I've Got This Round

by Mamrie Hart

  In our ten-plus years together, I never had to deal with sadness. Our relationship was stable and supportive and fun and even-tempered, so much so that when I realized I might want to end it, it seemed unfathomable. IN WHAT WORLD would someone end a relationship where there are zero fights? Zero arguments? But therein lies the rub. Without those peaks and valleys, you can step back and see a flat line. We were best friends and great roommates and each other’s cheerleaders, but we weren’t in a true romantic relationship anymore.

  We both knew it, even if we didn’t want to admit it. There was an elephant in the room, an elephant who had been hanging out in our living room for a few years, chilling and eating all the snacks and not even apologizing for it. I knew that elephant was there, because the couch had gradually become my nightly bed and that elephant was on the floor snoring, keeping me up at night.

  I tried to convince myself that everything was fine. Our relationship was fine. And maybe if I just made some positive changes for myself, it would have a domino effect on the relationship. Maybe if I felt more attractive, I’d be more inclined to get physical with my partner. So, I hightailed it to the gym. I lost a shitload of weight. I dyed my hair darker. I bought the dream car I always wanted. And in doing that, I saw myself starting to self-actualize into the person I would want to be if I was single. It was like when a dog goes into the woods alone because it knows it’s going to die, only instead of heading into the wilderness, I started getting on the treadmill every day, pumping that incline to the highest degree like I was hiking away from my problems.

  But no matter how good my ass was looking from all that steep walking, my head and heart were in the same place. I eventually stood still and confronted my feelings, which felt like an impossible task. He had done nothing but been loving and supportive and wonderful. So, how do you say you don’t want it anymore? It’s like ordering something at a restaurant, and when it comes out completely like you asked for, exactly how it sounded on the menu, you end up saying, “Nah, I think I’d rather just starve for a little bit. It looks great, though.”

  Sending that first hey, we need to talk tonight text set everything in motion. My heart was breaking, my stomach was aching, and I felt like I was living in an alternate universe. One in which I would no doubt be the bad guy, the villain who also feels unbelievable amounts of guilt. Maybe this was my fault completely. Maybe I was the one who leaned too much on the friendship, and he just followed my lead. Had I concentrated on my career too much? Maybe this was my Achilles’ heel. My obsessive drive in work would always be my mistress, and I worried that eventually my partner would become tired of being a third wheel. Even if that wasn’t the case, I still needed to know what it was like to be by myself. I drove home, hands shaking, wondering if I would have the balls to start the conversation.

  When you are ending a relationship of that length, and without a true inciting incident or drama, there is no such thing as just ripping it off like a Band-Aid. It’s a lot more drawn-out and painful than that. More like slowly peeling off the strips of duct tape you used in a lieu of a bra to keep your tits up in a deep, plunging dress.*

  The next two weeks were a slow burn of breakup conversations, of terrible moments crying together on our couch and then one of us saying something to lighten the mood.

  “I’m going to get super ripped now. You know that, right?” he said to me at one point, making me laugh as I wiped away tears. “I mean it. I am going to be so in shape. I’m starting my own YouTube channel tomorrow.” Him making me laugh in that moment made me love him more than ever, but deep down, it also told me I was making the right move. My love was now one of friendship and history and respect, but I needed more. Or to at least try for more.

  But it was scary. To put it in perspective, I hadn’t been single since I was fresh out of college. The last time I ever brought a new guy home, I was a naïve New York City newbie, living in an empty apartment in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn. My only possessions in my room were a suitcase full of clothes and an air mattress that had a hole in it, and for months, I was too broke to buy a new one, so I would just fold the flaccid plastic mattress in half to pad the hardwood floor a little more.

  This was totally different. I wouldn’t be out on the dating scene, drinking PBRs, and counting my ones to see if I could afford a cab home if the date went awry. I was a grown woman. This wasn’t going to be Girls; this would be Sex and the City (though a couple of seasons in, when Carrie wasn’t such a mess). Bring on the cosmos!

