Eco Boy Misses Out. Yoga Girl, Quite Accidentally, Grows Up a Little.

“If you don’t like the present moment, the trick is to stick with it and stay fast and firm—and breathe, and be gentle with one’s tender, sad heart. And, smile. Don’t run. Don’t entertain oneself out of sadness—that never works for long. Don’t dwell  in the sadness, either. As Blake said, just touch it, and fly—” ~ Dr. Willard Evans

Eco Boy and Yoga Girl had one, and only one thing in common, now that they were broken up and they hated each other and everything sucked.

They were both miserable.

When the present moment is happy and nice, it’s a facile, spiritual 101 kinda thing to say: Be present!

But when the going gets tough, most folks would rather be anywhere than the present moment.

There’s two ways for immature, beautiful people to avoid the present moment.

Eco Boy took the high road.

He cycled his miserable way up to The Pharm, and bought some organic Green Crack, and rode his less-miserable way back down to his house, and baked some brownies with banana mixed in.

Source: ivillage.com via Jennifer on Pinterest

Then, he sat in his living room butterfly chair and texted girls. This was the best part of breaking up.

The best part of breaking up…is Green Crack in your brownies.

The worst part was that he was alone, again, and he’d failed, again, and maybe he wasn’t cut out for the real thing and, just, the heavy sadness stuff.

But! The best part was he could date different women, and if he did so quickly he wouldn’t notice the cold sadness stuff, or have to learn from it. Learning usually involves work.

As an immature emotional infant, Eco Boy preferred playtime. So he texted Newbie Yoga Teacher, a 26 year old former sorority girl who’d left behind drinking and getting f*cked over for yoga pants and yoga mats in the back of her cheap SUV and a bad yoga teacher income and a Facebook Page where she quoted famous spiritual foreign people.

She didn’t reply. She always took a week to reply—she was a beautiful woman with a high, kind, sweet voice. She was a black belt first-degree expert in playing with boys like a cat plays with a tortured mouse. That’s okay, he thought, curled up in his sad chair. He’d get dinner with her in a week. Gotta think longterm.

The kitchen was starting to smell nice.

Next, he texted Snowboard Model, and she texted back quickly, she’d love to but she was busy. She was always busy. She had amazing style, and a sweet side, so he forgave her. On the con side, she drank too much, partied too much, was 23—beautiful, but a child.

He opened a bottle of organic, lady bug red wine and commenced drinking while he waited for the brownies. He downed a glass quickly, and poured another, smaller one. He felt so sorry for himself—he had so much to give, and no one wanted it.

He texted Literary Girl, but she lived in Macklemore Country, so there was no point. She texted back and brought a one-second smile to his face. He liked her. But he speedily smartphoned his way out of that happiness, just as he was trying to speed his way out of his sadness, and texted 80s Girl.

As Eco Boy happened to know, 80’s girl had just broken up with her 5-year-long good-looking hipster boyfriend. So she was free, and sad, too. ’80s Girl had bleached white shortcut straight hair and was in a band that played in a no-name bar and they’d dated, once, sorta, a few years back.

“Okay yes let’s just watch a movie…”, and she texted a bunch of emoticons.

He texted back: “Let’s watch Room with a View or Godfather or I got Sherlock on Netflix Inst? Or Dead Poets, ever seen that?” This was all for show; he knew if she came they’d watch five minutes and then make out.

“I got my brothers password HBO u seen Gilrs?,” she replied.

“Yah I like it watched a few of em. Well figure out when here just come.”

“ok :)”

And she rang his old bell 20 minutes later, looking happy and nervous and hot. And he invited her in and they went to the old dark kitchen and she helped him scoop the brownies out, even though they weren’t quite baked. And they went to the sunroom and curled up and watched Terminator on his big Apple display. And they slathered and slobbered their way through half the pan, and then, sugar high and high otherwise, fell asleep on each other on his bed. He drooled on her shoulder, a little bit.

They woke only to go pee and drink lots of water and watch 30 more minutes of Terminator. “This reminds me of being, like, 10 and watching this with my best friend Blond Boy.” Then, the Terminator still terminating, looking progressively more fucked up, they turned their eyes away from the scene where Schwarzenegger pulls an eye out of his effed up face.

