Glass houses

So yet again, had given me lemons, and like a true champion of the cause i was thinking tequilla and not lemonade! But alas, not all life's answers can be found in a shot of Cuervo. So it seemed i was going to have to be an adult and actually deal with it (barf). 

I was at the wonderful place that i imagine old men with white beards writing cliche's about, while the modern wimp gets another self-help book. I can almost hear my English teacher bandying around phrases like "stuck between a rock and a hard place" or one or other unfaithful bastard shouting "Bitches be loco" while he shakes his head! Fact is they're both true.

This modern tragedy features the unfaithful bastard, the very well dressed damsel in distress and the friend who shat on her happy ending, well something of the sort.

So in any credible Kingdom the traitors would be banished, or if it was an Islamic state stoned to death, but in little world i live in, it just didn't seem as easy as booting them out as the crowd sang Ce la vie!

The fact is break ups are easy or they're hard but there is something different about ending a friendship. There is something about letting someone be a part of your life in that way that makes it hard to simply make the cut. But simultaneously, one cannot be a dumping ground for people's shitty decisions.

One of the hardest decisions in life is which bridge to burn and which bridge to cross, so what to do?? 

Personally? Pass me the gasoline, lets burn this motherfucker down.

Friends, Flakes and Faders

I'm not really your run-of-the-mill nice, girl next door, kind of person. Ok, to be honest, im not that person at all. Mainly because i don't really see the point in walking around smiling at every Tom ,Dick and Jabulani that has decided that the one drunken conversation you had now means they know you.

This devil-may-care attitude of mine stops right there i'm afraid. Because when it comes to friends I all but give up a liver- just in case you need one some day. I don't know whether thats because im loyal or because im stupid but for whatever reason, i'm that friend.

This weekend i learnt what friendship really means, and its not taking shots at the bar together, or laughing at that badly dressed person you walked past or even being there that one time I cried. Friendship is consistency, it is bending over backwards, it is going out of your way to be there for the other person. Friendship is listening to them tell the same story about the same douchebag over and over until they are over it, essentially, friendship is admin.

And thats what i expect, because that's what i give. But lets face it, thats a bit of a tall order. And thats what i learnt this week while i was somewhere between my fifth tequilla shot and a nervous breakdown, that not all friends fit that exact category and thats ok- As long as you remember who is whom.

So let me break it down for you:

1. They are there to laugh, to drink, to do stupid things, to dance in the rain with you. But thats all they are.

2. They are there to cry, to pray, to tell you you deserve better, to weather the storm. But thats all they are.

3. They are there to laugh, to pray, to do stupid things, to get you to dry ground. They are everything.

And thats it. You can't always have everything in everyone, but when you do, hold on to it and fight for it because for every number three there are a dozen other people pretending to pick you up while secretly hoping you'll fall.

Me and my Blair

So essentially this post is a salute to all my beautiful everything people, to *Speckle and *Lollipop this is also to the life lessons learnt with a shot Cuervo in my hand. This is to growing up, with or without you.

BFF??

Call it what you want- "Friends with benefits", "Fuck buddies", "Colossally shitty idea" either way, you should most probably just take a cold shower and let that go. So yes, there's nothing quite as fun as that no holds barred time of flirting without expectation, fucking without drama and still getting to laugh while you cuddle but alas, like all good things it ends in that akward moment when you see him hooking up with someone else and all of a sudden you're that jealous girl giving stank in the club!!

I mean yes, i could launch into my already rehearsed speech about how you need to put your friendship first but to be honest, that doesn't really convince me either, cause lets face it, we're the exception right? Wrong. With benefit friends, someone always pulls a Charlie Sheen, loses their job, but for some reason still thinks they're #winning. He WILL fall for you, or even more likely, you will for him and end up like every other notch on his bedpost: forgotten.

Then you get friendships like me and *Tequilla, we didn't quite start out as most friends do-insert wink- and even now that we are friends, there is always that undercurrent of sexual electricity so whats the harm right? Again, wrong. Ok, to be honest, i'm not sure. The truth is it's a little less black and white when the weather is grey and all but actually screams "FORNICATE BITCHES!!!!"

The world preaches that sex is just sex but i don't buy that. I think sex is just as much emotion as it is legs in the air-mid shriek-carnal, screwing. But seriously though, there is no such thing as "No strings attached", its just a matter of who will be the sap standing alone with their banjo in the rain- I know, i should watch fewer American movies!

So yes, go for it if that's what you want to do but remember your manners: Guests usually take gifts to a party. In this case i'd suggest a marker... For his bedpost.

Just Friends?

They lied to you. Who? Everyone.

All of the people that said you looked nice in that horrendous skirt you're wearing or told you that wearing a midrift bearing top in 2011 was still in fashion and even worse the people who said you can be friends with your ex.