  Because the breakup was my choice, I decided I would be the one to move out and find a new place. Being on my own was going to be a totally new experience for me. I had lived with my mom and siblings until college, then had roommates in my dorm, then roommates for a year in New York, and then I moved in with my ex. Finally, I was going to experience full freedom. Knowing that if there were dishes in the sink, I couldn’t be frustrated that someone else had left them or wait for someone else to clean them like a dirty sink standoff. Having a fridge full of things that I loved eating, without having to block out the mayonnaise or other ungodly white condiments.* What would my aesthetic be like? I had always decorated how I liked but with my partner’s style in mind. Would I be super minimalist and modern now? Or would I go the opposite route and start scouring eBay for one of those lips couches from MTV’s Singled Out? Fuck it, if I’m going for a big-lip couch, I might as well install my own champagne glass tub!

  First things first, I had to actually find a place. I scoured Craigslist and found an adorable house for rent, and, with fingers crossed that it wouldn’t be a murderer’s den in real life, I made an appointment to see it. Craigslist can be hit-or-miss; when I lived in NYC, I’d go looking at apartments that looked like a penthouse suite in the photos but were as sketchy as a Penthouse magazine when I got there. So I knew it was a gamble. But by some grace of God(damn luck), this place looked exactly as it did online. It was perfect: a sunny one-bedroom in a walkable neighborhood that I loved. Plus, there was a yard that my dog, Beanz, could sunbathe in. And . . . there was a hot tub. It was a no-brainer. But just like any new ramen restaurant, when something is this good, there’s inevitably a line for it.

  “Hey, I know you’re showing your house to lots of people,” I said to the married landlords as the next folks waited in the front yard to be shown the place, their maniac toddler running and yapping like one of those windup dog toys that can do backflips. “But wouldn’t it be nice to rent it to a single, mature woman in her thirties who travels a lot? Instead of some starter family that has kids who will definitely try to trash the place? I mean, kids are nightmare!” I turned to the pregnant wife. “No offense.” This was our actual interaction, and they actually chose me!

  I moved in a few weeks later, walking up to the front door with a rolling suitcase full of clothes in one hand and a rolled-up air mattress that Joselyn had loaned me in the other. As I plopped down in my empty living room, I daydreamed about how I’d fill up the room with cool art and furniture. I couldn’t stop smiling at the potential of what this life, and house, would look like a few months down the road.

  The sun set, and I was about to have my first evening living by myself. I sat on the kitchen counter barstools sipping on a vodka soda, just relaxing in the moment. It was so peaceful. So quiet. So, so quiet. Jesus Christ, why was it so quiet?!

  If there was ever a moment to cue “Hello, darkness my old friend . . .” it was then.

  I started feeling anxious. It was total, immersive silence. I had previously lived in neighborhoods with lots of traffic, but this house was on a quaint residential street. My just-off-the-highway apartment in Brooklyn would make this place feel like a sensory-deprivation tank in comparison. I didn’t even have a TV hooked up yet to distract myself.

  But it wasn’t just a noisy neighborhood that was missing—it was the noise inside, the noise that comes from living with another person. Someone to talk to, or make quips during S
hark Tank to, or yell to bring you a towel when you got in the shower without one on standby. Another brain in the house to bounce an idea off of or someone who could band together with you to fight off an intruder. Even the simple concept of not having another opinion on what to cook for dinner, to not have an “I cook if you do the dishes” trade-off was mind-blowing. For the past ten years, there had been an alley-oop aspect to everything in my home life, and now I felt like I was tossing the ball toward the basket only for it to bounce right back down with a thud. I felt like I was having an awkward lull in conversation with myself. So while my anxiety just kept dialing up and up, I decided to crank something else that night.

  Music!

