Better Than Fiction

by Alexa Martin

I don’t even like myself half the time and you’re telling me it’s a good idea to latch myself on to one other person until death do we freaking part?

In movies, when a person gets home after work, we watch them visibly deflate right in front of us. All the stress from the outside world melts away. They rip off their bra and crack open a bottle of wine. The luckiest of them all lounge on a gigantic couch with too many throw pillows as they snuggle up with an extra-fluffy puppy thrilled to finally be back with their human.

consider a hot-ass mess, I’m a pretty organized person. I thrive with structure.

Herein lies the problem with dating in the time of the internet and apps and texting. Basically existing in the twenty-first century. Our standards are so low that when someone is average, they jut above the crowd. Common courtesy should be the bare minimum, yet here we are, offering endless praise for being a decent human being.

My body was made for a lot of things, but wearing four-inch stilettos is not one of them. I have trekked up mountains and crossed through rivers courtesy of the suede and cork footbed of my beloved Birkenstocks. But one short jaunt across the dining room of a steak house? I nearly died. Thrice.

Gran always told me there were three types of people we should avoid at all costs: Someone who doesn’t return their grocery cart to the cart corral. A person whose voice doesn’t change when talking to dogs or babies. Anybody who is rude to the waitstaff at restaurants.

My luck is not beginning to change. I’m starting to think I committed some seriously heinous acts in my past lives.

Why build equity and own something when I can just throw my money away every single month to a landlord who raises the rent every other year but doesn’t do anything to improve the building?

overlap. I was hoping to avoid the blazing afternoon sun and the even bigger nuisance: crowds.

“I’m okay with it though. I think everybody’s lives can be a bit messy at times. Some people get hot-girl summers, I have hot-mess-girl summers. It, too, shall pass.” Hopefully.

Since Gran passed away, I have picked up a new habit of listening to podcasts about serial killers. This is wonderful because they’re super interesting and give me something to listen to besides my own thoughts. It’s the worst because I’m a certified scaredy-cat. There have been more than a few nights when I slept with all the lights in my apartment on.

Maybe it’s another of my never-ending list of issues stemming from my childhood, but I don’t want to watch someone get saved. I want to watch them save themselves. I want to know they can live a fulfilling life with or without a love interest.

There’s something that grounds you when you’re entrenched in nature. I don’t think humans were designed to never experience fresh air and stillness. Hustle culture has somehow shifted the narrative so that we feel guilty when we rest instead of accepting the truth, which is that we need rest to thrive. Add in the constant rise in the cost of living but never increasing pay? We’ve forgotten about work-life balance because we’re all killing ourselves to survive.