Just read the word JOMO for the first time on The Skimm.
TRANSLATION: JOY OF MISSING OUT.
It gives me joy just to say it.
“Jomo!”
JOMO is the reason I wake up in the morning, so I can go back to sleep. It’s the reason my friends make back-up plans whenever I agree to go somewhere.
It’s the reason I love my pillow. It’s the reason I’m milking my new shoulder injury to the point that I’m considering standing on a table and asking someone to push me off.
The reason I don’t like going anywhere isn’t because I don’t want to meet other people. It’s not because I don’t want to see the world and experience other cultures.
The truth is I just don’t feel like getting dressed. The bra, the buttoning of the pants, the tying of the shoes. The whole thing just ruins leaving the house.
The buttoning of the pants has always been the biggest problem. It started in seventh grade when all we did every weekend was go to make-out parties. My mother had warned me about those types of parties. She told me not to be like those girls, even though those girls were my only friends. So I went, but I refused to participate. It was humiliating. I felt like a voyeur. Fortunately there was pizza at those parties. Instead of making out, I stood in the corner and ate myself into oblivion.
I remember one party in particular I got a raging stomach ache and my best friend, a real make-out aficionado, told me to go in the other room and lie on my stomach to stop the pain and “flatten it out.”
To this day whenever I have to get dressed to go out to dinner, there’s some kind of memory trigger and I blow up like a balloon.
It’s the same scenario every time. My husband stands at the door saying,
“Just so you know we’re ten minutes late.”
A little while later I hear him yell,
“Now we’re 20 minutes late.”
A little while later he resorts to,
“Should I call and say we’re not coming?”
When I don’t answer, he comes in the bedroom. I’m always lying on my stomach with my face pressed into the bed. That’s the only position that works.
Eventually I have to admit that my pants won’t close.
“Do you want to stay home?” he’ll ask.
“Perhaps it’s for the best.”
“You sure you won’t feel bad afterwards?”
“Are you kidding?”
“Should we order a pizza and stay home?” he’ll ask.
And that, my friends, is JOMO.