Woman, Stop Yer' Whinin'

And so it was that in the thirty-first year, she was silent.   Or, hopefully, that is how it goes.  

Sick of hearing my own complaints.   Am over it.

Will try to be less of an emotional vampire in 2009, by complaining less and focusing on others more. Actually work on trying to become a good person instead of spending my whole life feeling sorry for myself.  And who knows?  It is a new year, anything is possible.  

I don't know where to start, nor where to end, so I begin in the middle

I feel a need to write.   I also feel blocked from writing.   In some ways that is a good thing -- a departure from my normal tendency to come here and spill forth buckets full of unfettered and ill-considered emotional offal in an effort to unburden myself.  To simply rid myself of its weight (to limited practical effect, of course).  

I am not overwrought.  That is good.  I am not hysterical.  That is better.  I am not even sad. Which, truly, is exceptional.   

I am just increasingly resigned -- to what is -- and incrementally wistful -- about what is not to be.  Generally, just feeling empty.  Hollowed out.   Which again, may sound dire, but truly is a relief in comparison to the ridiculous hysteria of the preceding six months.

So it was a shock to me that, upon getting notification that my best friend from high school (who was recently married) and his wife are expecting their first child, I had a panic attack in the middle of the food court in which I was standing as I received the email.   The shock came, in large part, because I am happy for he and his wife, and, as such, really had very little reason to draw increasingly shallower breaths leading to light-headedness and quickly having to sit down before I passed out unexpectedly.   

But it isn't them.  It isn't even me really.  It is just a side effect of the last vestiges of one of my mental coping mechanisms being dismantled.   I had not really realized it, but in recent years, as a mental crutch, I had come to rely pretty significantly on the fact that the majority of people I went to high school and college with were not married or close to it.  In the last eighteen months, all of that has changed.  Not only does it seem that they are all married, but the vast majority of them are starting families as well.  And so I am left to deal with some difficult truths I had long been pushing aside:  The number of people in my boat is significantly smaller, and it scares me.  There is no strength in numbers anymore.  I am officially a left-over, a cast off,  a broken toy.  The odds of my fulfilling my dreams become exponentially smaller with each passing year.   Time is not on my side.  And to have come this far and to have been unable to have a grown up and healthy relationship may say a lot about the flawed partners I picked, but it says more about me.  As much as I say I want someone to love me, I have pushed away people who have shown me true and sincere affection.  It scares me.  I don't trust it.  I am much more comfortable with rejection.  Due to familiarity?  A love of martyrdom?  Like Shirley Manson, only happy when it rains?  Or simply unfamiliar with how to accept love?  I realize this because yesterday I was Facebook friended by a person who cared for me a great deal in college.  He was a sounding board and I was a rambling and narcissistic complainer.   For some reason he liked me.  He was impossibly sweet, incredibly smart, emotionally sound, universally well liked, and then (as now) ridiculously good looking.  And what did I do?  Rejected him romantically at every turn.  For three years.  Pretty stupid.   He is a married surgeon now, still ridiculously good looking, and as far as I can tell still emotionally sound and impossibly sweet (which seems a sort of funny trait for a surgeon, but perhaps that is just too many medical TV shows talking).   How did I let a person like that go?  At the time, it was easy.  There were so many others willing to treat me shoddily -- clearly, I needed to date them instead.   

A lifelong theme it seems.  

Agh!  

And now that I realize my problem (if not its solution, quite yet), as is karmically just, all of the nice guys from my past have moved on -- they are married or engaged.  They are starting to build the family life of which I can only dream.   

As the favored aphorism of one Hillary Rodham Clinton  goes:  You must bloom where you are planted.  So I must make the best of where I am.  Even if this is not the life I wanted, it can be a good one.  There may be a part of me that may always carry a sadness for what I can never have, but it does not have to be the majority of my experience.  I need to focus on giving back to others in different ways.   On moving the focus away from myself.  I have spent a great deal of time navel-gazing.  It has been -- and can be -- helpful.  But it can also be trying and frustrating and scary. I think turning outside of myself and towards trying to be a help to others would do -- at least me -- a lot of good. 

I think that would be most productive.   I need to make a plan... 

So who is the dog in this situation?

In shockingly appropos bit of luck, what happened to be on Lifetime "Television for Women" tonight as I was on the treadmill:   When Harry Met Sally.

Men and women can never be friends, you know.  Because the sex part always gets in the way. 

It is one of my favorite movies of all time.  I know 80 percent of the screenplay by heart.  I used to watch it, nearly weekly in college.   I have not seen the movie since my college graduation.

Now it has a whole different resonance.   Originally, I thought I understood, but I didn't.   Today, as opposed to twelve years ago, I am Sally's age.  Her complaints, her pain, are my own.   She seemed so high strung twelve years ago.   Today, she seems so reasonable -- like someone who just "wants things the way she wants them."  

So can I find my Harry?  Is that possible?  

I remain dubious.  And, as always,  alone.

"She smells like soup."

The title to this post is, of course (to any child of the 90's who was/is a TV addict), an obvious invocation of Chandler Bing and his issues dating.

He was alone because he was too picky.  Because he rejected a woman he claimed to like generally because, and I quote, "she smelled like soup."   

This has been one of the excuses I have co-opted for my own interminable state of singleness and solitude.  I am just too picky.  They all smell like soup.   Well, all of them except those who are arrogant and emotionally damaged and who treat me badly and leave me crying and making myself less than (and who, uncannily, generally have some sort of affiliation with the armed forces).

So, in short, I am alone because I make bad choices, discarding good men because they "smell like soup", and because the men I do choose are assholes, in one form or another, and so it is doomed because, of course, it is "them and not me."

Except that all of this is absolute bullshit.

Don't get me wrong, it is necessary bullshit.  It is the bullshit you need to tell yourself to get through the day, to get through your life.  It is the bullshit your girlfriends have to tell you in order not to hurt your feelings and because they love you and desperately want to believe that your inability to have a relationship longer than the lifespan of a fruitfly (approximately 8 to 12 days) has nothing to do with you, and everything to do with this abstractly odious man.

And yet, again, generally, it is, in fact, all bullshit.

The truth of the matter:   It is me.  

Again:  It. is. me.

 

There is something profoundly wrong with me, and I am simply unable to put my finger on it.  I think I can try, and probably get pretty close.   But, what scares me most, is even if I can approximate it, I don't think I can change it.

For the last couple of years, I have been working on convincing myself that the reason I could not find and keep a partner in life was that I failed to be authentic when I dated.  I was so insecure and nervous that I spun-plates and completely obscured "who I really am."    

Well, here we are, approximately two years down the road from making that discovery, and the more "real" I become, the more horrifying I am to my dating prospects.  It isn't achieving authenticity that is my problem, it is that who I am, such that it is, is not in fact a very appealing package.   I need to acknowledge this hard truth, regroup and reassess.   There is something very wrong with me -- in a very fundamental sense -- despite the paper selling points I may being to the table, things that may spur initial interest.  There is a very deep and searing flaw in my personality which makes me unsuitable for dating, let alone commitment.  Even the occasional considerate and kind fellow I happen to date finds it unappealing and runs at the first opportunity.  If I don't confront this hard reality, I am going to be left with living out my greatest nightmare for the rest of my life:  being utterly alone.  I have been looking back, trying to understand if it is just revisionist history or if it is in fact true, and as near as I can figure it is my lifelong truth:  My lifelong overarching goal was to be loved.  Really, I have never had any goal other than that.   I never wanted to be anything in particular or to achieve anything in particular.   I have been successful in my life (well, by a fairly loose measure of the standard), but mostly because I feared not being successful, and I was seeking the approval (a weaker strain of love?) from others.

I feel that it is inappropriate to speak about now, because it inflicts pain on those I care about, but my life in its current definition is almost schizophrenic for me:  on one hand I can be proud that I am self-supporting and have "achieved" a respectable paper resume, on the other hand, my life is an absolute horror show.  This is exactly where I never wanted to be.   I never wanted to be old and alone.   I wanted to fall in love, and have a family, and not have to keep throwing my bruised heart out on the table to be mishandled and dropped and stepped on again and again.  It is not that strong.  I am not that strong.  

I sustain.  I endure.   I "endure" far less than others that have actually been tested -- by health issues, economic issues, crises of conscience.   I know my problems are small and petty.   I hate myself for not being able to dismiss them.   In fact, in this week of absolutely awesome inspiration, of an elation and a bonding with my fellow Americans, with absolute strangers that I did not know -- the culmination of nearly a year of wishing  and hoping, of more that two hundred years of pervasive inequality -- I was soaring on Tuesday night, and I spent my entire day walking around silently crying in corners today.