  Screw that “Sound of Silence” bullshit; I blasted some good ol’ Sean Paul on my phone and danced in front of my new floor-length-mirror closet doors until I was drunk and dripping in sweat. If this visual seems kind of sad to you, don’t worry. I had an audience. And by that, I mean I woke up Beanz, who had been sleeping under the throw blanket on the air mattress, to watch my moves. She was unimpressed, which is rude considering how hard I was working it. I was dancing at the level that while you’re doing it, you can already predict how sore your thighs are going to be the next day.

  Eventually, all the cocktails and aerobic ass shaking caught up with me, and I was ready to call it a night. My first sleep in my new place! I turned off the lights and slowly pushed Beanz over to one side. I tell ya, for being five pounds, the dog somehow hogs the bed. Doesn’t matter if we are sharing a couch or a California king. It’s like the jeans from The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants—somehow, her body adapts and she takes up 75 percent of any sleeping space.

  So, I got her bod to one side and snuggled in under the throw. This isn’t so bad, I thought to myself as I stared up at my ceiling. I am going to be just fine in this silence. But it was at that exact moment that I heard the tiniest high-pitched noise. Like the lightest dog whistle, or when Pee-wee Herman would do his routine of slowly letting the air out of a balloon. And that’s when I knew. Sonovabitch. This air mattress had a hole in it.

  I shook my head in disbelief as I felt the mattress below me slowly starting to lose its firmness, like an overhandled peach. There I was, ten years since moving to New York. Ten years older. Ten years wiser. And yet I still found myself in an empty place, by myself, on a deflating air mattress. I couldn’t tell if this was sad or not. It felt very full circle, but maybe full circle isn’t a good thing since it means you end up where you started. Maybe these past ten years had just been a giant lap, and I was back at the starting line once again. My mind raced.

  Is this just who I was when I was on my own? A girl who sleeps on deflated air mattresses? My ex would’ve never been in this position. He would’ve blown up the mattress and made sure it was okay way earlier in the day, not when he was too drunk to drive anywhere and get a new one. Is this air mattress some sort of metaphor for not being able to take care of myself? I thought as my body slowly descended to the hardwood floor. But rather than wallow in self-pity, I popped up off* the deflating raft and decided to take action. I wasn’t the same naïve girl I had been back in Brooklyn. I was a woman now. An independent, successful woman! I didn’t need someone to take care of me. What I needed was to solve this myself, to get my act together, and . . . to pay someone to deliver me some duct tape to patch up this damn hole!

  Seriously, I went on a delivery service app and paid twenty dollars to have a three-dollar roll of duct tape delivered. “I swear this isn’t for anything weird or sexual,” I tried to tell Patrice, the very judgy-looking older lady who handed the tape from her car window. “Mmmm hmmm,” she mumbled under her breath before speeding off.

  But did I care? Hell no. Did the duct tape fix the hole completely? Of course not! I woke up a few hours later on a half-deflated air mattress with Beanz on top of me, scared I was going to roll over in my sleep and catapult her into the air like she was on one of those inflatable blobs people have off lake docks.

  It didn’t matter that my back was killing me. Or that I was already hungover and it was only five A.M. I was proud of myself. I had stuck out the silence. I wasn’t that twenty-two-year-old in Brooklyn anymore, ignoring the discomfort of a broken bed. I was ready to fix my problems when I spotted them. Not just deal with discomfort because it seemed more comfortable than confronting it.

  From the cradle of that plastic taco I was in, I got on my phone and ordered a real bedframe and a real mattress. My first home purchase. The only catch was that it was going to be a solid six weeks before they were delivered. But that was okay by me . . . because I had some traveling to do.

  I Think I Cannes

  DISCLAIMER: Feel free to take a moment to go online and download the sad-trombone sound effect to play in response to this chapter title. Not impressed? I almost named this one “Eiffel Crazy.”

  Every so often, I get asked to speak on a panel about the digital world or being a female writer or what have you. It’s such a perk! I’ve done them so often that sometimes I feel like a parakeet who has only learned the words “authenticity” and “my brand.” Other times everyone else on the panel is so eloquent and smart that I feel like a Beverly Hillbilly during their first interview. So, why do I do them? Easy: ’cause if I really get going, I can make even myself cringe, and cringing is great for your abs. Also because you can’t spell “panel” without “plane.” AKA, the panel is in a really cool spot and they cover your travel.

