Everything Reminds Me of Something

“If you like pina coladas and getting’ caught in the rain…”

That line was my first thought when I woke up this morning.

I’ve been singing this song non-stop, sometimes out loud but mostly in my head, for the last five days.  I went out with a man who wrote to me about it, then my ex mentioned it, then my friend Heather mentioned it. This song makes me wistful (in a good way). Wanting to escape and not recognizing that what you want has been there all along. Missed connections.

Reminds me of that New Yorker cover a few years back where a boy and a girl are looking at one another while they sit in different subway cars, reading the same book but separated by a subway platform. I remember trying to figure out which book they were reading and concluding that it was Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night.

And it reminds me of that Bob Dylan song “why wait a little longer for the one you love/when he’s standing in front of you.”

I’m a hopeless romantic idiot.  I often wonder why it is that we miss the most obvious things. Is it an inherent human characteristic to reject what seems too easy? Are we wired to make our lives more difficult than it needs to be?

One of these days, I will write about my own big missed connection.

Some good news about my friend CC – the cancer has been downgraded from Stage 4 to Stage 2 or 3.  I hope this latest bit of news is not inaccurate.  I don’t understand how she can be at Stage 2 when there is metastasis.  Let’s hope I’m being overly cautious and totally wrong.

What has CC been thinking of these last few days?  I cannot even imagine. When she first received the diagnosis, she told me she thought of my pregnancy and eventual abortion.  I guess it’s to do with having to face monumental, unwanted life changes.  And when you get down to it, to being alone with your dilemma. Can you even compare the two? 

When C found out she had cancer, no matter what her boyfriend said or did, what anyone says, it is only C who had cancer, the only who might die or lose her hair.

When I found out I was pregnant, I was the only one who was going to make that big decision and live with what came after.

So maybe the similarity is that both situations woke us up to the realization of how we are trapped in ourselves no matter what kinds of connections we manage to make with one another. And that no matter what happens afterward, you will not be the same person you were before finding out.

Tomorrow, I’m going to the ‘burbs to keep her mother company while she undergoes more tests. What is that going to be like?

Last night, I spent the night with my ex.  We went to the biergarten in Astoria, drank too much, talked, got caught in the rain.  (The song obsession was in place before last night, just to be clear.)

Before we went to sleep, I told him I love him.  It’s easy for me to say that, and without rancor, I accept that we are no longer possible.

Will I contradict myself in a few days?  So far, have I? Somewhere, someone is laughing at me.  Maybe I’m the one who’s laughing?