no apologies for the lack of posting this time.

Wait
Something Corporate

I can hear ticking clocks running rampant in me
Chiming in an apogee
Waiting for the synergy
Of her and me
Waiting on the light
And I never say goodnight
Never say that I'm always right

Now with you, girl, I'm content to drown
You're so high, and I'm so down
This night will end sooner, but much sooner now
And I'm awake in you, and you're asleep in me
All the things I'll never be
Make me wonder could you see
And I said

Wait till I hit the ground harder
Wish I could wait to hear her heart beat fast
Wish I could wait til I missed her flavor
My days are numbered here
And I don't want be the last one home
Don't want be the last one home

Though I'm weak inside
I'm thriving just the same
Still calling out your name
Wondering who it is that I should blame
Stabbing hard and buried consciousness and fear
Forgetting others I hold dear
Wondering, maybe could you hear
And I said to

Wait till I hit the ground harder
Wish I could wait to hear her heart beat fast
Wish I could wait til I missed her flavor
my days are numbered here
And I don't want be the last one home
The last one home
Oh, here we go

And I said, there you are, baby
Waiting on the sun
Just staring at the sky
Said when, "will he be done?"
I said, there you are, baby
Waiting on the sun
Just staring at the sky
Said, "when will he be done?"

And I wish I could wait
Til I see you shaking
Wish I could wait
To pull out of this one fast
Wish I could wait
Til I taste your flavor
Maybe I could savor every last drop
And I said to wait til I hit the ground harder
wish I could wait to hear, to hear your heart beat fast
wish I could wait 'til see you shaking
My days are numbered here
And I don't want to be last one home


Ever since I started thinking about marriage, this song has kind of been the culmination of a lot of my feelings about my boyfriend and the topic. I've been ready, I think, for a while now. He, on the other hand, has had a couple of hang-ups that have set us back (in my opinion), and every time I listen to this song, I can't help but feel sorry for the singer, and ourselves.

Thanks to the wedding this past weekend, marriage and this song have been on my mind a lot. A bit of research today unearthed the fact that this song probably isn't so much about a relationship as a description of sex (which I never would have gotten, maybe my mind isn't as dirty as I thought). Still, I can't help but ignore those innuendos and keep to my original explanation, even though some lines are pretty blatant.

I guess I just feel like my part in this whole marriage equation is just to wait. I have to wait until he's settled, wait until he's ready, wait until he's in a good place... all the while feeling the pressure and prick of time. And even after all of this time, it still isn't for sure. I don't want to pressure him; I also don't want to be the last one home.

fighting gingivitis together

As I stood in front of my bathroom mirror, one hand on my hip, the other holding my toothbrush in my mouth, I saw his toothbrush standing in the little ducky holder on my counter. No, this is not a symbol of our depravity (he doesn't spend the night considering I live with my parents). It's simply that he works late, and when he comes over straight from work, we've gotten into this little routine of going up and brushing our teeth together in my bathroom.

I don't know why I like his toothbrush there so much, next to mine. But if I were to take a guess, I like it because it's a piece of him that is so solid, tangible and ordinary, living in my world. And for once I'm not saying it means that this relationship is going to continue or die or anything too deep - it simply makes me happy. I like waking up in the morning and seeing that piece of him. I like standing next to him and making faces at ourselves in the mirror while brushing our teeth at night.

He's up for a new job, one that's closer and wouldn't require us to see each other at 1am. And I'm so excited that I will get to see him more frequently and at times that I'm not ready to fall asleep.

But I just don't want to lose that damn toothbrush.

i'd die if i didn't see you there

And when we can see things clearer
than we think we see them now
Maybe kiss each other sweetly
instead of trying to bite down
Maybe then all this will be better
Maybe then we'll recover


I didn't know that fights could be silent. I always pictured them with yelling, door slamming, even household items smashing into walls. I didn't think the first one would be fought over the phone, curled up in my bed or in my car, sobbing, trying to contemplate any sort of future - let alone tomorrow - with the man I say I love.

But knowing us, I should've guessed that it wouldn't have been a normal fight. There was no yelling. There was no anger. It was the easiest fight to lose because all I had to do is keep my mouth shut, and it was over. Us. No more.

But He made me look at him, he made me speak, and because of that, we have tomorrow. And the next day, and the day after. Maybe even longer.

Monday is seven months. And it means more now, than ever.

they call her love

The weather has been changing in Northern Virginia - fall is definitely in the air. I know this because at night, the breeze coaxed through my window by my fan is not just cooling my hot skin, it's chilling what's already cold. I know this because when I wake, I'm deep under covers, tucked into pillows and the light is hazy and not quite enough to pull me from my warmth. I know this because I now scamper into the shower, the hot water now serving a purpose to protect me from the day ahead.

