I am humming a Rhianna song as I head for my car, swinging canvas bags dangling from my hands, proud that I remembered them. Grateful to be home from a work trip, I am headed to the store to stock my fridge, my favorite grounding activity after travel. My happy hum drifts away as I press my keyless fob to my car and nothing happens.
The battery is totally dead. I glance from the fob to the car and back. I consider my options as unlocking the car with the key will trip the alarm. I shrug, impatient and seeing no other option. I try to recall how to disable the alarm as I unlock the door with the key. 20 minutes later, I am honk-honking my way down the 163, headed directly toward the auto shop, alarm piercing and relentless. My attempts to disable the alarm, following the proper sequence of door closing and turning the car on and off, have failed. My attempts at finding disable alarm in the Honda handbook – futile. I gaze squarely ahead, unwilling to make eye contact with the surely bewildered faces of passers by. When I finally make the turn into the repair shop, car alarm blaring all the while, a mechanic approaches my door. As I turn off the ignition, I notice the amused look on his face. The alarm continues to blare. I glance up at him and shout over the alarm, “Subtle entrance, huh?” Not missing a beat, he returns, “I bet I know why you’re here.”
I want to be the kind of person who always remembers the canvas bags and knows with 100% certainty that the meat I buy comes from animals that were treated humanely. The person who takes her keyless fob to get serviced the moment it randomly stops working. The person who reads her bookshelf full of books on equity in education instead of watching the Real Housewives of Orange County. The girl who goes to the gym before going out to happy hour. I want to take responsibility for every part of my life. The truth is, sometimes I just choose the least complicated thing. Like now, for instance. I sit in Starbucks after giving up on finding my writer’s group across the street at the local coffee shop. On this hundred-degree day, I was easily lured away with prospects of air conditioning and a pumpkin spice latte. I want to be the girl who will sweat it out rather than participate in big business, but fuck it. Here I sit.
I let out a long breath as I watch the passersby through the window, fast walking, intently focused on where they are headed. I wonder if it’s human nature to choose the uncomplicated. When it comes to dating, are there trade offs for choosing what’s easiest? I once read that the way you know you’re ready for a new relationship after a break up is when you can look back on the entire relationship and identify your part in the dynamics. What’s easiest is to blame the other person, I decide, eyes widening, head nodding in adamant agreement with myself. What’s difficult, I suppose, is stepping out of the victim role and looking at myself in all of it. Later over a glass of wine with a dear friend, I retell my blaring alarm fob story. Brow furrowed, she takes a bite of salad and innocently asks, “So it stopped working, just like that?” “Not exactly,” I begin as I take a sip of wine. We stare blankly at one another a moment before I add, “It’s been acting weird for like 2 years.” And we have a good laugh.
Later, as I lay in bed staring up at the ceiling, unopened book on gender equity beside me, I wonder about my part in the dysfunction and demise of past relationships. So often I have told myself that my part in the relationship was that I chose the wrong girl. The bad picker phenomenon, as referred to by some. But is it really taking responsibility for myself if I’m saying my only fault was not noticing what’s wrong with you? Is that just another way to deflect responsibility away from me and cozy on up in the victim seat?
Without this authentic owning-up on our part, I wonder if it is just a matter of time before we repeat the same relationship with a different person. So if I’m to truly move on and grow from my past relationship, my goal is to hold myself accountable while also holding Ex accountable. How can anyone ever truly separate that out? And really, why bother? Isn’t it easier to just blame it all on Ex? I’m reminded of something my professor said once in class, referring to the long-term investment of education: you can pay later or you can pay now, but either way, you’re gonna pay.
Too drained to devote any more thought in this direction, I sit up, pull my laptop into my lap and begin to write an article about justice. I write about a time I experienced a painful sense of betrayal and unfairness. I pause for a moment and wonder if, in my version of this story, this betrayal, I have taken the role of victim. If I can’t control what others do, how do I balance taking responsibility for all parts of my life, while holding others accountable for their actions? Where is the line between victim and taking responsibility for everything when it comes to relationships?
As my head begins to swim with confusion and anger at the ambiguity of it all, I find myself reaching for the remote and scrolling through my highly unfeminist, uneducated, stereotypical television program listings. Don’t judge.