Cleave

All these months and only now do I realize that whenever I go crazy, I am never thinking about the abortion.  There are no images or fantasies—all that comes later when I recall my bout with that kind of madness. In the moment, there is only the feeling of absence and it never changes – always overwhelming, interminable and the thought of being alone with it is unbearable.

Right now it feels as if I am imagining this for a story, not that I am writing about myself.

The last time A and I talked, he told me that it hurts him less.  I felt like I’d been slapped. But why shouldn’t he feel better?  Why shouldn’t I?

In What I Loved, the couple whose child dies end up separating. She moves to Berkeley, he remains in New York.  They never divorce, never have too much rancor toward the other, never came back together and never really parted.

This makes me think of the word CLEAVE. It means to come together and to come apart.  It is the opposite of itself.

But that’s just a word and the couple in the novel are not real. It’s too soon to know what kind of relationship, if any, A and I will have in the future.

I have nothing to do for Thanksgiving. I worry being alone that day will make me sink. And I worry that not being alone will have the same effect, only with other people watching. For someone who claims not to care, I have too many hang-ups about this holiday.

AL had a funny post on Facebook last night that made me miss him. Why I am “friends” with someone I will never see again is a little silly, isn’t it? Without reproach, I will say that AL doesn’t care enough to delete me.  And I keep him on because he reminds me of something I want. Which isn’t him per se.

It is the idea of someone new, someone good who would love me. That AL and I spent so little time together and did not love each other is not the point. AL isn’t even relevant is he? He could have been anyone.  I could have been anyone.  Maybe we were feeling the same thing.

I once knew a man named Cleave. We both live in New York but met in West Virginia at The Greenbrier.  He is a musician we hired to entertain our rich guests. He liked me as soon as he saw me. I was momentarily infatuated – something about a musician.  But after talking for a few minutes, I realized he was an idiot. He kept on mentioning God and being blessed. When he found out I like to drink scotch, he informed me that the best scotch came from Scotland.

 When we got back to New York, he called me and I made myself disappear.  We never went out but saw each other at work functions in other states. He’d always start our conversation by asking me if I’d gotten married.  

I’ve run into him twice in New York. Neither of us acknowledges the other.

Sometimes life seems like one long game of chance.

Ahead

Where's He Gone?

Have I finally gotten rid of Professor Dick? He hasn't responded to my email from a few days ago when I told him I wouldn't be spending Thanksgiving with him and his family. I feel bad for all my little lies in avoiding him, but I don't know what else to do.

I wish there was someone I could ask (and who would tell me honestly) if I have turned in turned into such a wreck that the most random people want to take me under their wing and fix me.  The flipside of this of course is that if no one paid any attention to me, I'd be just as disturbed.

Silent Choices

My friend Faith invited me to a screening of her documentary about abortion and black women.  The screening is next week, right around the 8th month anniversary of MY abortion.  Faith doesn't know about that at all. Is saying that these two events happening around the same time is ironic the right way to use the word ironic?  Or does it just suck?  Sometimes I confuse suckage and irony even though they are not synonymous all the time.

Aida and Carmen and Figaro

I've gone a little opera crazy.  On Monday, I'm going to Aida with M and at the end of November it will be Figaro. In February, Carmen.  I'm excited about Monday and seeing M and putting on a new dress. We haven't seen each other since we had that weird conversation.  So it'll be a little awkward probably.  But it's an awkwardness I kind of like.  The awkwardness of possibility rather than the kind that comes from knowing there is nothing left.

What I Loved

I am reading What I Loved by Siri Hustvedt. The book came out a few years ago but I have resisted all this time for reasons I can't recall.  I had a feeling a child would end up dying in the novel.  And I was right. But there is also art and love and friendship. It's about people who occupy a rarified kind of world, the kind of novel that I like but irritates me at the same time. I like these sorts of books even though I never feel as if I ever get inside the characters--they are the kind of people never seem to have to do dishes, where being poor is a mere stepping stone toward intellectual and fiscal prosperity.  I want to say this is the kind of book that only the well to do or the educated would appreciate, but I obviously contradict that statement.  Very gauche thing to say, isn't it?

Therapizing Myself

Sometimes I am ashamed of the thoughts in my head.  My progressive, insanely liberal friends would disown me  if they knew that I believe there are things -- stereotype-y, classist, racist, anachronistic things -- that hold a certain truth.