I am leaving the country on Monday and I am grateful for it. 

I need to pull myself together.  And contemplation on foreign soil seems to be just the right palliative at this moment. 

It has been suggested to me that I should get back on the anti-depressants.  Perhaps I should.  I went off of them because they made me feel like a slug and instead of feeling bad, I simply felt nothing.   It might be nice to take a holiday from feeling for a while.   But I fear letting go.

 

A good man, a seemingly honorable person has rejected me for reasons I cannot even fathom.  Well, I know it is my flaw -- I just haven't pinpointed it yet.  His response is a complete 180.  It is puzzling.  It is searingly painful.  But I keep such things to myself, as I know I am ridiculous.  It is stupid that I am so affected by someone I knew for a matter of days.  It is the ultimate demarcation of loser, and of weakness.  Of an inability to parse what is important from what is inconsequential.  When it comes to matters where my heart -- my romantic life -- is involved.  I have no ability to shield myself.   All of this hurts.   It hurts -- a sting, persistent, eventually to bruise, if not to sear.  

What is wrong with me?  Why can't I fix it?

I need to figure out what it is first.

It makes me sad to admit that I am so weak.  That shepherding my heart around this world for thirty-one years has made me so tired.   I know I generally bruise easily (I was black and blue all through my boxing bootcamp), but my heart seems to be the only part of my body that seems unable to recover.  Each bruise may lessen a bit, but it remains incorporated into the landscape.  Simultaneously indented and swollen, ever tender.   

I want to be resilient.  But I am tired.   But I cry.  And cry.  And cry. 

I know how annoyed everyone is with hearing this.   I am working on being better about my stoicism as well.  So far, I managed to avoid discussing this at all with anyone this week.  But here it has spilled out, as is my way.  

My arena of last resort.   

I am sure my comment trolls will eviscerate me for it -- and in their defense, they are right, I am dour and self-pitying in this format, and it is indeed tiresome.   

But again, this is my forum of last resort.   The niceties and tempering, even comments are all used up in interacting with the outside world.   This is my safe place to dump my sadness.  To try to make sense of it.  To try to off-load it.  

It does not lead to very pleasant reading, but, my hope is, it leads to more pleasant living... for me at least.

This will be, however, a post without a conclusion, as I don't have any answers here.   I have only my painfully flawed self.  My only company for the long haul.

And perhaps that is the answer.   But the acceptance of that brutal reality is something that eludes me.   

Fingers Crossed

For various reasons both political and personal.   

Hope.  

Change.  

Commitment.

Equality.  

Acceptance.

Love.  

Possibility to Become Reality? 

BELIEVE.

Counting Sheep

I should have been asleep two hours ago.   I will pay for that tomorrow.   Yet still, I cannot sleep. Generally I know why.   Having fallen victim to the stomach flu which left me bedridden for three days, and relying heavily on Nyquil to sleep through the achiness, I think my body is now confused into thinking it has created such a stockpile of sleep that it no longer needs to resort to such a lazy state of being.  I would go back to the Nyquil, but I have to be up at 5:15 am for my boxing bootcamp and Ny-sleep will never allow that to happen.  I do have the most vivid and wonderfully odd dreams with Nyquil though.  Or maybe they just seem vivid and odd because I am able to remember them -- if only for a moment -- as I am generally not able to do otherwise.  As is the case with much of my waking life, my vivid Ny-dreams seem to center on men.  No they aren't Ny-rotic,  well, not by standard definitions.  Okay, that sounds bad too.  They are not weirdly kinky or anything to that effect.   In truth, they are not sexual at all.  Typically they tend to play themselves out as mise en scenes of the truly mundane:  starting a day getting ready for work,  meeting up for a family event,  preparing dinner, deciding on what movie to go to,  watching a ballgame from the right field bleachers,  taking a call between client meetings.  The only constant is that they involve me interacting with a (different, though plucked from real life) man who is my presumable life partner of some sort and who is interacting with me in what I imagine is the standard loving way that a partner does in these mundane activities.   Yes, it is true, my wildest and most erotic fantasies center around being perfectly boring, normal, standard and barely-if-even-remotely-first base sexual.  (Side note:  I realize at this moment that, even after 31 years of life, I am not entirely sure what "first base" really means.  I am assuming at the time of this writing that it involves making out but with no hands involved, but I am not sure that is quite right.  Anyway, my mundane fantasies all involve a lot of hand holding, hugging and cuddling, sweet kisses, and absolutely no removal of clothing).  I suppose that it stands to reason that we tend to fetishize the unknown and the taboo, and, as such, domestic bliss would qualify as such in my life.  This is not actually a segue into my feeling sorry for myself.  Truly.  In fact, this is just an effort to clear my head so that I can actually sleep so I don't get hit in the face again tomorrow morning because I am not paying attention to the punch combinations that were called for sparring (yes, that has happened on more than one occasion).  But I think this is a segue -- if not a great one -- to a point I have been meaning to touch on, and will probably want to revisit in a more coherent way, in the future: For me, and for every one of my siblings (and there are 4 of them, so this observation, if slightly less than statistically significant, is at least slightly more than anecdotal) emotional affection is something for which we would do anything.   I don't mean "boil your bunny" type anything, but rather a more personally emotionally perilous "anything".   We are so taken with the fact that someone would profess to love us or be romantically emotionally invested enough that we lose all sense of perspective and immediately hand the other person all of the emotional power in the relationship (or faux-relationship, such that it is).  And there we all are: powerless and addicted to the affirmation from the other person, and then when things go south, as they inevitably always do, the pain sears and resonates and echoes,  far deeper and for far longer than it ought to do.   As we are all fairly different people, and as my oldest brother (who lived with us only starting in his teens and who was functionally an only child before that time) seems to suffer the least from this phenomenon, I can only venture to guess that this is a symptom of having grown up in a household devoid of emotional affection.  I *know* my parents love us, but I never *felt* it.   I know my parents did not love each other, and I saw it (and still see it) every day.  And we always saw everyone's frustrations and tension seep out and slosh around, infusing everything.   Still happens to this day.  It is why going home is very taxing.   Again this is ineloquent, and it is probably doing a disservice as it sells short all that my parents did for us, and our own roles in allowing this to be our lot in life.   As I have said here before, and as I say here now, if only as a placeholder, my parents did their best given their lot in life, and it is amazing what they were able to accomplish and all that they gave us even when times were so tough.  Their actions were expressions of love.  I recognize and celebrate that.  I realize now, however, that should I ever be blessed with children, that kids aren't so good with nuance -- especially in the midst of turbulent times, they need to hear things loud and clear:  I love you,  I love you, I love you, work hard, be respectful, and you are wonderful just as you are.   Otherwise they spend the rest of their lives simultaneously craving and doubting those very words.  

A Return To The Mean

I am a woman of singular virtues.   In each sphere of my life, I possess one particular gift.  It may not be enough to make me exceptional or even interesting, but such a constitutional makeup has, in the long run, kept me safe.   My only physical gift is that of endurance.  I can run and run and run and run till the world finally makes sense again.   My gift in the realm of emotions -- an area the never fails to bewilder and fluster me and turn what I know inside out and upside down -- is the uncanny ability to return to the mean.  Sometimes this return is a stop-motion trickle of rivulets ultimately accumulating into a substantive pool and sometimes it is a head-jerking snap back into place -- but no matter its pace, there is always the return.  My emotional compass may often lead me to wander in a despondent wilderness, but it is also why, in the end, I am never lost.  I always know deep down I will find my way back, that I will return to the mean:  I will come home.  

The mean is neither happy nor unhappy.  It is not painful nor is it exuberant.  Not orange, nor blue.   Sounds a bit like purgatory, but shares just as many characteristics with the definition of nirvana.   It is a holding pattern.  It is refuge.  It is safe.  

The mean is not a place to live.  But, I do often forget, that it is a place to catch my breath.  A ramshackle haven.  Somewhere for the wicked, the worried and the weary to rest and regroup.  

Too long in the mean leads to hardening at the edges, a calcification of the soul.   As such, an imperfect defense from the rawness that ensues from wandering out, bounding up and down the orders of magnitude.  

But the mean keeps me safe.   It lets me survive.   It makes hope possible.   

It is what proves that I can take care of myself.  

Real Life

Currently, my Facebook newsfeed has (1) pictures of four different newborns (all girls, as it happens), (2) a picture of someone's first sonogram (sex indeterminate at this point), (3) three status updates re. attendance at a wedding, (4) one status update celebrating someone's change of relationship status, and (5) a couple pictures of a very pregnant woman (pregnant with a boy, I believe) walking her oldest son to his first day of school.

