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