My New Job

I actually like it. This makes me a true nerd, I think.  I sit there for hours writing about the dullest matters. I like how the document grows, how I start off with bullshit and then come to understand what needs to be said.

CC

CC's tumor has shrunk to the point of being "undetectable."  I wonder if this means that she doesn't need the mastectomy anymore. I hope so.


A.

We are on another round of "let's not talk too much."  The frequency of our conversations and the intensity of our arguments was starting to really make me hate us.  Inappropriate intimacy can make a person crazy.  At least this one.

So we'll see what happens now. I showed Lyna an email A sent me and she said, "It's getting tiresome for you, isn't it?"

It is. But that's just this week.  Who knows what happens in November? Sometimes I feel this burst of happy when I am by myself, on my way to somewhere.  It never lasts long but it last long enough for me to believe that I will not always feel broken by this whole fucking year.

So maybe I will end up getting a life.  Soon-ish and for real.  I want that more than I can say.

Next week is going to be a little rough for me.  I expect I'll be back here often.

--Lucy

Summertime and the Living is Easy

I'm thinking of that old song -- from Porgy and Bess maybe?

Family

In every family with more than one child, does it automatically happen that each child is assigned a role that they are to play throughout their lives?  I want to say that this is particularly the case for Asian families but I know that would be wrong.  Families are not all that different across ethnic lines, it just so happens I have the most intimate knowledge about Asians.

So what’s my point?  That we eldest children are expected to be provide a kind of reassurance that other siblings are not.  Even Lyna, who is kind of a wreck, is expected to hold her sister’s hand through childbirth.  No one seems to know or want to acknowledge that Lyna is drowning.  Never mind that – the other daughter is having a baby!

CC

My friend CC and I have not been in touch much lately.  This is what happens when you (well, CC) tell someone too much about your life.  She has revealed too much to me about her boyfriend. I decided he’s an asshole.  Now she feels bad/resentful that she told me all this because she knows that no matter what nice thing she tells me he did for her, I will keep remembering that he said to her “You do you and I do me,” meaning that he didn’t want to hear about her cancer problems.

This isn’t the first time this has happened with me and CC.  It’s funny that we keep getting back together.  I have had a lot of friends in my life and kept a good majority of them.  I find her to be the most trying.

I am a bit more careful with sharing than she is.  I tell 2/3 thirds of most stories.  I leave out the ugliest parts (or what I deem to be the ugliest).  I’m too concerned with what happens when the emotions calm. Damage control should be kept to a minimum.

Professor Dick

I am more and more uncomfortable with his “caring.” Today I wrote an email telling him that I’m going to San Francisco for Thanksgiving.  The truth is that I have nothing to do for that dreaded holiday. I am going to risk insanity rather than be around him and his wife.

Professor Dick’s kindness to me reminds me too much of the way A hovers over me. Not that these gestures go unappreciated or unreciprocated by me, but I do wonder what the point of it is.

Politically Incorrect Self Labeling

Before I left for California, A and I were talking and he said something weird.  I called him on it and he called himself an “emotional wetback” when it came to me. I have no idea what that even means, if anything at all. But I found it quite funny and felt bad that I couldn’t tell anyone I know that anyone I know said that to me.  My friends are all screaming crazy liberals.  Sometimes, they are oppressive in their embrace of political correctness and sympathy. 

Summertime

At Columbus Circle about a week ago, on Broadway and West 61^st Street, I had the clearest memory of an evening in August with A. I was wearing a blue dress and the wind started to pick up and the rain came pouring down.  A and I ran north in search of some kind of shelter.  It was a lovely time to be had by two broken up people.

Another night – M and I on his motorcycle roaring up Riverside Drive, across Manhattan to the FDR and onto the Brooklyn Bridge and then back across to the Westside Highway.

And another day – Heather and I napping on a blanket at Riverside Park at twilight.  A boy asked to take my picture.  Later the fireflies lit up the evening and we sat there to watch their show even though the bugs were attacking us.

And then that first night with AL on LaFayette Street – a first kiss at the entrance of the F Subway line and that was all. 

In between all these days and nights I mentioned, there were desperate days and nights. What is my point?  That I had a lovely awful summer.

