I was thinking that today while I was thinking about the man I'm falling in love with, and thinking how uncomfortable it can be that he is so different.
We run toward what is familiar.
And this man in so many ways is not familiar.
Familar, for me, tends to mean a little bit mean and a lot but what about me.
It doesn't necessarily mean kind or interested or engaged. And this man I'm loving is all of those things.
I think that when many of us run toward what is familiar, we are running towards what our souls feel calmed by the repetition of. Sadly, we often repeat what we've known even if it scared us, or tarnished our memories of ourselves or changed the stories we tell about how our lives happened.
I fell in love with this man about a week before I met him. He writes a blog and I read it, and fell in love. Hoped against hope that he wouldn't be horribly geeky and skinny and weird. Made an online date. And he wasn't geeky or skinny or weird; he was beautiful and tatooed and sexy. And he fell in love with me.
And it happened just like that.
Here is maybe the only meaningful thing I can really say about running towards what is familiar: It certainly feels weird to run towards what is utterly different. It is unsteadying to be held by a man who can hold all of you, and who wants to. It's fine to sit leg-to-leg with him on your living room bench, contemplating what the future might hold in a way that only two independent forty-somethings can. And it feels crazy when his face makes your heart leap like a nineteen-year old's.
Here's a really crazy thing: He gave me until the end of the year to move in with him. Or not.
He's not kidding. He says that if we don't know by January that we want to live together, we never will. And that that's not what he wants.
Who is this man?
Back to what I said:
Running towards the unfamiliar can be like plunging into icy water--you simply brace yourself and move in. You can't expect what's coming; your senses don't know how.
But once you're in. Oh...so warm.
Thursday, February 24, 2011
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
One Year Ago This Night
A year ago tonight I lived in the place that was my home for the last time.
It was exactly one year ago--the Tuesday before New Year's Eve--when my then-husband walked in what had been my front door for 17 years, and asked the un-askable.
He asked, Are we over?
Not exactly in those words, but that's what he meant.
First, my mind started racing. How do I answer this? Is there any answer that will stop the world from collapsing?
Then, Maybe it's time for the world to collapse.
It turned out to be exactly that.
Later, when I could think, I thought: When he walked in, it was still my front door. By the time I walked out, it no longer was.
It took me less than an hour to pack what I needed, I remember. But we both kept stopping to cry, so it took much longer. I couldn't find anything that my pillow would fit into, so I ended up hailing a cab on the corner of Second Avenue, sobbing, clutching my pillow under my arm like a third grader leaving summer camp with a bad case of homesickness.
Really the homesickness had set in before I even made it to the corner.
The taxi sailed through the darkness to the apartment I was subletting. I let myself in and realized that even that entryway had changed. This wasn't my front door, either. Up until that evening it had been my great escape--the place I could go to figure out what was going to happen next, what I was going to be capable of. Now there was a clock ticking. My home was no longer my home, and this sublet was a home with an imminent expiration date.
It felt like I had gone from having so many things that felt like mine, to having almost none.
Except the pillow, of course.
A year ago this night I was not sure I would physically survive the pain of it. Ironically I was actually in quite a bit of physical pain, in fact surgery was imminent, though I didn't know it at the time. That pain had become the back-seat driver that kept me company every minute of my life--I wasn't conscious of its maneuverings, only its chronic annoyance.
It was the hollowed-out throbbing in my stomach and my throat that I feared had become a permanent fixture--that was the pain I didn't think I could survive.
The truth is that it has lasted much longer, and hurt much more, than I would have wanted to know on that night a year ago.
I can still call it back in its full force. Sometimes I want nothing more than to swim in it, this pain. I know there's no escape, so I might as well soak. And I do. It can be intoxicating. These are the times I reach for it voluntarily.
Another way to call it back is to become entangled with the wrong men--wrong meaning men who will not be careful with me, men who are not good for me. It's not that I have a particular skill for this, I've come to realize. It's that, when you have the sharp memory of losing your front door and hailing a taxi on Second Avenue with your pillow under your arm, you forget that you need more than someone who will weigh you down, prevent you from floating away.
You do need something to weigh you down when you've lost every anchor that once kept your soul tethered to the earth.
This is not the only thing you need, however.
