My Toxic College Relationship, Conclusion

After graduating from college, I drove straight back to the west suburbs. What was supposed to be a three-month layover has dragged on more or less for nine years. Regardless, after that last encounter with Babs returning home felt cathartic; I knew our friendship was strained, and she wouldn't bother me in a part of the suburbs that she detested for vague reasons. (Her July 2006 visit was a disaster, but she already had a preexisting bone to pick with Downers Grove and Westmont.) We were still Facebook friends, but I felt no inclination to drop a private message, or leave a wall post, or even a solitary poke. The distance was geographical and emotional, palpable yet comfortable.

Babs reached out by DM in March 2008, three months after I graduated. It was a sincere apology but also a belated one; it seemed like she was finally doing something about her hair-trigger temper. She suggested meeting up over summer break, but with my work schedule and general lack of interest, I didn't take her up on the offer. Communication after this point was sporadic, the occasional email or Facebook message, and just that.

Even though I felt cool and collected, I was still struggling to move on. My inherent social awkwardness and lack of dating experience made asking women out a landmine of failure, and the handful of dates I went on went nowhere. I created an account on POF, but that was also a dead end. Babs continued her pattern of meeting guys of her particular type, getting bored and cheating on them, then dumping the cuckolded guy for the new slab of meat. Then this happened.

I was lethargic for days, and a phone conversation with Babs a few days later did little to console me. I thought it was strange that she would get engaged less than five months after meeting this guy, but knowing Babs' tendency to act on impulse and not thinking things out, I was almost certain the engagement would fail. Did she even know the guy? Indeed, it did fall apart and for a lot of the same reasons she dumped me: she clashed with her would-be mother-in-law, religious differences, her fickle tendencies. In our next Facebook chat, Babs implied that he was verbally abusive, and legal action was taken to prevent the two from ever encountering each other again.

Professionally, Babs was also fledgling. Her lifelong dream was to be a park ranger, or at least work in the U.S. Park Service in some capacity. Apparently, she had a job interview for a ranger position, but lost the job to a woman of color. Not only did Babs complain about affirmative action to me, but she also complained to the woman who conducted the interview... in person. (She was escorted out of the building.) Ultimately, she landed a gig working in a rehab facility for troubled teens, which was demanding and only sporadically fulfilling. From a distance, I worried if her temperament would be her undoing again.

I continued to maintain a distance. Our last real conversation was in July 2011; she wrapped up the late night chat by saying she wanted to see one of my improv shows someday. She loathed city driving, or being in urban areas in general, but I knew in that instance she meant well. At the same time, her hair-trigger temper was starting to spill into social media. On three occasions, I commented on a status update she posted, and she called my response pointless and idiotic. On the last of those occasions, she posted something about a sick grandmother, though it was unclear if she was talking about her own grandma or someone else's. She left a terse wall post clarifying that it wasn't her grandma, then unfriended me. I replied in defense, but I knew she wouldn't have read it. It was the last time I attempted to contact Babs. I knew she was overreacting (again) but this was the final straw. It was March 2012, six years and two months after we first met.

For some inexplicable reason, my sister is still in touch with Babs on Facebook. She claims they only talk about dogs, and only every now and then. I have asked my sister to sever ties with Babs, to no avail. On the one occasion when I dared to ask about her current whereabouts, my sister told me she moved to Dallas in 2014. Babs and I one had a dozen mutual friends; when I last looked at her profile two years ago, we were down to three. I was still friends with most of these people, and I wasn't the only one that get fed up with Babs. Maybe she was projecting her insecurities, maybe she had an as-yet-diagnosed case of borderline personality disorder. I'll never know and quite frankly, I don't care. It goes without saying that I have no intention to reconnect on my own volition.

So why am I sharing this story? In some ways, Babs is a cautionary tale; it took a lot of growing up and introspection to realize that abusive relationships may not necessarily be rotten at the surface. It was my first relationship and the one that provided the harshest learning experience. There is something cathartic about excising toxic people from your life, a person who may seem sweet or wayward on the surface who gradually exposes the worst attributes of their personality. I've moved on; I've been in relationships with other women, and I'm content without Babs in my life.