I don’t know how it’s possible for me to say that, let alone mean it.  I’m having trouble accepting that despair coexisted with a kind of happiness.

Snooping

This I have told only my shrink and CC.  I told most of the story.  I have access to A’s personal and corporate email accounts. For a few weeks, I checked both sites, hands shaking (from shame, maybe?).  I don’t know if he’s changed any of the passwords.  I don’t go snooping anymore. Not that I’m not tempted.  But I am less interested for whatever reason. It’s too pathetic.

Baby

For the four or five days I was in L.A., I didn’t think that much about the abortion/fetus/baby.  My mother didn’t say a word about it. But last night after everyone had gone to bed, I found myself thinking about it.  Nothing specific, nothing I can name.  But it was there.  I suppose some part of me was fantasizing how it would be if I had a baby to share with my family.  I couldn’t give in to the fantasy.  Will there ever be a time when I can allow that?

Is there ever going to be a baby for me?  That's the real question, isn't it? Funny that's the first time I've ever actually said that out loud. I wish someone would say for sure.

You Belong to Me

The weather here is magic and it gets on my nerves. But when I get back to New York, I won’t be able to sleep and I will be sad for a few weeks missing my brothers and my mother and my two cousins.  Family is strange and maddening and lovely.  

Being with my folks makes me think of A, who has no folks except for his sad mother. 

Is that the biggest difference between us? That I have this strange bunch of people waiting for me to return from wherever in the world I happen to end up and all A has is his unhappy mother who is just waiting to die?  That can’t be true.  My family isn’t that great, not even functional really. But there is a home for me to come back to and none for him. That must do something to a person’s head. And no matter what I said or did, I couldn’t change the facts of his life and the person its made him into. He will not see that belonging to something as crazy as a big family has any benefits.  Well, at least not a real family.  

Now he is part of something --  a group of friends he acquired through the new girlfriend.  It was something he wanted from me – he wanted my friends too.  But I am not the group type.  My friends are not my family.

Four days in L.A., I’ve left my mother’s house once to shop for upholstery fabric for my mom’s occasional and dining chairs and to see my friend June who lives in a little apartment in Koreatown.

June and I drove a bit around Hancock Park where the houses are old and big and set back from the street. It reminded me of drives taken long ago when my old love B and I would roam the streets of Los Angeles because we had nowhere to be alone.

It made me like this city a little more to remember that.  And to remember how I used to hate it here.  It’s not so bad.  It’s not so hateable. Someday I will live here again. 

I’m starting to think I will be living here again sooner than I think. 

My mother is aging fast.  She is starting to show signs of panicking on the freeway.  I love my family but I don’t know what will happen to me if I were geographically closer to them. One thing that hasn’t changed is that I still want my own life and that seems impossible with family close by.

M and I are going to see Aida next Monday.  It will be the first time we’ve seen each other since that weird conversation that went nowhere. If we have enough of these conversations, will that push us toward each other or will the talks eventually peter out? It's gonna be weird.

Everywhere I Go

Cancer is a cruel disease, my mother said, puffing on a cigarette. Give me a heart attack or a stroke. She inhales deeper then clears her throat. Behind her, on the stove, the chicken stews and sour soup simmers.

In the almost 48 hours I’ve been here, my mother and I have gone between avoiding the topics of death and disease to diving headfirst to the heart of the matter. This year has mostly been about loss. The air in this house is stifling – the Christmas decorations were never put away from last December, the terracotta pots in the patio are filled with dirt rather than plants.  My mother has let her hair go gray and needs a haircut.

If you look at her when she leaves for work, you would never know she's kind of a messy housekeeper. Her shoes are Ferragamo, her jackets are boucle so there's never any need for an iron, and the jewelry is always just right.

This put togetherness is something I got from her and my father.  No one needs to know your business.

My mother just came out of her bedroom holding a pair of Pucci shoes that she wants me to have. Haha. Even when she's depressed as all hell, she thinks of my wardrobe.

I looked forward to coming to Los Angeles, but now I can’t wait to leave again. On the plane ride back to New York, I will keep seeing my mother’s soft face.  She is a thin woman with jowls. She is still pretty, but now she squints at everything and she is prone to sighing. She walks in a shuffle, the way old Asian ladies do. She is clearly tired and unhappy with the choices she’s made in her life.

