I’ve been binge watching Planet Earth. So far I’ve seen a wolf kill an ox, a shark kill a seal, a seal kill a penguin and global warming kill a polar bear. With the exception of the polar bear all the other animals were picked off from their herd, which got me thinking about our herds.
As much as we try to separate ourselves from animals, we have a lot in common. Being part of a group is one of them. We may no longer need a tribe to hunt, or protect ourselves from wild animals, but having a tribe makes an uncertain world seem less scary. It’s also a seal of approval on who we are and how we live our lives.
Remember High School?
Even though we don’t depend on the squad for survival in the same way musk ox might, our herd is important to us. Penguins work as a team to survive harsh weather. Lions hunt in prides to take down bigger prey. We lean on our inner circle for support, advice and companionship. But where animals are unified by species and survival, our groups are selected from who’s closest.
Though our main social groups are comprised of whomever we interact with most frequently, there are people that we pick out and maintain friendships with over distance and time. We like to think it’s because there’s something special about them. The reality is a tad more narcissistic. Studies show that friends who support our sense of identity are more likely to be kept around. If you see yourself as a high school prom queen, chances are you’ve surrounded yourself with people who see you the same way.
Our herd reflects who we are, or at least the version of you that you identify most with. If you’ve changed and evolved as a person, it stands to reason that your herd has too. One way or another.
It’s because your herd matters. The right friends can help you to grow as a person and achieve your potential. Similarly, hanging out with the wrong crowd can limiting. The need for approval and fear of being cast out is powerful. You can get stuck in old patterns and trapped in a version of yourself that isn’t true to who you are. If you’ve ever tried to break up with a friend, you’ll know it can be just as hard as a romantic break up.
If you’re in the right herd you all grow and evolve together. If not then it can be bittersweet. It’s all part of being human. It beats being taken out by a shark, I suppose.
Curious about cupping? Let this idiot be your guide.
I‘ve long been outspoken on periods and how they are viewed and treated within society. I’m baffled by the fact we have to pay for sanitary products when it’s part of our biology. To add insult to injury these products are then taxed as a luxury. If this was happening to men, there’d be a riot. To top it off, sanitary products contribute to the burgeoning quantity of waste loading the world’s landfills. This is why I chose to go the way of the cup.
Here’s a bit of information you might find helpful if you’re planning on giving it a go.
All shapes and colours
Surprisingly, there are many different kinds of cup, in different colours and different shapes. The most well known brands are the Diva Cup or if you’re UK based, like I am, Mooncup. I use a Lunette because it was an affordable price, suited my flow and has a long stem which makes it easier for me to position and remove. It’s worth doing some investigating before you make a purchase. I speak from experience. Most companies will offer you a 60 day money back guarantee. So if the cup you choose is not for you, try again with another.
Pink seemed a good colour
It ain’t big at all
Find your fold
To insert your in order to do this you need to fold your cup. I recommend watching a few Youtube videos before going in there. The U fold pictured below is the most common. I prefer to use a narrower fold. Pick the fold that’s comfortable and suits your shape. You may also want to wet the rim or use some lube to make insertion easier. I’m going to be honest. You’re about to get real up close and personal with your vagina. The kind of intimacy you may have only known after a bottle of wine and a fancy meal. It’s an educational experience.
Classic U
My fave
Narrower Fold
Positioning
This is the tricky bit that makes you feel a bit like an amateur gynaecologist. Don’t give up! It can be frustrating, but if you’ve endured someone else fumbling down there, you owe it to yourself to persevere.
Courtesy of LENAcup
The cup should be fully open and positioned beneath the cervix. If it doesn’t open it can move and will leak. The advice is to rotate it, but this is easier said than done. What I found was easier was to run my finger around the outside of the cup a few times, do a few squats and check again. Give the stem a pull when you think it’s opened. If it’s offering some resistance it means it’s open and the suction is working. If it doesn’t, try again.
Comfort
A good way of checking that it’s correctly positioned is comfort: like a tampon, you shouldn’t feel it. So if the stem is digging into you or you feel uncomfortable, remove it and try again. I found practicing when I wasn’t on helped me feel more confident.
