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.

Lucy's Perfect Days

It seems like too much to hope for good times in the midst of all this trouble with CC.  But it happened. 

CC

CC is mad at me.  I am the bearer of bad news, the burster of the bubble, the rain on the parade. She is letting people think she is at Stage 2 because her doctor hasn’t given her an official diagnosis.  I think she is at Stage 3.  Yesterday I told her this. That was a mistake on my part.  Mostly because it made her sad and angry. And also because I don’t really know what I’m talking about. 

I just don’t want her to downplay things and end up not getting the right treatment from the right facility with the best doctors.  It’s not my business and I have promised to keep my mouth shut now. This is about no one but CC. I want to be a good friend to her.  Pissing her off at this point is a bad idea.

Another A
I’ve been seeing a man whose first name starts with A—let’s call him AL. He won the green card lottery a few years ago and has lived in New York for the last six years.  He’s from Dublin.  The accent is cute, but not enough to make communication difficult.  I don’t know how long he will be making an appearance in this blog.  We haven’t seen each other that much.  But so far, it’s fun.  I like him. 

On Saturday night, we went to dinner in SoHo after my bookstore gig ended and after he finished work.  He kissed me in the middle of a bar called Puck Fair. Ah the romance!

Then he got a call from work – end of date, I thought. Apparently not.  He decided not to go back to the office.  Grand Theft Auto would wait till Sunday morning, he said.

Okay, I said, but you’re not getting laid tonight.  He laughed and said he wasn’t really expecting that.

Then we went to his apartment in Brooklyn.  He has more books than I do.  He has a little gizmo that scans all the titles and he has a pretty accurate count of what is in his collection.  Very endearingly nerdy, especially for a girl like me.

I like this guy’s style.  Straightforward.  He makes fun of me a little bit.

No one got laid.  I want to see AL again.

Faith and Central Park
Faith is my ex A’s friend.  When my ex introduced us, I was somewhat put off by her I-am-a-strong-black-woman thing. I liked her immediately, but I am wary of self-labeling as defense mechanism.  To me, it is a too-transparent attempt to justify what has gone wrong.  And it means that a person like this would be easily offended by my mostly good-natured but politically incorrect commentary about life.

Yesterday, Faith and I went to see the last performance of the season at The Delacorte. The play was Euripides’ Bacchae.

I queued up for tickets at 9 a.m., she showed up at noon.  Before she arrived, I lay down on my blanket and listened to Bob Dylan and bits of opera. I almost wished she wouldn’t show up. It was cool and sunny in the park.  I could have stayed there all day. I lay under a canopy of trees, the sunlight drifting down between the leaves and water from the previous night's rain occasionally splattering down.  There were a few hundred people in line with me. 

We got our tickets and wandered around the Upper West Side together, got our nails done, drank wine, ate pizza, talked about her movie, talked about men. We carefully avoided the subject of A.  She is uncomfortable being friends with the both of us.  Understandably.  So I told her that we were fine, friends even. Does anyone ever trust an ex-girlfriend when they say this?

Faith is 40.  She is going a little crazy over a man she went out with once three months ago.  They had a falling out after one date and he called her again last week.  I’m not sure what is going on with that.  But I have to say, it was nice to see her shed that I-am-a-strong-black-woman armor and allow herself to obsess about something as simple as a date that didn’t go the way you would have wanted it to.  And to hope that it still has a chance to turn into something. 

Will Faith and I remain friends or was yesterday a fluke?

The Bacchae was probably pretty good.  To be honest, I didn’t pay much attention till the end.  It was a beautiful night.  Between the moon and the sky and the view, and the top of the turrets of Belvedere Castle that was visible from where Faith and I were sitting – I couldn’t concentrate. And later, raccoons that were supposed to be part of the play escaped their cages and I kept looking under the seats for that flash of red eyes. I kept thinking "this is the end of this lovely awful summer."

How could it be that this year, thus far, has been so bittersweet for me?  I don't think I ever truly knew what that word meant until the last few months.

Toward the end of the play, after Pentheus had died and his mother cradled his severed head, I finally started paying attention. The actress let out a wail that pierced the air and I myself tearing up.  I wish I could remember all those lines. “I love you more in death” or something like that. 

Of course, I was thinking of my baby. But honestly, it wasn’t so bad.  It was a reminder, that’s all.

On My Mind -- Honesty

Nothing to write.  I'm starting to treat this blog the way I treated my journal. I am disappointed at how repetitive I am.  M told me this a few weeks ago, to watch out for redundance.  He was referring to other things I write but I see how this problem bleeds into other things in my life.

I've been talking to A about this blog. He asks me for the address and I tell him I don't want him to find it.  That is mostly true. I am afraid the loss of anonymity will make me self-conscious and I will end up lying.  I think I keep enough to myself as it is. I've said a few things out of sheer desperation that might be hurtful.  

But if you do find this, A, tell me. It's only fair.