Neither of us is that interested in one another’s life.  It is shocking to realize that this woman doesn’t want to hear a thing about what I do on the other side of the country, who I talk to, where I live.  I’m not sure if it’s because it’s so far away. Or if it’s because it involves no one else in the family but me.  Or maybe it’s because she is still grieving for her sister.  I wish I could say (as I have in the past) that she isn’t interested because she is too self absorbed. But this time around, she isn’t interested because she simply doesn’t care.

Last night A called while I was sitting around doing nothing. It reminded me how when we were together, talking to him was the thing I looked forward to whenever I was in L.A.  I rushed us off the phone – what is the point of all this friendship again? Why does he feel he has to tell me that his girlfriend call him and he had to get rid of her so he could call me?  Sometimes I think he calls to reassure me he hasn’t forgotten me AND to tell me that he’s just great without me.  Perhaps his motivations are not clear to anyone, most of all to himself.  Pretty much the same way I’m a little muddled about things.

The night before I left New York, M and I had dinner. On our way to the subway, we joked about dating each other. I told him, half seriously, that I wasn’t sure if dating is a good enough reason to risk our strange friendship.  He said, also half seriously, that he would be willing to take the risk.  Then we moved on to another topic.

What the fuck was that about? 

M and I been dancing around this for years now. It doesn’t seem to me like it’s ever going to happen. Or even that it should.  Then again, why not?

Now is probably not the time for it. But it’s a nice thing to think about. We could go to the opera together -- that has always held a kind of allure for me because I'm always going to the opera alone.

I'm going to see Faust with my Norwegian granny on Monday.  The Monday after that, I am going to see Aida. I'm going back to the life I had before I met A.

One of the things that changed when I was his girlfriend was that I stopped going to the opera.  I didn't care so much about shoes. I didn't suggest going to the restaurants I used to frequent. Mostly it was because I'd feel strange about it with him.

I don't regret any of the time I spent with A, but I have to say I've missed all this.  And I don't understand why I let it go. No one asked me to. Maybe this just means I'm lonely again -- I think of pretty things when I'm lonely.  Or maybe I wanted us to look as if we belonged together. Pucci and Land's End don't go together very well.

Professor Dick

Since the last entry, A and I decided to talk less.  So far, there has only been one text message exchange. I told him I had his sweater and he told me he ran into a mutual friend of hours while with the new girlfriend.  I'm not sure why I need to know that.  But that is the reason we shouldn't talk much--neither of us needs to know everything about one another's lives.

On Tuesday, I'm going to Los Angeles.  AL is in Los Angeles now.  If we hadn't broken up, we'd planned to see each other during the week.  That not happening is making me a bit a sad.  What is even sadder is that I have not much else to say about AL.  I remember thinking that I was smitten. But I guess I really wasn't.  That is more disappointing to me than the break up.

I was looking forward to going to LA until this morning. Now I'm worried that my mother will be too high strung and that I will get resentful.

The fall seems never to have happened at all.  It's in the 30s and 40s in New York, too cold for mid October.

It's strange that I've never mentioned this before (or have I?) given how much it's been bothering me.  I have a kind of stalker.  A benevolent stalker.  I met this man through A.  He is an English professor, in his 70s and an aspiring novelist.  Today he has called me three times.  He invited me to have Thanksgiving with him and his wife.  He wants to talk to me all the time.  I never answer the phone anymore when it's him, communication mostly by email.  I'm not sure what he wants from me or what he gets from me.  I don't know how to make him going away without hurting his feelings.

Ho-Hum

Cigarettes don't taste good anymore.  Did they ever?  I've been a smoker my entire adult life.  I always joke that the Marlboro Man is my longest relationship to date. That's actually not funny at all. I think the truth is that smoking reminds me of my mother.  The smell of smoke and a perfume called Tamango brings to mind an image of my mother sitting in front of her vanity and wearing dressed in a lace full slip. She is putting on her make-up, Christian Dior in those days.  The slip was probably Dior too.

My mother was beautiful when she was young.  Very Blanche DuBois. Now that I think about it, I am now older than she was then. I was eight or so, she must have been 33.  The dressing table memory is not a good one. When she put on make up, it meant I was sitting next to her and begging her not to leave. Then she would disappeared to her sister's house for the rest of the day. This  happened almost every day. I still wonder now if she hated being a mother. These days, it is the highlight of her life. But at 33, I don't know what she was thinking.

