the difference between alone and lonely

This is the point in my life where for the first time in several years I am truly alone. I no longer have a longterm live-in boyfriend, I have no roommates, and I'm in a city where I have no safety net friends. While I have made the occasional bar-hopping friends from work that I might know me on a superficial level as the sassy, quick-witted New Yorker, what I truly long for are my Buffalonians. These are the people I've known since high school. The people who I don't feel the need to entertain. But most importantly these are the people that I know I could call at 3am just after the scene of some vicious crime and with no questions asked help me drag the body across the floor. I have yet to find anything close to that in Chicago and I suppose it does take time, but my heart hurts just thinking that it might never come.

What this time has shown me is the huge difference between simply being alone and what it feels like to be truly lonely. There are times when I do savor being alone, like after a particularly hectic day at work or when I want to dance around my living room with my music as loud as possible. But most of the time I'm reminded that there will be no standard phone calls at 7pm on a Friday night from the people that you know you have plans with regardless of ever actually having made them. I'm no longer a member of a standard group and with that I've somehow lost who I am as an individual. Although that sounds almost contradictory, it's the people we associate ourselves with that genuinely makes us who we are. It is through these relationships that we emerge as the listener, the comedian, the romantic...

So when will I be able to move from being lonely to content in just being alone?

the bar

For almost as long as I can remember a central presence in my life has been housed in one bar or another. I’ve been a regular bar frequenter since I was eight years old. I can still remember getting off the school bus in my catholic school girls’ uniform and rather than playing with friends outside or watching TV, I would clutch the almost too heavy door and slip into my step-father’s dark and smoke-filled bar in South Buffalo. Immediately, I would be transported from the mid-afternoon’s sunlight and sucked into near darkness and coolness that’s only really comparable to that of a cave. As my eyes adjusted to the change in light I would begin to make out the shadowy figures slumped over the bar.

At this point in the day there would only be a handful. They each had varying stories… one was a textbook alcoholic, one was hiding out from his family after his recent job loss, one was living in a nearby halfway house spending what little money he had on the cheapest draft beer, one was my step-father’s old high school buddy dried up from his excessive drug use during the 70’s, and then there was me.

My older sister didn’t share in the adventure and secret world that the bar held for me. She somehow knew it was inappropriate for an eight and ten year old to be there. But for me, I couldn’t have been more thrilled to spend the afternoon at the bar. The fact that there was the faint scent of urine, the occasional passed out drunk, and ash trays over flowing with cigarette butts made it all that more appealing to me. No one paid me much notice and that’s the way I liked it. I wanted to pretend as if I too were a regular… as if I belonged to a private club of social outcasts with tragic life stories that the best American novels are based on.

As I sipped my Cokes at the bar, dangling my feet above the floor, I would mimic their slumped posture and reflect on my own life tragedies thus far… the way the kids in my class would remind me everyday that my name rhymes with “Barfa,” the embarrassment of being held back a year in kindergarten when I moved from Texas to NY, and having an older sister far more beautiful than I would ever be. With these social outcasts, I was at home.

Eventually my step-father was busted for selling cocaine out the basement of the bar and not even his brother, a city Sheriff, could save him. He lost the bar and it was replaced with new ownership that stole from it everything I loved. My fellow pariahs were replaced with happy hour specials and girls in tight clothes. There was now a dance floor and neon lights where the jukebox once stood.

And worst of all, Houlihan’s was now known as Finn McCool’s.

one valentine with a side of mayo please

Brace yourself, you're about to encounter pure poetic genius:

The Other White Topping
Author: M.C. Awesome

I hope this present finds you surprised and a bit confused

So let me clear this up and explain how this gift is used

You can spread it on a sandwich, a BLT or some bread

Just apply to the bun with a knife… then spread

Miracle Whip and Hellmann’s are the brands atop the chart

If you ever see me shopping, you’ll find both in my cart

Reach for the Whip if looking for a lighter, smoother feel

Or ball up and grab the Hellmann’s for a pastier, manly meal

I hope these tips help as you indulge in this treat

And I hope you add extra on the next burger you eat

So on this VDay while at home, playing with your games

Think of me - spoon in hand - while enjoying your mayonnaise

the song slaughterer

We all know this guy... you're rocking out, enjoying a kick ass song when the person you're with insists on rocking it just a little too hard. [Insert air guitar/drums here.]

You can no longer hear the words of the song and instead are bombarded with the crackling, toned-deaf vocal accompaniment of your musically-challenged companion.

The song is forever ruined.

Buddy, do us all a favor and tone it down.

my medicine

There are a few very select people that I can remember the precise moment I met them as if it happened yesterday. I can instantaneously go back to that moment and relive it just as realistically as if it were the first time.

Meagan is one of these few people and I’m infinitely grateful for the day she plopped down next to me on a bus. Disheveled and out of breath, she had an enormous sense of relief spread across her face as she found the only available seat, which happened to be next to me. Rather than the awkward shift away from one another and avoidance of eye contact, she immediately dove into conversation about her latest boy troubles and I felt inclined to verbal vomit into my own. Little did I realize she would change my life completely from that moment on.

The day I knew that in Meagan resided the most genuine friendship of my life was also on a day when I wasn’t quite sure I had it in me to face another day. At 17 the most shattering moment of my inexperienced life was the day I was dumped in pursuit by my then boyfriend to “experience other people.” Nothing could have been more crushing and my bed was the only place I could find solace. I was determined to never leave the comfort of my twin bed I had slept in since I was 3 years old and I wasn’t about to change my mind even if it meant living out my remaining days on my floral sheets in complete isolation.

It was that day when Meagan appeared in my room, dead-set on not taking no for an answer. Before I could even go down my poorly formed list of excuses, she forced me out of bed and into clothes. Before I knew it, we were in my step-father’s Jeep Cherokee littered with miscellaneous trash and probably even a few bottles of liquor. Although it was early spring and the weather was still closer to winter than summer, we began an aimless drive. Annoyed and wishing I was still in bed, we set course for no where with the windows down and the heat full force. I hopped on the I-90 toward downtown in the middle of the afternoon and she excitedly popped in a mixed tape made just for the occasion. I fought the urge to car-dance for a song or two but we both knew that given the right combination of 90’s music, I would eventually cave and dance my upper-body as if my torso and arms had never moved before. That day I realized that a boy was no reason to feel destroyed… that life would in fact go on, and there’s no better remedy than a best friend and the greatest hits of the 90’s to cure anything life can throw at you.

To this day that combination has been my medicine to just about everything.