And she remonstrated “Ew!,” and her face came into to his and his gruff face came down to her pink lips and they started making out. It was delicious.

And not only did he feel a wonderful, temporary sort of joy, he couldn’t remember the sadness and confusion and hurt and all that bullshit, just now. She was like a big Tylenol. And she put her hands in his sharp-cut dark hair and she put her hands on his pants and he pulled her tank top up and caressed her naked European ribs and torso and small breasts. She wore tight bright turquoise pants and he didn’t bother to take them off. He just wanted to make out and feel happy and high and go to sleep. He wanted to light up the room that was his mind and drown out the sad sounds of broken heartedness.

For he had loved Yoga Girl, he was pretty sure…he wasn’t thinking clearly, but he’d definitely either loved her or thought he loved her, or truly loved what wasn’t really her, or  …he’d definitely loved the idea of loving her.

She was easy to fall in love at.

~

And so while Eco Boy distracted the present moment with fun, Yoga Girl, perhaps surprisingly, took the low road.

She didn’t get high, she fell down the rabbit hole. She didn’t fall fast…she just floated down, down, down. Down through the memories

of their good times in bed,

of his charming smile,

of his stupid handsome dark moustache,

of their good times at the golden bar or the golden restaurant or the golden trails or the golden future they’d never now have.

For in her sadness, her loss, her self-pity, she painted everything they’d done together in translucent gold, and without waiting for nirvana to dry, she cried. She sat on the toilet, lid down, and just sat there, and looked at her thoughts as they spun and climbed and crumbled, but never fell away to reveal her simple, vulnerable nakedness below.

She didn’t feel broken hearted…well she did, but she buried that simple sadness with storyline, with what soon became her familiar depression.

She’d always had three friends: boredom, she’d been born with. A rich girl, given everything, she’d never appreciated anything. And so her second friend, consumption, which included falling in love, had kept her company through the years. But when those two friends failed her, she was left with depression. A cousin of death, depression was always happy to hold her tight, cold, hungry.

But this time—perhaps it was the gap in the bathroom curtain showing the big orange-streetlight-lit snowflakes as they fell and settled…she didn’t want to fall all the way down the rabbit hole. She didn’t like her three friends—they’d never really cared for her. They’d only really ever made her…dependent upon them, like dealers.

And so, wearing only a thin gold and red, and green and purple, but mostly navy blue and white satin kimono, she walked outside her little upstairs apartment, into the painfully cold snow.

And the pain was pleasure, for she felt it, instead of her thoughts.

And she walked into the street outside, and the wind chilled her, rattling her perfect white teeth, and the chill was delightful, for it was reality chilling her, not her money, or her lost loves, or her deep dark thoughtstumble.

And she began to run, cinching her kimono tight. And she ran and suddenly she jumped, and slid, and whooped, and cried…cried with hopeless joy, like a school girl kicking a red rubber ball at a boy on a wall.

And it was night and it was snowing and there were no cars on her side street. It was cold and gold (thanks, orange streetlights) and she began to cry hot tears, warm tears, cold tears by the time they reached her chin. But she was so happy…perhaps now, finally, at the venerable age of 26, she could begin to live life.

Suddenly, nearly kneeling in the middle of the street, she realized she must look crazy. And she smiled, a deeply sane smile, she perhaps for the first time, ever, smiled at herself, and at her life, and at her troubled and sad but unburied heart. And she ran home, quickly, but head up, her face catching the cold flakes and melting them. And she tiptoed up her fire escape, taking care not to slip. And she shook and rattled as she turned the cold old doorknob, and she closed the door and ran to the bathroom and ran a hot bath, and closed and locked the door, and released the kimono off her pale pink shoulders, and sat in the grateful water even as it ran, and hugged herself, and shivered and cried.

And as the steam rose about her it finished cleansing her of a life of selfish privilege.

She’d lucked into reality, that night, having no other real choice—having run the road of self-distraction so many times she was sick of walking it.