This Post Probably Explains Why I Don't Have a Boyfriend

The other day at lunch my Soul Twin, my Biscuit, my Brooke and I were discussing certain traits in men that I find unbearable. 

They are, oh surprise, many. 

*Please note, not all of these are direct experiences. 

Things Deb Loves presents...

The Dealbreakers Post!!

 If a man claims Catcher in the Rye is still one of his favorite books, that's a dealbreaker.

Look, I LOVED Catcher in the Rye. IN HIGH SCHOOL. But if a coming of age novel is still one of his favorite books, it means he thinks his white, suburban upbringing was sooooo hard and that he is a special, special snowflake (trademark, Katie Maloney), who no one will ever understand. It means he is, in short, STILL COMING OF AGE. 

Dude. You're 30. Get over it.

If the movie Garden State is one of his favorite movies, that's a dealbreaker.

I immediately start to distrust a man if I see he owns this movie. I get it, growing up rich and white and able to loaf around in your parents house into your late 20s, and overly medicate yourself with prescription drugs and marijuana until a tiny, boisterous, 20 something girl comes along and saves you from yourself, sounds like the hardest thing in the world. 

Oh, wait. It doesn't. Get a job.

If a man wears ratty hoodies on dates 1-5, that's a dealbreaker.

I dress up to go to dinner with my girlfriends. Now granted I actually take pride in my appearance, and I don't expect that of every man, but the fact that some men can't even be bothered to put on a collared shirt to go to dinner with a lady is ludicrous. Are we supposed to be impressed by your overtly non-nonchalant attitude as exhibited by your holey sweatshirt and crappy, worn jeans? 

Well, we're not. If I wanted to date a man who looks homeless I would date a homeless man. I've gotten proposed to by many of them already.

If a man tells you he's hopelessly in love with another woman before he tries to sleep with you, that's a dealbreaker.

The only way this is charming is if you are Barney Stinson on How I Met Your Mother. And then it's only charming because it's NPH. Are you NPH, man who did this to me? Oh, wait. YOU AREN'T. As a side note, before this happened, this same man tried to make out with me by a dumpster. 

A DUMPSTER.

Spoiler: I still slept with him. Because 2 years ago I had no self-respect.

If a man doesn't use proper grammar in or proofread emails (as evidenced by excessive typos), that's a dealbreaker.

This indicates two things: 

 1) He graduated from some learning institution without being able to compose a proper sentence, in which case I question the legitimacy of said "education."

2) He is lazy.

The reason we have email is so we can proofread messages before we send them. I don't expect everyone to proofread text messages, mostly because "damn you, autocorrect" is the best website ever, but don't send me something you haven't read over after writing. 

Also, unless you are using a non-smartphone, "u" is never an appropriate abbreviation for "you." 

Do you have a Qwerty keyboard on your iPhone?

Type it out, Ass.

If a man wears pants tight enough to wonder where his penis goes, that's a dealbreaker.

If his pants are that tight, his penis can't be that big. Act accordingly.

I'm a generally happy person. Except when I'm not.

So it's two weeks into the new year and a month since my last post (as my Hetero reminded me on facebook yesterday). To be honest, I have started probably 4 different posts that I might, at some point, finish and publish. One was about making the old new: a rant about the futility of change and our society's effed up views about our potential to "be better." I wrote almost the entire thing until it spiraled into indignant lecturing, and I scrapped it, for now at least. There were countless other posts about how much I love Zumba, about my dad being old, about the joy of having 9 best friends. But nothing I could ever finish. Well that and I spend every moment at my job trying so hard to do my work. Even when I am not actually doing it I am wishing I could make myself do it, and a blog post, for me anyways, takes a while. 

But most likely the real reason I haven't been writing is, well, I've been pretty depressed. About an hour ago I read an article from xojane.com (one of my favorite online magazines) about a woman (Emily) who struggles with depression, and I found myself crying (oh surprise). And if reading an article about depression and crying isn't a sign of depression, I don't know what is. 

I have been pretty open about my depression over the years. All my friends know I have bouts of the sads (as one of my dear west coast friends calls it), but it doesn't make it any easier to find myself in that place. For Emily, it's getting out of bed. For me, it's showering. When I can't make myself take a shower I know things are bad. But if 2.5 years of therapy have taught me anything, it's that there are signs I am sliding before I get to the point where I can't bother to clean my body. I have trouble sleeping. I have trouble getting up. I don't want to cook for myself. I don't want to floss. My room gets messy. My laundry goes undone. All these subtle little acts of self-care slowly falling by the wayside, until one morning I am standing in front of the mirror trying to do something with my greasy hair that hasn't been washed in 4 days. 

As an unmedicated depressed person, I find myself to often be in the minority. Granted, I am not unmedicated because I think medication is wrong or that people don't need it. I just think the level of pain any given person can take is variable, and I haven't reached my threshold yet. I often medicate myself with a good old fashioned it-doesn't-matter-if-you-WANT-to-do-it-take-the-goddam-shower, which works about 50% of the time. The other 50% of them time I elicit help from my best friends. I cry about the same shit I was crying about 6 months ago (people die, I will die, people are lonely, I am lonely etc... heck, I've been crying about that shit since I was cognizant of death and loneliness). And 100% of the time I just work through it. Which is what we all, medicated or not, have to do.

I often find myself thinking about my "urban" lifestyle (as my brother calls it) and wonder if it isn't part of what makes me so sad. I sit at a desk, I move very little during the day, many of my friends live across town, and my Besties lives in DC. Don't get me wrong. I am extraordinarily lucky to have a sunny office with a huge window, a work best friend to rival them all, and my dearest, loveliest Elizabeth a 20 minute walk away, so I get sunshine and some fellowship at least once a day. Maybe I should be content with this, but I am not.

What I'm trying to say is, I don't think the problem is my mind (well, at least not the WHOLE problem). Yes, medication would probably make things easier, and there are times when I consider it. I even got a prescription from my doctor once that I never filled. But I maintain I am not the problem. I am just a person, broken, fallible, trying to live in a world full of broken, fallible people, who, more often than not, can't even see how broken they are (understandably so, as our modern world makes it easy to forget). The majority of white America is comprised of once children raised to think if we can dream it we can be it, when the oftentimes sad truth is brokenness is a basic human reality. 

What I meant in my would-be blog about "making the old new," is that I want to just let myself be broken. I have spent years fighting to fix myself, and I want to let it go. Not to say I am going to let myself spiral down into a stinky, showerless abyss, it's just that I want to learn how to handle my heart with more gentleness. And truth. And awareness. My singular "New Years" resolution is to replace changing, rule making, and bullying, with sight, attention, and habitation.

I think this is how to get out of the sads. 

At least for me.