  And no free trip has ever felt more glamorous than when I was asked to do a panel in—drumroll, please—CANNES! Yes, that Cannes.

  The type of place that is so storied, so mythical, it sounds fake, like Ibiza or Bora Bora. Why was such a classy place letting a creature like me in? Ironically, because I had been a creature earlier that year! Several months prior, I had been lucky enough to be involved in a Web series called Oscar’s Hotel for Fantastical Creatures. In it, I got to do something I’ve always dreamed about: become a Jim Henson creature!

  As a girl who was obsessed with Fraggle Rock and Labyrinth and The Muppets growing up, it was an incredible experience. But as a girl who can occasionally get herself worked into a panic attack when she feels claustrophobic, being glued into a giant octopus costume for four-hour stretches at a time was not so amazing. Somehow, I made it. Here I am as Octochef!

  I didn’t operate this myself. To move the tentacles, there were four dudes underneath me. So, clearly it felt like home. ;)

  At this point, it had been a couple of months since my breakup. For those first few, the grieving and guilt from ending it were omnipresent. Everything reminded me of it.

  *goes to bar* . . . My ex and I used to go to this bar. I hope he’s doing okay.

  *eats a taco* . . . My ex loved him some tacos. I hope he’s doing okay.

  *sees a bird* . . . My ex loved bird-watching. I hope he’s doing okay.

  Not having a partner in crime was a new reality for me. Especially with texting! You don’t realize how much you can text someone all day, like a stream of consciousness, until you don’t. When I was out at night, I would feel something nagging at me, like I had forgotten to do something, until I would have to remember that no, you don’t have to text anyone your whereabouts or what time you’ll be home. When I started daydreaming about what I wanted for dinner, I had to remind myself that it was just my choice. There was no one to text and ask, “Whatcha hankerin’ for tonight?” It was just me. And those first couple of months were tough. Where I would normally text a thought, I now just had the thought and swallowed it. But slowly, that feeling of free-falling began to feel normal. Empowering, even. I didn’t feel alone so much as I felt independent. I was an untethered balloon, no longer tied to someone’s wrist, and I was ready to fly, baby!

  Specifically, first class to Cannes! Apparently, every year there is a huge convention called MIPCom in the South of France, or “MIP” for short. The production company that
produced Oscar’s Hotel was attending, and they asked me to join them. My excited brain was flooded with thoughts when they made me the offer. They came in as follows:

  VIP TO MIP! THAT’S QUITE THE TRIP!

  What the hell is a MIP?!

  What do they want in exchange?

  It turns out MIPCom was a place where people took their projects to be sold in international markets, and so the Jim Henson team was trying to sell the overseas rights to our show. All I was obligated to do during my time there was participate in a five-minute interview onstage in front of buyers, talking up the production company and project, and then I was done working. So, of course, my answer to them was an enthusiastic FUCK YEAH.

  This was a dream come true and exactly what I needed at the moment. I had wanted to go to France since I read all the Madeline books as a little girl. (Hello?! An outgoing, outspoken redhead who’s constantly getting into adventures? That bitch sounds familiar.) I dreamed about seeing the Eiffel Tower and spending my morning eating pain au chocolat, which sounded so much nicer than a “croissant with chocolate shoved in it.” I wanted to wander the narrow streets drinking lattes, watching the sun set over the Seine, and then spend my evenings watching the dancers at Moulin Rouge. I knew I had to seize this opportunity, so I not only said yes to the trip but I asked them to fly me out of Paris so I could spend some time there. They agreed, so the plan was for me to be in Cannes for MIP for a few days, then take a train to Paris, where I would gallivant around and no doubt be mistaken for the grown-up version of Madeline by tourists.