When my boyfriend and I split, I went through usual grief: denial, depression, rage. Well, mainly rage. I had all this excess energy bottled up, so I considered my options. I could buy a pint of ice cream and watch every depressing episode of Sex and the City and cry my eyes out, I could go downtown and blow most of my bank account on fabulous shoes, or, I could do something productive like writing my humongous paper. I wound up taking a walk downtown and found a farmers’ market with a huge selection of fall fruit.

I ended up buying 5 pounds of apples.

When I got home, I decided it was time to put all my energy to good use and bake a pie. I turned up loud, energetic music and started up the oven. As a semi-professional cook, making delicious things was always a kind of therapy, and was a way to channel my emotions. I asked one of my male friends if baking a pie was an appropriate response to a breakup, and I was told, “Only if you’re planning on throwing it at his face while it’s still steaming hot.” Aah, right to the point.

So now I present the:

I’m-Too-Good-For-Him-Anyway Apple Pie: Read More »

In high school, I was more or less obsessed with Bright Eyes. I absolutely adored Conor Oberst and all his whiney, scratchy-voiced angsty music, not to mention his sexy eyes & all-around hot emo boy demeanor.

I was also extremely depressed, dropped out of high school (only for a semester!) and spent three hours a week in intensive outpatient therapy.

However, times have changed and I traded in my razor blades for wine glasses and my sorry, pathetic teenage attitude for a much healthier, positive one. I became happy. Baggage-less, I thought. Completely devoid of any negativity from my past.

And then, as all love stories begin, I met someone who I had absolutely everything in common with and with whom I got along flawlessly for the first six months. I thought I was over my years of self-loathing and teenage drama, and if I could hold a healthy, (somewhat) adult relationship, then I was convinced.

Seriously, this relationship was awesome. We were like male and female versions of each other: We were in the same major (yes, boy magazine journalism major!), loved cheap beer and foosball and basically couldn’t keep our hands off of each other….any time, anywhere.

But, eventually my insecurities came to the surface and the relationship became a huge emotional mess, for both of us. I’m talking the whole screaming at each other in public and then pouring beer on each other to even the score kind of mess. There it was again; all that baggage I thought I tossed years ago, staring me right in the face, mocking what I thought was my new life and new super-happy relationship.

I might be an extreme case (in fact, I know I am), but after the failure of this relationship, that was all lovey-dovey, fairy-tale, red roses on the outside, I began to question, quite Carrie Bradshaw-esque-ly, if we can ever really escape our pasts. Read More »

[Seriously though, if your mom is in this picture…We want to high five her]

It’s comforting to know, judging by the results of a recent CC poll, that I’m not the only girl on Earth who had a horrible time at her high school prom. Actually, until I came across the poll, I had kind of forgotten about just how horrible it was. Now I remember every gritty detail again, though, so I’m going to share what happened in an attempt at therapy.

I was a late bloomer, and I didn’t have my first boyfriend until sophomore year of high school. Let’s call him Eric. Eric was a freshman when I was a sophomore, but we were in the same German class. After several weeks of elaborate and awkward courtship, Eric finally asked me to see a movie with him, and our relationship began. Neither one of us was the flaky type, so it lasted a pretty long time—almost two full years, until I was a senior. Until, to be precise, just a couple of months before my senior prom.

As you might imagine, I was crushed when he dumped me (over instant messenger—on the night before finals!). I’m ashamed to say that I walked around for weeks being weepy and really dramatic, but my friends were a great help, especially my best friend. Or so I thought, at first. Read More »

I got fired. It came out of nowhere, like a ton of bricks on my head. I was called in for a meeting with my supervisor and the head of the company on a Thursday morning, and everyone (myself included) actually thought I was getting promoted! I had been doing so well, and my supervisor had just told me the day before how well I was handling the work.

And then? Bam. Fired. Jobless. Let go only 2 months into my very first full-time salary-and-benefits job out of college.

What I didn’t realize about being fired is that it feels exactly like a breakup.

I went home and curled up under my duvet in the middle of the afternoon, and all I could do is replay the breakup in my head. Instead of “I think we should see other people” it was “We are going to have to terminate you, effective immediately”. I could picture my boss’s face in my head, and it brought me to tears each time. Just like a breakup, I couldn’t eat or sleep or think about anything else. In vain I tried to distract myself by downloading and watching episodes of Gossip Girl.

A few days later, when I finally dragged myself out of bed, I came to realize that I probably wouldn’t see most of my ex-coworkers again, kind of like how you never get to see your ex-boyfriend’s cool friends after the breakup. Too awkward. But I loved my co-workers! I can’t believe I don’t get to hang out with any more! And of course I wouldn’t be able to hang out in the neighborhood where my old office was, for fear of running into my ex-boss, or just being overwhelmed with negative memories. This thought affected me so much I almost broke down in tears again just thinking about how I wouldn’t be able to go to the local DELI again. The deli! I was clearly losing it. Read More »

It seems like everyone’s parents are divorced, and every time someone finds out that my parents are still married after 26 years, they act like my family is weird.

Masses of my friends who come from a ’split’ family love to assume that my family is NOT split simply because my parents are still married. Boyfriends assume that because I have parents that are still married that I too must want to get married.

Well, not only do I not want to get married, but I wouldn’t be surprised if watching my parents all of these years has played a role in that choice.

Sure, they’ve been together for a long time. They’ve stuck it out through thick and thin: cheating, emotional abuse, money problems…you name it. But they don’t make me want to get married.

They’re apocalyptically wrong for each other, first of all, and they’ve stuck this thing out because they believe that staying married is a religious duty. EVEN THOUGH they were both married and divorced before meeting each other. Read More »

I was always jealous of girls who had a good and healthy relationship with their mother. My envy was something that none of my friends could ever understand.

When they were around my mom, she was the coolest mom anyone knew. She made the most mouth-watering desserts. She was HILARIOUS and even outlandish in many scenarios. She was over-hospitable and generous in every way. She’d take me out with my friends and pay for their movie, their dinner, their shopping sprees…She was the mom that all of my friends wanted, or so they thought.

The unfortunate thing is that my mom probably should have been going to therapy her entire life — but she never did. The result has been pretty destructive to our relationship, and her relationship to everyone else as well. Read More »

When I was 15, I got my first boyfriend. We fell in love, had sex for about three months, and then broke up.

I was devastated. Like many young women, I had internalized the idea that a “good girl” only ever sleeps with one guy. In a society where sex before marriage is no longer taboo, sex in a relationship that doesn’t last forever is still frowned upon.

Perhaps the breakup wouldn’t have been as hard to bear if I had been able to better differentiate between sex and love. It took me many years — and many partners — to learn that sex doesn’t have to equal love in order to be good.

Unfortunately, I did learn that sex needs to be free of emotional baggage in order to be good. On the rebound from my first relationship, I f#cked my way through my grief. Nothing ever satisfied, and each breakup left me feeling even emptier.

I eventually screwed myself, figuratively at least. I got into an emotionally abusive relationship that ended with some tough lessons a year and a half later. Basically, after 18 months of possessiveness and jealous accusations, I slapped my boyfriend, and he promptly turned me in for domestic violence. A moment’s bad decision cost me $650 in fines and restitution, and nine months of therapy. Read More »