This past holiday week I went to visit a guy I’ve been long-distancely dating for a few months. While I was at his apartment, I felt a full-blown nervous breakdown coming on. A what-am-I-doing-with-my-life-I’m-going-to-die-alone-my-thighs-look-fat-in-everything-I-wear kind of breakdown. Not good.
I tried the standard think-about-nice-things-like-puppy-dogs-Swedish-fish-and-Paul-Rudd’s-delicious-smile route, but it wasn’t working. Shit! I was on the verge of a serious nervous breakdown in front of a boy who wanted to have sex with me and didn’t yet know that I’m crazy. What’s a girl to do?
Here are a few suggestions:
1. Go! Go get a coffee, go for a run, just go somewhere. This will give you enough time to call your girlfriends and vent, freakout, potentially vomit, and then compose yourself before heading back in. Whatever you do though, do NOT call your mother. Although she is the appropriate and perfect person to talk you down in a time of need, the second you call her it’ll make it real, you’ll start to cry, your eyes will get puffy, and you’ll have to make up some excuse about being allergic to the coffee or getting stung in the eye by a bee or seeing a deer get hit by a car on the way home.
2. Tell him that you have a stomachache and you need to be alone for a few minutes. He’ll hear “diarrhea” and give you all the time you need. This will give you a moment to sit on the toilet with your head in your hands and reflect about what happened to your life. Tell him it’s the malaria pills, the flu, Eboli, whatever…just don’t tell him it’s about him and/or that you’re emotionally unstable even though it probably is and/or you probably are.
3. Pretend to lose something important. The keys to your apartment, your dead grandmother’s ring, your little brother in a freak bear-mauling accident…anything that could affect you directly and immediately and that would legitimately cause you to freak out. That way, you can continue to have your quarter life crisis but he’ll think you’re having a reasonable emotional response.
Questions? Thoughts? Concerns?
Lindsey Gentile is an actor, writer, comedienne, and all-around gal-about-town. Every Thursday, she reports from the front lines of single life in NYC. Check out her website HERE. Need more Big City Siren? No problem.
