Reflections on a Shitty Saturday, or: Why I was Sobbing in Barnes and Noble, or: Plummeting to a Whole New Low

In my last post, I worked hard to focus on the positives of my current life situation, and I’m glad I did. I enjoyed writing that post and I felt tremendously good when I was finished with it. But the truth is, I created this blog as a place to complain about things with the thought that if I complain here, I will be less apt to drive my few remaining friends away with my infinite self-pity. So, in the true spirit of Mona A. Monzano, I present to you a complaint-filled recollection of my Saturday:

I  planned to go visit my parents this weekend because Saturday was Chili Night in my home town. Chili Night is a significant social and cultural event for the good people of Southern West Virginia that consists of everyone in Raleigh county walking around what is left of downtown Beckley and eating all kinds of chili. I haven't missed one in years. So I pack my bag on Thursday night and plan to make the three hour drive from Morgantown to Beckley on Friday evening, because an old friend is coming to Morgantown on Friday afternoon and I want to spend some time with her before I leave.

By noon on Friday, however, the weather is ridiculously bad. The sky is gray, it is raining, and it is barely 40 degrees. I decide not to go to Beckley because it isn't worth forty dollars in gas and six hours in the car to attend a bleak, dreary, rainy chili night. A problem though: it is also 40 degrees in my house in Morgantown because we can't get the furnace’s pilot light lit and have no heat. My solution to this problem: spend Saturday evening in the warm, pleasantly-lit, mood music filled face of the evil corporation Barnes and Noble.

When I arrived at B and N I head straight for the new fiction section. I am already feeling sort of blah and I'm not about to challenge and depress myself with real literature. There on the shelf I see something that I sort of wish I hadn’t: a new Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants book.

The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants books have been a source of emotional turmoil for me since I began the series at fifteen. My relationship with them is very very complicated.

Firstly, there is the obvious: They are mockable. The name of the series itself is corny, and the concept is sort of corny and they are the punchline of many a slightly misogynistic joke. Then, in 2005, they made a movie adaption, which was poorly-cast and horrendously corny. I hate and loathe this movie because, in addition to being terrible, it gives people who didn’t read the books the idea that they were cornier than they actually are.

Because yes, they are sort of corny, but they are also sweet, earnest, and innocent, and Ann Brashares does a decent job of portraying the multi-dimensionality of being a young, middle class, American female. And I enjoyed reading the books, even though I myself normally mock similar titles.

Secondly, though, I have a less intuitive problem with these books. This problem stems from own social insecurities, as so many of my problems do. It’s like this: the four principle characters in the Traveling Pants books are best girlfriends since birth. Their friendship continues through high school and college, and they even live together post-college. I am not good at friendship maintenance. I have maybe two lifelong friends, and am I no longer in contact with most of my high school crowd. I’m sure a lot of people have the same problem, but still, reading about these everlasting gal pals kind of bums me out.

So, anyway, I couldn’t resist the fifth and final (?) installment of this bothersome but addictive little series, so I picked it up and searched for a private corner of B and N to read it in (because I did not want anybody to see me reading it (because I was embarrassed)).

And SPOILER ALERT! But this was not the light tale of everlasting friendship that I signed up for. The alternative film maker girlfriend kills herself! By jumping into the ocean! In Greece! Within the first sixty pages!

So I’m already feeling kind of sad about my own lack of everlasting friendships, and then here I am, in a remote corner of Barnes of Noble at 10 pm on a Saturday night, mourning the sudden death of a fictional character that I’ve known and loved since I was fifteen. And crying uncontrollably.

I only got to read about 100 pages because Barnes and Noble closes at 11. So I went home to my empty and freezing house and ate scrambled eggs and streamed Party Down on Netflix while wearing a winter coat.

And I don’t even know how the book ends, but there is always next Saturday.

Edited to add that tonight I realized that I wouldn't have been able to eat chili anyway, because I became a vegetarian this summer. So good call staying in Morgantown, despite the cold and house and the Traveling Paints trauma.