And a man who will weigh you down may not weigh you down with love. He might weigh you down with meanness, or with the fear of his own smallness--and so many other things. None of this is good.
But the pillow, the front door, seventeen years...you don't, you can't see this.
You can't see that it's OK to be flying wildly about the universe with nothing holding you down. You can't see that it will hurt, and it's OK that it will hurt. You will bump into people and grab onto them and lose hold, and this will hurt. I remember reading first-hand accounts of the tsunami in Indonesia and when all of this came about last year, thinking: Yes. Exactly. You try to grab hold, you're holding on with all of your strength, but your strength has never met anything like this.
All of this started a year ago tonight.
The people who love me tell me that I should be proud of how much I've done, how much I've lived and how much I've survived; that I've loved and lost and loved and lost again. And again, even.
I don't think I will be proud until I've mastered it, however. It's like dance: The learning is challenging, engrossing, it can be grueling. But until your body understands the choreography without your brain interfering, there is no real, lasting beauty. You haven't really earned the right to learn the next series of steps.
So that is the way I will look at my memory of that night, I believe--of the whole year that followed up until right now, actually. It was just the beginning of cutting away from the anchors that kept me safely tied to my old life.
I haven't got this mastered. But I'm getting pretty good at the steps.
It was exactly one year ago--the Tuesday before New Year's Eve--when my then-husband walked in what had been my front door for 17 years, and asked the un-askable.
He asked, Are we over?
Not exactly in those words, but that's what he meant.
First, my mind started racing. How do I answer this? Is there any answer that will stop the world from collapsing?
Then, Maybe it's time for the world to collapse.
It turned out to be exactly that.
Later, when I could think, I thought: When he walked in, it was still my front door. By the time I walked out, it no longer was.
It took me less than an hour to pack what I needed, I remember. But we both kept stopping to cry, so it took much longer. I couldn't find anything that my pillow would fit into, so I ended up hailing a cab on the corner of Second Avenue, sobbing, clutching my pillow under my arm like a third grader leaving summer camp with a bad case of homesickness.
Really the homesickness had set in before I even made it to the corner.
The taxi sailed through the darkness to the apartment I was subletting. I let myself in and realized that even that entryway had changed. This wasn't my front door, either. Up until that evening it had been my great escape--the place I could go to figure out what was going to happen next, what I was going to be capable of. Now there was a clock ticking. My home was no longer my home, and this sublet was a home with an imminent expiration date.
It felt like I had gone from having so many things that felt like mine, to having almost none.
Except the pillow, of course.
A year ago this night I was not sure I would physically survive the pain of it. Ironically I was actually in quite a bit of physical pain, in fact surgery was imminent, though I didn't know it at the time. That pain had become the back-seat driver that kept me company every minute of my life--I wasn't conscious of its maneuverings, only its chronic annoyance.
It was the hollowed-out throbbing in my stomach and my throat that I feared had become a permanent fixture--that was the pain I didn't think I could survive.
The truth is that it has lasted much longer, and hurt much more, than I would have wanted to know on that night a year ago.
I can still call it back in its full force. Sometimes I want nothing more than to swim in it, this pain. I know there's no escape, so I might as well soak. And I do. It can be intoxicating. These are the times I reach for it voluntarily.
Another way to call it back is to become entangled with the wrong men--wrong meaning men who will not be careful with me, men who are not good for me. It's not that I have a particular skill for this, I've come to realize. It's that, when you have the sharp memory of losing your front door and hailing a taxi on Second Avenue with your pillow under your arm, you forget that you need more than someone who will weigh you down, prevent you from floating away.
You do need something to weigh you down when you've lost every anchor that once kept your soul tethered to the earth.
This is not the only thing you need, however.
And a man who will weigh you down may not weigh you down with love. He might weigh you down with meanness, or with the fear of his own smallness--and so many other things. None of this is good.
But the pillow, the front door, seventeen years...you don't, you can't see this.
You can't see that it's OK to be flying wildly about the universe with nothing holding you down. You can't see that it will hurt, and it's OK that it will hurt. You will bump into people and grab onto them and lose hold, and this will hurt. I remember reading first-hand accounts of the tsunami in Indonesia and when all of this came about last year, thinking: Yes. Exactly. You try to grab hold, you're holding on with all of your strength, but your strength has never met anything like this.