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My Toxic College Relationship, Part 3

Even though Babs was no longer dating Zak, she wanted to stay friends with the big doofus. This was much to the chagrin of her social circle as well as our mutual friends, who justifiably disdained the guy. Babs took it upon herself to organize Zak's birthday party; she corralled me, a friend visiting from home, and two friends that were local into taking Zak to the Bloomington Hooters. At his core, however Zak was a Christian and not a very worldly one; at the very last minute, he begged Babs to not at a risque restaurant that he knew next to nothing about. Our party ended up going to the Chuck E. Cheese's across the street. I was annoyed by the 11th hour change as everyone else, and implied to Babs that I never wanted to hang out with Zak again.

When I was dating Babs, we bonded over our mutual appreciation for the TV show "24." I had been watching almost from the beginning, but she jumped in at the start of Season/Day 4. We watched nearly all of Day 5 together, and didn't see any reason why not to do the same for Day 6. One night later in the season, we both had obligations on Monday and I agreed to record the show on my VCR. (It was 2007, and most college kids didn't have Tivo or a DVR.) To my chagrin, my roommate confused the VCR remote with the TV remote --he was trying to watch the Bulls game-- and it didn't record. I left the voice mail on Babs' phone, and ten minutes later she called back to tell me I was an idiot. Before I could defend myself, she hung up. Another ten minutes after that, she instant messaged me to apologize for overreacting. We watched "24" together a couple of times after that, but ended up watching the rest of the season separately.

In March 2007, I went on my first date since breaking up with Babs. I was training a new DJ at my college radio station, we struck up a conversation, and we agreed to meet for coffee. She wasn't interested in dating, but we ended up staying friends and we're still in touch. (I have a habit of staying friends with one-and-dones.) It was a dead end, but at least I was finally moving on. At that same time, to my secret relief Babs and I were finally starting to drift apart. She started dating another guy, and our schedules kept clashing. We both had summer jobs, and I had summer school as well, so we didn't see each other for several months. As summer transitioned into fall semester, we never hung out and our encounters grew more sporadic. Babs was dating yet another guy, and I felt no inclination to entertain her in my new dorm room. The temptation to tell her off was too much.

Even though Babs was fading from sight, what she left in her path still lingered around. One girl, a mutual friend that eventually got fed up with Babs, worked at the same college radio station that I did. I still ran into Lola and one of her other roommates on the quad. One day at the station, Zak called out of nowhere asking for help with a move. He wasn't the bullying Zak that I knew, but slightly defeated and still rather persistent. I said I would get back to him, and shortly afterwards I did something I should have a lot sooner: ask for the advice of my peers. I explained that he was the guy my ex dumped me for, and that he could be insufferable to be around, but seemed desperate to have someone help him move. The consensus of my co-workers was a resounding "hell no," and I left a voice mail telling him I was busy that Saturday.

The day before I graduated from ISU, I ran into Babs on the elevator at Watterson Towers. I was cleaning out my dorm room and carrying items down to my car, and she was going downstairs to get a snack. She informed me that she'd had a falling out with her latest roommate, a mutual friend of ours named Allison. For reasons unclear, Allison made Babs uncomfortable, so Babs decided to move into a single-bed room on the other side of campus. I blurted out "oh well, its not like you got along with any of your other roommates" (which was true), and when we got down to the lobby she bolted out of the elevator in a fury. A few minutes later, I was able to find to her in the lobby talking to some girl, but she was snappish and refused to accept my apology.

As of this writing, it was the last time I saw Babs in person.

(Part four next month.)

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My Toxic College Relationship, Part 2

A week or so ago, I wrote started writing a personal essay about "Babs," my college girlfriend. (To read part one before going forward, click here.)

A few hours after our one-on-one sitdown, Babs dropped a line on Yahoo Messenger to ask if I wanted to grab some ice cream. I agreed, not really knowing what to expect. However, I made the fatal mistake of misreading her last dispatch as "see you at five" instead of "see you in five." For once her quick temper was justified, and we did not speak to each other for about three weeks.

I figured the healthy thing to do was to not focus on our failed relationship. I went about my business with school and finding a job as if nothing happened. Out of the blue, I ran into Babs and her new paramour Zak --yes, no C in his first name-- waiting for an elevator at Watterson Towers. We first encountered Zak a few months earlier on Normal public transit; she randomly struck up a conversation with the guy, and I guess they had stayed in touch. I didn't think, however that he would be her rebound.