My life? I have a profile picture of myself at a dance club, a status that features a quote from the premiere of "Entourage", and a posted NYT article re. the Beastie Boys' MCA (nee Adam Yauch) making indie films.

Arrested development much? Oh God. This is not how I envisioned my life to be at this point.

Yeah, I want to gouge my eye out with a fork.

Damnit...

I am never right about anything. But when it comes to the end of relationships, I am a fucking savant. Fantastic.

So, as will come as very little surprise to anyone, it is over. I know I sound angry. I am not sure how I feel. Again, more of this out of body feeling I have had over the last 24 hours. He pegged it to an insurmountable distance issue. Assuredly, the distance put pressure on the relationship that otherwise would not have been there. It artificially accelerated everything. But if you were really excited about the person you would give it a go. However, best to know he is not excited now, rather than later, I suppose. God, I feel so fucking numb. Like literally, I cannot feel my fingers. My body could be made of silly puddy and being contorted in all sorts of shapes right now and I am just watching it happen. Okay, that last sentence makes no sense. I guess I am just... again, numb. My body and my brain are protecting me.

The latest guy has dumped me. The Boy is engaged. I am going to be 31 in 18 days. And if I am brave enough, I am going to go see my first love get married this weekend....

Finally, there are the tears....

Your host...

in this twisted alternate universe is both very sad and very lonely.

Probably doesn't help matters that she is getting old, and watching PS I Love You.

Under Armor

Having decided to take this week -- in the middle of all of my varying inanities -- to contemplate the various planks that make up my own personal platform, I figure I will take the opportunity to explain myself. If only bit by bit. And, if only to myself.

My love of clothing, accessories, shoes and handbags is something that both inspires great pride and great shame in me. I feel shame because I know that taking pleasure in such things is shallow -- vainglorious to the extreme -- and, at a certain level, very declasse (insert accent mark over the last e -- I am too technologically impeded to do so). Very West Egg indeed. But the truth is, labels don't mean that much to me. They do hold some panache for both quality's sake, and letting others know I recognize quality. But still, that is not why I would spend $125 on a t-shirt or $700 on a pair of shoes. Obscene. Wretched. Decadent. Wasteful. I know. But, in the classic new money iteration, the ability to do these things are a signal that I have arrived. I find more honor in them in that, I could care less that the rest of the world thinks I have arrived, it is a signal to me that I am the master of my own destiny. I take care of myself, and I can cater to even my own decadent whims. And, I can make happen for myself, the things that were only pipe dreams so long ago when I was first introduced to the trappings of high society.

But even all of that is just a surface level explanation of my affinity for beautiful clothes and extravagant couture. The end game, the bottom line, is this: High end fashion is the epitome of glamour and beauty, when I can adopt even a little of that into my life, I feel instantly more empowered. Stepping out in 4 inch Christian Laboutins, I feel as though the world is my oyster. I strut. I am powerful. I never feel that way otherwise. Never. And it isn't just the label, but it is the beauty. I have adorned myself with something beautiful and it makes me beautiful too -- if only for a moment. And it feels good. The ugly duckling making good. It gives me a bite of the ephemeral. It is an easy, if temporary, fix to my ongoing crisis of confidence. Though, I must also take pride in the fact that people (as misguided as it is) will look to me as tastemaker. This is an affirmation of a magnitude I can never adequately describe. I was the little fat girl wearing stirrup pants (because she couldn't fit in jeans) and an ALF t-shirt that read "Nice Planet You Have Here" -- for anyone to compliment me on my taste is beyond thrilling. Especially because it really is something I came to all on my own. My mother is not very girly -- her naturally beautiful looks always got her everywhere. Everything I learned about being a girl, about being even remotely a fashionista, I learned on my own. And admittedly, I am as proud of that as I am of any advanced degree or professional accolade I have ever had. Perhaps that is a sad statement, but there is something in the fact of its very organic nature that I find inherently comforting.

Maybe I am shallow after all.

Brave Alternate World

IF I WAS BOTH COURAGEOUS AND FOOLISH ENOUGH TO JUST STATE THE FOLLOWING (WITHOUT ANY CONTEXT OR WARNING) I WOULD. THEN MAYBE I WOULD BE LESS RIDICULOUSLY INSECURE BECAUSE ALL OF MY "UNATTRACTIVE" PARTS WOULD BE EXPOSED. AS I AM STILL A HOPELESS COWARD, INSTEAD I PUBLISH THIS LETTER TO... WELL, LET'S JUST SAY MYSELF... HERE. MOST OF IT WILL NOT BE UNFAMILIAR TO THE AUDIENCE HERE. MERELY COMPRESSED/SUMMARIZED.

What should/could you know about me (as I am not sure I am the best arbiter of what is necessary and what is not -- as I am the most opaque transparent person you will ever meet):

-- I have a tendency to be anxious/a little neurotic. I qualify it this way because I am a lot less anxious/a lot less neurotic that I was years ago, though I guess that even with that being said, I am a lot more anxious than the average person. I have learned over the years how to cope (well, cope better) when I feel anxious. I make a list and/or a plan. I take a run. I ask a direct question b/c usually the answer, one way or another, will make me feel better. It occurs to me that asking the question may make me look silly, but it is a smaller price to pay that carrying the larger ball of anxiety without pause. In this same vein, I am insecure. I know I am smart and there are moments where I believe myself to be attractive, but out in the field/in practice, I have a hard time exuding a belief in the whole package so to speak. In my dating life in particular, I think I am so hung up on my past failures and my internalization of all of the blame for such things, that I can't relax and just be myself, for better or worse. I really, really want to.

-- If I could, I would worry less about things. I will always try to do so, but to a certain extent, I think it is just my way. Silly, I know. But I was the chief worrier in my household -- my mother was cavalier, my father combative in his stress -- and I was always trying to smooth things over. It has become a habit in a lot of ways -- I worried about things that would never happen, and subconsciously, I think I began to believe that that is why they never came to pass. Because I was vigilant, or some such nonsense. These days, I try to ask myself the question as to whether my worry really makes a difference. Sometimes that helps, sometimes it doesn't. Being a BigLaw lawyer, paid to worry over the placement of semi-colon's as though they were a crises, did not help matters much; being a lawyer in a more relaxed in-house setting has helped matters a great deal.

