First time

For the first time in a long time I was attracted to a man that I didn’t compare to you. Not once. Not at all. 

Baby-step progress, bitches.

Dinner etiquette

The intricacies of paying for a meal with a group bill…

At a stagette: do not just cover your own meal and drinks. Split the cost of the bride-to-be’s meal and drinks evenly amongst all the attendees. Be sure to also add tax and tip on top of this total amount.

This way, one person doesn’t end up paying $70 for a meal that should have cost $48 total, because you are cheap and/or don’t understand common courtesy.

Not cool.

Every single time we go back there. Every time.

I don’t know what it is about us.

But for the first time ever, I feel no guilt and no pressure - and you feel it all.

A lesson in love and periods

Just when I think I hate all men with everything I have because of one careless man, my Father enters the room.

My Dad who hugs me and without knowing a thing about my private life says, “Dia, I love you. We have come so far together.”

I choke out, “Yes. We have.” I completely understand. I think about it being just he and I for many years. There were many times that he could have killed me, because I was awful. Just a selfish little know-it-all teenager. But he didn’t. Because he loves me.

Then he says, “I wouldn’t change it for anything. Any of it.” 

Good men exist. They are few and far between. My Dad is a good man.

Also, if you’ve ever wondered what PMS is like, it’s this. These tears.

God damn you.

That’s really all I wanted to say.

December 21st, 2002.

colporteur:

by Brett Elizabeth Jenkins.

It’s said it takes seven years
to grow completely new skin cells.

To think, this year I will grow
into a body you never will

have touched.

- This year.

The Good ‘Ol Boys

Listening to my Father on the phone last night in the other room with one of his “good ‘ol boys” made me smile.

There is something comforting about hearing my Dad - my upright, through-and-through conservative Father - converse with people with whom he used to party and “live it up”. 

I understand this side of him. I can see the similarities of my life now and his life of the past. I hear how he lived through this stage of his life not that much differently than I am right now. He drank, he smoked sometimes, he dabbled with the opposite sex, he did ridiculously stupid things with his friends. And, in all of that, he became the loving, caring, furiously loyal man he is today.

I like to see that these memories, the ones I am making now, and that he made many years ago, can be looked back on with wistfulness of how the “old days” were.

These memories may feel like a lifetime ago for him, but I see them as a piece of his story - one of the pieces that makes everything seem like it will be alright.