NO TIME TO LOSE

 
 

By Beau Hayhoe

When my friend Marina mentioned this project, my interest was immediately piqued. An essays-focused website with a name based off a "Portlandia" skit? I was sold. But the topic was, to be quite honest, a lot to sort through at the start. What could I possibly say? And then there was the matter of finding a photo to convey everything. So, when I found myself on a flight to L.A. to see an old high school friend, I carved out extra time to really dig into this post.

After some writer’s block and a delay on the runway, the thought I found myself returning to related to the reason I was on that flight. It’s a motto I’ve tried to keep in mind when faced with a tough decision or an obstacle or a rough day. Some might consider it a cliche, but it’s really taken on meaning for me when I’ve been faced with a new adventure or cool opportunity.

Life’s too short.

Let me explain — I wasn’t always living by these words. It wasn’t until I was hit by a significant life event earlier this summer — not the loss of a family member or friend or some other massive tragedy, but a breakup that proved to be a pretty major change in the life I thought I had and planned to have — that my mindset changed along with my relationship status.

 

“After the breakup. certain words and phrases she had said rang in my head over and over again. Each time, it felt like I’d been knocked to the ground and kicked in the gut.”

 

I’d been dating my now-ex girlfriend for about a year and a half, and it felt a more momentous time in my life than any other. Things were exciting and new and different, and finishing up school at Michigan State with her by my side was an amazing experience. I felt like we were nothing less than a perfect match. Navigating New York City in our first jobs and eventually moving in together was a really valuable learning experience — one that I thought paved the way for a more vibrant and even better future.

But the life that you think you lead, or the person you think you know — those foundational pillars can change unexpectedly and seemingly instantly. That was where I found myself at the end of June 2015.

I’d started a new job, and I was working on several side projects at once. It was busy, but fulfilling. Life felt pretty good. Living in a major city a month into a new, fast-paced job made for a bit less time and some bumps in the road — our relationship wasn’t 100 percent perfect. It exacerbated some communication problems we’d had in the past, too. It was a balancing act I needed to figure out. But I believed that, as with anything, if you take the time to work on it, things will smooth out. It was nothing I couldn’t handle with the person I loved, right? Not quite.

Being awoken in the middle of the night without any real warning, hearing some crushing and fairly brief words, and then having to go to work the next day and put on a brave face was exceptionally difficult. It only took a handful of weeks before I realized just how drastically this person had changed. It made me feel incredibly small inside — how could I fail so badly? How did I not see this coming? What had happened? 

 

“Through the struggles I’ve faced since graduating college, I’ve learned that some clichés just make sense. It’s a realization I understand more fully each day.”

 

After the breakup, certain words and phrases she had said rang in my head over and over again. Each time, it felt like I’d been knocked to the ground and kicked in the gut. But I gritted my teeth, got up and brushed myself off by sticking to the busy routine I’d developed for myself.             

It wasn’t easy. I felt empty. Over and over, I heard that voice in my head telling me I wasn’t good enough. But in the midst of all this, I realized I had a choice: Do I sit around, wallow in the past and fill up with regret or hopelessness or even anger? Or do I push myself to funnel that failure, to funnel those words into greater motivation, more hard work and greater passion? New projects, new adventures, newer and bigger and better goals? It left me with something to prove. It left me with a chip on my shoulder, and it motivated me to leave that past and, to be blunt, that person, in the dust — because life’s too short to look in the rearview mirror.                  

Through the struggles I’ve faced since graduating college, I’ve learned that some clichés just make sense. It’s a realization I understand more fully each day.

Life’s too short to sit and wonder how your friends are doing across the country. Go visit. It’s too short to not stay in touch with those same friends — it’s as simple as picking up the phone and shooting them a quick text during the day. Life’s too short to sit around and make lists of all the things I want to do in Brooklyn, where I’m lucky enough to live. It’s about getting out there and experiencing them, whether it’s a new bar or a new shop or a new restaurant. Don’t plan too far in advance — just go, now.     