-- Factually "scary" things --

• I was a fat kid (not so scary), I had an eating disorder (on and off from the time I was 14 till the time I was about 28 -- more scary). Not hospitalization-worthy stuff, just more neurotic than anything else. I have always had body issues (see the fat kid thing), but this is actually an area in which I have made tremendous progress in the last 2 years between my nutritionist and having time for regular exercise. I am still probably more of a gym rat than I ought to be, and I am always conscious of what I am eating, but it is also important to me that I eat. Hunger is not an acceptable state of being, and I am okay with being a size 6 (at some point I had whittled myself down to a size 2, but looking back at pics, I don't think that looked good, and I know I certainly didn't feel good, and I was definitely not thinking straight, as I was clearly starving).
• I was raped when I was 14. It was a high school party date rape sort of situation -- which would have been issue enough -- if it hadn't been complicated by the fact that the party was at my house, hosted by my brother, the guy who did it was my best friend's older brother, and it happened in a newly constructed part of the house that had no curtains and faced out towards the backyard where everyone who was anyone at my highschool stood and watched what happened to me. I spent the next two years of high school trying to pretend it didn't happen, though getting reminded of it nearly every day. Years later, people still mention it to my siblings, and not in a sympathetic way, but in a laughing sort of way. Looking back, it is the way my classmates treated me after the fact that seems even more painful than the actual occurrence. I think this is also something I have overcome and that it does not affect me, but I mention it only because I would have said the very same thing 10 years ago, and it was only upon making such a statement to a friend that I realized that I also ended up in tears every time I got physically involved with a man. This is no longer the case, but I think it definitely made me very hesitant and unsure about physicality for a very long time.
• When I was at the firm, I ended up on antidepressants for about a year (I was also seeing a therapist regularly during this time -- at certain points twice a week -- more her idea than mine as it was really expensive). Anyway, I like to think of this as being evidence of strength because I reached out for help when I needed it, but truthfully, it does embarrass me that I was so overwhelmed by life that I had to take such actions. Nonetheless, while it prolonged the inevitable, eventually, I made the move I needed to make -- meaning I left the firm and BigLaw practice, and miraculously, my disposition improved immeasurably (and almost instantaneously). And here we are 18 months out, and I cannot imagine having to use such crutches anymore.
• My family is a little/a lot nuts. They are good people with good hearts and they are not nuts in a way that is mean or vicious, but it is pretty clear they all carry a lot of their own emotional baggage and it is pretty weighty. My parents -- married for 32 years -- did not really seem to like each other much till recently, and then I think it is because they realized they had been together so long, they actually do depend on each other. My mom is generous to fault -- she literally would give you the shirt off her back, on the other hand, she is also ridiculously divorced from her emotions or from the worries of everyday life. She believes absolutely in her own world view and struggles in understanding others. My worrying (a lot of which is misguided, but a lot of which comes from being practical and being a lawyer etc) has always perplexed her. She just doesn't get it. Sometimes this means she succeeds brilliantly, other times it means she crashes and burns in spectacular fashion. Her real estate speculation, into which shamefully, I allowed her to draw me in (as she did to one of my brothers) is an example of the latter. So yes, I am paying a mortgage on a house I will likely never be able to sell, and which is probably worth less than what I paid for it. Again, it shames me to this day, and it has, unfortunately, frayed our relationship quite a bit. The house made me feel trapped at the firm for a long time. Finally, I decided I would have to leave regardless in order to save myself. Things are okay, but again, to this day it still vexes me. I should not have to worry about money the way my parents did -- and I don't -- well, not to that extent. But I should be a lot more secure than I am. And, to a certain extent, as my mother purloins the rent check for the house every month, I am supporting my parents now (in part) as well. It makes for an uncomfortable dynamic, so I don't spend a lot of time with them, though they are geographically close. That being said, they don't exactly reach out either. They are odd folk. Very live and let live -- which is good, so as not to be crowded and smothered, but also there is no feeling of safe harbor, of a buoy of unconditional love. My father is a smart and kind man, who has worked harder and worried more in his life than any person ought to, but he definitely does not cope well with his own stress and worries. He takes them out as passive aggressive moments on the rest of the family. His unpredictable moods would color every dinner and every holiday. When things were good, they were very good. When they were bad, they sucked. Running around on eggshells and still he would find ways to be unhappy. As an adult, I understand all of the extreme pressures to support a family of 7 and to deal with my mother's flights of fancy and everything else, when I was growing up, and I empathize with him. The pressure must have been unimaginable. The man probably didn't sleep for close to 20 years. But it doesn't change the fact that it is for that reason that I have no stomach at all for even the slightest amount of tension or disagreement in my personal life and why I will do anything and go anywhere to ameliorate such a situation as soon as possible. It could be why I am constantly apologizing for things that are not my fault. I will take the blame if we can just move on. Again, he has mellowed with the years, and with children moving out of the house (well some of them), but every holiday still holds the possibility of dramatic exposition, so I always travel home with my metaphysical pith helmet in hand. My brothers all run the gamut of dysfunction from normal to sad. My youngest brother is a geek, but generally, these days, he has a sweet disposition. He is a good kid, and I love him to pieces. Much better than the mid-range teen years when all he ever said was a grunted, "Yes", "No" or "Fine" (or maybe I just caught on and realized I needed to ask more open ended questions). MY oldest brother -- also a sweet person whom I love very much -- has been caught in an arrested development phase for the last 15 years and is now an adult living with a wife and child, but is still enrolled in college classes full time, as he has been constantly, again, for the last 15 years. He broke up with the girlfriend he had before his current wife, just by ceasing to speak with her. Just stopped returning her calls one day. After 2 years! So I ended up dealing with his breakup (I was the only other person related to him for whom she had a number). My middle brother, whom I adore is smart and funny and wonderful, and has a lot of personal issues. At least he has a tendency towards depression, confirmed he has OCD, at worst he is an agoraphobic. He moved back in with my parents a year and a half ago after a break up and he basically hasn't left the house since. Needless to say, family holidays are always unpredictable.
• I am messy.
• I really, really want to be married and to have a family of my own. I am so tired of my own navel gazing. I really want the opportunity to take care of someone else, and to have them take care of me. I cannot think of anything else I want more in this world. I don't know what the "family of my own" would look like. I think it would have kids -- I find myself lately hoping that it would have kids -- but I would not have kids for their own sake. If my family of my own, was just my partner and I, then that would be fine too. Maybe I say such things because I am afraid that I won't be able to have kids, but I think it is more that I have learned enough to know that I can't be sure the shape that certain parts of my life will take. I just need to find someone who isn't afraid of all of the above. And I have to be willing to share it. Both of those things are very hard things, but I think they are possible. Someone who can be patient with me. I am slow to find my rhythm, but once I do, I can follow the beat pretty well.
  

'Fraidy Cat

There is a reason it is imprudent for a woman of a certain age to get a cat. It never makes her look good. And, it seems, this maxim holds true -- whether the cat is literal or figurative.

I am a big 'fraidy cat, and it doesn't make me look good. And it makes me feel worse.

I cannot relax and enjoy the ride. I worry out the details till they are frayed and worn. I babble incessantly. I am afraid: Of relying. Of being hurt. Of expecting too much. Of being disappointed. Of messing up. Of ambiguity. Of believing my own eyes.

Again, in response to such fears, I am generally trying to take a deep breath. However, sometimes I just take to babbling. I have taken to babbling to the boy about behind the scenes matters. Chatter with my girlfriends. I think it is generally sort of funny, and in the end flattering, but it is also too much. There needs to be mystery. I can't let him know I like him this much. It makes me feel like I am fucking everything up.

In quieter moments, I like to think that, although it isn't in accordance with the rules, it is what I do. It is who I am. If it frightens him off and messes things up, well, that is beyond my control, because it is who I am. But I am not sure that it is.

What it is is just fear and nerves. Why am I still being this way? Why can't I just relax?

Deep breath.

I Am?

Dame fortune has been kind to me of late. I find myself -- all of a sudden -- presented with the possibility of spending more time with a person I find myself attracted to in every sense of the word (and, who, as far as I can tell, is not arrogant, unkind, or immature -- at least not more than the average person).

The situation has some contextual quirks. Among them the fact that we have a shared history, but not a shared past. Another, is that he is geographically undesirable as he lives far away, but he lives in a city with many people to whom I was once close (and am not today, only due to time and geographic circumstance). Then there is my abiding fear of the telephone, something which in this modern era of blackberries and IM'ing is generally not such an issue, but is more so when you are trying to get to know someone better from a distant three thousand mile divide.

I am struggling to write here because I am not entirely sure what I want to say. I like to write when I am confused because it helps me work things out, but I am afraid of my own words here. That to write anything about this situation is presumptuous and such hubris will then align the fates against me.

Ooh, look -- I am so important that the Fates would take time to align against me. Clearly, they do not have anything better to do. Ahem.

Anyway, perhaps stream of consciousness may help here. It will be inelegant, but I think elegance can be sacrificed to efficacy this once in the name of a worthy cause of allowing me to wrap my head around my love life. (I deem this worthy because I am imagining that, after all these years, people might be relieved if I took a break from my one-note lamenting with regard to this particular topic.)

So...

I like this guy. I really like him a lot. We have been out on two dates and what I saw left me wanting more. I want to spend more time with him and to get to know him better. I am excited and anxious (as in expectant, not as nervous) to do so. I am not, however, in love with him. I still have to know him better. I guess I feel like, given some of the quirks/impediments I listed above, I should have been struck by the thunderbolt of love at first sight to even consider any kind of long distance possibility (and to pick up and go make a cross country visit as I am soon going to do). But that is not quite the case. I am deeply "in like" with this man, in no small part because I can refer to him as a "man" and, unlike so many of my romantic attachments, the descriptor seems apt. I am accused of getting ahead of myself for using terms like "long distance possibility" and, well, I will be bold a write out the non-euphemism, "a long distance relationship" but I think that, for once, my consideration of a potential relationship and envisioning how it might work is not necessarily getting ahead of myself. By virtue of our ages (we are not the youngest chickens in the coop anymore) and the distance, it just seems to me that if I wasn't serious about the possibility of dating (as in committing -- not just perpetually playing around) this person, then why make the effort. In a very odd way, the fact that I don't believe that I am instantly in love with him, makes me want him more. The abiding curiosity of wanting to know more, to spend more time with him, is a very strong sort of parallel (precursor?) feeling. I could not tell you whether this will work out. My pessimistic side wrestles continually with my hopeful side. History is not on my side -- longevity of relationships has never been my strong suit. And because I am so particular and don't date that much, I also tend to vest people with more of a sense of possibility that they are probably entitled. I have written here about my issues with the "Last Best Chance" and how nervous that makes me. I am trying hard not to weigh this situation down with such expectations. Truly, I do not think I will be alone forever. But again, this one has so much possibility. Someone kind, yet ambitious, familiar, yet all new. He just has so much possibility -- or I guess I think that he and I would have so much possibility. There is something just different about it. I get nervous and tongue tied and worried. I will admit to a couple of stutters at the beginning of our one phone conversation since he left. I know I just need to be myself, that I cannot control how he feels about me, that all I can do is present to him who I am, who I genuinely am, and then just trust that things will work out as they should one way or the other. If he is to ever love me and I am to ever love him, I should hope we would be loving the most genuine version of the other person. I guess I am worried I don't know who I actually am. I find myself playing and replaying conversations and emails and all the rest -- proud of moments where I just surrendered to quirky, worrying about when I sounded stilted and awkward and weird. I guess those latter moments are when I am doing more of my plate spinning. So maybe the stutters are an indication I need to change course and get back to topic in a way that is closer to the real me.