Cleaning
Wash your hands before inserting. Pour the contents down the toilet. If you’re at home rinse your cup out in the sink with warm soapy water. You can buy special wipes if you plan to remove it when you’re on the go. Once it’s clean you can reinsert it. At the end of your cycle, sterilise the cup with boiling water. I don’t bother with all the wipes and washes, but they’re available if you prefer them. I like to use my little Meeno pot rather than crossing boundaries and sterilising my cup in the communal saucepan. But that’s just me.
I’m still getting used to mine and researching. If you’ve got questions or advice feel free to comment!
Every now and then a guy I’d completely forgotten about will resurface on my WhatsApp or chat.
You know the type. The ones who send a mandatory maintenance text that outwardly says ‘sup’, but really means ‘I haven’t forgot you, we could still hook up. These never ending situationships that went nowhere have started boomeranging back in the form of monosyllabic text reminders of the fuck ton of bad choices I once made which now baffle me.
I appear to have dated an array of sexual opportunists and emotional parasites who have hoped the relationship door will be left ajar on the off chance they get locked out of a opportunity with a girl they actually like. Luckily, I can now identify a waste of time in under 10 characters. A tragic but necessary life skill. Like being able to find your way home drunk.
It took me years to realise I had to stop responding. Screw being polite. I wasn’t bitter, or in my feelings, I just didn’t want to massage the ego of some guy who was clearly getting some relationship karma coming back his way.
These men had gotten all the time out of me that they were going to. If I was going to spend anymore of my time frivolously, I’d rather waste 20 pokeballs trying to catch an angry Seadra than maintain intermittent contact with someone who lacks both common courtesy and the ability to send a witty text.
Despite this move in the right direction, I did not live happily ever after.
Much like the elusive bus that only appears when you light a cigarette, the minute you stop bothering with some guys they rematerialise with added emojis.
Really? You were thinking of me? If you want to get all nostalgic, try having a wank over your mum’s Mary Kay catalogue or watch The Goonies. Don’t assume some type of emotional vigil is being held for you by an old flame. You’re getting in touch with a practical stranger who (if they’re me) will ask you to lose their number.
I refuse to assist any more guys in any delusion that I may be the one that got away, or that I’d spent years at a window, Jane Eyre style, before wandering the moors to find them. I am not that girl. The only time I patiently wait by the window is when I have an ASOS delivery coming.
Why am I ranting about this? The Colombian. A fuckboi who didn’t want to date me then ghosted me before disappearing completely. Until one afternoon when I got that ‘Hey’. Here’s some free advice: if you plan to resurrect a relationship via text, get a thesaurus. Only Jesus can get away with a casual ‘Hey’ and that was after just three days. I hadn’t heard from this guy in 2 years.
What followed was more monosyllabic inane small talk and thinly veiled enquiries about my relationship status which culminated in him asking me to fly out to see him in Colombia. The only response I could think of that fit was LOL. He did not take this well.He ranted on about how I obviously didn’t care and to forget he’d said anything.
Guess what? I didn’t care. He had texted me while I was happily eating Jaffa cakes in a dick free zone. His irritating wounded act ruined a perfectly lovely afternoon.
A month later I got another ‘Hey’ and a life update. Now he’d moved to Mexico and wanted to know whether there was a chance I’d be moving there, or was I still mad at him (because clearly it was my irrational female anger stopping me from uprooting my life to Mexico for a guy who was a dick). I’ve never found block and delete quicker in my life.
To the horrified male friends who have messaged to ask what the ‘poor guy’ had done wrong, allow me to clarify my position: I’ve got nothing against exes getting in touch. Just don’t do it if you were a douche who is now feeling sorry for himself. Definitely don’t interrupt a woman during biscuit time.
The future looks more like the past than the past did.
When I was a kid, I thought that in 2005 I would have those self lacing hi-tops from Back to the Future and be living in a Jetsons style apartment in space.
The future
The technological advancements have been amazing. Even if I do seem remarkably underwhelmed a lot of the time.
Why can’t I Whatsapp underground? Why won’t my internet work faster if I click a thousand times every 5 seconds?