I don't feel like talking about the abortion much these days. Last night, after the evening conversation with A, I thought about it. I lay in bed and concentrated, willing something to come to me.  Tears, rage, something. I want to feel it all when it is gone. And when I'm feeling it, I want it gone. I find relief in crying about it, solace in the pain. Is that grief or punishment?

In moving forward, I feel guilty. Like I'm leaving my little baby further behind with every step. Will I someday reread this and look back and think myself crazy for not wanting to leave this? You don't owe the past your future. Or maybe you owe it to the past to look for a better future.

Not sure what I mean by saying that.  But what good is it to that dead fetus if I waste my life mourning it?  It's not as if it's floating around somewhere watching my actions, cheering me on or chastising me. Dead is dead.  I still believe that. 

But I find myself working it into conversations with people I've told.  My dead fetus something or other.  When I was pregnant blah blah blah. That must come in part from my regret that I couldn't have met him/her.  Wishing it the life I could not give it.

When I think that I decided whether or not that baby should live, I am overwhelmed by the enormity of that decision and the responsibility I had. How did I decide?  Love and selfishness and idealism, I suppose. And principle.  I always said I would not have a baby under those circumstances. I guess I meant what I said.

Am I horrible person for feeling a little smug in knowing that I have stood by my words?

I don't tell A this.  I am only half honest.  How honest is he with me? Maybe more so, maybe less. I won't ever know. I imagine him out of my life because of this -- how is a genuine friendship possible between two people who have to set put up so many rules?  Forget about the sex because I imagine that will go away eventually. What of the old emotions?

Where do I stand in those five stages of grief that everyone talks about and why is it so important for me to know where I am? 

Summer is almost over. Being unemployed and half crazy is strange -- the hours are slow but the days go fast. 

Life is short. Am I wasting mine? 

Babies and Maybes

When I first started this blog, I imagined it would be an elegant meditation on grief. It didn’t occur to me that I wouldn’t care about eloquence, that I would pass up opportunities to write about beautiful things. That I would have so much to say about other people, that other people would have reasons to grieve at the same time that I did. That it is possible to feel bad about so many different things at once and to find comfort from the very same people who have hurt you.

The last two days have been draining – the friend with cancer, my sister, my depressed mother, my aborted fetus, my own ongoing non-relationship issues. All of these people occupy discrete spaces somewhere in me, each of them a kind of sorrow.

But here I sit in the middle of a crowded restaurant in the East Village, looking forward to a nice evening. My stomach is in knots--because I am hungry and because I am nervous.

I am not unhappy, exactly. How is that possible? Maybe what I am is a liar.

I don’t know what I am looking forward to. The future seems so bleak. My mother is aging faster than I imagined she would. She gets sadder every time I talk to her. The older she gets, the more she finds to regret.

My friend has cancer and no one knows how this will shake out yet. I fear the worst. It’s my nature. What will her life be like in one week? I think of that and her, and my eyes cloud over a bit. I want to cry for her, but we're nowhere near that yet. It could be nothing. And tears are the last thing she needs to see from her friends.

I am still alone and fumbling in a world of men who don’t quite see me. I am still involved with my ex. We communicate almost every day, we have slept together twice. What do we want from each other? It would be so easy to label this something, that we have become sleazy together. How much truth is in that statement?

I suspect I am being weak even as I tell myself I am strong. What am I doing?

I will be alone for a long time I think. This is not what I want to happen, but something in me resists leaving the last few months behind. Is it the aborted fetus? Do I love A so much that I am willing to take whatever I can from him? Does he love me so much that he is willing to risk new love for old me? Fucking me can't be that much fun. How did I knowingly allow myself to turn out to be his bit on the side? Or are we just unprepared and/or unwilling to live with the decisions we’ve made?

Are we tied to one another more than other old lovers because we made a baby together? No one gets medals for making babies, especially when they turn out to be mistakes.

I just called my baby a mistake.

This afternoon I talked to A for two hours. We talked about everything and still it wasn’t enough time. What are we supposed to catch up on and what are we doing? It seems always to come down to babies and maybes. He blames himself, that if I hadn’t gotten pregnant, we would still be together. That’s probably true. But how badly did he want us to stay together and how badly did I want us to stay together?

How long would I have stayed knowing that all I would ever have with him is movies and breakfast and dating for all the time we are together? I am in love with someone who wants to be Peter Pan. And I want to be a grown-up.

Why isn’t that enough reason to stop loving someone?

Questions of Morality

My friend asked me today if I felt bad sleeping with my ex knowing that there was a current girlfriend. I am now seething at her even though I reacted rather mildly when she asked the question.  Not that what I did was right.  In fact, I am the first the say that what I did was wrong. But I don't feel that bad.  I know it was wrong, but I don't feel that bad.

But I guess I was hoping she would keep her mouth shut.  That she would trust that I recognize my actions and live with whatever consequences need to be dealt with.