Beau Hayhoe is a fashion PR pro and freelance style writer based in Brooklyn, New York.

ON GOING IT ALONE

 
 

By Ashley Fetters

There’s an art to being happy alone in adulthood.

It has to be learned; it has to be practiced daily and dutifully tended to. But I promise it can be done. Really. Being unmarried, single, childless, yet satisfied and fabulous — it’s possible, I swear.

I mean, I think. It’s been almost four years since graduation, and four years since somebody I loved said to me, “We should talk about getting married” — and with these last four years of mostly solo, mostly happy early adulthood under my belt, I’m, like, pretty sure the keys to being alone but feeling complete are as follows:

  • Get a job you love; dive headfirst into it.
  • Know who your favorite friends are; make them your neighbors, your cooking partners, your dining cohorts, your workout buddies, your travel companions, your designated non-judgmental receivers of drunk/why-am-I-still-awake texts.
  • Remind yourself regularly that three’s not a crowd at all if you like spending time with both halves of a couple.
  • Read good books, all the time. Quit the ones you don’t like immediately.
  • Own exquisite bedsheets and wear the comfiest, most absurdly ugly pajamas you can find to bed.
  • Challenge yourself frequently to conquer alone what you think you need a partner for, whether that’s dancing or trail hiking or a Valentine’s Day meat platter for two.
  • Sleep right in the damn middle of your mattress, and every now and again as you fall asleep at night, appreciate how nice it is that your whole bed — and all your time, and all your money, and all your personal space and DVR space and bathroom-shelf space, and all your wine — belongs to you and you entirely.

It’s a good regimen, if I do say so myself. In my experience, it works about 51 weeks per year.

☐ ☐ ☐

This photo is a photo of my sister-in-law. That’s my nephew on her lap, and they’re participating in our family’s yearly Thanksgiving tradition, in which we all write down what we’re thankful for then share aloud what we’ve written. It’s a lovely tradition — really, it is. First on all of our “thankful lists” is always each other, and as you can see from the caption, my nephew always reveals what exactly has been holding his little-boy world together that year by giving thanks for stuff like Cars 2, macaroni and cheese, policemen, firemen, and, as an afterthought, his sister. But now that I sit at the grown-ups’ table, this yearly ritual is often the loneliest I feel all year.

For me, annual Thanksgiving festivities mean sharing a table with eight other adults, some close to my own age, who all married young and married wisely. When they share their “I am thankful for” lists, they express gratitude for their partnerships of nine years, of twelve years, of thirty-seven years, of forty-two years; for their two beautiful children, their three beautiful children, their four beautiful children. Everyone else seated at this table has managed to maintain for decades what I seem to only ever be able to hang onto in half measures, or for a few months or years at a time. They gaze warmly and sometimes tearfully at each other as they give thanks for partners who really do stick by them in sickness and in health, and for the opportunity to wake up every morning next to their best friend.

 

“Maybe this is one of many table-for-one phases I’ll know in my lifetime, or maybe I’ll just keep on carving out a cozy space for myself in the world, accepting the challenge of building a life alone that feels meaningful.”

 

So what’s cropped out of this very festive and #thankful Instagram, I suppose, is me — the aching ninth wheel, fumbling through “I’m thankful for my job, and, um… my education, and my apartment.” And then maybe lamely adding “And being able to sleep late on the weekends if I want to, heh,” all the while wondering why the cool job and the grown-ass-woman apartment now seem not brave but selfish, and why the lifestyle so thoroughly optimized for Doing Whatever I Want now seems so crass and small.

☐ ☐ ☐

I don’t really know what the moral of the story is here. Maybe it’s “Loneliness is real and it happens to everybody, no matter how loneliness-proofed you think you are.” Maybe it’s “Commit to someone you love while you’re young and don’t overthink it.” Maybe it’s “Be better than this Ashley Fetters person is at being in relationships” — or “Be better than this Ashley Fetters person is at being alone.” Maybe it’s just “Always remember to pack some Xanax when you go home for the holidays.”