I guess I just need to take a deep breath and surrender to the possibilities. Wherever they may take me...

Defying Logic

If there is one thing that has been true in my life up until now it is that despite any protestations to the contrary, logic has little, if nothing, to do with anything I have ever done.

If someone refuses to be seen with me in public, I should reject them out of hand. If they refuse to follow through on promises, I should curse their name. If they only make contact when convenient (and typically at odd hours), I should disavow any knowledge of them. And yet, because I am a weak girl, I do none of these things.

The positive, I suppose, is that, out of sheer annoyance, I am writing about this now. (The annoyance being the positive part.) Of all people, I do not understand why this particular person is jerking me around. Then again, I do: Because I let him. I taught him to treat me this way -- not particularly badly or shabbily, but simply with very little fondness or regard (well, at least when we are not actually in the same room together -- and, also, I suppose, when we are fully clothed).

I did not think I was emotionally hung up. And, actually, even now, I don't think I am. Should someone else cross my path, I would not hesitate to be open to other possibilities. I guess I realize, however, that if this particular person were open to actually having a relationship with me, I would be open to having a relationship with him. However, he is apparently not open to such things, and it vexes me as I cannot understand why.

I think that this is life working itself out in the right ways again though. If he gave me even slightly more, I would get more involved, and that would not be good for me as I do not think , in the end, that he is capable of giving me what I need.

Till then, I need to stop responding the the half-way entreaties. Easier said than done.

Remainders

I have a longer post re. a concept known as "pitching to contact" in baseball which is a skill that many older pitchers (or those reinventing themselves post injury) must master. Rather than striking a batter out and thus winning by overpowering the offense, the pitcher throws the batters pitches he knows they can hit (hence pitching to contact) and relies on the seven men playing defense behind him to make the appropriate out. It is an orientation that requires a great deal of trust -- there are after all seven people covering a lot of ground in whom you must have absolute faith -- and it is especially difficult to adopt if your former approach was to mow down batters at the plate. The latter is the control freak approach (effective, if you have the talent to manage it), the former is the wise and more accessible approach. Using the former, you don't need to be a once in a lifetime talent to get what you want, you just need to be alert and astute and have a little faith.

So, my theory is that I need to learn to "pitch to contact" so to speak. I will never get what I want trying to control the whole game. I don't have that much talent. Very few do. It is a lot easier to accomplish the same thing by simply putting pitches out there and letting things progress.

Working on it. Currently caught up in a wave of nostalgia. My past has come back to me in so many different forms. Some complimentary. Some creepy. All educational, I suppose. Mostly in that I think that -- for me -- there isn't as much unfinished business out there as I thought. I feel like maybe I am on the precipice of a breakthrough, but I never quite seem to be able to break through. I can turn a boy's head, but I can't ever seem to get him to stick around. This doesn't make me sad as it once did. It just leaves me puzzled. I am utterly without even the first idea as to how I am to close the deal and convince someone that being seen in public with me on a regular basis is a good thing. I suppose that when the right fit comes along then it will all just work itself out. But as I am not getting any younger and my expiration date grows ever closer, I figure it doesn't hurt to be proactive.

Pitch to contact, indeed.

Slouching Towards Bethlehem

I read somewhere that, if you feel as though you are stuck, you should make a list of what you would like to do, what you would like to learn, what you would like to complete, and what you would like to say. Once the list is complete, you should label each item listed as "N", "L", or "NITL" -- now, later (with date specified), and "not in this lifetime." Then you should proceed to accomplish/complete the items on your list in the priority with which you designated them. The "not in this lifetime" designation is useful because it determines that that desire and/or that task, while acknowledged, need not be completed and thus moved off of the priorities list.

I am still working on initially compiling my list. Surprisingly, it is taking longer than expected. I am thinking, however, that I may have a little "in memoriam" moment for all of the items I end up listing as "NITL."

So far there is only one (query whether I am too ambitious, or too much of a perfectionist, to give up on any of my goals. Apparently the only quality I have that overrides the aforementioned two, is an unabiding fear of confrontation....): As such, my one NITL thus far is telling The Boy exactly how I feel about him coming back to town. But if I were to muster the courage (and, honestly, if I thought there was even a scintilla of a benefit at all -- to me -- I would) to tell him such things directly, this is what I would say:

I am so angry at you. I wish that I weren't because it means that, at some level, I still care. A lot. But the truth is I cared a lot for such a long time that just walking away from those feelings is impossible. They have to go somewhere. And so, with a brief stop at hurt, they caromed from caring to anger. You, on the other hand, feel nothing at all about this situation. Actually that isn't right. I know you feel something: Relief.

Relief that you didn't actually make eye contact when you passed me on the street.

Relief that I didn't stop right there and call your name.

Relief that, having ignored my last email (in response to yours), I have not attempted to contact you again.

Relief that you will never have to see me again.

Actually, I understand all of those things (I have been there myself). Well, except for the last thing. I do not claim to understand that at all, because, frankly, it is just stupid. If we did not live in the same neighborhood and share an (albeit extended) network of friends, perhaps it would not be so preposterous, but given those unavoidable facts it is the equivalent of a three year old sticking their fingers in their ears and yelling, "La, la, La, I can't hear you" when trying to avoid hearing a hard truth. Rational behavior for a toddler? Yes. For a thirty year old? Not so much. Again, stupid.

So now, in addition to having hurt me through your revealing the depth of the profound lack of respect that you have for me, you have also placed the burden of being the bigger person, the one to act like an adult, squarely on my shoulders. When we meet again, as in this small, small town we inevitably will, it will be my burden to smile and make nice. To keep things brief but civil. To wear a mask of conciliation, and to will it not to crack until the moment I am finally able to turn away from you. Maybe you will be alone. Maybe you will be with a significant other ("So nice to meet you. Really.") Worse still, maybe you will be with one of our mutual friends and then there will be no escaping. There will be no tears. There will be no screaming. There won't even be a snide backhanded comment. There will just be prolonged agony of the unspoken and the unsaid. And you will walk away unscathed and unrepentant. And I will be unwound. Tending to the wound -- the gaping hole in my chest that allows me to draw only intermittent rough, raw breath which serves only to punctuate the unceasing rush of pain -- which I had worked so hard to heal with acceptance and patience. Once again, freshly reopened.

I had wanted to try to avoid that silent melodrama with the "How's things" email I sent you, but you chose not to take that road. Again, I understand this too -- avoiding hard truths. It is certainly easier -- for you. Then again, for you every potential approach in this situation is weighted that way -- it is just in in your character. Unavoidable, really. And so I understand, but damnit, I hate you for it. And, in spite of it all, in my quiet moments, I will admit to myself that I miss you. And I hate myself for that. But it will be okay. Some day there will be no reflexive sting to hearing your name. Some day there will be total indifference.

I read the following sentence today, which says it all: "If you have judged someone's character rightly he or she is not likely to disappoint you." I am not hurting now because you misjudged me. I hurt because, clearly, I misjudged you. And that misjudgment leaves me feeling angry, and hurt, and embarrassed. And yes, disappointed.

But you know what? I will get over it, and I will do so precisely because I did misjudge you:

You may be exceptional, but, turns out, you are just not that special.

Assets

In the spirit of taking good advice and, in that vein, trying to focus on the positive, I have a post that is not "oh woe is me" for a change.