All of this started a year ago tonight.
The people who love me tell me that I should be proud of how much I've done, how much I've lived and how much I've survived; that I've loved and lost and loved and lost again. And again, even.
I don't think I will be proud until I've mastered it, however. It's like dance: The learning is challenging, engrossing, it can be grueling. But until your body understands the choreography without your brain interfering, there is no real, lasting beauty. You haven't really earned the right to learn the next series of steps.
So that is the way I will look at my memory of that night, I believe--of the whole year that followed up until right now, actually. It was just the beginning of cutting away from the anchors that kept me safely tied to my old life.
I haven't got this mastered. But I'm getting pretty good at the steps.
Friday, December 17, 2010
All of Our Hearts Are Broken
We all wish it had happened differently.
Every one of us can imagine a better ending.
It seems like it could have gone so many different ways, other ways than that.
But if it hadn't happened like that, who would we be now?
Would we be shaped differently?
I wonder about it in so many different ways, and always come back to the same thing: All of our hearts are already broken. We are going about it all with wounds that no one else can see.
So if all of our hearts are already broken, maybe that's why we're here.
To mend the broken places that only we can see.
?
Every one of us can imagine a better ending.
It seems like it could have gone so many different ways, other ways than that.
But if it hadn't happened like that, who would we be now?
Would we be shaped differently?
I wonder about it in so many different ways, and always come back to the same thing: All of our hearts are already broken. We are going about it all with wounds that no one else can see.
So if all of our hearts are already broken, maybe that's why we're here.
To mend the broken places that only we can see.
?
Thursday, October 28, 2010
What Is Inside My Soul?
Another man has left my life, a man that I don't actually know yet how exactly to characterize.
A very sexy man. A very funny, charismatic man. In many ways, such a very, very fun man.
In many ways when I am ruminating over the break-up, I want to tell myself that it didn't have to end the way it did. But I know that not only is the universe unraveling exactly the way it's supposed to, but that if any two people were heading for a crash, it was me and this particular man:
A week and a half before two final, painful, nervous break-up conversations--telephone conversations--we had gone on a fairly spontaneous road trip. Each packed a bag and drove deep into the rural mountains of Pennsylvania.
We drove for about six hours each way, did nothing but talk and listen to music and make out and pull over to buy road food. It was glorious. It felt like the end of summer in so many ways.
He said on the drive down that we were staying at a Hamptons Inn, and I believed him. But it turned out that he was joking; he'd rented a room in an old stone lodge overlooking a valley of changing October trees. It was unspeakably beautiful countryside--cows and barns and clouds and sky. When he carried our luggage up the stairs, he wouldn't let me carry my bag.
He won't let me carry my bag, I remember thinking. I actually just want to carry my own bag. This is weirdly honeymoon-y.
On the ride home after a night and a day, it hit me with a thud: There's a rebound coming. He will think about something to do with one of these conversations, and he will miss me. Or he will smell me on some piece of his clothing. The reflexive discomfit with attachment that rides on so many XY chromosomes will begin to pulse alive.
In our own way, don't we start to anticipate it? This makes us behave differently than we would otherwise, if our antennae weren't up. We're taught to sniff it out, right?? Doesn't it make sense, evolutionarily?? That we'd have some sense of panic at the prospect of the departure of a man?
Especially a sexy, good-smelling, funny man?
Could it be that?
Wouldn't it be nice if it were that?
So he ended it, we ended over the telephone because he found an opportunity, and I've cried for a week. Or actually have meant to cry but haven't had the time until right now. One night this week when I meant to cry I had to sit with a lawyer instead, who read to me, paragraph by paragraph, the details of my divorce. My divorce is 20 pages long. In case anyone is wondering, I will no longer be related to the man becoming my ex-husband. He will legally no longer be my family.
The lawyer was only doing his job.
I had a date tomorrow with one of the men I have very enjoyable sex with, and this afternoon he cancelled.
I feel very much alone.
So I sit here and write to you and I know that everything, eventually, will be much better. I know that it is OK to ache and to cry for this man who just left, who made me laugh so hard and blinded me with passion. I know that for all of the ache of feeling my marriage done away with, I am better off without it. All of this sits together inside me.
Here is what I wonder: What will feed my soul instead of these sweet, damaged men? When will I stop breaking up with myself? When will I stop dumping me?