With another boyfriend, years ago, we were talking about our personal limits.  Morality, you might say.  I remember saying to him that there were things I hoped I'd never have to do, but that I knew I would do what I needed to do for myself, to survive, to keep myself sane and safe; that I would step on who was in my way.  In the last few years, I've thought about this conversation over and over again. And wondered if I had changed. 

The truth is that I have not changed much.  I aborted a baby I loved because I didn't think the circumstances were right.  I slept with someone else's boyfriend (he used to be my boyfriend but that doesn't matter much anymore unless used for context). I am not looking hard for a job.  I fill my evenings and my days with meetings and activities I don't always want to participate in just to keep myself occupied.  

So what is my point?  That I've made decisions that I knew would be hard to live with, to some extent, that went against my morals.  But I did it all with my eyes open, eyes trained toward the murky future.  

Does this make me a bad person? I don't mean to hurt anyone.  Does that excuse bad behavior if you say you meant no harm?  I know a few people who would forgive themselves with this excuse in mind.  

I will do anything and everything that needs to be done to get myself through this.  It's that simple.   Sure I feel bad.  But I have bigger fish to fry.

I've had a lovely few days.  Yesterday the beach.  Really it was a lame beach -- more like a lake with still water and an almost muddy bottom. My friends and I got into a seaweed fight with some strangers.  

And today, I went to Columbus Circle and came upon a few kids playing in the fountains.  I couldn't resist -- I slipped off my sandals and stepped into the shallow pool.  Those children made me so happy I didn't know what to do with myself.  I almost wished my friend would call and cancel on me so I could sit there for the rest of the night.  I watched those children for a long time.  It occurred to me later that I wasn't looking at those children and thinking of my fetus.  I was looking at those children and thinking how nice it would be if I had one of my own, not about how I lost one.  

Is that progress?  

I didn't not feel loss.  It was that the loss was separate from the desire. I wasn't replacing or fantasizing about was is gone; I was looking toward a future with hope that someday I might have a kid of my own.

How much of the weird/crazy am I willing to put myself through in the hopes of finding something good?

What I'm Doing on My Summer Vacation

I talked to A again last night. He came up with this: that we should go to my therapist together and that we should have a ceremony for our baby (I keep wanting to call it aborted fetus but it is hard for me to say that these days).

With some reservation but no hesitation, I agreed to the ceremony. Does it mean I have to say goodbye to my baby? To A? That's what it feels like is what will happen. Isn't that what funerals are for?

I don't know if I'm ready to say goodbye to my baby. I want to say I'm sorry. That I can't deny. But goodbye? Holy shit. To leave it twice?

So A and I are doing it this Friday. I don't know what will happen or how we are going to do it. I don't know if it's just an excuse for me to see A. Maybe it doesn't matter. I have to cancel my Friday plans.

There's something nagging at me, that I am cancelling a stupid pseudo date so I can see my ex so the two of us can be sad about our aborted baby. This translates to me turning my back on a possible new thing that could be part of my future for a man who has quite clearly stated that he is part of my past.

How many points do I get if I talk about love? That I made a baby with him and that means something to me?

It is not likely that A and I will go to see my shrink together. That offer, he told me, was just for me. It was nice gesture on his part, but that seems wrong to me. You go to therapy together to fix things and clearly we are trying to walk away from each other.

Maybe we'll go to Riverside Park. I want to do it there but haven't told A. Selfishly, I wonder what happens after we have our little ceremony -- will I forever associate the park with my saying goodbye to my little baby and my love and never want to go back? Or will I keep going back revisiting my memories? None of these are appealing options.

Am I ready to say goodbye to my baby? Which baby am I talking about? Will A hate me if I am not? Will A and I become friends? I think we already are, in a way.

I am having a hard time looking at myself right now - too maudlin.

My Toe in the Water

I joined a dating service -- a dare for myself.  I've gone out with three men.  Slept with one.  It is rather thrilling in the moment -- the emails, the meeting, the sex. But in the end I sleep alone and it is still lonely. I'm doing this with a measure of hope for connection and also because it seems like the practical thing to do.  Why sit home?

I have a lot of friends.  I have standing invitations to go to the Hamptons, to Fire Island, to California.  Before the summer is over, I will go to each place I'm fairly certain.

I don't sit around thinking of fetuses. Babies don't make me weak-kneed. I go about my life like a person unburdened because lately that is how I feel. But I don't trust myself. No matter how okay I might appear, there is an emptiness in me. No matter how hard I laugh or how far I travel.  

How to explain it now?  It's not the same grief I lived with a few months ago.  It's quiet and doesn't need to be discussed -- I suppose this begs the question of why I must write about it if nothing else needs to be said.  I have no answer to that. 

Every time I get my period, I think of the abortion clinic.

On Saturday, a friend and I went to Roosevelt Island. From the southern tip of the island, you have a wonderful view of the ruins of the smallpox hospital framed by an ugly bridge. It's an only-in-New-York moment that makes my chest tighten up.  

My ex emails me often.  I wish he would say why.  But we talk about the weather and writing and things that, to me, don't matter quite so much.