"where is the substack"
-all of my friends the last month
i’m coming to you LIVE from my temporary temp job in midtown, where i’ve been for september so far, and will be for the rest of the month. my dearest readers, it’s been a hot minute since i’ve delivered the musings and mutterings that you all so kindly crave, and to that i say: i am so sorry! i love writing, and i was in a bit of a creative rut that i seemingly have emerged from. so, welcome back to me and to you. i’ve gained some new readers/subscribers, and to that i say: welcome, and thank you! i highly recommend you start from my first post and then make your way over to this one. i absolutely said on my august 16th post that i would return to posting here, and i did anything but that. let’s dive into the updates regarding dating, weddings, breakups, and the absolute shit-show of my mind when i’m devoid of a routine and job.
job updates
circling back to my temporary temp job: my good friend and fellow actor juan (new character alert!) booked an out-of-town contract in vermont and works at a property management office doing office assistant type work. i quite literally had one phone conversation with his boss regarding covering for him, and here i am. it was waaay more fun when juan trained me and we were able to work together, but i am incredibly appreciative of the fact that 1. i have somewhere to go every weekday 2. the work is quite mindless and easy, which has provided some welcome reprieve from the mental toll and toxicity that my previous work environment wreaked upon me.
also, i do make more money here than on unemployment, and that alone is worth it to me. the folks that work here are extremely entertaining-naturally, i’ve gravitated toward the 50-year old gay man who believes that in a past life, he drowned on the titanic. so of course we’re friends!
i am very set on being re-employed full-time on a salary (and with benefits) by the end of this year, and i am confident that will happen for me. but please, for the love of god, please stop asking me “how the job hunt is going”, because i’d rather bash my head into a brick wall and swim in the east river than answer that question. i love all of my well-meaning friends dearly, so if you’re reading this and love me, cut it out!
weddings + wedding etiquette
all my gals are getting married! and there are so many activities involved outside of just attending the wedding itself! i will be in sf next week for a bachelorette, and very excited to see my dearest friends and *relax* a bit. a mere 2.5 weeks later, i’ll be back for her wedding!! in february, i’ll be in the philippines for ten days for another wedding. in april, my sister is getting married. in august, another friend is getting married. i’ve only been to two friends’ weddings in my entire adult life, so this is all very exciting for me! it can seemingly feel like a lot of commitment and work, but mostly these events all add up to be expensive, and it’s nice to have friends that don’t expect you to attend every single shower, bachelorette, etc. even BETTER that my friends all plan far enough in advance that i can properly budget/get creative/use credit card points where applicable.
i feel that the etiquette surrounding all of this is to know your limitations: whether financially or just socially, and communicate those potential limitations transparently to your friends who are getting married! my friend who is getting married in the philippines is encouraging to “bring whoever” as a plus one, whether it’s a friend she’s never met, your mom, or a friends-with-benefits situation. i love that about her-she just wants to have fun and have a huge party essentially. not everyone is like that, though!
this leads me to my more specific conundrum surrounding plus-ones as they pertain to dating. let’s say i started dating someone today, and by april we were in a full-blown relationship, just in time for my sister’s wedding. that’s seven months of knowing someone, and probably five to six months of actually being in a relationship. at what point are you “allowed” to bring them to a wedding? do wedding dates imply that the relationship is serious enough to be end-game? when you include the additional layer of my family being arab-muslim, there are even more questions to be considered. when i was younger and all my cousins got married, no one in our family would dream of bringing a significant other as a plus-one. but honestly that’s partially because they would all have been secret relationships.
i went with my ex-boyfriend to his cousin’s catholic wedding and it didn’t feel like a big deal at all. we had been together for over a year at that point. maybe the stakes felt lower because i was the plus-one? i actually could go on and on about this, but i think if we’re using the example of my sister’s wedding, it’s absolutely and unequivocally up to the bride/groom/person getting married to make the final call on plus-ones. i have seen countless reddit posts where people ask if anyone can photoshop someone out of a wedding photo, and always want to know the story there. meanwhile, there are so many men on hinge who are “looking for a plus-one to a wedding coming up”…that is where i draw the line. my hot take is that a best-friend who will be in your life forever is a much more trustworthy and socially acceptable plus-one to a wedding. again, ultimately i would defer to the person who is actually getting married if you sincerely have concerns about plus-one etiquette. i’d love to hear what everyone else has to say on the matter.
