Collective nouns tend to be one of those weird niches of language that is consistently entertaining, whether alliteratively ("a bellow of bullfinches," "a lounge of lizards"), in joke form ("What do you call two crows on a branch? Attempted murder"), or in personal improvisation ("a stump of corgis"). I was thinking about this the other day in terms of something of the two-legged variety: what is the collective noun for ex-boyfriends?
I ask because it got a little crowded the other morning.
I was sleeping over at my boyfriend's house. At 6'4, he's a remarkably considerate sleeper: he lays down on his back and conks out completely. Towards the morning, he might roll over once, but that's it. Unlike me, he does not magnetically gravitate towards the dead center of the bed and then rotate myself regularly throughout the night like a roast on a spit. This weekend, in the early morning when he had rolled over onto his side, I found myself staring at his back.
And then there were three of us in bed, because I was remembering what turned out to be the last morning with the last person I was really in love with. He had rolled over as well, and I hesitated to curl up against him. Whatever we had been, which had never been terribly clear, was over, and I was just realizing it. It had probably been over for a while, but that was the instant that it really hit, and I was crushed.
Back in the present and later in the morning, when my honey and I managed to haul ourselves out of bed towards the goal of making French toast, he tossed me a pair of his pajama pants to wear downstairs. I had slept in his Moby Dick shirt and added a hoodie for good measure. At 5'6 (on a good day), I was swimming in everything except the slippers, because I had brought those myself.
And then there were four, because my most recent ex, whom in retrospect I have come to loathe, always wanted me to look just so-- he professed hatred for my beloved and beat to hell Dartmouth sweats and would whine when I looked anything less than his version of presentable (if you're wondering how I ever came to date this guy, believe me, I'm still asking myself the same question). Standing in a bedroom two years later, I hoped that I looked kind of adorable in ridiculously outsized PJs, but the stupid ex still popped up to rankle.
On the couch downstairs, we were cuddled up with French toast and "The Soup" on DVR, and the topic somehow came around to gay marriage. The man in whose arms I was wrapped (and whose French toast I was happily consuming) expressed his frustration at states' dragging their feet over gay marriage. He told me he just didn't understand how people could continue to be so bigoted. I expressed my profound agreement but was wise enough to keep mum about the fact that my last long term boyfriend-- who had turned out to be a bit of a bigot himself, which is why I broke up with him-- had just appeared on the recliner next to us.
"Intrusion" as a collective noun is already assigned to cockroaches (insert obvious joke as needed). Maybe we go with a "haunting" of exes? Something to think about...
There are those who have
said to me in the past that I have terrible taste in men. I'm willing
to admit that there is potentially some truth in that statement on the
face of it, but when you go a little deeper, it gets a little more
complicated. Because if I have terrible taste in men, I will always
choose terrible men. Following that strain of logic, is anyone to whom I
am remotely attracted ultimately destined to be a shmuck, a bigot, or
an idiot?
God what an awful thought.
God what an awful thought.
For the sake of argument, let's just look at my love life as it is at this very moment: I am dating a man who is very goofy, kind, affectionate, thoughtful, hilarious, and (as I mentioned) tall. He has given me absolutely no reason to doubt him in any way. We are making plans in the short and medium term. Things are good-- hell, things are great.
So then why is it so crowded? Why the haunting?
It makes me a little sad that my boyfriend can make me so exceptionally happy, but that there are times when I still find myself amidst an invisible haunting of ex-boyfriends. Because I'm not dating them-- with good reason I might add-- I'm dating him. And I am bat-shit, "Mitzi Gaynor tap-dancing on an overturned rowboat" crazy about him. Still, most of us bear some degree of scars or skittishness from previous experience. Sometimes it's very hard to negotiate the warp and weft of a happy present and a less than happy past. Suffice to say, it can get a little bumpy.
Having spent
so much of my life living in my head, I find that one of the scariest
and most obvious things about a relationship is that it is with another person.
You can't know what's going on in someone's head all the time-- I mean,
really, I don't know what's going on in my own head half the time.
What that means is you can't know the moment when something changes, why
it did, or necessarily how to fix it. You also can't necessarily depend on the things you've learned in the past from other people to be accurate or helpful in the next scenario.
And that is terrifying in a way I think that only falling in love can be terrifying: loving someone's insides (and boy howdy, his outsides too) but being unable to control or even really predict them. It's ironic, because in a way, I figure that's what love should be: that dumbstruck fascination with someone who is really his or her own person entire. Not to state the obvious, but love is then, by definition, just bloody terrifying. But, of course, y'know, in the best way...
My relationship experiences have not been stellar. That doesn't mean they've all been completely awful either, but I still find myself on the twitchy side, which makes my impression of a normal, balanced human being even more hard to maintain sometimes. The most terrifying part of all, though, is that he seems to like my crazy parts, that my impersonation of normalcy is totally unnecessary. I am aware, though, that there is a line between occasionally, adorably twitchy and persistent, paranoid basket-case. Let's just say I'm working on finding that balance.
Maybe what it ultimately comes down to is the fact that I have a hard time trusting that this wonderful human being would be genuinely crazy about me too, because often I have felt as if there is something about me that's-- quite frankly-- romantically off-putting. And the only thing I can do to combat that feeling is trust this man, be honest with him, and be as good to him as I know how to be. There's even the possibility that there are some ghosts of girlfriends past that are visible only to him. I figure the best way to exorcise them-- and my own ghosts-- is to do one of the hardest and best things I can think of:
To be terrified, yes, but more importantly, to love. Crazily, un-self-consciously, weirdly, intensely, and in all directions at once, such that the sheer volume of it will simply shove all those ex-boyfriends-- and maybe some of that terror-- collectively straight out the window.
And then it'll be a perfect collective of two. Not to be too precious about it, but how about a "smitten"?
Again, something to think about.