What is there, really, inside my soul?
for margaret
A very sexy man. A very funny, charismatic man. In many ways, such a very, very fun man.
In many ways when I am ruminating over the break-up, I want to tell myself that it didn't have to end the way it did. But I know that not only is the universe unraveling exactly the way it's supposed to, but that if any two people were heading for a crash, it was me and this particular man:
A week and a half before two final, painful, nervous break-up conversations--telephone conversations--we had gone on a fairly spontaneous road trip. Each packed a bag and drove deep into the rural mountains of Pennsylvania.
We drove for about six hours each way, did nothing but talk and listen to music and make out and pull over to buy road food. It was glorious. It felt like the end of summer in so many ways.
He said on the drive down that we were staying at a Hamptons Inn, and I believed him. But it turned out that he was joking; he'd rented a room in an old stone lodge overlooking a valley of changing October trees. It was unspeakably beautiful countryside--cows and barns and clouds and sky. When he carried our luggage up the stairs, he wouldn't let me carry my bag.
He won't let me carry my bag, I remember thinking. I actually just want to carry my own bag. This is weirdly honeymoon-y.
On the ride home after a night and a day, it hit me with a thud: There's a rebound coming. He will think about something to do with one of these conversations, and he will miss me. Or he will smell me on some piece of his clothing. The reflexive discomfit with attachment that rides on so many XY chromosomes will begin to pulse alive.
In our own way, don't we start to anticipate it? This makes us behave differently than we would otherwise, if our antennae weren't up. We're taught to sniff it out, right?? Doesn't it make sense, evolutionarily?? That we'd have some sense of panic at the prospect of the departure of a man?
Especially a sexy, good-smelling, funny man?
Could it be that?
Wouldn't it be nice if it were that?
So he ended it, we ended over the telephone because he found an opportunity, and I've cried for a week. Or actually have meant to cry but haven't had the time until right now. One night this week when I meant to cry I had to sit with a lawyer instead, who read to me, paragraph by paragraph, the details of my divorce. My divorce is 20 pages long. In case anyone is wondering, I will no longer be related to the man becoming my ex-husband. He will legally no longer be my family.
The lawyer was only doing his job.
I had a date tomorrow with one of the men I have very enjoyable sex with, and this afternoon he cancelled.
I feel very much alone.
So I sit here and write to you and I know that everything, eventually, will be much better. I know that it is OK to ache and to cry for this man who just left, who made me laugh so hard and blinded me with passion. I know that for all of the ache of feeling my marriage done away with, I am better off without it. All of this sits together inside me.
Here is what I wonder: What will feed my soul instead of these sweet, damaged men? When will I stop breaking up with myself? When will I stop dumping me?
What is there, really, inside my soul?
for margaret
Monday, October 4, 2010
What Makes Us So Crazy?
If sane is the new sexy, I am in need of a character overhaul.
I have become crazy, it seems.
Frighteningly, many of my friends and even women I only have glancing social acquaintences with have become crazy as well. What's weirder, it's the exact same kind of crazy. What happened to us? What is happening to us?
For me, currently, the insanity involves a man I'll call the Sixth Avenue Kisser--when he (and I, for that matter) last appeared on this site, I had just been kissing him on lower Sixth Avenue.
The kissing continued. It was very good kissing. And you know, we all know, what kissing leads to.
That was very good.
And that continued as well.
Then, out of nowhere, it began:
Craziness. Out of the nowhere of my soul, it crept up. One moment I was casually daydreaming about what to wear on our next date--sort of looking at the backs of my hands, wondering how many days it had been since I'd had a manicure. Then that moment passed and in the next moment, with sinking dread in my stomach, I was thinking:
Wait: Why hasn't he called?
When was the last time I saw him / spoke to him / got an email / text / telekinetic message from him?
How long has it been?
Finally: Does he not want me?
This is the savage animal that drives us to craziness. Each of us has one; she knows us by name. Sometimes she knows us by ugly names. And we know her. This is the bitch who looks us in the mirror on bad mornings and tells us our face looks weird. No matter what clothing we put on as we're dressing for work, she says, too tight. You must be putting on weight.
There are times when she doesn't shut up, this bitch. She rips it all apart; she is a ranting tornado of destruction.