I know fall is here by my mood, by the events, by the time. I always seem to want to think more during the fall, preparing for the long haul of winter when I have nothing but intellect to keep me company. Only this time, it will be different because of the man I have next to me.

I have held his hand in mine for almost seven months. SEVEN MONTHS. It feels like an eternity to me, the girl of short relationships and flings. He has put up with my BS, my craziness, my frustration. I have forgiven his tardiness, his absentmindedness, his unavailability. He has made me talk to him. He has let me cry. He has forced me to move outside my comfort zone. He brought me roses for our sixth month anniversary.

We have finally said the Word (or, The Words). And it was painful and it terrified me, it made me doubt us and myself and relationships but we said it anyway. And it's true, and I meant it, and I hope I never stop meaning it or forgetting how much it meant.

what's good for you

For the first time in the history of my relationships, I am looking at the future.

For the past year, I thought I wasn't a "future" kind of girl. No rings, no white dresses, no bouquets to throw. No homes, no mortgages (at least, not with anyone's name beside mine on the papers). Certainly no children - they are the EPITOME of the future.

And then I met him. And things changed.

It's my little victory - this weekend, I will be celebrating my longest relationship (i.e., two months and SIX WHOLE DAYS). In another month, I will hopefully triumph over the Curse of May with him by my side. And honestly? I wouldn't be surprised if we actually made it all the way.

It's the little jokes about having children, but always with the "if" hanging over it. Using the "L" word, but only kidding. Playing with fingers and rings without saying a word. Describing wedding plans, in the hypothetical sense. And the other plans, so many plans, that might have nothing to do with marriage but everything to do with commitment. These things make me wonder if one day, I will share the white dress, the bouquet and the mortgage with him.

(Even my mother has noticed and made her own predictions about the possibilities of a ring on my finger in an ungodly short amount of time.)

But my favorite thing about us is that for I don't have to worry because we are in no rush to do anything. We're not rushing the ring. We drink in just being with each other, and there's that underlying assumption that there's never going to be a drought.

It's thrilling. It's scary. These are uncharted waters for me, but I've got a fellow sailor next to me who doesn't mind the lack of map. People always say it's the journey, not the destination, that matters - I'm ready for both.

someone like you and all you know and how you speak

He asked me what my issues were. I asked him what his were.

Apparently, I am afraid of attachment. He has trouble sharing his feelings.

We're now dating.

For someone as happy being single as I was, this was more of a fight than anyone could know. And at the same time, it was perhaps the easiest, sweetest and most right relationships of them all. I told him, had he asked me the night we met to date, I would have said no. Even a month in, I still told him I wasn't ready. But only two weeks after I said that... here I am. A girlfriend.

He taught me how to shoot a gun and drive a manual car. I taught him how to bake cookies. He loves the parts of me I try to hide, and I can't get over how he makes me laugh.

And I'm realizing, more than anything, that relationships are built on the differences, the pieces of ourselves that don't match up. And they're work to find the common ground, to open up, to let yourself fit together.

And it's the moments when you're sitting there and hands slide together and bodies curl around each other that you realize this totally absurd concept of (to quote my friend Tali) two independent people simply wanting to be together is actually possible. Not only just possible, it's the most rewarding feeling in the world.

face to fake

Today, I found myself in the oddest position of giving advice to a girl over a boy that has played her like a fine violin.

It was just SO bizarre! Because I could just see myself in her, feel her pain, understand every bit of confusion she was feeling. Because I was there, you know? For a year, I was in that zone, wondering, planning, debating. It's a tough maze to find your way out of.

"We can call it anything we want," I told her as we walked back to her dorm room so she could show me the profusely apologetic Facebook note he wrote her. "We can say we've been played, we're cynical, whatever. But deep down, it's simple - our feelings have been hurt. It doesn't matter that we're in college or 21, our feelings are hurt and it sucks."

I think you have to acknowledge these things before you can move on. I think that accepting that god, sometimes your heart just hurts for no logical reason is a step you need to take before moving on. That though it doesn't matter in the world, in the grand scheme of things, it matters to you, however tiny and insignificant you are. It matters.

I've been down the road she's looking at - wanting to make contact. Trying to phrase messages so clearly and calmly. Wanting to believe those pretty words, wanting to give someone the benefit of doubt, wanting to believe the past four months weren't a waste.

"We need to have a face to face," she said.

"Face to fake is more like it," I replied, thinking of Kevin.

why i am single part one: TOWCS

I realized I never finished my story.

I haven't seen him in almost two years, yet daily I am reminded of the relationship and the choices I made. I still wonder, sometimes, if I really did act in my best interest. It's rough, being forced to quit cold turkey when you're honestly not quite done. But I did it, albeit messily, and here I am, single. (We'll forget that The First happened, because apparently that memory is not worth worshipping.)

