Why do I love you? You never give me true insight, though you often try. Your articles are like politicians’ speeches, shallow and full of half-truths. Your foolproof cocktail recipes are always too strong or too sweet and your featured opinions are either eccentric or half-formed. And your “MUST Have Clothing of the Season” never fits me even after I follow your “30-Day Plan to Celebrity Abs.”
Clearly, this is not working out for us.
But every month you turn up on my doorstep, sitting among the bills and the ads in that comforting way I’ve come to know so well. And every month, I carry you across the threshold without hesitation. And for those first few days we are happy. I scan your vibrant and beautiful ads, study your remedies for bad hair days and dry skin, and pencil in the answers to the celebrity crossword you provide in back.
But then around the second week of your stay, the trouble starts. I’m starving on the “painless” diet you’d prescribed, the killer bargains you boasted were only while supplies lasted, and I still haven’t had a date with that new tech guy at work, despite your tips on flirting.
So, all of the third week, we ignore each other. You remain on the coffee table or in the bathroom and I return to normal eating habits and stick with my Yoga for Beginners program. We meet in passing, but I no longer leaf through your pages and you cease to offer me new advice.
By the end month, your cover is battered and the light reflects from it in patches. The smile of the woman on your front has become cynical and mocking as I realize I will never be as beautiful as she is. Now, I’m sick at the sight of you and angry at my own failed attempts at bliss. So you are exiled to the box that contains all of your past selves, firmly out of my sight.
You should know that I intend to cut you up one day and create a collage full of ironic statements from your headlines. You should find someone else to enchant.
But a few days later, there you are again, sitting on my doorstep, full of promise.
This must be one of those abusive relationships they warn you about in high school health class and that you yourself occasionally feature an article on. I realize that I’m going to have to be the stronger one here and end it, because you keep sending me reminders to renew my subscription.
I know I should get National Geographic or The New Yorker instead. Crosswords in magazines like that have clever plays on words and require you to know what an ‘epee’ is. Their articles are well researched and have an irresistible intellectual quality to them. Even their advertisements promote “Green, Sustainable Solutions.”
So why do I love you anyway? Why do I fall for your tricks? I am not any more organized, or less stressed, or fitter, or hipper, or more glamorous then when you first arrived. Looking back, the whole thing has been a rather pointless endeavor.
But maybe I’ll give you one more chance. Your next issue is about how to find true love. It seems in your desperation to keep our relationship alive, you are finally giving in and telling me what I really want to know. Maybe this time you’ll have all the right answers.
A. T. Greenblatt works in a firmly non-writing field when the sun is up and writes under a desk lamp at night. Fueled by a sheer love of books and a tyrannical imagination, she writes the stories that appear over her morning coffee and won't leave her alone until they are put down on paper. Follow her on Twitter at http://twitter.com/AtGreenblatt.
Archived at http://girlswithinsurance.com/index.php/prose/flash/293-ag-1110-why and shortlinked at http://frsh.in/g0