Isn't it odd to think of a smell you cannot recreate and then see a visual image? Scent has no image but I've managed to attach a person to that memory.  That doesn't make much sense, does it?

Last night, I accidentally "shared" this site from my personal email account.  I don't think anyone's read this  but still I worry. I told a friend about the accidental sharing today and she wanted to know if she could read this blog.  I felt bad saying no.  No as in never.  And I told A last night in a panicked phone call.  I worry about him reading this too.  I've said some mean things about him.  But when I think about it, I don't think I've said anything here that I haven't said to him.

That doesn't make it better though, does it?

I am not so sad today.  I cleaned my apartment. I hardly thought of AL at all. When I did, it was not with such regret.

This has turned out to be another pointless entry.

Maybe not dating is going to turn me into a prolific diarist.  That is how it was the last time I retreated from men.  The thing is, life is much less interesting without men.  You don't even have to sleep with them, just their presence changes the hum in the air.

Not reading much now.  Makes me wonder how I manage to wile away my evenings. I haven't had much activity this week save for the dinner out on Monday.  Tomorrow I'm going to some strange place in Queens with two girlfriends. I'm not sure what I was thinking when I agreed to go.  I'll probably have fun but the way I see it now, it would be better for me to stay home and listen to my neighbor's music. On Friday, I'm having dinner out again.

It's getting colder out and this is helping my mood somehow.

Don't Care About Thinking Up a Title Now

My aunt Lydia died last night.  After the floods in Manila two weeks ago, my cousin Corina died. It's a lot for one family, however large.  Aunt Lydia was my mother's oldest surviving sibling.  Now the oldest one is Gloria. There is a story about her that I always mean to write about but have a hard time with.  Maybe someday.

My sister, who lives in the Philippines, will be going to two funerals in one month. Less than a month. Our big crazy family is shrinking fast--my generation of cousins are not as prolific as their parents when it comes to making more babies.

The days continue to be shitty but less so.  I saw A last night -- an impromptu non-date wherein he invited me to have dinner and go to a screening of short films in the Lower East Side. It is funny how I can feel such love and disappointment and disgust for him. All at the same time.  I ended the evening early and going home after dinner.  I couldn't stand the thought of sitting next to him in a theater as if I'm his girlfriend.

After the show, he called me on his way home.  I imagined that before he called me, he called his girlfriend first. Then he talked to me till 2 a.m. My jealous streak  gets quite a workout with him.

I think of AL often.  Today I looked at his Facebook picture and asked myself, "WHAT THE FUCK WERE YOU THINKING?" I wonder if he thought the same thing when he looked at my picture.  Of course, I am assuming he's looked at my picture post break up. How did I let it go on for so long without it dawning on me that he didn't like me all that much?  I don't usually get blindsided by these things -- I'm too paranoid, intuitive or whatever you want to call it.

There are a lot of things for me to write about but I simply don't have the energy at the moment.  I'd forgotten how exhausting working can be. What a relief it can be.

I wish I had less to think about regarding A.  He invited to spend Thanksgiving with him and his mother.  I was expecting the invitation but was disgusted anyway.  He is being nice and a little sentimental.  He did the same thing with his ex-wife. I remember having a fit about it years ago.

I am drained. I don't know how long this will last.  All these months of being a little crazy and always sad -- why am I feeling this exhaustion now?

Did I mention that I am taking a break from men?  Does A count?  He's really the one that needs to go away.  I don't understand what this is between us.  Does having a having a dead fetus in common tie us together?

When I see my mother in a few days, how will I be?  Of course, now that her sister has died, her sorrow trumps mine. But it doesn't matter -- when I see her, I will be a little happy and a little sad, and I will want her to be the kind of mother she's never been.  She will cry louder than I will and have more to say.  That's the way it is.

It'll be strange to go to CA after all that's happened.  I said this about Anthony -- that I wish we'd met last year, when I was a totally different person.  It'll be that way with my family -- I'll wonder if they know that I'm different now, I'll wish I was the same.