I suppose there’s a disappointed child in me that wanted the future where pizza rehydrators existed.
Despite technological advancement and surface improvements, we continue to live on shaky foundations. As an animal we’re a real show off. Look at how clever we are, we can fit a camera on a phone. But we’ll continue to perpetrate ideas of race superiority, act violently and bomb the brains out of each other, because we’re retro like that.
Maybe that’s why Lavish Reynolds chose to stream the moments following her boyfriend’s shooting. Use our technological advancements to showcase our failures as a society. We’ve failed to progress if even one person is being treated this way, let alone thousands. It’s even worse that others make excuses for it, or try to downplay serious social injustice.
Killing people is wrong. Acting out of hate and prejudice is wrong. Controlling people through fear is wrong.
It’s like that film California Man. Yes, they dressed him up so he could fit into Encino life, but he was a caveman and continued to behave that way. That’s how humanity has started looking to me; like a PG Tips advert where the chimps have gone feral.
Let’s have a cuppa. We’re not animals.
We’ve all got a brain. We can all think. Reflect. Take responsibility for our own lives. Our own actions. Yet so many people would much rather make excuses for their behaviour. He scared me. She was provoking me. So and so says we should be wary of those people. Why don’t we just think for ourselves? Why do so many people think they are exempt from basic human decency? Why do so many people buy into the crap spouted by hateful people, blindly assuming they have our best interests at heart?
Why abdicate your own reason in favour of someone else’s?
Erich Fromm called it TheFear of Freedom. It was too much to be responsible for our own decisions and use our free will responsibly. What if we made a mistake? The majority would rather be told what to do. How to think. Where to shop. Who to blame. Then it wasn’t their fault. It was what they had been taught/told/shown.
But the ‘He told me to do it’ defence doesn’t hold up.
We advanced too fast and weren’t mentally prepared for it. But a handful of opportunists were. Peter Parker got the “With great power comes great responsibility’ talk. What did we get? Pictures of my dinner, smartphones and Kris Kardashian’s pasta primavera recipe.
Distractions.
They released the self lacing hi-tops a few months back.
I think that my job search has managed to go from bad to worse, today being the biggest disappointment since finding out Ben Kingsley wasn’t (and then was) Indian. It was a confusing childhood rife with misinformation. I blame Gandhi myself.
I went for a job today, expecting to sell myself for an advertising post. What I almost ended up doing was going to Worthing to watch someone handing out Beauty Salon promos for no basic wage. I probably would have got on a train had it not been for another girl piping up to say it wasn’t for her, giving me the opportunity to say “Ditto” and run off.
I should have twigged something was off when I caught a glimpse of their morning mantra/pep talk. Screaming and shouting in order to prepare for “sales battle”, and ruining Ali’s immortal ” I’m gonna float like a butterfly, and sting like a bee,” were definite red flags.
This wasn’t my sales approach. I’m more of a sarcasm over wine kind of girl.
I hope this spate of bad job interviews ends soon; it’s costing me a fortune in comfort shopping. Today I bought a DKNY purse. It’s blue. To match my mood.
I give up.
I mean who do you have to stalk to get a job in this town? it’s not like I haven’t put myself out there. There has been a lot of putting out, and none of it fun.
I blew my last job interview on the grounds that my interviewer didn’t think I would be a good fit. I may have gone a bit overboard on the professional look, and was way more serious than I normally am. In my own defence, I’ve been unemployed for a month now and if I was emanating a serious, or even desperate vibe it was probably because I was sweating out the last of my deodorant stick, at the end of a travel card, in a suit that was about to fall apart at the seams.
With that image in mind, I actually respect them for not giving me the job; I must have looked constipated and severe. Who wants that in the office?
They tell you not to lie in interviews, and they’re right. When they asked me what I did for fun, tequila sprang to my mind. But reading sounded more professional. I didn’t know tequila was the right answer. I would have come to the interview in the Hooter’s outfit I bought off Ebay, and got them to do jelly shots off me if I had.
Bet you’re glad you did all that
What did I know about the method to their madness? Did Mr Miyagi make any sense when he asked Daniel San to wax his car instead of teaching him to roundhouse Johnny to the face?