Since I turned thirty, about 7 months ago now, I have not notice a lot of physical changes. It is not as though I woke up in this new decade and found my physical landscape had totally gone to hell. Just as when I woke up on the day I turned twenty one, I did not feel that the mantle of adulthood was firmly affixed to my breast. All of that being said, in the intervening seven months since the "thirty" milestone, I have noticed a few differences. There have been the sudden uninvited appearance of gray hairs (which even regular six week highlight appointments cannot wholly stay in front of). Likewise, I have seen the beginning of the dreaded phenomena that is cellulite popping up in various "problem" areas -- a cruel genetic disposition I was not aware of. But lastly, and most significantly, I have become aware that, unlike prior years, regardless of how rigorous my workout regimen, my posterior -- the proverbial boo-tay -- does not change in size. Or as my sister rather inelegantly noted recently to a cab driver of ours, "She has a *big* ass. Like J.Lo/Beyonce big! But it's only because her waist is so small. Really." In a former life I would have taken such offense I would not have spoken to her for a week, and I would have stopped eating for two. But today, being older and wiser, I knew it was true.

My bottom, such that it is (along with my thighs) has been the bane of my existence for the better part of half my life. It is what I was always running miles and miles and miles to get away from. I wanted it to shrink. To retreat. To give up its relentless pursuit. Always there, in my rear view mirror, right behind me. On a select few occasions over the years, I succeeded. But only when consuming 600 calories a day and running 6 miles as well. Need I mention that while my ass my was small, my head looked like a lollipop, and I was, well, nothing short of insufferable, because, frankly, I was damn hungry.

So today, I am still pretty fanatic about my workouts. I am less disciplined in my eating -- partly by design, as I am working with a nutritionist to regulate my eating patterns (though she, and I, frown on my York Peppermint Patty and Starbuck's pastries habits) -- but overall, I eat in a healthier manner than the average bear. Maybe not the average sorority girl, but better than a super-majority of the populations. And in the end, there it is -- the end. My end. The rear end. Following on as always.

The only way to describe it is as my sister did, in the the pop culture vernacular: It is J. Lo, Beyonce, and Kim Kardashian all rolled into one. It is most like these pop culture exemplars because I have a smaller frame on top (though unlike Kardashian, and perhaps Beyonce, I am not all that well endowed).

I am not going to lie. It does -- as it always has (and probably, to some degree, always will) -- vex me. I wish for it to disappear, to make itself less apparent, to take on the cloaking qualities of Wonder Woman's plane. But of course, it does not (though I am not fully convinced that it cannot) take on the aforementioned qualities. It is nothing if not persistent (and more than a little recalcitrant). Behind me, full and round and buxom (if such an adjective can be attributed to the derriere) it remains. I should appreciate it, for in this life, it is rare, beyond the exceptional friends and the ocassional family member, to find someone or something that always stands behind you.

My bottom -- such that it is -- is a key, I think. If I can truly accept it, it would be a gateway to accepting all of my other endemic flaws. Er, quirks. It, too, useful as a gating item. "Sir, do you mind girls who went to Harvard? Who have graduate degrees? Who are well-beyond self supporting? And who have ample bottoms?" I think it really could be a victory-squared (win-win-win) situation.

So we shall see what comes of this rocky relationship between me and my bottom, but, I am happy to report, I am willing, for the first time, well, ever, to sit down (on it) to have talks (with it). Wow, that seems like it will be a bit awkward, doesn't it? Well, let's put it this way -- accommodations for talks will be intimate and the parties will therefore be highly incentivized to come to agreement.

The Peppercorn

Admittedly, my first day as a law student was not a distinguished one. I found my way to class (an easy enough task when there are 50 other people who share your schedule and, thus, gazelle-like pivot in the right direction, eventually). I even had managed to purchase the proper books ahead of time and to read the assigned cases (though my relative comprehension may have been dubious as I did wonder why certain paragraphs at the beginning were preceded by keys and seemed extremely repetitive). No, my lack of distinction became inescapable in the first 10 minutes of my first class on my first day as a first year law student, as my contracts professor began a lyrical meditation on the essential parts of the contract: "First, one must have an offer -- the bridge to formation of a contract. Second, one must have acceptance -- the car to drive across that bridge. And last, but certainly not least, one must have the essential ingredient for formation of a contract -- that which seals the deal -- the oft-touted, much beloved, supremely utilitarian Peppercorn. Or as it is more conventionally known.... Ms. [______]?" Roused from my shell-shocked stupor by the sudden mangled mispronunciation of my last name and the realization that my attempt to wear nothing but neutrals was not going to save me from whims and vagaries of the Socratic method, I dissembled. Actually, more accurately, I spluttered in what I imagine was a keen, yet undecipherable, imitation of Porky Pig: "I, I, I, I.... ddddon't kn-kn-know." Two beats. Seamlessly, the professor continued: "Well, Ms. [______] that is a shame. A peppercorn is the legal metaphor for the concept of consideration. It is the payment of the toll to drive your acceptance car across the offer bridge. If you act without consideration being extended to you, in the end, there is no agreement. I hate to inform you, but Ms. [_________], if you act without consideration, then no matter what was initially offered, you are on your own."

How true. In every respect.

******

Embarrassing as that episode was, it instilled in me a lifelong respect for the peppercorn. Or the "mere peppercorn" as it is so often lovingly referred within the halls of the legal academe. An appreciation which is only tempered by my continued amusement at the ridiculousness of the term "consideration" to describe the inducement to enter into a contract (usually money, but can be as amorphous as a promise to do or even not to do something).

But at the juncture of here and now which is my life today, the concepts -- arcane and silly as they may have seemed at first blush -- take on a new meaning and singular importance. I should have known. I have always had a love for the supremely absurd.

******

I have been attempting throughout my life to have romantic relationships in which no peppercorn -- not even a mere one -- was exchanged. There was no consideration. In any sense of the word. And everything, inevitably, would fall apart. I had no recourse. But that is as it should have been. In truth, there was no agreement.

******

No bargain, no benefit.

******

My struggle has always been that I did not know what to bargain for. I did not think I was entitled to consideration, let alone to think about defining what form of consideration would be best for me. Whither my peppercorn?

Recent events, from my Goodbye to All That moment to Client No. 9 making a splash in the news to my new appreciation for St. Patrick's Day, have led me to a greater understanding of what that peppercorn might be. Or at least now I am fully cognizant of what it is not. It will not be someone who dazzles but holds me at arms length. It will have to be someone who leads with their heart. It can be a confused heart, it can be an unknowing heart, it can even be a frightened heart (mine is certainly all those things and more), but it must be an earnest heart. All the rest is just meaningless noise.

******
So I have discovered the peppercorn. And I am, without a doubt, utterly beyond terrified. Knowledge which I would have assumed would bring me comfort instead fills me with dread.
I know the truth now, so to the extent that things do not work out from here, there is only one target upon which blame can be placed: It is my fault. Every additional day that I am alone -- continuing on that relentless march into spinsterhood -- another indictment: Broken. Irreparably broken.

A singular life as damaged goods.

******

I will never be confident enough. I will never be laid-back enough. I will never be thin enough. I will never be interesting enough. I will never be put together enough.

I really am at a loss for how to fix these things. If I could snap my fingers and make them so, then it would be done. If I knew what book to read or what course to take or what service to enlist so that I could work my way toward the solutions for these things, I would be well on my way. But I really have no clue. Obviously. It shows.

*******

Every day, I try not to care. To be indifferent. To laugh at the oddities of my life. To chant silent internal cliched mantras about life working itself out and things being for the best. To harden my heart and prepare for a life ahead that looks very much like the life behind, and to negotiate a peace with that.

Every day I fail.

Perhaps my efforts are not entirely wasted. Perhaps, I am getting closer by fractions of millimeters to such goals. And such movement, as minute as it may be, is a victory. But I cannot see it. Mostly because I find my eyes blurred by the ever-welling tears because as hard as I try to toughen it and make it impervious, there is no escaping my heart and how much it hurts. All of the time. Every hour. Every day.

******

It is funny. It has never been about getting married. More so when I was younger and did not know any better. Now, much less so, as it seems so inconsequential to the real point: All my life, all I have ever wanted is that enduring love. To have someone love you, and you them. I just can't imagine anything more precious or more amazing. I really cannot imagine it. I have no idea what such a concept would look like when I am part of the equation. My actual involvement in interpersonal relations of the romantic kind is always a swift precursor to rejection and pain.

******

It bothers me that I am so weird. That I am horrifying to men across the spectrum. Tolerable enough to sleep with on occasion, but daylight is out of the question. In my quieter moments, I dare to ask why they think me so monstrous, but as I don't have an answer, I am back to welling with tears. Of course, the fact that I ask the question is probably a good one -- indicative of the fact the in my heart of hearts I must not believe I am a monster. And so that is a victory.

Pyrrhic. But victory nonetheless.

******

I know there are other things to be concerned with in this world. All so much more important and consequential than this. And I want to turn my attention to them. I just need to get my damn heart to stop hurting.