Gasp!! I can almost hear the chorus of "What the hell do you know" screaming through cyber-space from all the naive little people who are either still in love with their ex's but have been friend zoned so hard they have to pretend that thats what they wanted too, or from the ones who think their ex isn't into them when he all but actually drools and starts scratching his man bits every time you so much as smile a him.

And then there are those who don't fit either of those categories and are sitting there smugly thinking they got it right. Hi, i see you Self-righteous- and you're even more deluded than the rest. Thats really the saddest place to be because its there in emotional Siberia where you are most likely to just have no idea of what the hell is going on. Let me guess, you genuinely see him as a friend but somehow you still kind of miss something more and you relate to Adele a little more than you should? Yep. He's not your friend. 

So what does this all mean? Do you toss him out like that awful skirt and turn that midrift into the wash rag it so desperately needs to be? Maybe. What you don't do though, is run around like you've got it all figured out throwing around the term "just friends" like you have even an inkling of what that means.

The fact is ex-boyfriends suck and break-ups reeeeeeeally suck and no amount of being cordial or civil or friendly is going to change that. Especially if like *Strohrum your ex is really the reason Kanye West released "Toast to the douchebags" (Yeah, he's really not your friend).

My advice, be honest. People really aren't as stupid as we like to think.l If you're not over him, he knows that, so just wait until you are. If he's not over you, don't be a bitch, leave him alone till he is- and no one buys that whole "I really didn't know" bullshit you're selling.

There is no blueprint for getting over someone, just like there is no Guantanamo for people in Corduroy pants or Al Qaeda for shops that sell mini-skirts in sizes above a 36, thats life and love and it really just kind of sucks. 

Emotional concealer

Now i'm not really a make-up person, partly because im so fucking hot (just joking) but mostly because its tedious and fake to spend an hour turning myself into someone i'm not. But at the very thought of a lovebite i am the first person reaching for the concealer because lets face it, love bites are glorified tramp stamps. Hickies are ugly and they don't match the rest of your skin, they are a reminder to you and everyone that sees you that you have deviated from the path.

We all have that part of ourselves which we'd rather pretend didnt exist. That part of us that makes us go back to ex-boyfriends and betray our values and our friends, that part of us that we hide behind lipgloss and aviators, until we get to our rooms and we are faced with the fact that we can be better. That part of us that is kind of like a hickie: ugly and doesn't match the rest of us.

And thats the important part: perspective. It doesn't match the rest of us. We might not be all good but we're not all bad either.

Yet there i was dabbing concealer on both my hickies.. But then it dawned on me that concealer merely hides the bruise, it doesn't take it away. You can fool everyone but when you touch your neck, it'll still be a little tender, a little sore and u'll know that under the concealer there is that little bit of ugly.

So i took it off and i saw myself exactly as i was, not quite pretty but not quite ugly. Not quite lost but a little way from found.

Cuervo

So today is an “out with the old and in with new” kind of day, this is the kind of day that inspired Britney Spears to shave her head bald (that and Kevin Federline), the kind of day that chanelled Angelina Jolie’s inner whore and made her steal Brad Pitt from Jennifer Aniston, yep, its that kind of day.

Out with semi-emo posts about lost love, heartbreak and stupid girls, and in with the frivolous and nonsensical.  What’s todays post about then? Tequilla. My 8 favourite letters after make-up sex. Ok, that’s not eight letters but I had to sneak it in there somehow!

So in the spirit of this “Anything goes” kind of day I broke up with Tequilla. And no, that’s not some pseudo-name for another worthless dipshit , I broke up with Jose Cuervo. Like all good girls, I like bad boys. I like them big, and rough and generally quick- nothing says stupid like actually dating a bad boy.

So you can see why Tequilla was my drink of choice- Its like a leather clad bad boy in a shot, it was love at first sight. Tequilla helped me stagger my way through high school but alas, now it was threatening to help me crawl my way through varsity. #unprofessional.

So like any good girl who’s clearly out of her depth, I ran. By ran, I mean I lay in my bed till three in the afternoon trying to piece my night together! So its over.

Gone are the days of drunken table dancing, falling behind the DJ booth and forgetting who I hooked up with the previous night. Gone are the days of half-spoken, half-slurred conversations and embarrassing drunk dials.

Now you’re probably thinking “Bitch get a diary”, Its just Tequilla? But Tequilla is an important part of my life. Yes, I sound like an alcoholic. Sue me. Or better yet, pass me my Lemon and my Cuervo.

Talk is cheap..

We say: “he broke my heart”, “he’s an asshole”, “how could he do this to me”.. But never once in our rant do we ever think to portion some blame to the pathetic, sad excuse of a person that was running around lapping up every half-baked lie and excuse that was thrown her way. We never think to portion blame for the person that blatantly refused to listen to every person, sign and experience that told her it wasn’t real.