And when she digs her nails into why hasn't he called, out pours a symphony of ugliness.
With my rational mind--perhaps with all of our rational minds--we know that he probably hasn't called because he is a man. Thus he was watching the game/working on something on his computer/imagining your naked breasts or looking at pictures of someone else's naked breasts (or both). But our rational minds get drowned out by this shrieking cacophany.
I don't remember when this behavior started in me, but I know that I have not always been this way. Maybe it's that with certain men I am not this way? This makes me wonder if there is something toxic and scary between me and the Sixth Avenue Kisser...and why shouldn't there be? I seem to have become a specialist in toxic and scary. Perhaps I suck it into myself like metal filings to a magnet.
This makes me worried. The more worried I get, the louder the bitch symphony sings.
Here is what I want to leave you with.
The problem is not that we will never be able to answer, "why hasn't he called?" The problem is that it's the wrong question.
Here are the right questions:
If I weren't focused on him calling, what in my life would be hurting the most? What is it that I'm drowning out by obsessing about what he is feeling for me?
Why wouldn't he want me? How many strong beautiful sexy talented funny achingly alive MEs are strolling around this planet?
And if he's not smart or sane or savvy enough to be asking himself the same thing, why would I want him to call?
What makes the nasty bitch slip into the driver's seat of our brains and our hearts? Why do we hand over the keys and slide so easily into riding shotgun?
What makes us so crazy?
I have become crazy, it seems.
Frighteningly, many of my friends and even women I only have glancing social acquaintences with have become crazy as well. What's weirder, it's the exact same kind of crazy. What happened to us? What is happening to us?
For me, currently, the insanity involves a man I'll call the Sixth Avenue Kisser--when he (and I, for that matter) last appeared on this site, I had just been kissing him on lower Sixth Avenue.
The kissing continued. It was very good kissing. And you know, we all know, what kissing leads to.
That was very good.
And that continued as well.
Then, out of nowhere, it began:
Craziness. Out of the nowhere of my soul, it crept up. One moment I was casually daydreaming about what to wear on our next date--sort of looking at the backs of my hands, wondering how many days it had been since I'd had a manicure. Then that moment passed and in the next moment, with sinking dread in my stomach, I was thinking:
Wait: Why hasn't he called?
When was the last time I saw him / spoke to him / got an email / text / telekinetic message from him?
How long has it been?
Finally: Does he not want me?
This is the savage animal that drives us to craziness. Each of us has one; she knows us by name. Sometimes she knows us by ugly names. And we know her. This is the bitch who looks us in the mirror on bad mornings and tells us our face looks weird. No matter what clothing we put on as we're dressing for work, she says, too tight. You must be putting on weight.
There are times when she doesn't shut up, this bitch. She rips it all apart; she is a ranting tornado of destruction.
And when she digs her nails into why hasn't he called, out pours a symphony of ugliness.
With my rational mind--perhaps with all of our rational minds--we know that he probably hasn't called because he is a man. Thus he was watching the game/working on something on his computer/imagining your naked breasts or looking at pictures of someone else's naked breasts (or both). But our rational minds get drowned out by this shrieking cacophany.
I don't remember when this behavior started in me, but I know that I have not always been this way. Maybe it's that with certain men I am not this way? This makes me wonder if there is something toxic and scary between me and the Sixth Avenue Kisser...and why shouldn't there be? I seem to have become a specialist in toxic and scary. Perhaps I suck it into myself like metal filings to a magnet.
This makes me worried. The more worried I get, the louder the bitch symphony sings.
Here is what I want to leave you with.
The problem is not that we will never be able to answer, "why hasn't he called?" The problem is that it's the wrong question.
Here are the right questions:
If I weren't focused on him calling, what in my life would be hurting the most? What is it that I'm drowning out by obsessing about what he is feeling for me?
Why wouldn't he want me? How many strong beautiful sexy talented funny achingly alive MEs are strolling around this planet?
And if he's not smart or sane or savvy enough to be asking himself the same thing, why would I want him to call?
What makes the nasty bitch slip into the driver's seat of our brains and our hearts? Why do we hand over the keys and slide so easily into riding shotgun?
What makes us so crazy?