Maybe I’m just not the kind of person who can be measured by other people’s standards.
This is the moment when I realise that I can’t work for anyone else, and try to set up my own business, which then goes from strength to strength, ending with me admiring the cityscape from my penthouse, side by side with my gorgeous husband and a Martini.
Only I still haven’t figured out what I can do that gets me a penthouse flat in London and a hot guy.
Call girl? Lottery winner?
I don’t think I’m ready to work for myself. I’d watch reruns of Fraiser and eat French Fancies until I felt like doing something more productive, like eating mini Battenbergs and watching Only Fools and Horses.
Unless an opening for French Fancy tester opens up, I will just have to suck it up and keep trying.
Colonic irrigation is about as fancy as it sounds.
The room was small, incense burned, a jazzy tune played, but the roar of the ocean could still be heard in the background. I stared hard at the long wooden plank leading to the toilet in the middle of the room. Above it, a bucket filled with coffee infused water and a system of tubes. I listened carefully as Mun acted out how to carry out your own colonic, occasionally eyeing up the plastic bottle filled with olive oil that I would be using to ‘lubricate my anus’
Maybe the juice fast had me deluded.
This had seemed like a much better idea after a clay shake. I am very suggestible and mildly violent when hungry. I had wanted to purge any residual negaitivity I was storing up mentally. Why not physically? Start afresh: body, mind and soul.
I hadn’t imagined a new start would look like a 6 by 4 propped up on cinder blocks and an open toilet.
I’ve never been one for diets or health fads. I attempted Beyonce’s Maple Syrup diet 7 years ago. Well I say attempted, I drank herbal tea for 5 days and chased them with short stacks drowned in, maple syrup.
The Sanctuary is an amazing place to satisfy your curiosity for detox and cleanse programs. It is possibly the cheapest place in the world to have a colonic, or carry out a cleanse. Its staff are friendly, and well informed. There are also ongoing classes in yoga, pilates and meditation, as well as massages, a spa and steam room.
The whole environment encourages you to live and eat well, and fills you with a sense of well being.
I was intoxicated. Which is probably why a Juice fast sounded good.
I love juice. All drinks in fact. The more beverages the better. A day of juice sounded easy. Anyone who has seen me wolf down an order of tacos, or observed me eating my three lunches, knows I won’t fade away after a day fast. What I didn’t know was that all cleanses ended with a colonic.
I had a vague understanding of how they worked thanks to an episode of Jackass where Johnny gets a colonic. It didn’t prepare me at all for what it would feel like. It didn’t feel as hilarious as Johnny’s looked.
As I returned to the wellness centre, I looked visibly traumatised.
I won’t lie, when I decided to come out here I had been hoping to get in touch with myself. Just not via my anus with a tube I inserted myself. But you can’t predict what turns the game around.
I thought the emotional elements I couldn’t shift were with me for a reason. But just like a physical cleanse, it takes time to flush out the more noxious parts of us.
They can be shifted though.
It won’t be pretty, but as I lie swinging in this hammock with a massive smile on my face and not a care in the world, I’d say it was worth it.
The new year is a big deal for some reason. Successfully orbiting our sun matters to us. I can’t say I know how difficult, or dangerous it was, but I’m sure it warranted a drink.
Manchester is currently the shining example of how ham we go on a NYE celebration. I have little recollection of my own NYE, but from the accounts of complete strangers who I ran into at the Guinness factory, I was absolutely destroyed.
For those of you that didn’t go full pagan, here’s what you missed out on:
My own mayhem was not quite the renaissance masterpiece above, but I did my best to try and drown the old year in alcohol.
Maybe it’s the promise of a clean slate with our hangover that pushes some of us over the edge. The need to obliterate the memory cells of whatever it was that made the last year so horrendous. The joy at being surrounded by the people you love the most.
We go out how we have to: Civilised drinks with family and friends, or pinned to the ground by feds.
Either way, we all deserve a fresh start.
With that fresh start come expectations. I mean it has to go better than the last. There has to be progress. I have to be better than I was.
I think I stopped making resolutions in 2003. There were only so many times I could tell myself I was going to be a teetotaling, non-smoking, gym fanatic who read 40 books a year.