breakups
i want every one to break up. but actually! my bestie got dumped a couple of weeks ago, and a few weeks before that, my other good friend broke up with his girlfriend. nine times out of ten, breakups are the BEST thing that can happen to a person, because it’s such a clear indicator that the relationship was simply not it! a farce! a sham! a joke! a nightmare! the days, weeks, and months after a breakup are some of the most transformative, and as someone who has gone through it in a very serious way, i love listening to these two friends on the phone/facetime almost daily yap away about all of their respective realizations, delusions, and experience the stages of grief in real time.
when i was in the same position, i was eternally grateful for all of my friends who were seemingly on call 24/7 to provide me validation and/or tough love. a special shoutout to olivia, who exhibited the same type of tough love on a much more intense scale (see this post to get a taste), and subconsciously empowered me to be that same type of friend to the people in my life who are experiencing the aftermaths of their individual breakups. i will never judge or condescend, but i will not sugarcoat, nor will i enable destructive, unproductive behaviors. all of the advice and “wisdom’ i impart to these friends are all drawn from the experience i had in the months following my own dramatic breakup in the summer of 2022. the themes i’ve consistently come back to are:
-selfishly pour into yourself. even if it feels disingenuous at first, fill your time with routine, new hobbies, a meditation/journaling process, etc. eventually you will find that you enjoy some or all of these activities as you rediscover yourself.
-stop pretending you know what your ex is thinking about, what they are doing, etc. and please stop psychoanalyzing their social media posts and post-breakup behaviors! it’s a waste of time, and you’re also probably wrong.
-time heals everything. LOL. ask parker how many times i’ve told him this, and he said it makes him suicidal. but it’s true! there is no possible way to know *when* you will feel okay, but one day you will! healing isn’t some sort of magical amusement park that we “go to”, but every passing day is another day that you are doing a little bit better.
-feel all of your feelings, but not too much. there’s a fine line, but i’ve learned that when we intellectualize too much, we give way too much power to the “thought” or the the “thing”, and risk being in a perpetual state of victimhood and madness.
-become insufferably comfortable with being alone. so much so, that with each heartache you become less debilitated by the daunting curse of breaking up again.
-decenter your relationship! your partner should not be the center of your world! continue to nurture your passions, your friendships, and especially your relationship with yourself. your significant other should add to your life, not derail it. my friends (myself included) have been guilty of disappearing once they are boo’d up, because all they want to do is hang out with their significant other. it’s giving co-dependency…and while i’m here, can i just proliferate over the fact that i simply cannot stand when someone’s significant other is constantly invited to every single event. enough of this, i beg!! if i want to have some quality friend time, i am truly so sorry, but your person does not need to be there. there is a time and a place. i promise you i’m not the only one who hates this.
-read “when things fall apart” by pema chodron. more than once.
as a bonus, being on the other end of this over the last few weeks has been so helpful to me in my own relationship to myself and to dating! unfortunately, clichés are true: like we really do accept the love we think we deserve. some things really are not meant to be, and maintaining your standards shows how much love and respect you have for yourself and your valuable time. and for the love of god, get off the apps and get into therapy if you aren’t ready to date. get into therapy in GENERAL. i want so much better for my friends and for myself when it comes to relationships and dating. anyway, i’m kind of obsessed with breakups and like a lot of my friends better when they are single, call me crazy.
my own lil dating updates, strap in!
i alluded to things ending with mr. artistic around a month ago, and thank goodness they did! we were “seeing each other” infrequently since june, and about halfway through this adventure, his teeth crowns were falling out, then the temporary crowns were falling out, then his car wouldn’t start-all of which are events that are totally valid in being stressful. however, it seemed that this man could simply not handle the stressors while also maintaining a steady stream of communication with me. for a 39-year-old, it seemed odd that the dental issues specifically seemed to span WEEKS…but i digress and am definitely projecting my love of the dentist onto how i thought mr. artistic should have been behaving. needless to stay, when the momentum was lost, i started to get the ick.