But it’s hard to know the moral of a story, I suppose, when you also don’t know how it ends. Maybe this is one of many table-for-one phases I’ll know in my lifetime, or maybe I’ll just keep on carving out a cozy space for myself in the world, accepting the challenge of building a life alone that feels meaningful — fifty-two weeks per year, forever.

Or maybe one day I’ll accept the challenge of building a life with someone else that feels meaningful, 52 weeks per year, forever.

I guess I’ll have to keep you posted.

Ashley Fetters is the digital entertainment editor at GQ Magazine. She lives in New York.

SOMETHING OLD, SOMETHING NEW

 
 

By Britteny Dee

The first time I remember seeing my dad cry, he was sitting Indian-style on his bedroom floor in front of his closet. I walked into his room to ask him a question and found him staring at a framed picture with tears filling his eyes and streaming down his face.

I didn’t actually need to see the picture to know what it was of — my mom and dad were going through a divorce then, and I already knew he took all their wedding photos off our walls and hid them in his closet.

My mom and dad got divorced when I was 6, just four short years after their wedding day, when someone took the above picture of my mom and me. I found my 24-year-old self studying this photograph and crying just like I witnessed my dad do on his bedroom floor when I was a child.

When I look at this picture, I don’t cry because I’m sad that my parents got divorced. I’m old enough now to realize they’re happier apart and a divorce was much better than the alternative. When I look at this picture, I cry because I’m scared.

☐ ☐ ☐

I went home recently for a birthday party my mom threw for me and two of my siblings. Most of my family was there, and more than a few times, I was asked by a grandma or an aunt when my boyfriend of almost two years and I are getting married. I replied as I always do — by saying the thought hadn’t even crossed my mind yet as I’m only 24 and have a lot I want to accomplish before getting married. But the truth is, I think about marriage all the time.

 

“My parents looked so happy in those wedding photos I revisit from time to time, but knowing how they ended up makes the pictures seem unreal, like they were staged for an advertisement.”

 

After living through my parents’ ugly divorce, and watching them struggle to find love time and time again afterward, I told myself I would never get married. I had seen too many seemingly perfect relationships crash and burn and had acted as my parents’ shoulder to cry on so often that I started to believe true love was something Disney movie writers made up.

But now, every time my boyfriend and I talk about apartment decorations, vacations we have planned months down the road or the puppy he promised me we can get one day, I return to the thought of marriage. When talking about the future with a serious significant other, it’s hard not to.

☐ ☐ ☐

In college, despite my plan to stay single until after graduation, I ended up in two serious relationships back-to-back. I loved each boyfriend more than I ever imagined myself being able to love someone, but deep down, I always knew graduation day would likely mark the end of our relationship, so marriage was never something I had to think about. We had different career goals and dreamed of living in different cities, so I enjoyed the time we had together and left it at that. No looming nuptials meant things were relatively simple.

Unfortunately, college doesn’t last forever. My current boyfriend and I don’t have an expiration date like graduation day, so marriage isn’t completely off the table. Not being able to see into the future and know how it will end is frightening beyond belief.

It might sound like I don’t really like my boyfriend, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. What I don’t like is the idea that marriages often fail, and one day, if we do decide to get married, our relationship that I love so much now could be destroyed. My parents looked so happy in those wedding photos I revisit from time to time, but knowing how they ended up makes the pictures seem unreal, like they were staged for an advertisement.

I know the man I’m with now wants to one day be married. He wants a ceremony with friends and family, and a woman he can call his wife, not his long-time girlfriend or life partner.

Which brings me back to this picture of my mom. I look at it and wonder if on my wedding day if I’ll look as happy as she did, and if, more importantly, I’ll be able to succeed where my mom and dad failed, and maintain that happiness until “death do us part.”

Britteny Dee is features editor of Fashion Times and lives in New York City.