I do alright as I am.
I will still get wasted on occasion. I will still have a drunken fag. I will read, but never as much as I could. I will work out, only as much as I need to in order to be able to eat two whole Nando’s chickens on my own.
Obviously there will be change. But it will come at its own pace.
My New Year is all about acceptance.
My resolutions were always about being a better person. Kinder, more tolerant, more forgiving. Or it was about how I could improve my life to fulfil some imaginary standard others would appreciate.
Showing the same kindness, tolerance and understanding for myself never occurred to me.
Moving past my short comings, be it getting so drunk I fall off a pier, or ignoring my intuition, is something I find hard. My failings are the sun which I have been stuck in orbit around for years.
Rather than trying to evolve into someone perfect, this year will be the year I embrace my dumb ass self for who I am. An alcohol imbibing, wise cracking loud mouth, with an occasionally impressive rack, and a life that often looks a bit like a Manchester high street on New Year’s morning.
Here’s to happiness and shenanigans in the New Year.
Every-time I think I’m out, I get pulled back in again.
When I first met my ex I told him he should go on Tinder. He’s a good looking guy and was single. I thought he would clean up. I hadn’t thought I’d be dating the guy. I was off to Mexico a month down the road. Plus he had seen another man’s penis on my phone.
Long story short: never show a married friend a dick pic. She will tell her husband. He will make you show it to everyone at breakfast when you are too hungover to quickly sit on your phone.
It’s a miracle our relationship ever got off the ground.
It shouldn’t have come as a surprise to me when he popped up on my Tinder feed after the break up. But I deleted the app off my phone all the same. It was like he could see me.
Dating has always been my go to move when things are going badly in my life. When I say dating I mean Tinder. I have no desire to get to know someone in the hopes of cultivating a relationship. Not when I’m heart broken. Shameless superficial hottie snap, and texts filled with innuendo is all I look for when moving on.
I had signed up again because I thought I needed to move on swiftly. I needed to remember that other good looking men existed.
The shock of seeing his duck face staring back at me in various poses made me realise I wasn’t ready yet.
Cue Rio: a city where the word Sex is literally everywhere, and everyone is hot and semi-naked. It was a disappointment to find out that Sex- Dom was not a sensual version of the Crystal Maze, but the equivalent of Sat-Sun abbreviation. More of a disappointment was the fact I just wasn’t into anyone and would have had no use for a real sex dome unless I could charge my Kindle there.
My trainer acted like we’d conceded a goal when I told him I had just enjoyed the sights.
“What’s wrong with you?! Get laid woman!”
It had been 4 months. The ‘Get over it’ was coming in thick and heavy.
I decided to give it one last swipe.
Straight off the bat I gave a cute guy my number. Almost immediately his penis was on my phone, completely unsolicited.
The penis was a shock. But not as much as the fact the guy had been so quick to whip it out that he had forgotten to hide the bald patch he’d disguised in his pics.
He apologised for the penis, but couldn’t explain the hair. I no longer felt compelled to respond to his messages.
That’s when my Tinder game changed. How it happened I don’t know.
Instead of cuing me up some hot sex I built a small support group for the texting wounded.
Now all my messages seem to be pasta recipes, or stories of dates gone wrong. It’s almost like having a stable of boyfriends, who every now and then suggest a meet up.
I’m finding it hard to say yes though.
I said to one guy it was timing and location. If he wasn’t where I was at the right time then it wasn’t happening.
I may yet go on a date. I leave it to GPS, alcohol and wifi connectivity. But It’s not my priority anymore.
I won’t be deleting the app this time.
How will I know how ‘Strap’ and sex dungeon boy are doing on their quest for love?
Anyway, Dario told me he’d send me a recipe for cannelloni that I want to try this weekend.
Thanks to #TinderNightmares for this bounty. Mine were too explicit, or too boring to post.
Margaret smiled at me. She looked very mum like. I always run into well meaning mother figures when I’m abroad.
She and I were the only passengers on the airport shuttle into Budapest. We got talking about the plane delay. Complaining is a great way to start a conversation it would seem. We got on the topic of why we were in Hungary. She was there for work. I was there because I could be. I was lucky enough to have friends there, the time, and no responsibilities.