I’m starting to think that maybe there is some inherent part in a girls psyche that breeds stupidity and blind trust, something that seems to outweigh intelligence and his three, five, nine girlfriends something that says its ok to be treated badly as long as he sometimes smiles at you or kisses you or pretends to love you. Its sad really, to look around and see girl after girl do the same thing in some derivative of the same relationship with some derivative of the same dipshit.

And I know I’m starting to sound like that aloof person who knows better and is merely tutting at all the naïve little people screwing around with their emotions but I’m not. Mostly because I’m a girl and maybe a little bit because we all want to believe that people can change, that if we are witty enough and our weave is straight enough and we can find that perfect little black dress to go with our killer smile somehow it will all work out.

But it wont.

So no, I’m not aloof, I don’t know better but I’ve been battered and bruised and I’ve come out even better dressed on the other side, I can only hope that next time *Strohrum comes around with his charm and his smile and his humour ill walk away, and if that’s not enough that ill run to a place where I can finally tut at the naïve little people still listening intently to the big fibs told by little men.

Fake it till you make it

No one wants to be that sniveling, pathetic girl in the movies who throws herself into a relationship only to be thrown out and end up parked on a tattered couch watching re-runs of friends as she shovels down truckloads of ice cream and damns the male species.  But the truth is the real alternative is worse, because in the real world of Statistics re-writes and friends who don’t really have the time or patience to understand, all you’re allowed is one lunch date, facebook inbox or skype conversation after which you’re unceremoniously expelled from the world of the broken hearted and expected to man up and get over it already.

The fact is the real world has no time for sob stories or tedious pity parties so what we do, what we have to do, is just be okay, or at the very least pretend to be, until we are. So we busy ourselves with this or that though all the while silently and quietly shovelling down ice cream and friends re-runs behind our smiles.

So there i was, 3 weeks post-break up and i was still smiling, still grieving, still shoveling metaphoric ice cream when my “real world” mentality kicked in, could I just man up and get over it already??  Because the truth is we’re more like our friends than we realise, we too have neither the time nor the patience to truly understand what we’re going through, so perhaps its not the big, bad world that sets these standards but the naïve little girls we are inside, too young and foolish to cope with the harsh realities of love and of life.

Retail therapy

So often we bandy around the term ‘friend’, maybe its that girl with the pigtails who used you used to play hide and seek with, or that girl in high school who used to pick your  dresses for the club or now that boy you watch movies with and share your life, or whoever it is we link arms and lives and say we’re best friends.

My best friend is the best parts of fire and ice, she is the person who brought me up and shook me up and turned me into the beautifully damaged person I am. Yet we have spent as much time hating each other as loving each other. But in the greater scheme of things, the good, the amazing and the down right insane outweigh the ugly and the mundane.

Even with my beautiful Gucci bag hanging on my shoulder I still went and bought a good knock off. Yes, its cheaper and still looks good to the untrained eye, but at closer inspection you notice that its not as durable, the stitching is untidy and the finish is just not quite the same. That’s the thing with fake labels, if you look quickly you could think that they look the same, they both have the tag but they aren’t.

So you walk around with your knock off until the colour starts to fade and the straps begin to crack and all of a sudden everyone knows it wasn’t real.

Friendship is exactly like that, we walk around calling every thing even a smidge past acquaintance our friend, we take shots and convince ourselves that that equates to substance but it doesn’t.  And then one fight, one slip up, one drunken phonecall later your “friendship” begins to crack and you know for sure that it wasn’t real.

So perhaps its better to put in the time and the effort into these friends, perhaps its better to hate each other till you don’t, perhaps its better to max out your credit card and buy that painfully expensive Gucci bag lest you look down and realise the stitching is coming undone.

So this is for Speckle, my best friend, this is for all the fake Gucci’s pretending to be the real thing and this is to knowing the difference.

Viva le ridiculously expensive labels.

World Peace

“Its funny because all this while i thought you broke my heart but i know now that you didn’t. The truth is, we were always better on a platonic level than anywhere else. Im glad we did everything though because i don’t think we would have grown as close as friends if we hadn’t. And thats the person that i miss, thats the person i want back, my friend. “

Thats what id say to Jaggermeister if i lived in a world where one could be honest about their feelings without being made to look like some wimp who treated a breakup like it was the third world war, thats what id say if every experience and im sure every self-help book didn’t say that when people break up they need to actually Break. Up.

And i think maybe thats the lesson here. Maybe it is about being totally apart so that you can remember who you were separately, that way you can be friends without that secret, niggling little voice kind of hoping you’ll get back together.

So for now i’ll strap on my freakum dress and my skyscraper heels, work the room, give him a smile and a nod and wait for the Saturday night that i can do that without butterflies attacking my stomach. That’s how you know the war is over, when you can let your guard down: when there are no longer canons and tanks in the streets , America has already taken  all of your oil and you can walk past your ex boyfriend and see other people in the room.