. They will think they can hide inside of your curves, use them as a flotation device to keep themselves from drowning, and then realize they don't need you when they sink their fingers into dry sand and know they are safe now. You're not for wearing out in public. You're a secret garment- the silk kimono he wears when he is alone in his house.
After:
3. The world still might not love your curves even if you do. Your husband will show you Amazonian plus-size models in an attempt to make you feel better about your 5 foot one frame that can still hold all of this body. You will try not to point out that this is not the same thing at all. He will be able to deal only with very specific parts of you, and he will barely touch you while you are trying to enjoy the sex that only happens once a week now, and he won't look at you, and he won't forgive you for gaining more weight and giving him even more of you to ignore. You will need to wait until after he separates from you and your problem areas to realize that he was wrong. You will believe it because you will tell yourself that it's true.
4. You will be so amazed at how good you look in that one pencil skirt, you will want to cry. You will be asked the question, "How do you fit all that ass inside your jeans?" You will be told that the song, "Ms. Fat Booty" is about you. You will be told you have the perfect waist-to-hip ratio. You will see a picture of your mother from 1977, her silhouette outlined against the sky, and for a split second think it is a picture of you. You will pretend to double-dutch jump-rope in front of a room full of people while wearing shorts and give zero fucks about it. You will realize that you are a silk kimono, and a bouncy castle, and an adventure. And you will understand what it means to be all of those things.

Eliza Pilgrim Vs. No One

One of my favorite comic book series, just after Sandman, is Scott Pilgrim. I found the series, as well as the movie, really comforting when I was at my lowest point. Maybe it's because I identify so much with Scott Pilgrim as a character. He's kind of a nice guy but he's kind of a dick to the girls he dates, he's not really that good at anything, he has friends but they don't really like him, he falls ass over teakettle in love with a girl he sees in a dream and then finds out is a real person. I haven't been there on every single one of those instances, but you get my point. I have literally told someone,"I'm going to leave you alone forever now," just like Scott does the first time he actually speaks to the girl of his dreams.
I read Sandman again, particularly the book The Kindly Ones, when I know something terrible is about to happen and I want to revisit something I know like the back of my hand, but I read Scott Pilgrim again when I need to be reassured that even the least remarkable person can learn, and I've spent a lot of time feeling pretty unremarkable.
When I first read it, I really wanted to be Scott's love interest, Ramona Flowers. I have concluded that I will never be a Ramona Flowers. I will never get that many people to fall in love with me and then hate me that much. I kind of still wish I was a Ramona Flowers. Ramona is mysterious. She does not give much away. I give too much away. I dominate a conversation with so much information, all of it about me, or I try to impress someone with how many trivial facts I know about one specific thing to try to get them to like me. I wish I was guarded and unattainable, but I'm not. I will fall hopelessly in lesbians with someone I have only just met and I will always go too far trying to prove it. I will always be Scott Pilgrim.
It might be better to not strive to be a Ramona. Ramona is kind of a jerk. Almost all of her relationships end with her cheating on someone and she's kind of a coward. It would also be really annoying to be her. She tries to have a relationship with this charismatic, mysterious guy who wears awesome glasses and he pays her back for trying to leave when it gets to be too much by inflicting her with the Glow and pushing her around until she vanishes into Subspace. Then he forms a League of Evil Exes to control her love life? And every time she wants to date someone new, even someone as basically harmless as Scott, she has to see all of them again? Jeez. I don't have evil exes. My exes just kind of don't like me anymore. My exes are like Scott's exes. I have my Kim Pines, my one Knives Chau somewhere back there, and my one Envy Adams still fucking things up for me. The difference is, my ex isn't even some slinky, sexy rock star girl with a crazy awesome Evangalion hairstyle. He's just a guy who gave up, who runs into my stepmother and doesn't even ask how I'm doing. He has no interest in sabotaging my future happiness, but that is all due to the fact that he has no interest in me. And I still ask his mother how he is doing when I run into her even though I really want to not care.
There is something to be learned from how much Scott is willing to do for Ramona. It makes me wish I had that kind of pull with anyone. He is so obsessed with her that he is willing to fight everything and everyone that gets in his way. He mans up so completely, and so almost needlessly, that it holds up a dark mirror to my own past. Every time Scott does something in the name of all of that need, just to impress this really cool girl, I just want to reach into the book, pluck him out by the scruff of his neck and tell him, "Ssh, stop it. Just stop it," because I want to be able to do that to myself. I wish I could have pulled myself out of so many situations that arose over someone who didn't really warrant that kind of shit. I will never run out of Ramonas to fight over or new ways to look foolish.
I keep forgetting the point of all of it, or at least what I see the point as being. Ramona doesn't even end up being the reason for Scott becoming a better person. She's the impetus, but not the reason. The best fight, of course, is between Scott and Ramona's evilest ex, Gideon Graves, but before that, Scott has to battle himself. The most important fight is between Scott and Nega-Scott, who was created out of Scott's inability to see his own flaws, and the point is that Scott isn't meant to actually fight him, he is supposed to merge with him, and thereby accept all of his faults that he has ignored up to that point. I keep thinking about all of that negative, black energy I manifested when I got my heart broken, how it felt like carrying around a whole other person who hated me. I wonder where it actually went, or if it's still following me. I'm still trying to figure out if I did it right, if I actually zeroed in on what is wrong with me or if I've just spent the past year and a half identifying what is wrong with every person who has ever hurt me. Every time I get depressed, I feel like I am still just fighting the meanest, darkest version of myself, the side of me that wants to watch me drown. And I am still not sure I can even trust my own memories. I don't even have the luxury of blaming my one-sided recollection of things on someone implanting false memories in my head, the way Scott Pilgrim does. This is entirely my own doing. The ultimate enemy is always going to be me, but it's not even an enemy I can fight, it's an enemy I need to learn from. More to the point, this isn't a fight at all, so there is no chance of winning. Maybe the upside of that is that there is therefore no chance of losing. The game is rigged-you cannot lose if you do not play. Oh, shit, never mind, that's from The Wire. Fuck it, I'm going to go watch The Wire in its entirety from beginning to end for the fourth time and get Lance Reddick's face tattooed on my chest. And try to be a little less like Scott Pilgrim and be more like Deputy Cedric Daniels.