We Are Never Meeting in Real Life.

by Samantha Irby

But I’m going to need you to love me on the bus, dude. And first thing in the morning. Also, when I’m drunk and refuse to shut up about getting McNuggets from the drive-thru. When I fall asleep in the middle of that movie you paid extra to see in IMAX. When I wear the flowered robe I got at Walmart and the sweatpants I made into sweatshorts to bed. When I am blasting “More and More” by Blood Sweat & Tears at seven on a Sunday morning while cleaning the kitchen and fucking up your mom’s frittata recipe. When I bring a half dozen gross, mangled kittens home to foster for a few nights and they shit everywhere and pee on your side of the bed. When I go “grocery shopping” and come back with only a bag of Fritos and five pounds of pork tenderloin. When I’m sick and stumbling around the crib with half a roll of toilet paper shoved in each nostril. When I beg you fourteen times to read something I’ve written, then get mad when you tell me what you don’t like about it and I call you an uneducated idiot piece of shit. Lovebird city.

Maybe in this life you get all kinds of soulmates, multiple people who vibrate at the same level you do.

I guess what I’m saying is that maybe we could all just mind our own fucking business for once, and that when you can actually see a person’s scars, maybe be a pal and don’t pick at them.

This exchange typifies 98 percent of my former social life, and you know what I’ve realized? I spent too much time trying to mold myself to fit the romantic ideals of humans who proved themselves unworthy of that effort, and I regret it. Never again will I be with someone who is unwilling to accept me as I am, or who has any desire to mold me into something that makes me uncomfortable. Mostly this is because I’m too anxious and overwhelmed to meet new people and try to make my interests sound more fun. I have unsuccessfully tried to be a girl who is into obscure collage. I have unsuccessfully tried to be a girl who is into the electronic music that just sounds like a bunch of bleeps and bloops. I have unsuccessfully tried to be a girl who reads graphic novels. And experimental fiction. And David Foster Wallace. I have stayed up late watching bootleg kung fu movies on shitty laptops; I have grimaced through expensive meals that were little more than adorable art projects on a plate; I have shivered in an icy stadium seat cheering for a team I have no stake in, and I have cooked lobsters (which I don’t like) for someone who wouldn’t dare eat a burger from McDonald’s (which I do).