involved an event whereby I was going to sit for a couple of hours and talk about my terrible, no good, very bad love life. I wanted to talk more with Annie about it, but I was a little bit afraid of her. Plus Annie was sleeping like a baby. She would do that for at least four hours at a time, then she would wake up and pace on the back porch with a cigarette. Chain-smoking had become a new addiction for her, but I was happy to let her substitute the lesser of two evils. Cigarettes didn’t make her steal cars.
I did my hair for the first time in a month on Sunday morning, curling it under at the ends. I willed myself not to look at Floozy’s Twitter feed. I plucked a few stray eyebrows, vowing to get them waxed next time I went into the city, and put on what I thought was rehab chic: skinny jeans with a cozy Tucker cardigan. Comfort was something I imagined people in rehab would embrace.
I checked her Facebook, just once.
Noon came and went without anyone arriving. And 12:20 and 12:30, and finally at 12:45 the doorbell rang. Then it just kept ringing so I finally had to leave it open. I had assembled every chair in the house in a circle in the living room. Thirty seats in all. And by 1:00 p.m. they were all filled. Sure, everyone was a little late, but they had come. A lot of people had come. Some of the women I knew. I recognized Olivia as one of Megan’s many cousins. (Megan’s family is very Irish Catholic and by her own admission they breed like rabbits.) Cameron was a girl I had gone to college with whom I had e-mailed toward the end of the week when I got spooked that no one would show. We saw each other socially and tried to have a drunk Sunday brunch once or twice a year, and each time we met she regaled me with stories about another man who had done her wrong whom she desperately wanted to marry and have babies with. One of the women I didn’t recognize was an enormous Indian girl, who introduced herself as Prithi. She was swathed in several of her own long cardigans. (I gave myself a pat on the back for our shared sartorial sense.) Prithi practically had to waddle to her seat.
I got up in front of the group the way Joe had at the AA meeting.
“Welcome to the very first meeting of Love Addicts Anonymous,” I said, my voice shaking a little from nerves. I balled the ends of my cardigan up in my hands and kneaded them across my sweaty palms. “This is a safe place.” Joe had instructed me to use that introduction even though it sounded a little creepy, along the lines of “show me on the doll where he touched you.” “We’re all here because we recognize a problem in ourselves and we want to try to fix it. I think women give themselves a bad rap. We’re always competing with one another instead of helping each other out, when we all go through the same things. This is a chance for us to get together and help one another through a tough time.” Looking at the hopeful and somewhat needy expressions of the women in the audience gave me a sense of confidence. I felt stronger now and more sure of myself.
“Let’s face it; our friends and family are sick of hearing us whine about our crappy relationships. There are some things we do that are so crazy we don’t even tell our friends, and then we feel guilty about it because it’s our secret crazy. All those fake e-mail accounts we create to send one last message and times we’ve just happened to end up in the same bar because we’ve stalked a status update—that’s shit no one likes to admit to anyone else. Now we’re in a space where we have license to whine and admit the secret crazy, and the goal is that by talking about these things we won’t make the same mistake twice. We need to break our cycle of love addiction. We too can be those carefree women who live and love and go on to love again without going to a dark place.” In my head whenever I pictured this kind of woman she was always like one of those ladies in the Tampax commercials who
I did my hair for the first time in a month on Sunday morning, curling it under at the ends. I willed myself not to look at Floozy’s Twitter feed. I plucked a few stray eyebrows, vowing to get them waxed next time I went into the city, and put on what I thought was rehab chic: skinny jeans with a cozy Tucker cardigan. Comfort was something I imagined people in rehab would embrace.
I checked her Facebook, just once.
Noon came and went without anyone arriving. And 12:20 and 12:30, and finally at 12:45 the doorbell rang. Then it just kept ringing so I finally had to leave it open. I had assembled every chair in the house in a circle in the living room. Thirty seats in all. And by 1:00 p.m. they were all filled. Sure, everyone was a little late, but they had come. A lot of people had come. Some of the women I knew. I recognized Olivia as one of Megan’s many cousins. (Megan’s family is very Irish Catholic and by her own admission they breed like rabbits.) Cameron was a girl I had gone to college with whom I had e-mailed toward the end of the week when I got spooked that no one would show. We saw each other socially and tried to have a drunk Sunday brunch once or twice a year, and each time we met she regaled me with stories about another man who had done her wrong whom she desperately wanted to marry and have babies with. One of the women I didn’t recognize was an enormous Indian girl, who introduced herself as Prithi. She was swathed in several of her own long cardigans. (I gave myself a pat on the back for our shared sartorial sense.) Prithi practically had to waddle to her seat.
I got up in front of the group the way Joe had at the AA meeting.
“Welcome to the very first meeting of Love Addicts Anonymous,” I said, my voice shaking a little from nerves. I balled the ends of my cardigan up in my hands and kneaded them across my sweaty palms. “This is a safe place.” Joe had instructed me to use that introduction even though it sounded a little creepy, along the lines of “show me on the doll where he touched you.” “We’re all here because we recognize a problem in ourselves and we want to try to fix it. I think women give themselves a bad rap. We’re always competing with one another instead of helping each other out, when we all go through the same things. This is a chance for us to get together and help one another through a tough time.” Looking at the hopeful and somewhat needy expressions of the women in the audience gave me a sense of confidence. I felt stronger now and more sure of myself.
“Let’s face it; our friends and family are sick of hearing us whine about our crappy relationships. There are some things we do that are so crazy we don’t even tell our friends, and then we feel guilty about it because it’s our secret crazy. All those fake e-mail accounts we create to send one last message and times we’ve just happened to end up in the same bar because we’ve stalked a status update—that’s shit no one likes to admit to anyone else. Now we’re in a space where we have license to whine and admit the secret crazy, and the goal is that by talking about these things we won’t make the same mistake twice. We need to break our cycle of love addiction. We too can be those carefree women who live and love and go on to love again without going to a dark place.” In my head whenever I pictured this kind of woman she was always like one of those ladies in the Tampax commercials who
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