All posts by Allyson Darling

Since I was a child, one of the most important life matters to me has been traveling the world. I am lucky enough to have lived and taught abroad, and although the list of countries I want to visit is longer than the list of countries I have been, I have learned much from street food consumption, peeing in holes in the ground, and sleeping in hostels with kittens, mosquitos, and Austrian men.  The following lessons may be clouded by my personal experiences, but they are an assemblage of advice thatRead More

Unless your childhood was a mundane mix of mild manners and perfect parenting you probably read the infamous, Alexander and The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day by Judith Viorsts, somewhere between wetting the bed and fourth grade.  I could delve into details of the prizes his brothers found in their cereal bowls that morning and what Alexander found instead,(nothing), but from the title the underlying nature of the story is apparent.  As adults without bed times and with the ability to buy ourselves a cookie, we at leastRead More

In honor of father’s day this past weekend, I spent some time reflecting on the invaluable lessons you have taught me in a quarter century.  You have owned some version of a beard or a mustache for nearly my whole life, which admittedly and Freudian-ly may be why I am only attracted to men with some sort of facial fur.  You posses the innate ability to tell a joke with such sincerity that you gain instant belief from your victims.  You have never been known to turn down a drink with the onesRead More

First dates cause my nerves to spin into a panic.   They saunter between fear and regret the moment I have left my home and begin wishing I were back in my sweat pants, back in my bed, watching some show about sex and a city that was created when I was graduating from 6th grade.  My future husband could be the pizza guy, right?  I had left work earlier than usual to allow myself time to shower and eat something, lest I enter the date hangry and ready to stab himRead More

It began in first grade when the discovery of a substitute teacher greeting the class in the morning distressed me so much that I begged my mother, through snot and salinized skin, to take me home from school. My threshold for the substitute teacher’s performance being less than perfect in mirroring my own teacher’s routine absolutely shattered me. I was sort of a high-strung child, you might declare. Thankfully, years later, there is nothing that warrants this exact reaction from me, except, perhaps, intense moments of hunger. Childhood anxiety isRead More

I woke up the other morning, in company of a stray popcorn kernel (I get rowdy on Friday nights) and it dawned on me, suddenly.  I can’t remember the last time I cried, minus that Saturday night I didn’t get a bacon wrapped hotdog and I was starving.   I do feel disappointed that I let myself suffer in a relationship that was no longer serving me, but I’m not heart broken any longer. I mostly feel relieved that I don’t have to have sexual intercourse like a married forty yearRead More

I have a curiosity for new experiences and adventures, an originality quest that lately has caused me to be reckless with my intentions and sloppy with my boundaries. The careful deliberateness I had cultivated evaporated somewhere between devirginizing  a twenty-six year old and my eighteenth bacon wrapped hot dog in a month span. Here are some lessons I have been privy to lately that I have realized you are never too old to learn:   1.  Just because you can doesn’t mean you should. This statement encompasses a range ofRead More

I realize the purpose of yoga is to quiet the mind and soul, but I own one of those spider webbed minds of anxiety that lacks the dexterity to let thoughts be. Instead of focusing on my downward dog, my thoughts ping around like a pigeon stuck in a subway station. After climbing five flights of stairs in a maze like stack of slender corridors that inspire feelings of despair in never seeing daylight again, I arrived at a light-filled loft overlooking San Francisco. These are the thoughts loitering inRead More

Getting dumped is something I have become well acquainted with during the past couple of years.  I like to blame it on my stint teaching English in Thailand, where an ex-pat lifestyle boasted an environment unsuitable for fostering skills to sustain a relationship and which resulted in a lot of strangers tongues in my mouth on island parties.  When I returned to the U.S. I went out with a lot of men that I was incompatible with, who I catered to, and who were only interesting after a whiskey sour or five.  I didn’t knowRead More

As a twenty-something year-old woman living in a city that is highly populated with single individuals, I have become quite familiar with Tinder.  Newly single, ready to mingle, and hungry for Pringles, I committed to eating for a work week only while on Tinder dates.  I approached each date with the intention of getting to know each man and considering him in my dating life post-meal.  However, as an individual notorious for her hanger (the dangerous combination of hungry and angry), I realized it was crucial to be strategic inRead More

It disheartens me to admit this, but the following are nonfiction accounts, both of friends and my own, of ways to really freak guys out.  They may have been committed with favorable intentions, but the outcome of each involved a male ending up thoroughly disturbed.  I can’t conceptualize the workings of the male mind, and although these actions seemed like the best way to communicate at the time, they irrevocably translated to the traumatization of a few men.  If you have a guy in mind that you need to get rid of, hereRead More

If we put down that near-barren wine glass that signifies the consumption of the better part of a bottle, if we turn off the Xbox, stop brunching, human-humping, and indulging in the other distractions that construct our twenties;if we are honest with ourselves, we realize that the only certain element of this defining decade is uncertainty.  Far away is that safe four (perhaps five) years of cushion that college provided for us.  Buffering us from the real world, college proves to be a quasi-adult world, where we are old enoughRead More

I laughed with girlfriends over drinks in regard to the female phenomenon of making excuses for the guys we date.  We admitted to how pathetic we could be, constructing covers for their lack of communication and attention, “He just has had a really busy week,”  “He is just scared of how much he likes me.”  We discussed these delusions that we make up in our minds in response to a text that takes less time to type and send than it does to fart.  I am fatigued from generating the reassuranceRead More

Sometimes our work-happy hours last longer than expected and we awake the next morning, foggy and furious at our alarm, and must abandon any  intention of showering in order to sleep a little bit longer.   No, I am not advocating regular avoidance of bathing to match the scent of the homeless man surrounded by pigeons and urine on your walk to the bus, but there are some serious ways to glam up your grunge that every twenty-something should be privy to.   1.  Charm Your Chewbacca Legs You haveRead More

Feeling forlorn about the weekend ending?  Did your dog just get hit by a car? Is March Madness making you, well, mad?   Do you just want to curl up and die in your Happy Meal that you bought just to cheer yourself up?  There is no faster way to regain composure and cheer than learning about another person’s embarrassing moments.  In the hopes of turning your frown upside down I would like to leave you with my four most embarrassing moments that I wish I was making up.   1. Read More