Babs had a history of dating guys that were the same physical type: north of six feet tall, pasty and paunchy. Growing up rural and an affinity for cowboy hats were a plus. I was well aware that I was an exception, because she said she was going through a "nerdy boy" phase. The guy she two-timed me with had a build similar to mine (slight and gawky) but her preference was big and lumbering.

After our five-second encounter in the lobby, Babs messaged me on YIM that night. She wanted to talk things out, but it became a rehash of her previous bullet points: she hated my mom, she judged my religious beliefs (or lack thereof), I was weak and immature. And yet, she still wanted to be friends. Since I thought there was an outside chance we might become friends with benefits --again, I was thinking with my pants-- I decided to give it a shot.

Two nights later, I was awoken by the landline in our dorm room. (Keep in mind, it was 2006.) Babs was in hysterics. Apparently, she was not getting along with her new roommate, a woman named Lola. The roommate was a Black Studies major and very independent, and as far as politics and personality went she was the total opposite of Babs. Apparently, they nearly came to blows late one Saturday, and Babs asked if she could sleep at my dorm. Again, I begrudgingly agreed.

Babs grew up in Park Forest, a diverse, blue-collar suburb just south of Chicago. In a town that was about 40% white, 30% black, and 30 % Latino, Babs had a unjustified contempt for the 60% of the population that wasn't "her kind." One time when we were dating, we took a day trip to Starved Rock National Park. As we were leaving, I had to stop her from running over to a Mexican family because they weren't "speaking American." There was another time we were watching the 6 o'clock news at her house, and upon watching a news story about a 12-year-old African-American had been murdered, Babs said the middle schooler was "probably asking for it." Deciding to live with someone as headstrong as Lola was an attempt to show people she wasn't a bigot, but her true colors showed almost immediately. Within two weeks, Brit had moved into a new dorm room with a Jewish roommate. (As near as I can tell, she was not anti-Semetic.)

I volunteered to help out with this awkward, uncomfortable move-out, and it was there that I met a girl named Kathleen. She was a friend of a friend who was also free that afternoon; we struck up a conversation, became Facebook friends, and we agreed to meet for lunch the next day. It ultimately didn't work out, but it was my first earnest attempt at moving on from Babs. (Kathleen is married now, but we've stayed in touch.)

I thought the fact that we were no longer dating would discourage Babs from trying to "convert" me, but if anything else it made her --and her doofus paramour Zak-- double down. I was dragged into attending more campus ministry events, where they and some other born-again types tried to "convert" me. Where Babs used a passive-aggressive approach, Zak was a straight-up bully. I tried to make the most of my time there, but almost everyone I encountered acted like they were brainwashed. After two weeks of that nonsense, I kept telling Brit I was busy on those particular nights.

It was apparent after attempting to hang out with Babs and Zak a few times that he didn't seem to have any real friends. I don't think he was self-aware enough to know his approach to people was bullying, or at the very least condescending. He was a poseur, too; he claimed he was from Texas, but grew up 45 minutes from Normal. Not only was Zak annoying me about accepting Christ as my lord and savior, but he was starting to badger some of the guys on my dorm floor.

I guess at some point even Babs grew tired of his schtick, because their relationship ended after about four months. Over winter break, Brit called to apologize for being so pushy. She knew she was alienating people, and wanted to make amends. One night after the next semester started, I met with Babs and Zak for dinner; Zak was making me uncomfortable again, and I left early because I thought I had food poisoning. Babs dumped Zak the next day.

(Part three next month.)

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My Toxic College Relationship, Part 1

This week marks two anniversaries for me, one external and one deeply personal. On August 21st, 2006 Facebook introduced the news feed to its home page; rather than have to go from one friend's profile to another to get updates, they were now all in one convenient location. It was polarizing and divisive at first --I can think of at least two Facebook friends that deleted their profiles because of the innovation, and never came back-- but now you can't imagine Facebook without it.