Goodbye to All That

Contrary to its well-worn title, this post is neither a feminist screed nor an eloquent essay nor an impassioned political endorsement. This is simply more of the truth, as I know it. Or as I come to realize it. Maybe it is a distinction without a difference. Knowledge or realization, either requires me to be hit over the head to accept them.

The cold hard facts? He moved back here. He didn't tell me. He passed me on the street. He didn't say anything (granted, neither did I, but in my defense, I thought it a mirage of wishful thinking as it couldn't possibly have been him. After all, he doesn't live here. So why would he be ambling around the neighborhood -- walking a dog no less?) He lives in my neighborhood -- within a matter of blocks. He hasn't told me any of this. I found out by accident. He may or may not be working with many of my friends. They may or may not be avoiding telling me he is back. He may or may not be attending a party I am supposed to attend this weekend. He may or may not be living with someone (the dog, in my view, seems to be a pretty good support of that idea).

I may or may not be a total fool.

So what to make of these facts? It all just feels strangely familiar.

I have been down this road so many times, and, frankly, I am just tired. Contrary to a longheld belief of mine, I do not actually fall in love fifteen times a day. I am too picky for that. I am too afraid for that. I don't know how to accept love. Rejection and withholding, however, I am familiar with.

"I don't want to start something with you because then it would have to end, and I respect our friendship too much."

"It is like the difference between pizza and chicken breast.... you, of course, are the pizza."

"Someday, I want us to be like best friends, but for now, you are the least self aware person I know."

And those were the ones who sought to explain themselves. Others spoke more loudly without a sound -- my how I love those men of action: canceled meetings, forgotten birthdays, disavowed anniversaries, showing up at non-date functions with dates, ignoring correspondence, e-mailing about their impending nuptuals, finding out about impending nuptuals or other more person things from a third party, and, of course, stealthily moving back into town.

The parade of horribles is not insignificant.

But the saddest part is, that they aren't unexpected. As a wise person noted to me, my choices, for all of their extroverted, ebullient, extraordinary qualities, also beget a certain emotional tin ear. I, like others, bask in the glow of their presence. I derive energy and light from such a presence. I feel energized and ennobled in a way that is so foreign to me -- so rare, and so intoxicating. But I never feel loved. And I made the choice long ago, that the price of residing in the solar system of the extraordinary, might require a more independent-minded affection than that which I had dreamt up in my overwrought head. I would not be clingy and demanding and ridiculous. I would be self contained and ask for nothing, because, nagging as my desires are, they are ridiculous. Indicative of my inherent and unshakable core weakness. Oh the weakness. Oh the shame. Oh the truth: I am needy. I need someone who will look after me and my emotional well being. I need someone who cares what I did with my day, from the mundane to the ludicrous. I need someone who sweats the details. But above all else, I just need someone to hold my hand.

He is never going to hold my hand. None of them ever were.

It is a difficult and onerous job, where the risk/rewards calculus is not evidently a positive one, and I am not sure there are many (or any) out there who really could do the job. So, apparently, I have taken to choosing to bestow my affections on those that won't even try. This way I do not have to be disappointed when they fail -- I can just be disappointed all the time.

Today, I feel a sliding spectrum of emotions -- both heavy and lingering all at once: I feel stupid. I feel foolish. I feel like a dope. I feel angry. I feel rejected. I feel ill. I feel betrayed.

But at least there is this: his actions do not make me feel less than. I have known, but not cared to admit, for a long time that he doesn't care about me as I care for him.

What I did not know (or refused to believe even in my heart of hearts) till now is that he does not care about me at all.

How it is

If I really think about it, I have been struggling for a long time.

The summer before I started college, I was convinced I was dying of some unknown disease and ran a low grade fever the whole summer.

The summer before my sophomore year in college, I was recovering from mono, and plunging into a second round of restrictive anorexia/exercise induced bulimia.

Spring break during my senior year, I took a trip to Jamaica with a group of friends. I was so depressed, I did not participate in most group activities and spent the better part of the week by myself.

The summer before law school, I decided that getting a job was not worthwhile and that it would be better preparation for me to stay home and watch Law & Order reruns -- all day long -- and to eat anytime anyone said "objection". I gained 30 pounds, and even my mother was telling me I should eat less.

The summer before my third year, I developed a pre-ulcerous condition, which is pretty much an ulcer just slightly easier to treat because there isn't yet a hole in your stomach, just a lot of fraying of the stomach lining in one particular place. Either way, it still hurts, and either way, you still have to take a rigorous course of antibiotics for the better part of 6 weeks. Not to mention, I think I was having a low grade panic attack all summer because I was consistently short of breath.

After law school, my eating and exercise habits were likely not the healthiest. Okay, they weren't at all. I was very restrictive with my diet and rigorous with regard to my exercise in an effort to control a life I felt was spinning out of control. This continued for about 4 years. The last two years, I have alternated being controlling and being absolutely profligate when it comes to my eating and exercise habits. Resultantly, I have felt completely out of control most times.

We won't even mention my various panic attacks brought on in moments of emotional devastation. Some people get broken up with and go get drunk with their friends, I proceed to feel like I am having a heart attack and go to the ER, where once I am told I am not dying, I promptly feel better.

In the last couple years, I have also taken to "hiding" when I feel low. I do the bare minimum of what I must in order to fulfill the obligations in my life -- this is generally going to work and doing all that is required there (because I would do anything to avoid being branded a failure or to let people down in a professional context), then going straight home to bed.

These are the facts, and they are undisputed.

It is easy to believe that, despite all of the evidence to the contrary which I have listed above, through this time I was in denial with regard to my struggles. It isn't true. But I can see how it would be easy to believe, as concurrent with the time line above, I graduated in the top 5% of my high school class at the age of sixteen. I attended what some might argue is the most prestigious undergraduate institution in this country, and graduated with honors (though the dirty little secret is that 90% of the class graduates "with honors" -- you almost have to try not to do so). I attended a top flight law school, and graduated at the tender age of 23, on my way to a six figure job with a preeminent and highly sought BigLaw firm. Miserable though I -- and the economy -- were, we both flourished, surviving layoffs and cutbacks alike. When I thought I had reached the end of the my rope with my first employer, I got a job with an even more prestigious law firm. The job was so horrendous, it nearly killed me, but it certainly was prestigious. And now, I work in a job which is enviable both for its focus and its geographical location. Yes, I am thirty years old, my resume is flawless, and my life is a mess.

These are the facts, and they are undisputed.

As contradictory as my personal struggles and my professional accolades may be, I have been aware of the duality. I have tried to bridge the gap. I have tried talk therapy on numerous occasions -- my senior year in high school, my third year in law school, my fourth and fifth year in law practice. I think it is useful to discuss things with a neutral third party. I was always surprised at what I learned about myself in discussing topics I thought I had already parsed through ad nauseum with my nearest and dearest. But talk therapy is expensive and time consuming, and I have yet to come through the process feeling any sense of closure or accomplishment. To this point, it has been only a panacea. Wary as I was, as I had seen it work for a family member and several friends, I also tried antidepressants for nearly a year. There were a number of positive effects, but they came with negative ones which just didn't seem worth it to me. And the positive just didn't seem genuine, it just seemed to be more disconnect than anything. In addition, I have tried nearly anything else that anyone might suggest. I bought meditation tapes. I bought a blender to make green smoothies and adopt a semi-raw approach to my diet. I even tried to feng shui my room, but to my chagrin, all of my windows in my apartment face the wrong direction, so my chi is all going down the drain or something like that. My mother has long been praying to St. Judas (St. Jude -- the patron saint of lost causes) on my behalf. Admittedly, in the darkest times, I do too. But I think I need to be either most specific or more general with him -- because so far the prayers of "save this failing relationship" and "please just help me" have gone unanswered. Or, quite possibly, I am too ignorant to have seen the proper signs with which they were answered.

These are the facts, and they are undisputed.

I know that all of my problems in my life stem from the fact that I don't like myself very much. I couldn't tell you why. I really, really wish that I could. Honestly, when I look at myself (in the sense of evaluating myself as a person both in appearance and substantively) my viewpoint is very amorphous. It is as though I see myself reflected in a pool of water which is held by a sieve. Any reflection I see is by definition ephemeral. Fleeting glimpses, distorted by ripples and tricks of the light playing on the surface. Distortions -- both kind and unkind. So what do I see? I see someone who is smart. That doesn't really change. I see someone who is funny/amusing (though this often morphs into someone who is dorky/trying too hard/completely esoteric/boring). I see someone who wants to be a good person, to be generous, kind and giving, but who realistically allows her inner demons and her selfishness and narcissism to oftentimes keep her from being that good person. I see someone who has the capacity to present as attractive, but who also has the capacity for appearing ugly, and she slips between the two at will. Somehow, when I am in the ugly phase, it seems intolerable to have people see me (so again with the hiding). So I guess I need to add profound vanity to my list of what I see. I see someone who really desperately wants to be grateful and appreciative for the blessings in her life, and who hates herself more every day for her lack of gratitude and her ridiculous grousing and persistent and inexplicable whining. I see someone who has been driven by guilt and fear and and anxiety her whole life. It has allowed her to be a "successful" professional, but I think it has made her a failure personally. This is the one problem that the drive of fear, anxiety, and guilt can't fix. They are the problem.