the last and final time we saw each other, we went to a museum. immediately upon arrival he told me one of his temporary crowns had fallen out (again…) and he was in some dental discomfort, but he didn’t want to cancel on me. listen…i thought this was so sweet at first, but upon reflecting, it was actually kind of insane that he did that, especially because he was in a bad mood the rest of the date. he also stepped on my damn toe and broke off a piece of my toenail (fully bleeding) that just finished healing. i also have a gel pedicure so that somehow made it worse. the main event of the museum visit we had planned was to go inside the planetarium and watch the show, which were separate tickets that needed to be purchased. the museum staff member was my king, because he essentially clocked mr. artistic for only paying $2 for the pay-what-you can museum tickets, so buying the planetarium tickets wasn’t that big of a deal. there’s a bitttt to unpack here:
mr. artistic being a cheap ass. i am a huge proponent of the nyc resident perk of “pay-what-you can”…but $2 feels insulting.
the fact that the staff member definitely caught the vibe that mr. artistic seemed annoyed by the separate ticket needed for the planetarium! i love the staff member for it, and for also embarrassing mr. artistic in front of me :)
let’s fast forward to the end of the date. we got dinner, his exposed tooth nerve was becoming increasingly uncomfortable, i invited him over, he said yes, then quickly changed his mind because of the tooth, i was super relieved because he was so moody anyway, and we parted ways. we made some tentative plans to see each other again later that week once his tooth and car situation was resolved. i gave him some space, and then checked in on him a couple of days later. so began two weeks of the most vague, minimal communication from this man that i felt like i had to beat out of him. the first response from him:
“i apologize in advance. i’m going through a weird time.”
i was, as it were, waaay too forgiving and understanding, which speaks to the larger issue of women feeling the need to be the “cool” or “agreeable” girl. spare me…i could write a book on this! i was thinking that if i was patient and chill, he’d be ~so appreciative"~ of me once he got out of his funk. spoiler alert: it wasn’t a funk. the man had so many red flags from date number one! i present to you the next three responses from him via screenshots. please note the time stamps.
dear readers…these hellish screenshots should speak for themselves. but i want to point out one major issue: had i not texted this man after five days of radio silence, i doubt i would have heard from him at all. repeat after me: you should not have to coax a response out of someone or beg for baseline communication. last october, a nearly identical situation happened between me and a 36-year-old man i had been seeing. i got a text just like this after TWO WEEKS of radio silence, but instead the content was “i’m severely depressed and my new anti-depressants aren’t working, i def can’t date right now, i’m so sorry.”
i don’t take issue with men being unwell, i was on lexapro for the entire duration of my twenties and am a huge advocate for medication as a life-changing tool. what i take issue with is men on dating apps, or out in the world who do not possesses the emotional intelligence to know the difference between being ready to date and being ready for therapy. get. off. the. apps. i am not here to be the collateral damage in your “realizations” that you “should not be dating anyone right now.” conversely, i am no longer tolerating horrible communication when there are action! items! needing to be addressed!
since this nightmare situation ended, i have gone on two dates with two different people. the first one was with a man that is still very much on my radar, but guess what? he told me that he’d love to see me again now that he’s finished with a two week project, so i told him when i was free on friday, asked him to let me know what days worked for him and he…heart-reacted to the message. now sir...the action item and lack of follow-through in a timely manner is unacceptable. i won’t accept this type of behavior! why am i now in yet another perpetual state of “will he respond?”
now, if we do go on a second date and it leads to a third, this is the opportunity for me to be super honest with him about communication expectations. and if we have different expectations/styles, i’d love to see if that’s something that two mature adults can figure out and talk about without feeling shame or embarrassment on my end for expressing my needs. this is the current *thing* that i am working on. with mr. artistic, i wish i had just cut things off instead of contribute to the process of them dragging out.
the other date was with a 28-year-old who had never had an oyster and whose sister is currently a cop. we also got dinner per his suggestion, which i never do for a first date. there was nothing inherently wrong with him, i just didn’t feel an attraction and he felt like a boy versus a man.
throughout it all…i have not given up hope. i still think my soulmate is out there (preferably in brooklyn, in therapy, and has his own apartment). it cannot be danya’s dating diaries if i stop dating! although it is a little difficult to navigate going on dates as an unemployed gal on a budget…but not for long of course! i wonder what will happen once i do meet my soulmate…will danya’s dating diaries just evolve into danya’s daily diaries? i love writing and it has unexpectedly helped me in my craft as a musical theatre performer. this might be a puzzle piece in my one-woman show…who knows! but do not fret, i’ll keep dating, writing, and entertaining my friends and readers in my cute little jester outfit for the foreseeable future.