Friday, September 3, 2010
The Psychiatrist, the Soul Mate and Me
This has been the most unusual, painful, and interesting summer. And it is almost over.
It started with the Psychiatrist. I loved him, briefly, intensely, in a desperate, chaotic way, from the end of winter until roughly Memorial Day weekend. He was not my psychiatrist, but rather a man, a very smart and intense and sad and lovely man. A man I want to say I was thrown upon, as we are each sometimes thrown upon the harsh rocks of life.
At the frightening end of our end, we went through several rounds of shredding at each other's fabric until each of us was in tattered ribbons. By the time the storm had calmed and I felt like I could breathe again, it was the end of June.
At exactly the same sad, weird time, I reconnected with a high school friend on Facebook. Beloved Z., or Thomas, as he is now known. I have already said too much about him in this space, and the less I can say, the better for my heart. If you want to know more about how it began, read http://thattimeofthelife.blogspot.com/2010_06_27_archive.html.
I've never told the story of how my affair with Thomas ended. It is too sad for telling. By which I mean, I can't tell it without remembering the depths of my grief at the very end. There is something about our connection with the past that is both spellbinding and beautiful and potentially deadly. Like a drug, it is hard to quit. Thomas was a powerful connection to my long-lost me.
The closest I want to come to describing our end is to say that this very dear old friend's departure from my life felt like learning you have terminal cancer at a dull weekday doctor's appointment. Speechless and heart-stopping and riveting in its quiet ordinariness. I had no idea it was going to end like this.
Grant that I never verify this comparison. I am even sorry for making it. But this is how it felt.
And my heart was already broken, recall. Broken heart upon broken heart was the straw that broke this camel's back. I found myself, one night after dance class, weeping as I walked along upper Broadway. I couldn't stop, and dance had become the only guaranteed--albeit brief--escape from my grieving. I walked home choking with tears, cooked myself dinner, still couldn't stop this painful leaking. The flood was unending. I became afraid that I would drown.
I remember sitting in the near-dark, staring at my telephone. The only person I could imagine talking to was--can you possibly understand this?--the Psychiatrist. I wanted him to tell me it was going to be all right. That the flood dries and morning comes and you want to eat a banana. I knew that he knew the blackness of the place I was in. We had talked about it, his experience of it, and I wanted him to throw me a line.
I called him. He didn't, couldn't, wouldn't, throw me a line. He yelled at me for calling and hung up. I later came to understand this. At the time, it felt like having a hot match held to a new burn.
Here is the point of all this.
Gradually, I came to understand what both men had in common. What both relationships had in common. How closely--did you know this was coming?--they resembled my troubled, ended marriage.
What they had in common was this: These men suffered from a lack of empathy so deep that in a pinch, they were able to forget, or ignore, that I existed. My existence, the reality of me, was relevant only in its ability to extinguish their own needs, to brighten their own dark places.
The point, lovely people, is that the story of a man with a lack of empathy so deep that he can even temporarily forget or ignore your existence in the service of his needs is profound. This is not the story of a man who is an asshole. It is the story of a man who is sick.
The point is that being part of his story means that you are sick, too. It means you are a little bit crazy, I think. I see now that I spent the summer of 2010 more than a little bit crazy.
I have good hope, however. As one of my favorite writers said, eventually, you will realize you've come out of the craziness:
You will have been rescued, but won't remember precisely how or when. You will look up from what you are reading and notice that the wind has died down. You will notice that you don't feel quite so insane. You will already have changed. The moment of your rescue will have passed without much notice.
I do not know that I am rescued. I do know that the wind has died down. I don't feel so insane. The ache inside of me is a dull annoyance that sometimes doesn't gnaw at all.
I know that I stood on a busy sidewalk in midtown kissing a man with lovely eyes just a couple of nights ago, and that this is a man I happen to like quite a bit. I feel sweet and not urgent about this. This is a good, different feeling.
I also know that I am seeing another man whose body I enjoy just slightly more than his company. Both are absolutely perfect when taken in short, unexpected bursts. This is another new, good, very different feeling.
If this is rescue, I think I am getting there.
It started with the Psychiatrist. I loved him, briefly, intensely, in a desperate, chaotic way, from the end of winter until roughly Memorial Day weekend. He was not my psychiatrist, but rather a man, a very smart and intense and sad and lovely man. A man I want to say I was thrown upon, as we are each sometimes thrown upon the harsh rocks of life.
