Mean Girl.

I'm a much nicer girl when I'm single. I become friends with most girls instantly, and most the time, I'm the first one to make the move toward said friendship. I grew up with all girls—my mom and my sister—and I relate to women really easily. Even when we don't seem identical from the onset, there is always some underlying current of sweetness that I find easy to grasp within other feminine souls. Unless you are just a huge mega-bitch, bad person, chances are if you're a chick, we can get along and make the best of friends.

Unless I know you within any context wherein you knew my boyfriend before you knew me. In that case, you must be an awful, horrible girl who I will absolutely never like because I'm afraid my boyfriend likes you better, you slut-ass, dull, boring bitch!

Oops. I really like being that other girl better. I mean...have you seen my glitter pumpkin? That's the sort of girly shit I adore doing with my friends, accompanied by a bottle of wine and giggling. I love having my work BFF to half a scone with. I love texting one of my chicas about the awful weekend I'm having and hearing her first response be: I'm buying you a shot! I love discussing costumes and tatas with my burl-y girls in ways that I never could with the general public or anyone in possession of a dick (any potential boylesque friends excluded). I fucking love being the girliest girl on the block and having girl friends around me who get a kick out of being sexy, hot, smart chicadees as much as I do.

So what changes? What is it that clicks in my brain and causes this tragic chain of events where I'm consumed with jealousy and dislike for anyone who may or may not have liked the guy that I currently like before he even knew me? I don't know really. I know it sucks. I know I hate the way I conjure up the most absurd notions that don't hurt anyone but myself (and occasionally...and very unfortunately...these misled thought missiles land on whomever I might be seeing at the time which is incredibly, all-together unfair of me). It's terrible. It contributed in so many massively awful ways to my unhappiness during my pregnancy (and marriage). This all consuming, raging jealousy I feel about other women when I'm seeing someone. My crazy straw thoughts range everywhere from the typical (Does he think she's hotter than me?) to the absurdly convoluted (I bet he would prefer to fuck a girl who knows the name of more than one current president.) to the categorically insane, mundane (He'd probably rather a woman like her who wears flats in rainstorms.). It's fucking exhausting.

I don't know why I do this. I don't know why I assume that when I meet someone he is secretly in love with every other girl he knew before me. That I'm somehow not good enough or pretty enough or smart enough or interesting enough to hold the attention of a boy who clearly didn't have his attentions engaged elsewhere too much—else I could not have swept him off his feet. I don't know why I can absolutely adore almost every woman I meet to some degree, so long as the boy I call my own isn't around to possibly like her better than me.

Mirror, mirror on the wall, why can't I see anything clearly at all?

But I think I'm tired of asking why I do this. I think I'm just going to stop. Rumor has it, I'm a lovely girl but you're only as pretty as what you give to the world and the positive space you create around you. So instead of wondering why I do this—why I miss out on having new people to share my adoration of all things girl talk with and why I make otherwise beautifully, happy relationships into battlegrounds—I think I'm just going to stop. I'm hoping it proves to be one of the most freeing resolutions of my life. I'm praying to anything that can help that I'll be able to maintain it.

Because life is too short to not sit in bars talking about corsets and cupcakes, and Snow White didn't get her Prince by acting like an Evil Queen.