 

She's Got Personality

I am writing this entry on a Wednesday afternoon while at work. Makes me feel like I'm 21 again when I used to journal between customers. I worked in the Men's Shoes department at Sak's Fifth Avenue in San Francisco.

A little over a month ago that I had nothing left to say for this blog. I am amazed at my capacity to delude myself.

My friend Kevin is in town and we had dinner at Bar Bossa tonight. Kevin is gay and alone, doesn't know how to climb out of it. I told him what I'd been doing the last few months, and I could tell he couldn't quite understand how a girl like me could get around so much.

I am not a pretty woman.  I don't say that self pityingly.  I do have my charms, I can be sexy.  I am attractive to people who have talked to me a little, not necessarily by people who just look at me. She's got per-son-ality...I'm trying to quote a song. It's probably not working, is it?

Kevin is good looking but he doesn't pay attention. A lot of the time, he is looking at other things.  Maybe that's why I get more action than he does. He thinks my taking a break from men is a mistake.  He told me I'd be sorry I  pass up all these opportunities for "man sausage."

We were eating sausage. It was a wonderfully gross thing to say at the time.

On Tuesday I was on the phone with A for three hours. We talked about AL, his girlfriend, and all the other things we always talk about. We talk about how we aren't together anymore.

On Wednesday, I was on the phone with A for two hours. Soon A will be forced to commit to the girl who is a less attractive version of me.  I keep telling him how ugly she is and he laughs. Maybe she just takes bad pictures.

What would it have been like if I'd been working in the days and weeks that followed the abortion? Would I have managed to keep it together? I'm still a wreck sometimes. But I am a functional wreck. Working again marks a sort of rite of passage for me, I guess. It means I am cutting off the amount of time I can spend moping.

So three hours on the phone with A within a few days of breaking up with AL. This is a pretty clear sign that I need a bit more time to sort things out for myself. I actually don't believe that.  There is part of me that thinks that if AL liked me more, I would have less to sort out.  Could that be true?

I cannot count A as part of the equation because he has his own set of people to deal with. I told A that I wished he and I could be safe from one another, that he could look at me and say "nothing is going to happen here because I am with someone else."

But I seem to be the one in charge of saying no. It's easy when there's someone else in my life. Whatever my behavior as a single woman, I cannot be sexually involved with two men. It just isn't something I'm even tempted to do.

The odd thing is that I really like AL. I wish I wish I wish things were different. I want to say that I didn't screw up with AL too much -- he wasn't that into me either. Well, I guess I just said it. Is that my sincere believe or am I saying that to assuage the feeling that I was using him? I did like him. I don't even understand this. I like him.

Is it possible that I get into these ill-fated pseudorelationships as a respite from my grief and guilt and whatever else? A pseudoboyfriend means a few weeks of happy, sexy fun where love is possible and the future is not yet fixed. Then something in me snaps -- fun is not good enough all of a sudden when it was just the thing I wanted the day before. Is it when I realize that love is not possible with everyone?  Or is it when I am ready to face myself?

Whatever the reason, I find myself here, searching for different words to describe the same feelings I've had all year.

Hello again, Lucy.

Against Epiphanies

That title is from a Charles Baxter essay.  He was talking about the craft of the short story.   I am talking about myself and what is turning out to be the longest story of my life.

Today I went to work for the first time this year.  It went fine but all day I felt awful.  On the way home, I felt the prickle of tears.  In the fucking subway. A woman wearing too-expensive clothes and beautiful taupe shoes losing it in the New York subway.  I managed to keep it together -- this was a bad day but not so awful that I couldn't control myself. I prefer to lose it in public when I am unemployed and wearing ugly clothes and riding the bus.  Never in the subway. Not if I can help it.

At home, on my way to fetch a glass of water in the kitchen, it occurred to me that give or take a few days, it is seven months since the abortion.  Voila.  This is why I broke up with AL on Friday, why I drove him away. This is why I had a terrible day today.  This is why, like a drama queen, I threw myself on my bed and sobbed.  I haven't heard myself make those sounds in a few months. It hurt me to hear myself in such agony. Is that a strange thing to say? It was as if I'd separated from myself.

I called my friend Ann -- an SOS. She didn't know what hit her.

I am tired of this sorrow.  But I am not even past it enough to create new problems for myself, am I? I keep going back.

