Unreasonable

When we were younger, Amy and I used the word unreasonable an awful lot. Everything was unreasonable. He was unreasonable, she was unreasonable, it was unreasonable. There was no logic to anything. Things happened without cause, without discernible reason, against sound judgment.

This is the first thing I think about today when I'm on the phone with my mother. I'm thinking about this, this word--unreasonable--because I am crying. Crying and trying not to be heard. It's hard to tell exactly why I'm crying because, really, there's nothing to cry about. What my mother is talking about isn't scandalous or appalling. All she wants me to do is come to a bar for the Superbowl, eat some buffet, watch the commercials, meet a boy she thinks I'd like, a boy who will just happen to be at this bar with the killer Superbowl buffet.

It's the last part that throws me for a loop.

"It's like a date!" she says brightly, as if this will somehow win me over.

It has the exact opposite effect. My stomach clenches. I get angry. I tell her I have plans already, plans that involve me wearing sweatpants all day, plans that involve me eating molten brownies and stuffed crescent rolls and my favorite pizza from my favorite pizzeria. I stress the importance of the stuffed crescent rolls. I tell her dad and I have made these plans, and they are unshakable.

She laughs. "Your father?" she asks. "Your father is watching the Superbowl? What planet is this?"

This doesn't make me any less angry, but I can recognize the anger is completely unreasonable. I have no idea why I'm feeling the way I do.

"Come on," she says. "You really should meet this guy. He's so sweet. And it's really hard to organize a time where we can get you two together. Who knows how long it will be until we can get this to happen again?"

And there it is: pressure and guilt all stacked against me. Suddenly it doesn't matter about my plans. I should be ditching them for what my mother thinks is the opportunity of a lifetime. It's like a date! she'd chirped. I can see it in my head: a crowded bar, all my mother and her boyfriend's friends--people I don't know--the noise, the jostling for drinks. I can see me and this boy standing close together because it will be impossible to hear over the blaring football calls and people shrieking Go! Go! Go!

If I don't like him, I'm stuck in a bar for the rest of the football game. Stuck, stuck, stuck. It makes me feel claustrophobic just thinking about it--another unreasonable feeling. But then I tap into the most unreasonable feeling of them all: sadness. I start crying--soft enough so she can't hear. I don't know what's wrong with me. I don't want my mother to be setting me up on things that resemble dates. I don't want to go into anything blind. Two weeks ago I made the decision that I was never going to do it again--this after a date my uncle passed off on me, someone he thought would be just so perfect for me. The boy, while nice, was not even close to what I want or need right now, and I had to do an awkward dance to get myself out of the next date he wanted to go on. After I lied my way out of a second dinner, I couldn't get out of bed I felt so awful, so evil, so shallow and mean. It didn't help that all my male friends, after hearing my reasons that he and I should never be together, asked, "Was he attractive?" which I had to answer, and they didn't like my answer. "You're shallow," they told me. "You should've given him a second chance. You just didn't like him because he didn't look like a frat boy. That was a shitty thing to do."

But what did they want me to do? I told them there was no way I would ever take my clothes off in front of this boy, so where would that leave me? What type of relationship would that be? Should I just lie to myself, pretend, go ahead with it, close my eyes, pray it'll be done soon?

I felt bad enough myself--after all, he was so nice! So sweet! Trying so hard! Why couldn't I have just liked him? Why couldn't I just reach inside and manually flick some switch to override my ambivalence? And when my boy friends rolled their eyes and called me shallow it made me want to drink my way into a ditch. They confirmed it: I was a shitty person.

Now my mother is telling me to just come on, to come to the bar, to give this guy a chance. She's sure I'll love him. Isn't this what I want? Don't I want to meet a nice boy? Well, here he is. Waiting for me. Break your plans, she says. Come see what happens.

But I want to tell her how messed up I am, how I don't understand why I am so upset, why I am crying, why I am angry, why I want to go back to bed. I want to yell at her. I want to go to bed and wake up in 2003.

Back then, there were boys who liked me, and I was not afraid of anything. I went head-on into something dangerous and stupid, and I said yes! yes! yes! I'll be okay, this is going to be fine, let's try it, let's go.

Back then things weren't hard. I just opened my eyes and there were boys all around. They were cute. They thought I was cute. They thought I was interesting--a little crazy, but fun, too. They wanted to spend time with me. And so that's exactly what happened.

But now I feel damaged, dried up, a little off my game. Relying on uncles and mothers for boys seems wrong and, ultimately, like a really bad idea.

Still, it's unreasonable to feel this way, and while the silence over the phone sits ugly and dark I say the word over and over in my head. Unreasonable. I am unreasonable, unreasonable, unreasonable.

What happens next is predictable: my silence irritates my mother. My unwillingness to break the plans I've made with my father also irritates her. "He'll understand," she insists. "This is important."

But now she is angry with me, and I am angry with her and myself. And I stay that way for the next hour and through the phone call to Amy and the conversation with my father. I stay that way until the guilt eats me alive like some sort of parasite--like a tapeworm twisting its way through my insides--and I pick up the phone again, call her back, tell her I'll think about, tell her I'll call her back with my final answer in a couple hours.