A few days ago, I went into the Rockville Music and Arts to pick up some books for a student. As I drove up, I saw a figure leaning against the back counter that accelerated my heartbeat at least double time. A familiar button down shirt, dark hair, stocky figure. Holy shit, I though dimly, the process of forming actual thoughts stunted by the lack of oxygen to my brain, I think that's Kevin Paro.

I thought about how he did work in Rockville for a time, I thought about the manager turn over, I thought about Mary saying a year ago he'd be coming back. All of this went through my head in a split second.

I walked into the store, completely unprepared to say anything, unwilling to believe it was actually the Asshole.

And yet, I hoped, desperately, that it was.

Some things never change, you know? And I'm okay with that. Like my friend said, you'll never fully forget someone that held that sort of a spot in your heart. But I'm not afraid of him, and I'm not the begging girl I used to be. I have grown up a lot over the past two years. I've changed. Even though I still have no honest to God idea what I would say to him, I know that if it happened, I would be okay. Sure, it'd shake me. But I am at a good place right now. I am fiercely in love with being with no one but myself. I am being selfish, independent, young. And I guess these types of days are limited, so I'm not going to waste them.

The simple fact that I can joyfully embrace being single made it okay that I had no valentine, no plans, no hopes of anything Saturday. It made me not bitter. It made it more difficult - and yet easier, at the same time - to do this series on relationships over the past week. And absofuckinglutely absurdly, it made it somehow okay to spend the entire night and morning talking to a boy I barely knew and spending most of my Valentine's Day night in his arms.

But back to my story.

Belief crushed hope, and I was right. It wasn't him, and as I scrutinized the man I thought was TOWCS, I could see the similarities that made me think it was him, and yet it was so clearly not. At the same time, for all intents and purposes, it might have as well been him. I said nothing to him, he said nothing to me. And if I ever do meet him, the real Asshole, I have a suspicion that our reunion wouldn't be all that different.

friday five

Top 5 Thoughts About My Relationships from Matt

He gets a lot of practice being my best guy friend.

1. "The art of conversation isn't completely dead, don't kill it."
If you can't tell, the brutal honesty keeps me in line. I get so tired of trying to reason with males and eventually give up - and then Matt says something like this.

2. "I don't deny that you're truly fine with things now, but if you keep being friends with benefits, you're going to keep liking him, most likely more, and then you're going to WANT more emotionally, and I don't think that process is going to take very long."
Matt can make me see things that I probably know deep down and just want to ignore. To this day, I'm not sure how he got to know me so well in so short a timespan. I think I attribute this to our friendship forged in theatre.

3. "I think I've come up with new theory that you should embrace. We'll call it "Traci, Version 2.0". Guys have fucked you over so badly that you're emotional psyche (at some points, not all) couldn't BE any worse (no offence) that at this point you should just be like, screw it, and go do whatever you want because you can't get more screwed over by people than you've already been."
An interesting perspective, and one I've never truly been able to embrace, though it definitely looks appealing on paper.

4. "If they're so immature that they can't be just friends with you, then they're dumb anyway."
Story of my life. I've found it's incredibly hard to backtrack once you've started down a particular path, especially for guys (or at least, the ones I'm attracted to). This flippant dismissal towards a boy I care about is literally one of the hardest things for me to do.

5. "If you were a bitch, and you still were attracted to assholes, than it would be a power struggle until you stopped dating and the whole relationship would be a roller-coaster in a different sense than how it usually is for you. But you're not a bitch, you're normal and nice, but you're still attracted to that same sort of guy so, eventually, he's just going to fuck you up and you won't have that effect on him. The level of sarcasm and wit you protray from the get go is RIGHT in the middle between "sarcastic but in a sweet way" and "sarcastic and bitchy" and so some guys just think it goes to the latter and go with it."
Perhaps one of the most significant, defining characterizations of my love life, ever. It's both straight forward and sympathetic, which is a very difficult balance to strike, but Matt does it pretty flawlessly. I actually learned to stop blaming myself, just a little less, after this conversation.

they weren't there

There are some people you will never forget, no matter how much time goes by.

(and he wasn't my first)

I found the letter my best friend wrote to him while cleaning my room. Hidden under old birthday cards and school papers in the trunk that saw me through high school and my first year of college, I felt the inexplicable weight of the simply addressed envelope as I held it. I couldn't stop myself from sliding the pages out of the envelope and rereading those words for the hundredth time. The feeling didn't change - I felt all the wind sucked out of me and the panic of those memories. The words didn't change - the story of a girl who believed in me, who wanted to stand up for me, who wanted to validate me. And the outcome didn't change - I felt the questions creeping back in and all of those memories (theplaygroundworkmcdonaldsthestairsyourmotorcycle), but worst of all, the undeniable loneliness and my shame that I still miss him.

That relationship cost me my self-respect. It cost me a city and a job, a best friend and two years.

It cost me a lover.

He will probably cost me many more.

he was just the first.