It's Not You, It's My Chemical Imbalance (part 2 of a series)

Apologies for the 2-day delay. You know how things get after a[n] (8-month-long) holiday weekend/employment "sabbatical", as I've been calling it to assuage the internal pain and shame.

Any-hoo, happy Thanksgiving. As thankful as I am for you, my ardent fans, I would be even more thankful if you guys would evangelize the shit out of Insert Clever Pun Here; but not because I asked you to - because you want to (and I know you do).

Previously, on Insert Clever Pun Here... When the crazy bug bites, pull out the laminated print-out of this multi-part post that you always keep handy and consult and send me a signed blank check for graciously bestowing my considerable knowledge upon all you damsels in dementia out there:

P.S. I am offering a $1gazillion reward to anyone who can teach me to follow my own advice.

I have chosen this song for the opening credits:

-What to Expect When You're Expecting. Harboring expectations is a surefire way to incite the crazy mob to start rioting in your brain.  For instance, I hate shaving my legs.  It is time consuming, it gives me dry skin, and I have to change my blade more frequently (and that shit gets expensive).  This gripe applies only to my legs and NO OTHER body parts.  Anyway, I think that the amount of mental frustration I've overcome in order to drag a dulling Venus blade across BOTH of my legs while the hot water runs out because of the extra time I have to spend in the damn shower should be rewarded with appropriate praise from the person who benefits from my silky smooth-ness: "Oh wow, thank YOU so MUCH for shaving your legs tonight, they feel great! You're. The. Best. EVER!"  Obviously this is not an appropriate thought to entertain, and I know this, but I have it, nevertheless, every single time I go compliment-less after I shave my legs, and I am left feeling empty and frustrated.  This is a psychological theory called Cognitive dissonance, and basically it explains the mental discomfort that we feel when our expectations conflict with our experiences.
So, take your stupid expectations and throw them away, in the putrid grease disposal bin in your alley where they belong, and console yourself with the new, comforting fact that it doesn't matter that you've been dating for 11 years and he still hasn't introduced you to any of his friends or family, and that you've never been out anywhere together in public, because you are one of those super-cool girls who just goes with the flow.  This go-with-the-flow-iness will save you from ever crazily demanding why you have to leave his apartment at 5am on Sunday mornings (because you don't EXPECT to be allowed to stay later than that, anyway).

-Shut the FUCK up! When your feeble attempt at not expecting jack shit inevitably fails, you will want to Talk About It, and how it made you feel (brazenly desperate and depressed), and why the fuck he doesn’t feel like that, too, and why doesn’t he even WANT to feel like that, anyway, because all you want is for him to want you to be happy, right? RIGHT? Before you launch into a screeching diatribe, be it in person, over the telephone, or, in most cases, with a relentless and unending parade of text messages brightly hued in a gorgeous rainbow of expressions (unbridled rage, self-pitying apologies, pathetic guilt-tripping tactics, rhetorical ultimatums, and faux-self-assured sayonaras), remind yourself that guys don’t like Talking About It, because they don’t have feelings.  It’s not called “bitching” arbitrarily, so get out that industrial-strength needle and thread to sew your yap shut and throw your cell phone and computer down a well, because Silence is Golden.

-Mum’s not ALWAYS the word... If you keep your insipid weaker-sex anathemas to yourself all the time, you WILL spontaneously combust, spewing an avalanche of vile verbal excrement all over the poor shmuck who left the toilet seat up FOR THE LAST FUCKING TIME, buddy.  And you will subsequently be exiled to Elba, the island where all neurotic, conflict-crazed bedlamites go for their time-outs.  Pick your battles, and pick them wisely, because you can’t blame anyone else for driving yourself insane.

To be continued ... Visit me next week for more tips from the embodiment of a Cautionary Tale.

I have chosen this song for the closing credits:

It's Not You, It's My Chemical Imbalance (Part 1 of a series)

Readers, friends, readers who are friends, I would like to sincerely apologize for the lengthy delay.  I had slightly less to complain about than usual, having taken a brief foray into "normalcy", maybe even “happiness” (getting laid on the reg by the same person and generally having more spring in my step), and normal, happy people lack the wherewithall to pound out bitter tirades against the unfairness of life and publish them to the Internets (which is probably why, according to a 2006 study conducted at my alma mater Indiana University, “Diary writing has traditionally been associated with females, and politics and external events, the mainstays of filter blogs, have traditionally been masculine topics. Furthermore, previous research shows that females write more diary blogs, and males write a disproportionate number of filter blogs”).

Why do guys insist on holding us to higher standards of sanity when we spend a nearly quarter of our lives BLEEDING OUT OF OUR VAGINAS?  Please, please, PLEASE don’t misinterpret this as any sort of pro-feminist sentiment; most of the time I like being a girl, but we don’t get to pee standing up, or become President, and a pubic 5 o’clock shadow doesn’t have anywhere close to the sexy-scruffy allure that the one on your chin has.  If boys spent ½ the amount of time we did holding in all outbound colonic movement, they’d go fucking insane, too.

That said, I know that the entire male species isn’t just going to shout “Eureka! This girl is SO right and pretty and smart!” and start making decisions with anyone in mind but themselves (which is just one of those frustrating turn-ons that gets me all hot and bothered, anyway), and actually become COMPASSIONATE and SENSITIVE (which would also make them a bunch of sissypants ‘nice guys’ - and nice guys finish dead last), and throw us a goddamn bone for once, and stop seductively inducing the maniacal antics out of us whenever they possibly can (thereby absolving themselves of any culpability for what went wrong). It would be nice, though. A utopian paradise where men are kind and it is an accepted truth that bitches be cray cray.

Because it is an empirical fact that all girls are crazy. Even you. And you. And you, over there, shaking your head judgmentally and thinking smugly that you're sooo above drama. You're not.  However, many of you are at least less masochistic enough to extricate yourselves from an histrionic-episode-inducing situation before you lob a cinder block through dude's windshield ("It was sitting right next to your parking space, begging me to throw it, and you're the one who had some skank answer your phone and tell me you were too busy with 'Jessica' to answer my call.").

Anyhow, enough sharing.  Besides, that was YEARS ago; I've come a long way since then and restraining orders don't last forever.  When the crazy bug bites, pull out the laminated print-out of this  multi-part post that you always keep handy and consult and send me a signed blank check for graciously bestowing my considerable knowledge upon all you damsels in dementia out there:

P.S. I am offering a $1gazillion reward to anyone who can teach me to follow my own advice.

Aaand scene! Come back on Monday or I will call/text/e-mail you inexorably AND break into your apartment.