And I feel awful about AL. I wanted him to make everything better for me. How can I ask that of anyone?

My urge to tell people about the abortion has left me.  I haven't told anyone but AL. It's not that I've run out of people to tell, it's that I've become a bit ashamed of my neediness.  Every person who finds out tried to comfort me and that is all I want.  That is what is impossible to find and might be for a long time.

Day 2 at work tomorrow.  Let's see how well I can fake it.

You Again

My reluctance to sit down and write something for this blog is disturbing.  Is this a harbinger that my days as a mad diarist are over? I think not.  There was a possibility of that but I’ve made a few decisions over the last few days that need to be recorded so that I can revisit myself after some time has passed.

Much has happened in the last month – a new man for a time, a new job due to start tomorrow, my sick friend, my dead cousin, floods in my old country, crying over the wrong things but not realizing that until after I’d made myself sick with too much whiskey.

A New Ex

AL and I became something of a couple.  Together, we went out, we talked, we slept, we watched movies. I found myself doing things I would not normally do because he asked me (playing video games). That’s a kind of couplehood, isn’t it?

On Friday, after an incredibly expensive and fun dinner, we broke up.  My fault – I started to think I liked him too much. He started to think I liked him too much.  But the truth of the matter is that I pushed him out and I don’t like him as much as I wanted to or as much as I led him to believe. This is not to say that I don’t like him.  I miss him right now, in fact. But I am not capable of feeling anything real for anyone new.  I thought I was.  I wanted it more than anything because it makes me less sad.  But I can’t hide behind a man. Not for too long anyway.

It seemed to me that AL and I weren’t getting to know each other better. We were stuck on third dates, if that makes sense. We had a good time.  But in the middle of the week, we had hardly any contact.  Any emails exchanged were more perfunctory than anything else.  I thought I would be content with that.  But I have to admit that I want more.  And that I probably won’t find it now because I’m not ready.

AL told me that I was different from his other girlfriends, that I was outgoing. It seemed that he didn't like that about me.  "Not that you walk down the street making friends or anything," he said. I almost contradicted him, but realized that this is how he knows me -- I am a little desperate these days, more vulnerable than I have ever been in my life maybe. Before this year, I was a bit of a hermit.  But now?  There are weeks when I go out every night with a different person.  And I dislike myself a little for it too.  I kept thinking that I wished AL knew me before this year.  I was a different person a year ago.

Would things have turned out differently for AL and me if we’d met six months from now? I feel like I'd be more myself again.  But maybe I'm not so bad now. 

The end of things with AL has left me very sad. It's just me again.

CC

She is losing her hair.  Tomorrow, she will get it all shaved off.  The hair looks dirty and shiny.  When I saw her yesterday, she had no energy. I guess this is how it is after chemo.

Her boyfriend is an asshole.  One of these days, I will have to see him again.  I don’t know where I’m going to find the energy to fake being nice to him.

New Job

My ex A found me a new job.  I will be working a large hospital in the city doing project management.  Exciting. I start tomorrow.

A

I hope that A helping me find this job is going to absolve him of some of the guilt he feels over our relationship.  I could say that he continues to hover around because he still loves me.  That might be true.  But really it’s guilt.  He thinks I’m going to be damaged goods forever because of how things turned out between us.

Baby All the Time

Last week, when I thought that I was falling in love with that guy AL, I told him about the abortion. This is what AL did – he said nothing, he whispered my name and wrapped his arms around me and I cried.  But it wasn’t enough.  He did exactly what I wanted him to do but it was not enough.

And last night I cried about my baby again. At first I thought I was crying over AL.  But then very quickly it came to me that even when I’m thinking of other people and other things, I’m thinking of my little fetus.  It’s not so bad anymore, but it’s still there and even as I say I’m dealing with it, some part of me still wants to run away.

Dating

I’m quitting that game for now. How long with this hiatus last? 

Fire Island

Next weekend, I’m going there.  I was there at the end of spring when I was half crazy.  There is a picture my friend took of me where I am holding a glass of wine.  I can’t bear to look at it.  Five minutes before that picture was taken, I’d been crying. 

I was there in the middle of the summer – no more tears.  But it was hard. 

And now in the fall when the island will be deserted, I’ll be back again.  How will I feel this time?

I met A in Fire Island in the summer of ’07.