I am not perfect. No one expects me to be perfect. Well, one person does. I do. Actually, I don't even expect myself to be perfect. I have always said so, and I have believed it. Really. Perfect is unrealistic. So pragmatic as I am, apparently I just expect myself to be able to put up a passable facade of perfect. I feel I am so flawed, I can only be loved if I can do it better than the rest. But a facade isn't even doing it, so what am I doing?

I really would like one day where I woke up and I was so pleased to be me, so happy with what I saw in the mirror, with the person I am in my mind. Where I didn't want for anything.

I don't know how to get there. I have been so sad lately because I feel like I have run out of options. Short of moving so that maybe I can do the feng shui thing right, I just don't know that there is anything left for me to try to make myself feel better. Inevitably, as I ride out the wave of my own struggles, things always get better. Never fails. But I am just so tired of heading back down this road time and again. It is an ugly place, a lonely place. A place where you are your own worst enemy. A perennial victim of "friendly fire" -- which doesn't make it any less dangerous or the wounds any less deep.

I do not know why I dislike myself so much. Maybe if I can figure out where my relationship with myself soured, I can broker some kind of peace agreement. That could be the something new I haven't tried yet. It is worth looking into. We shall see.

Otherwise, I am going to have to move so my windows are facing east.

These are the facts, and they are undisputed.

Pick Flick

Placeholder

This is actually a space in which I envisioned deconstructing Eminem in great detail. A much more flattering and revealing exercise than it sounds like at first impression, I promise.

But I am not doing that today.

I just felt compelled to note that I miss him. Terribly. And I am doing this instead of writing him, because it seems like that is the better course. But even so, after all this time, I long for him. That is so unhealthy, and yet, much to my aggravation, it remains true.

He is the "fairy tale" I can't seem to shake. The feeling I keep trying to replicate.

Damnit!

And so...

I haven't been heard from in a while in the forum. The reasons are various -- the holidays, laziness, the inability to access the blog at work etc. -- but mostly because I have been wearing my cranky pants for the better part of two months now. They are binding. They chafe. Not to mention the fact that they are extremely unflattering (though they do coordinate nicely with the hair shirt I insist on wearing). Yet, somehow, I have be unable -- or perhaps unwilling -- to take them off.

It hasn't made me a hell of a lot of fun to be around. That is for sure. I have some moments of buoyancy, but then I retreat into my disgruntled, agitated ways feeling sorry for myself amidst an embarrassment of riches.

With 2008 having arrived just in the nick of time, I am grateful for having occasion to turn the page and attempt to dispassionately sort out the wheat from the chaff when it comes to all of the matters swimming around in my head, and to get myself back in a better mindset.

A few things I have figured out (listed in bullet point format due to the author's laziness and the fact that writing anything lately has become akin to squeezing blood from a stone, so she will take what she can get):

- In equal measure, both processed sugar and prolonged stress exacerbate my moodiness. It is not coincidental that my slipping back into the cranky pants coincided with my slipping back into my former ways of comforting myself with sugar -- the highs and lows of which are jarring -- and the high stress of the holiday season. 5 days after being freed from obligatory cheer and detoxing from processed sugar, I feel much more grounded.

- In a topic which I want to address in greater detail soon, I did realize over the holidays that it is not lack of affection in my formative years that has left me emotionally stunted and unable to effectively communicate when it comes to my feelings. Rather, it is the fact that my entire family suffers from an inability to communicate, feelings and otherwise. Whereas, once upon a time I believed the title of "drama queen" to be mine and mine alone within my family hierarchy, it is now clear that everyone in my 7 person clan shares this trait in equal measure. Makes family get-togethers very colorful, and very unpredictable.

- I have long been told that my standards are too high, that I am going to have to compromise if I want to avoid being alone. As of late, for the first time, I have started to believe that maybe people who offer forth such advice are right, and I wonder why I am the way I am, and exactly which of the 4,072 romantic comedies/soapy TV dramas I have watched in my life pushed me over the edge into believing that this bizarro world where there is "the one" actually exists. I has narrowed it down to a toss up between Say Anything with its urban legend that is Lloyd Dobbler (Damn you Cusack!) and The Matrix with its talk of there being no spoon, prophecies, oracles, and of course, Neo. But I take all of those heretical thoughts back. The gospel according to CLC is not derived from sudsy screenwriting, rather, it is derived from the well edited "reality" show I have been living for the last 30 years. My life, for as much as I complain about it, has been a charmed one to this point. I have long lived in a beautiful bubble, with its fair share of inclement weather, but where the terrain was populated by truly amazing people. Perhaps, more than the fair share of emotionally damaged people, but amazing nonetheless. People who were star athletes, honors students, ambitious and successful peers, and dead ringers for Abercrombie & Fitch models to boot. This has been true for me since I was in high school. Having it "all" doesn't seem so impossible, because I have known people like that forever. Of course, none of them have ever had any interest in me... but that brings me to my next point.

- My profound love of anyone emotionally damaged. If a man has significant emotional issues, like a dog drawn to a silent whistle, I cannot help but seek him out and offer forth my immediate and undying devotion, whether he wants it (ha!) or not. I apparently fancy myself the lady liberty of such men: Give me your closeted, conflicted, closed off, insecure, narcissistic, body dysmorphic, ultra-macho, testosterone -driven etc. Of course, my affections does not provide them liberty, nor comfort, nor anything other than annoyance. I, however, am unable to take a hint, and simply continue to pine away from afar, for years (and years and years) till something catastrophic finally happens that forces me to accept the reality of the situation. The reality that, but for my apparently rich fantasy life that creates these faux-relationships for me, I am alone, and that, in the company of these spectral men, that is unlikely to change.

- I think I may want to be alone. Being with someone else is frightening and I have never been in a romantic relationship where I have been myself. I am not sure if it is possible for someone to love me if I were "being myself" and I think I may be afraid that if someone were to love me when I were "myself" that the power of my feelings towards them would be so overwhelming that I am not sure I could take it. I would be so grateful, so relieved, so happy, and yet, so terrified. Terrified to lose it. Loving the emotionally unavailable shields me from that.

- I don't trust my own judgment. At least not with matters of the heart. After all, look at the colossal mistakes I have made over the years. The infinitely bad choices. Though what can one expect from the woman who is still struggling to accurately see herself in the mirror. The eyes deceive, so does the heart necessarily follow? JT Leroy would says so, but he is a figment of someone's imagination too. There have been folks whom I thought I could love if I just spent enough time convincing myself that I did (or those I thought I should love, if I could spend enough time forgetting that I did not), but I always worry, if I throw my efforts into convincing or forgetting, will I miss out on the one that won't require the invocation of such onerous and antithetical verbs. Of course, I suppose my own sadness could do the very same thing.

- I really want a partner in this life, but I am scared of getting close. Most of my intimate moments in this life have involved consumption of a fair amount of alcohol prior to the fact. I dare say nearly all of them. I have never really enjoyed most of them. I dare say nearly all of them. I feel so far removed from them. They feel more clinical than anything else. An odd thing to say when both parties aren't wearing any clothes, and yet it is true. There are only two times that I can think of where this was not true -- and serve now only to make it all the more difficult to sever myself from one of my spectral relationships. (Wow, how does one break up with oneself? Do I let myself down easy? Do I take myself to a restaurant so that I do not have a scene? Hope is a batshit crazy mistress. Leaving her is hard and one does so at one's own peril.)

- So here I am in 2008 left with far less hope than ever before. In many ways this is good. I am trying very hard to work on focusing on creating clean lines that are the boundaries of my life. Simplifying my personal calculus a bit -- what do I need, avoid what I do not, treat my body as a temple, give my mind the permission to be at ease -- to worry less, to dream more. I can focus on this because so much of my hope was torn away last year. I carry less cobwebs of my own delusion with me. And that is good. But there is a little sadness because I haven't quite figured out how to make myself stop wanting (and therefore to make it stop hurting) quite yet. Then again, the year is still young. There are 11 more months to figure it out.