The Wrong Path.

You know when you’re traveling through life, taking certain paths, lefts and rights, and you notice that things look a little familiar?

Like, maybe you’ve been on this road before?

But instead of the road being one fraught with happy memory and a welcome embrace, it’s littered with heartbreak and tragic reminders of the wrong turn you made and the suffering you made whilst pushing through?

It seems that I have returned to that very same path. It’s dodgy, cobwebbed, and dark, and while I’m disappointed I’ve once again become reunited with a road I thought I would never return to, I’m also grateful for the opportunity to change my ways, once and for all.

Now that I know that this is a path I’ve not only been down before, but survived, I feel better equipped at getting through it. And hopefully my time spent here won’t be as emotionally exhausting as the first time walking these same sad steps.

The story begins with my somewhat bad tendency to get Tinder whenever I travel through different cities. There’s no way I would ever download it where I live (for fear of swiping to find the local bag boy I see at Safeway, or stumbling across one of my regulars at the coffee shop), but other cities? Yes please.

See, back when I first started using the app, it was out of pure and harmless curiosity. What’s the local flavor like of Southern California, San Francisco, London, the East Bay?

I very quickly discovered that it was essentially a hookup app, very sexual. At the time, I wasn’t interested in one-night stands and sexting, but as the years wear on for a woman like me, those feelings start to develop more intensely, naturally.

So, during one of my last expeditions out of town, I decided to create a profile, at last interested in the possibility of dipping my toes into that kind of “relationship,” so to speak.

I’m young, I have desires… so why not?

It didn’t take long for me to match with some guys, and it was even sooner that I started developing a sort of textual relationship with one in particular, purely sexual.

Having been somewhat dusty in that department, it felt like my abandoned attic of a sex life was lit with a match and flooded with light and vibrant color.

As time wore on in my vacation, the more excited I became at actually getting to hook up with this guy, with the bad boy earring, 6ft4” frame, big lips, and foreign accent. I was ready, all loaded and in my “freakum” dress, as my friends so subtly put it.

My match and I had been talking about getting together pretty intensely for awhile, so on the last day, when the time came for him to bust a move, he ended up avoiding me, making up excuses as to why he wasn’t free. I was shocked, naturally, but also hurt, confused, and feeling some pretty intense rejection.

I’ve been denied before, mostly for not putting out, and ironically, it seems that when I want to put out (so against that phrase), I still end up getting rejected.

I couldn’t understand why a guy I had been texting pretty hot and heavy with wouldn’t want to actually experience all the things we had talked about, with me, in person. What’s better: a tangible person to have fun with, or pictures, texts, and videos?

Who knows, but I guess this particular guy preferred the latter (and of course didn’t have the decency to be honest and tell me that from the get go). And who knows, maybe he had a girlfriend, or was too nervous to follow through and walk the walk. It’s definitely likely he was talking to other girls, but the real reason? I’ll never know.

What I do know was that I was hurt, and what happened next was an embarrassing move on my part, done out of weakness and desire.

Instead of staying rightfully mad at him and deleting him from my life with a good ole fashioned Lily Allen “F*** You”, I reached back out, and we talked half a dozen more times, about SEX.

It’s like I was addicted. I couldn’t stop my fingers from typing up how hot I was feeling, I couldn’t stop my body from sliding under the covers in intense desire, and I couldn’t refrain from staying up well past my beauty sleep awaiting his racy response.

Even though I was essentially spurned, I still wanted to be in contact with him. It was like he was my drug, and I wanted that damn high. Despite all the warning signs I got from him, despite him CHOOSING NOT TO MEET ME IN PERSON AND EXPERIENCE ALL THAT WE HAD TALKED ABOUT, and in light of all the tears he caused to flood their way out of me, I still chose to sext him back because he was making me feel things I hadn’t felt in such a long time.

Which brings me back to this pathetic path. This path that I have historically taken when I ignore telltale signs that someone isn’t right for me. The path of torture where I suffer through the brambles and the pain hoping and believing that there’s something beautiful at the end, which of course, there never is.

Well well well if it isn’t the consequences of my actions.

I guess I deserved this. As a result of focusing so hard on what I wanted, I lost sight of what I deserved, and this guy was, and is, not what I deserve.

As I begin the difficult task of sifting through my emotions, I’m starting to unearth and survey what it is about this situation that warranted such a reaction from me, and how it’s having an impact on my life and my health.

It’s not that I feel guilt from the patriarch that it’s shameful for a woman to be human and have the same sexual desires like men have (though that’s very real in our society).

I don’t feel embarrassment that I engaged in racy sexting with a stranger because at the time, I felt confident and beautiful and it’s something I wanted to do, for me.

