I Am Not Liz Lemon and Neither Are You: A Rant For Single Ladies

So I'm coming up on t-minus 20 days until my 1st wedding anniversary and sometimes I still can't believe that someone actually accepted this job.

First off, I'm a lot of work. I require maintenance. Like, MAINTENANCE. Also it's long hours, terrible pay (technically no pay), a ton of manual labor and dangerous heavy lifting (well it's not my fault I can't reach any of the cabinets), and a guaranteed slew of uber-uncomfortable, terribly awkward  situations in which definitely you will want to kill yourself but unfortunately you won't be able to. Which I suppose makes me that Craigslist ad people share on Facebook with the caption: OMG check out this hot mess insanity. Also, I was frankly the kind of single girl who had been single for so long that her singledom had begun growing mollusks and coral and moss, like some sort of Yacht that sank long ago to the bottom of the ocean. At one point I think I agreed to marry my Chinese food deliveryman because at least he smiled when he brought me my wonton soup, and that was better than nothing. This was where my bar was set. Like I was Liz Lemon on the couch in a Snuggie happily munching on her night cheese.

This is how I see myself

Because I was such a mess (and by mess I mean a woman who has told herself she is a mess, because we women are raised to be queens of self-recrimination) I ended up dating a bunch of doucherags who, in retrospect, only validated this mythology I had written that I was a terrible person. I'm not sure if my intent there was to actually prove to myself that I was a terrible person by dating terrible people, but it felt like I needed to win at Fucking Myself Over. Like I was loading up the bases to hit my own ass out of the park so that I could collect my Congratulations You've Sold Yourself Short trophy, and my Yes You Were Right You ARE A Fat Ugly Loser medal, and be on my way in my sad old maid's clothes to knit sweaters for my three hundred heirloom dolls.

Except usually it was the barista at Starbucks.

At some point, my net worth became so entangled in my inability to date that I WAS a mess. And like plenty of other women I just lost all sense of myself. What I didn't realize, of course, was that I was looking at myself and everything all wrong.

Just as soon as I realize I am not actually horrible or disgusting.

The man who would later become my husband asked me out four times and I turned him down all four times, all the while chasing other men who had zero interest in me. That's like constantly turning down delicious chocolate cake to stuff empty candy wrappers in your mouth, sorry I can't help myself with the food analogies. But to give you an example, the last guy I chased before I dated my husband actually hit on my sister while I was in the hospital. Literally, a nurse was shoving a foley tube up my vagina and my sister turns to me and says, "You know your boyfriend just texted me to ask if I would jump on his dick." True story. Also TMI. Moving on.

Each time my husband asked me out I remembering thinking to myself, "What the hell does he want from me? Why is HE coming after ME?" like I was fucking Orphan Black or Agent Scully and any man who showed any interest in me could only be a contract killer or a degenerate who wanted to skin me and wear my breasts as a hat.

What do you want and why are you calling me?  I'm assuming you saw my TV ad?

As a woman I was taught long ago that my personality, such as it was (weird, tom-boyish, sarcastic, blunt) was wrong. My body, such as it was (short, stout, top-heavy) was wrong. It would not land me anyone. No, if I truly wanted a man I would have to give him a reason to want me back; I would literally have to justify my worth to him. I would have to twist myself into an emotional and aesthetic pretzel, I would have to just stop focusing on who I was and what I wanted and focus instead on what a man might want from me. Which is just as much of a horseshit strategy as this:

You're never going to get her, Pepe. This is futile, surely you realize this by now.

 The truth is you are fucking great exactly the way you are. And I get that you've probably seen that written on cat posters, but it's true. You are a weird, beautiful, imperfect person and that's great. Basically what I'm saying it's time to re-write your own false mythology. Because you know what my husband was actually looking for? He was looking for ME. Not the me who was convinced she only deserved assholes but the me who thought she was great.  And I feel like as women we tend to just assume we're not all that great. We downplay all of our strengths and pretend we're losers. Like we walk around literally telling ourselves we're awful people for no reason at all.  And then, what's worse? We actually start to believe our own lies.

In the end I found my husband only after I found myself.  And sure that sounds cheesy but the truth is in the cheese, my friends (sorry, more food metaphors.) Because, amazingly, it turns out that when you actually feel you are worth it you tend to attract people who believe you are worth it. I know that sounds like something Danny Tanner  once told DJ on Full House to a bunch of AWWWs, but just go with me here. Or else think of the fabulicious diva RuPaul: "If you can't love yourself how the hell you gonna love somebody else?"

Because I am great.

In any case, my point is that I was more in control of my own destiny than I thought, which means that so are you and so is everyone. Which means you won't be single forever if you don't want to be. Even if you're sitting there on the couch in your pjs reading this and eating your night cheese and wondering whether this is all there is. I promise you, there's more out there.

Just start doing terrific things for yourself and something else terrific will happen, I guarantee it. You just need to say YES to it regardless of whether that scares you. It only took me thirty years of telling myself NO and YOU'RE AWFUL and SHUT UP FATSO to figure that out -- that actually, I am pretty great. And now, while I still require a lot of work and maintenance and I still can't believe there's another human on this Earth who is super into that, I no longer question my worth. And that's huge. Happy 1st Anniversary, me!

And to my husband, if you're reading this, I love you. Thank you for loving me just as I am. Also, bring home cat food, we're out.

And now if you'll excuse me...