At the frightening end of our end, we went through several rounds of shredding at each other's fabric until each of us was in tattered ribbons. By the time the storm had calmed and I felt like I could breathe again, it was the end of June.
At exactly the same sad, weird time, I reconnected with a high school friend on Facebook. Beloved Z., or Thomas, as he is now known. I have already said too much about him in this space, and the less I can say, the better for my heart. If you want to know more about how it began, read http://thattimeofthelife.blogspot.com/2010_06_27_archive.html.
I've never told the story of how my affair with Thomas ended. It is too sad for telling. By which I mean, I can't tell it without remembering the depths of my grief at the very end. There is something about our connection with the past that is both spellbinding and beautiful and potentially deadly. Like a drug, it is hard to quit. Thomas was a powerful connection to my long-lost me.
The closest I want to come to describing our end is to say that this very dear old friend's departure from my life felt like learning you have terminal cancer at a dull weekday doctor's appointment. Speechless and heart-stopping and riveting in its quiet ordinariness. I had no idea it was going to end like this.
Grant that I never verify this comparison. I am even sorry for making it. But this is how it felt.
And my heart was already broken, recall. Broken heart upon broken heart was the straw that broke this camel's back. I found myself, one night after dance class, weeping as I walked along upper Broadway. I couldn't stop, and dance had become the only guaranteed--albeit brief--escape from my grieving. I walked home choking with tears, cooked myself dinner, still couldn't stop this painful leaking. The flood was unending. I became afraid that I would drown.
I remember sitting in the near-dark, staring at my telephone. The only person I could imagine talking to was--can you possibly understand this?--the Psychiatrist. I wanted him to tell me it was going to be all right. That the flood dries and morning comes and you want to eat a banana. I knew that he knew the blackness of the place I was in. We had talked about it, his experience of it, and I wanted him to throw me a line.
I called him. He didn't, couldn't, wouldn't, throw me a line. He yelled at me for calling and hung up. I later came to understand this. At the time, it felt like having a hot match held to a new burn.
Here is the point of all this.
Gradually, I came to understand what both men had in common. What both relationships had in common. How closely--did you know this was coming?--they resembled my troubled, ended marriage.
What they had in common was this: These men suffered from a lack of empathy so deep that in a pinch, they were able to forget, or ignore, that I existed. My existence, the reality of me, was relevant only in its ability to extinguish their own needs, to brighten their own dark places.
The point, lovely people, is that the story of a man with a lack of empathy so deep that he can even temporarily forget or ignore your existence in the service of his needs is profound. This is not the story of a man who is an asshole. It is the story of a man who is sick.
The point is that being part of his story means that you are sick, too. It means you are a little bit crazy, I think. I see now that I spent the summer of 2010 more than a little bit crazy.
I have good hope, however. As one of my favorite writers said, eventually, you will realize you've come out of the craziness:
You will have been rescued, but won't remember precisely how or when. You will look up from what you are reading and notice that the wind has died down. You will notice that you don't feel quite so insane. You will already have changed. The moment of your rescue will have passed without much notice.
I do not know that I am rescued. I do know that the wind has died down. I don't feel so insane. The ache inside of me is a dull annoyance that sometimes doesn't gnaw at all.
I know that I stood on a busy sidewalk in midtown kissing a man with lovely eyes just a couple of nights ago, and that this is a man I happen to like quite a bit. I feel sweet and not urgent about this. This is a good, different feeling.
I also know that I am seeing another man whose body I enjoy just slightly more than his company. Both are absolutely perfect when taken in short, unexpected bursts. This is another new, good, very different feeling.
If this is rescue, I think I am getting there.
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
It's Expiration.
I made it (http://thattimeofthelife.blogspot.com/2010_05_23_archive.html).
I will be awash in thoughts of him today, no doubt. Swimming in a sea of thoughts. But it is warm now, this sea. No longer scalding. As for the deep freeze...well, it could be better and it could be worse.
That's not so bad. Right?
I will be awash in thoughts of him today, no doubt. Swimming in a sea of thoughts. But it is warm now, this sea. No longer scalding. As for the deep freeze...well, it could be better and it could be worse.
That's not so bad. Right?
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