90 Days of Night

Apparently hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. In this case ‘scorned’ meant that I did not want to immediately jump out of bed early on a Saturday to go for a jog with my girlfriend, deciding instead to catch a few more hours of sleep.

Bad decision on my part.

When I woke up I could not move. I’m not sure what top secret elite military bed-making training she went through but I could not move. She’d made the bed with my arms down at my side and for the life of me I couldn’t squirm or thrash my way free. I felt a little like the guy in that Stephen King book Misery. In his case he got off light, the woman only cut off one of his feet with an axe. My girlfriend had other plans.

Terrible plans.

“Quality time” is what she called it.

This involved sitting next to me and watching an all-day marathon of a TV show called 90 Day Fiancé. Much, much worse than being hobbled if you ask me. Why couldn’t I have just dragged my lazy ass out of bed?

If you’re not familiar with the show, the basic idea is that the producers of the show find a half dozen or so people that are so jaw-droppingly pathetic that they have to search the entire globe for other losers to get married to. They follow these living trainwrecks around and film everything. How anyone associated with the show can live with themselves for exploiting these wretched human beings is beyond me.

The thing is, these dopes can’t even get the beginning of a relationship right. Which is the easy part. The fun part. The part where you can be anyone you want and they can be anyone you want. Before they find who you are and you find out who they really are. “Anyone can fall in love…” I muttered to myself at one point and my girlfriend looked over with an expression that made it clear that she was expecting me to finish the thought.

I thought it best not to.

See the thing is, after a few years, inevitably friends become strangers and love turns into nothing more than a bunch of ghosts rattling around inside your head. If you can’t enjoy the easy part then you are truly fucked. It only gets harder from there.

Easy for me to say, lying helpless in my bed, unable to extricate myself. Well, I might have exaggerated how tightly she had made the sheets around me. I’m sure I could have wriggled free if I would have tried my hardest. But that’s the thing about relationships; sometimes you don’t try your hardest.

And then there are others times when you don’t try your hardest… and the two look so similar that you can’t tell the difference and that’s when the trouble starts.

That’s what these dipshits on 90 Day Fiancé seem unable to comprehend. Love is about not being able to see the shortcomings of the other person the same way you don’t see your own. You might grudgingly admit them to yourself from time to time but you never internalize them. It takes a little ignorance to find bliss.

Or at least contentment.

Because in the end, friends become strangers and love is a bunch of song lyrics that have you occasionally staring off into space before you take a deep breath and say “Yeah, sure. One more episode.”