On the same day, sometime around 9 AM, I changed my relationship status from "in a relationship" to "single" and haven't changed it since. That is not to say I haven't been dating in ten years, I simply haven't changed my status. It was the first thing I contributed to anyone of my then 100-plus Facebook friends' news feeds, and that is a rather ignoble thing to admit. At the same time, this anomaly on my profile is a stark reminder of the first and most dysfunctional relationship I've ever been in.

I first met "Babs" on my third day on campus. I had just transferred from College of DuPage to Illinois State University, spending the long weekend getting acclimated to my new surroundings. She found me standing in line in the commons at Watterson Towers, and invited me over to sit with her and some of her dorm neighbors. Brit seemed interested in getting to know me better; I gave her my phone number, but forgot to ask for hers. Luckily, she called during the week, and we arranged to hang out the next Saturday.

I really didn't have much luck with dating in high school or community college, so I kept my expectations low. We walked around the quad for awhile, then did brunch on the opposite end of campus. Since I had nothing better to do that afternoon (or evening), I also followed her to the Miller Park Zoo, Eastland Mall, and back to her dorm. All in all, it was a memorable first date. After hanging out with her again for a movie night the next evening, and to watch "24" the evening after that, we officially announced we were dating by that Wednesday.

After my past failures with women, it was a relief of sorts to be in a relationship. However, one major red flag that came up on our first date proved to be our undoing: Babs was a born-again Christian. She asked me what my thoughts were on religion between brunch and the zoo, and kept insisting on taking me to faith-based events on or near campus. She also admitted that she cheated on every guy she had dated, but wanted to make an effort to be in a monogamous relationship.  I also realized she had a quick temper, and often made cutting comments about her dorm neighbors and people that I assumed were her friends.

Having never been serious with a woman before, I was inherently trying to keep things afloat, circumnavigating the loaded discussions about God and her frequent flirting with other guys by playing to our strengths and mutual interests. We were physically compatible, and maybe in hindsight we got physical too early in the relationship. We kissed on our first date, and things escalated after that, though we never had sex. If Babs said something I found offense or was throwing shade at one of her neighbors (which happened a lot), my instinct was to start a make-out session. I felt like the archetype of a horndog college student, putting my carnal urges above common sense.

One night, we were walking around downtown Normal (now Uptown Normal, long story) and Babs said she had something to tell me. Rather than be direct about it, she kept teasing the bombshell and kept making me guess. When we finally got back to her dorm room, she made me sit in a chair, she dimmed the lights, and she pulled out a bible. It turned out to be her most direct overture to converting me to born-again Christianity. It came from a sincere place, but I still wasn't aboard. If anything, the whole tease and reveal just made me uncomfortable.

The facade would keep cracking, but we would try to find ways to reconcile and compromise. One weekend, a movie night at her dorm came to abrupt halt when for no discernible reason, Brit started joking about a friend's eating disorder to her face. The girl ran out of the room in tears, the other partygoers left soon after, and just as I was about to leave, Babs begged me to stay and spend the night. Babs would insist I come along to run errands with her, even though I had plans that day, then get upset when I told her I needed to finish a paper or something. Toward the end of the semester, she needed help disassembling the loft for her bed, and I was the only person who showed up to help her. The physical duress of removing the loft, my inability to lift more than 60 lbs, and the humidity of an unusually warm early May day resulted in an excruciating afternoon.

A week or so later, I snapped. It was my turn to clean out and pack my dorm room for the semester, and even though I gave specific instructions on how to pack my clothes, she threw my clean shirts in with my dirty laundry. In hindsight it was a minuscule but in context I was livid. We proceeded to scream at each other for a solid ten minutes. Inexplicably, we reconciled that evening, but after that point it was pretty clear that we were treading on thin ice.

We both speculated that maybe we were spending too much time together, and since I lived in Downers Grove and she was from Park Forest (a one-hour drive, give or take) we could use the distance to our benefit. Any time we spent together during the Summer of 2006 was an event of sorts; we took two camping trips, one that went moderately well, the other cut short when Babs complained of stomach cramps (it turned out to be severe acid reflux). She spent Memorial Day weekend at my dorm during summer school, and I drove to her place at least three times.