Parliament in the Pest side of Budapest
“For £500 you could buy a Eurorail pass. Travel around Europe for a month.”
It’s around £500 if you’re 18- 25. If you’re 26 or older, it’s closer to a grand to get a Eurorail pass. It wasn’t a bad idea though. When I got out in district 8, Margret told me to do it while I was still young. I thought about how ‘young’ I was. I was strongly considering it.
It had been four months of applying for jobs I didn’t really want, and getting no where.
One morning I woke up and I contacted my agencies and said I was having a crisis and wouldn’t be available for work until the new year. This may be the only time when I’d have the money to travel and no commitments. When I could take a last minute deal. Buy a cheap ticket and see some more of the world.
I’ve realised I have quite a good network of friends around the world. I’m off to Brazil in November. A weekend in Paris in December. Perhaps Singapore in the new year, or China. I also know a lot of teachers scattered around the world in schools that need an English teacher. Maybe the life of a travelling teacher could be resurrected in Europe or Asia.
My friend Diana was right. I wasn’t fat and toothless. I did have options.
There is a lot to be said for having your gap year in your 30s. On the plus side, I have some money saved. I can do it in a bit more style. Hungary was a whirlwind of G&Ts, steak dinners and strudel. It beat my pizza pie budget when I was in New York.
Foie Gras Fantasy. Not really my cup of tea. Great strudel though. The Strudel House
On the downside, my mum and dad think I’m having a mental breakdown, and my savings are starting to dwindle, while my credit card balance gets bigger. It’s all I want to do though.
I didn’t have a gap year before uni. Well I did, but I was living at a mates house after my dad had kicked me out, working three jobs and desperately trying to lock down a job at Topshop #ambition. It was hardly ‘See the world before uni’ It was more ‘Prepare yourself for how much your life is going to suck when you have bills to pay and nowhere to live.’
I didn’t save a lot that year. Enough for a ticket to New York. I managed to meet my friends at the end of their travels, listen to their adventures around the world. We all still travel. Alone most of the time, I’ve noticed. We’ve even met up in different countries.
I think it’s something in your blood, wanting to be out there in the world alone, on your own adventure. Some people can’t live without it.
I like travelling alone. It’s never been something I thought was unusual. I always had a friend to meet somewhere, or I would make friends when I got to where I was going. I’ve never felt lonely. I’ve felt lonely at parties, in relationships, stuck at home. Traveling is something I’m happy to do by myself.
The reactions I get when I tell people I’m travelling alone make me smile. The concern, the sympathy. Did I have no friends to go with? Surely I’d enjoy it more with other people? Next time I could ask them to come along.
Being a woman makes it seem dangerous, but it’s just as risky as it is for men. I have been mugged three times, but I’ve made it out unscathed and often with most of my possessions.
You call that a knife?
The first time was at knife point and I was able to talk my way out of it. His pen knife was an embarrassment. I’d rather have been stabbed. The second time I was being an idiot, and wandering around at night with my headphones in. He got my iPod. But only as he ran away after i beat the shit out of him with an umbrella. So British. The last time I was mugged, it was at gun point, so I couldn’t really fight my way out of it. I managed to hold onto my shopping. It was worth more than the crap in my purse. Suckers.
Ok, it may seem uncertain. But it’s no more dangerous than your own back yard. You take the right precautions, you’re careful who you trust, and it all works out, most of the time. Occasionally you get a bit of bad luck, you wander into a bad area, fall asleep on the night bus with your iPod out; or date a man who thinks it’s acceptable to hold your possessions hostage because he’s teaching you a lesson for breaking up with him.
There are risks in everything we do.
Over the years my travels had introduced me to wonderful people, some of whom I’m lucky to still be in touch with. Sometimes you just spend a few nights having a good laugh, going to bars and wandering naked into the ocean. Other times you make travel buddies and end up at reggae festivals, or crossing the border into Panama.
I have had hand made pizza straight out of a make shift oven in a friend’s cave. It even had a door. The cave, not the pizza.
