Friday, May 1
What I Learned Last Night: Learning to Trust Your Gut and Develop a Meaningful Scarf Collection and Caring for an Orchid
Learning to Trust Your Gut: Recognizing Something is AmissOrHow to Build a Scarf CollectionOrLearning to Care an OrchidIn 12 easy steps:Step 1) When your Smoking Chef brings you out with his friends but fails to introduce you around or sit next to you, this makes you feel badly. But you choose to overlook it and be accepting of him – I mean – he’s just a guy who doesn’t know what to do with this chick in too much red lipstick and ridiculously high heels, and yet another scarf, right? Well girlfriend, lemme tell you – you should trust your gut analysis of this situation because something is amiss… The following is what I’ learned last night: Learning to Trust your Gut, Start a meaningful scarf collection, and Learn to Care for an OrchidStep 2) Over the past 3 or so months you’ve developed a lovely “friend”ship, or some type of “____ship” with your "Smoking chef’… You like him. You want to trust him. You appreciate that you can sit still with him. He's kind. funny. caring. awkward in an endearing way. and he does "it" for you. But you have reservations, you remain unsure about him really. ummmm..???. You've developed some kind of currently undefined "____ ship" with Smoking chef.... You have also developed a "____ ship" within his circle of friends. With his friend “Pink &Red Scarf”. Who is in Smoking Chef’s circle of friends, and who is female... And lovely. You like her lots. And you’ve spoken endlessly with Pink&Red Scarf about Smoking chef…. I mean like…lots… We're talkin' details here peeps. details.I’ll note now that you have many many scarves, you love scarves. You collect them. And you do best at collecting them from those you love or those you feel nostalgia for, or want to pay homage to or celebrate in some way: your aunt who “ Has had this one since high school”, and your mother who “I got this in Italy. It’s the Crest of that Italian village. Here’, have the orange one too.”, and all those little vintage shops you love to roam through, usually finding that scarf in a small pile hidden in a shop dresser drawer. You’ve got dozen and dozens of scarves. In nearly every color combo. But! But only one Pink &Red one. Only one. And she gave it to you. You think this is saying something lovely. And saying something bittersweet. Not to mention, she got it for you while she was traveling foreign countries and brought it all the way back. This is “friend”ship I believe.Step 3) You don’t know yet what kind of “ship” it is you have with Smoking chef because you’ve been holding back. You know he likes you, although you are not convinced he is the kind of chef that is fully invested. He might prefer his relationship meat undercooked, if you will. He’s not that emotional, and difficult to get to know. But he’s sweet… And hot, atleast to you. well maybe not H-O-T but you are attracted to him, regardless. You are, admit it. And you feel so very comfortable around him. He's someone you can just sit still with... But you discovered last weekend that he can be cold too. You need to get to know him more. You don’t know him well enough to DTR – Define the relationship. Not to say you didn’t want to get to know him better, you just didn’t feel you had enough info to decide if you liked him enough to DTR. I guess this is what they call dating… Or maybe your gut knows that you can not really communicate with smoking chef… So the tag on the front of ________ “ship” is undefined. The difficulty to a bad sign.Step 4) You didn’t need to learn last night that you needed him to be gentle with you. You knew this going in, you needed him to be gentle with you. You wanted to feel special. Like you are different. than the rest.Step 5) Dear Chef,Pink&Red Scarf called me last night and told me about you two. Although I know it was a year ago, why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you tell me first? Might have been easier for me to hear from you first. Would have made me feel more important to you. I feel so….temporary….. I’m “Steak to go” Applebee’s curb side pick up steak kind of temporary. Rare. I don’t hold the relationship with Pink&Red Scarf against you, no, no I don’t at all. I certainly understand human circumstance. You two hang out. It's cool. But it seems you may have treated her as temporary. The circumstances of your relationship made her feel temporary. And it turns out youandme smoking chef have the same circumstances....Ugh.... the lack of communication, the lack or future plans, the invitation over to the apt only, the text messages… It's all the same. And now you act like you do not know her.You think this is wrong. It’s just wrong. Same circumstances. And she was temporary. You broke up with her via text. The Sex and the City Post-It equivalent. I don’t want to be temporary. I don’t have casual relationships.Step 6) Are there other Scarves you need to know about? Are there other girls you have already befriended that he is pretending he didn’t sleep with? Just checkin’ cuz, besides retaining prom dresses from the 80’s, collecting vintage scarves, and finding vintage fur coats at goodwill (quite a find I will note – totally awesome!), and dancing the tango and lindy hop, what you do best is Obtaining Girlfriends! And you've not no interest in being Smoking Chef’s Girlfriends Club founding member, especially when you didn’t know you were nominating yourself. Jesus. Honestly!?!You do have a strange sense of respect and appreciation for Pink&Red scarf honestly though. You recognize it must have been a difficult can o' worms. But You'd rather know. And Pink Scarf knows this.He let you become friends with someone he had been fucking. Again you don't hold the basic humanness of this against either of them, but letting you become friends without all the information is just wrong. Especially for someone as emotional fragile as you. And you recognize this letting you become friends with her and not dealing with it as, yes... saying it with me: the easy way out... It's just secretive. You want to trust him. You wanted to trust him desperately.Step 7) You feel so so so fuckin stupid. I mean you told pink & red scarf way way too much about smoking chef. Gawd. How embarrassing.Step 8) Dear Chef, I emotionally invested in you. You’ve acted the same way with her as me. I am on the border of trusting you. And believe-you-me, I have been crushed. Shattered. Broken. Humbled. And appalled. But I feel like a fool for not knowing. I feel like a fool for not seeing it. I shuld have. 20/20 hindsight yadda yadda. Knowing that you were ok with me finding out makes me feel like you do not care.Step 9) Your smoking chef not telling you about the Smoking Pink Scarf Combo Meal (this is funny chuckle chuckle) might only be because Smoking Chef didn’t think it was a big deal. And it’s not a big deal. This you recognize. But it speaks volumes to how he might feel about you: Therefore you are not a big deal to smoking chef. He let you befriend Pink & Red scarf. If Pink &Red scarf wasn’t a big deal, then neither are you girlfriend! Yeah, your gut is sick. To much steak. You were once a vegetarian btw.Step 10) Suddenly remembering your conversation with Sugar about him not being that into you. And trusting your gut…Another side – ahhhhh you should take up tango dancing once again. Bad relationships lend themselves well to tragic tango dancers, the way all good tango dancers (who take themselves too seriously) are.Step 11) Too bad you lost your black and white scarf last weekend. Needs replacing. But the orchid Smoking Chef gave you for your birthday back in February is still in full bloom. You want to learn to care for it. I hear orchids are difficult to tend to, care for. Difficult to get to bloom again. You have to snip and trim just at the right time: when the last flower blooms, cut the next flower spike halfway down the stem. A possible rebloom will occur if you continue caring for your orchid.Step 12) ONE EXTRA, VERY IMPORTANT STEP!!!you haven’t slept with Smoking Chef.How do you feel now? Pretty good..for trusting your gut!!!You didn’t because your gut was telling you something was amiss.What I leaned last night:Trust your gut.Maybe don't wear that pink&red scarf for a little while.Take up being a holier than thou vegetarian again for a little while, or atleast no more red meat.