When it was Babs' turn to crash at my parents' house in DG, the shit hit the fan. It turned out that her acid reflux was serious enough to prohibit certain foods from her diet, which turned an otherwise unexceptional home-cooked meal into a landmine. She clashed with everyone in the house except my sister; we argued, she argued with my mom over something I don't recall, and my father asked indignantly about her reading the Bible in the kitchen. A trip to Brookfield Zoo (her idea) was a miserable slog. She threatened to cut the trip short, but I persuaded her to stay a second night as planned. I drove her back to Park Forest the following evening feeling oddly relieved.

A week or two later, Babs called me in a slight panic. A few months earlier I met Dave, an old friend that she admitted to having a slight crush on. Feeling spiteful and perhaps a little confused, she kissed Dave that evening and decided it was best to confess right away. Not knowing how to react, I forgave her almost immediately. In reality, however I was annoyed that was falling back into old habits, and I probably should have ended the relationship right then and there.

Babs and I hung out at her mother's house the week after that, where we made an attempt to talk things out. The undercurrent of tension ebbed and flowed but never dissipated; I also noticed that she was making overtures with a second high school classmate.  The week after that, the day after my 22nd birthday, she dumped me. Babs cited my mother, my immaturity, and my noted reluctance to become a devout Christian. I spent that weekend sulking in my dorm room, pondering my next move. It could have been my opportunity to break free, but Babs wasn't out of my life for long.

(Part two next month.)

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Have a Little Faith in Me

Is it too late to comment on last month's NYC mosque mess? If not...

Let me start off by saying how funny it is how the media creates controversies during a heated election year. As iffy as that mosque-cum-rec center may seem now, keep in mind that there's a Muslim religious center 15 minutes from where Flight 93 crashed. (The Pentagon mosque was an exaggeration, it seems.) There was even a clip on YouTube where Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham discussed the midtown mosque on Fox News in December 2009 and implied that they were okay with its location (said clip has since been pulled). It's one thing to triumph and support the anger and frustration of a browbeaten sector of the American populace, but another to play on their ignorance and fear. In all likelihood, the 20% of the US population that inexplicably believes President Obama is Muslim probably weren't aware that such a religion existed before that fateful day in September 2001.

Sadly, this controversy says a lot about how xenophobic our country can be, and an unwillingness by some to keep an open mind or look into the facts. To say the 19 terrorists represented all Muslims is like saying Fred Phelps and Terry Jones represent all Christians. Every faith has its bad eggs, interpreting religious texts in the most literal way possible and regurgitating said texts into convinient bite-sized "truths" that make 98% of the world sound like satanic messengers. The problem is that these hopelessly ignorant demogogues control more of the media's attention that they rightfully should. This is not by any means an anti-religious statement; in fact, I fear that good, god-fearing Christians and equally spirital Muslims are getting lost in a shuffle of hatred and animosity.

In the past, I've commented that racial and religious prejudices are often detached from a political bias. A recent cover story in Time magazine about Israel brought to mind how liberals and conservatives sometimes portray each other as anti-Semetic. For example, a far-left liberal conspiracy theorist will imply that the Jews control the world's money and were secretly responsible for the global economic downturn. A neo-conservative conspiracy theorist will suggest that the Jews control the media in order to transmit their latent yet rigid Zionist-Socialist agenda. Both theories are complete garbage, but it's something to think about. There are plenty of instances in world history where Christians and Muslims alike have persecuted the Jews, and even though anti-Semetism in American culture has fell on the wayside in recent decades, most Muslims and Christians in other countries are apathetic to the Israeli state. That's another debate for another time.

The conclusion I'm in arriving to is that in troubling times, everyone's looking for a scapegoat or a fall guy. When the southern United States struggled to gain their footing during the Reconstruction era, white locals pinned the blame on recently freed slaves. When the American economy teeter-tootered in the 1890s, financial experts pointed their finger at the sudden explosion of European immigrants. In the wake of Pearl Harbor, Japanese-American citizens were sent to internment camps. Now we're in a double-dip recession nine years removed from the WTC attacks and people are wary of the "growing" influence of Muslims in American culture. Times are tense right now, but there are bigger fish to fry and far more important topics to debate before the midterm elections. National security should be a crucial issue, not setting limits on freedom of religion, yet people blur the two together for reasons I can't seem to comprehend.

Next Week: the year in music, 1990.