And it’s not that I’m regretful that I let him into my life, because he brought me back to a place where I could better understand myself and what I deserve.

If anything, I feel I let myself down because I’ve been down this road before and I obviously didn’t learn the first time around.

See, I often find myself stuck with who I am, who I want to be, and who I should be.

This particular relationship was out of the sheer desire to do something I wanted to do, to dabble in the horrifically titled “slut phase” (can we call it just exploring your sexuality?) and I think I’ve learned that sometimes what I believe I want doesn’t always align with who I am.

Despite me feeling like I could be ready for hooking up, I won’t ever be ready, because that’s just not who I am nor who I want to be, and deep down, I think I’ve always known that, and that’s why it felt so wrong to continue talking with him. I also found that just because something feels good doesn’t mean it’s good for you.

I also need to accept rejection simply for what it is. To him, I was just photos and text, and other than that, he knew nothing about me so I shouldn’t take it so personally. And instead of hanging on to his attention like a dehydrated flower, I need to learn how to water my own damn roots.

I’m slowly learning to trust the signs, to listen to that voice in my head and to assess the feelings I get instinctually when something or someone doesn’t feel right and aligned with who I am.

I’ll sext again, don’t get me wrong (I find myself to be very good at it… I am a writer, after all), I just won’t do it if there’s no future with the recipient, because while sexting finishes well, (pun intended), it’s temporary, and I want something that will last far longer and be a part of a relationship that’s bigger than a one night stand.

So for now, my light in my abandoned attic of a sex life will stay on, but I will be its sole caretaker.

Ayyyyy a little self-love goes a long way.

And that path I found myself back on? I’ve finally decided to step off of it and venture into the new and unknown, knowing that if I ever do find myself back there again, it’s because I let it happen.

My life is in my own hands and as my friend Whitney said it best, “Don’t make a season out of a situation.”

I have to remember that sometimes, while things break my heart, they fix my vision; and ultimately, put me on the right path again.

Shell-ebrate Good Times.

There’s this packet of tissues I carry that have been through the ringer.

Pink in color, with a cat in a crown (of course), these are the tissues I use whenever I have a public breakdown.

There haven’t been many of them, but they’ve been memorable, haunting enough for me to associate these tissues with my severe depressive episodes.

The first was in Los Angeles, when I was dropped off at LAX after staying the weekend with a boy.

I remember distinctly getting inside the airport doors and my tears letting loose like a broken dam, emotionally overwhelmed and unable to hide my ugly crying face.

The second, more recent time I used this handy dandy packet of tissues was just a few days ago, on my last afternoon on the island of Kauai.

My two best friends from college, on our bi-annual get together, all met on the beautiful beaches of Hawaii and on my last day, I had a meltdown.

I was triggered, by a boy, and unable to control the emotions that were clogging every oraface of my body, I let loose in the backseat of the Jeep, tears flowing out like the Kaulia Waterfall. Even more embarrassed that I was, in my head, ruining our last precious hours together, the situation worsened, after my arm became numb and I began hyperventilating.

Eventually, after blowing through my tissues until there was nothing left but soggy remains, I bravely texted them I needed to stop the car, and in the middle of a parking lot in Kauai, roosters crowing around us, we had a heart to heart.

A completely unexpected conversation, but one of the highlights of my trip.

See, there was a reason I broke down when I did, and who I did with. And it reminded me of the power of friendship, especially with the girls I was traveling with.

Being able to express myself, even when that expression is sometimes as ugly as I’m sure I looked, in front of these special humans, is what true friendship is.

It’s acceptance of each others flaws, it’s comfort in knowing that you have a shoulder to cry on, and a friend to wipe rainy mascara off your cheeks. It’s beauty in believing that your friends will be there for you through thick and thin, and this was thin for me.

When I look back on all of the fabulous fun filled days I had in Hawaii, my favorite moments were the in betweens. It was the driving to the destinations, the top-off-the-Jeep, sun coursing through, wind in our hair, singing Moana at the top of our lungs kind of moments. It was my friend mispronouncing “luau” as “luHOW”, it was watching the two of them skipping in the rain singing “Be a Star” from the movie Life-size.

And it was them coming to my aid when I needed friends the most.

Though I still suffer through post-vacation depression (like bursting into tears whenever sand falls out of my clothes), I write this and feel fondness for the trip I just had, rejuvenated and freshly tan. And I know that these memories have only just begun and that as the years go on, I’ll have more to make with these two.

And we’ll continue to shell-ebrate good times, and get through the bad times.

Together.

Cause that’s what real friends do…

Many thanks to Whitney Sutherland, the photography queen, for all her gorgeous photos.