I’ve soaked in thermal baths under the stars. I’ve hiked up a mountain in Andorra, cooked my own dinner and then hiked down into France for breakfast. There were parties on the beach, night swimming in lagoons, and once I jumped on a motorbike to a ghetto in Belize to shave a man’s beard off.
Dick Fountain. Or a more formal sounding name for this fine monument.
Traveling has been good to me.
There was never a trip I regretted. Not even this one back home. It took me to Hungary, a dick fountain, dear friends and the knowledge that Hungarians will not budge in a bar. Soon it will take me to my nap buddy, caipirihnas and samba.
I was told I couldn’t live like this for the rest of my life. Maybe what they meant to say was that they couldn’t live like this for the rest of their life. It’s not for everyone.
If you have a travel suggestions let me know. I live out of a suitcase.
The one thing you have to love about London is that if you dare to converse openly in the street every Tom, Dick and Harry will give you their two pence worth. As Galia and I made our way to Rebel Bingo, I started rehashing the whole did he/didn’t he of my ex’s supposed infidelity, and secret friendship with a girl whom I’d never heard of until last Christmas.
This was random man’s opinion on the debate:
“Who describes his bedroom to a girl via a text message? Take a picture, yeah, send it to her, but who describes it?”
He made a very good point.
“It’s easy love, the simplest answer is most probable.”
Was it more probable a psychopath became obsessed with my ex after staring at him too long? Did she then lie to her husband (yes husband) about an affair? Did they then conspire to ruin an innocent man’s life?
Or was it more likely he just shagged her, got caught and now regretted it?
“Simplest answer love.”
Camden’s answer to Confucius turned to a cash machine and started to get money out, leaving me and Galia nodding our heads. Why we were nodding I don’t know. I’d never know which story was true.
Why do I keep bothering with dating when my instinct on men is so off?
I once had dinner at a Mexican friend’s house and was discussing yet another failed relationship when her Nana came in. She joined in the conversation with the promise of bestowing her years of experience and wisdom. At the end of my tale of unreturned texts, a terminally ill relative that never died, and crucial gym commitments, I looked to her for her wisdom. She delicately placed a hand on my shoulder, looked at me consolingly, and said “Mija, pero tienes radar de pendejos.”
When I turned to my friend to ask what she had said, she replied “Nana says you have asshole radar.”
Thanks, Nana.
My love life reads like a a serial killer’s scrap book.
I have been on a one woman mission to perfect the art of reverse man alchemy, where I take a guy that looks golden and turn him into a shit. Complete success has been achieved on more than one occasion. That doesn’t bug me as much as the fact my life has become one big dating anecdote.
The things that I have done, places I have seen and people I have met are the backstory to a failed love life. This realisation has lead me to my new plan: rewiring my radar.
As dumb as I may already sound, I am not so stupid that I am going to sit crying into a tub of ice cream about how unlucky I am. Well, not anymore. I don’t really believe in luck, or karma. Up until now I used to think that I believed in myself, but it was clear to see after months of flailing around struggling to come to terms with a whole new life in London, and a lot of disappointment, I didn’t believe I could make any of it work alone. Me. Who moved to a Mexico alone at 24 with no friends and 100 pairs of knickers because a) why not? and b) you always need clean underwear.
Those of you that know me, know me as a fearless, loveable idiot who won’t shut up. Those that have known me longer know might think I’m quite tough and cynical. No one knows you better than yourself though, and after the last dating anecdote I’ve decided to take time off life as I’ve known it.
I have a pathetic amount of money saved and will be funding the ‘having-a-life-and- being-happy-project.’ During this time, I will be going out and about in London. Travelling to a city near you, perhaps. Writing about what I see along the way, the people I meet, and setting my radar to ‘no pendejos’.
If you need a partner in crime, call me. If you want to go somewhere you haven’t been to before, I’m your girl.
It’s been two weeks now, and it’s absolutely terrifying. I have only just stopped waking up with the kind of pain in my chest that makes me have to pat myself down to see if I slept with my bra on.
Every-time I think I’m out, I get pulled back in again.
runslikeabeigegirl 
You must be logged in to post a comment.