Eldridge Street, New York City

Have I come to the moment where I can retire this diary? It seems that way sometimes. It's not that I've been so busy.  In fact, I spend quite a bit of my time alone these days. Long stretches of no one.  Sometimes it is so maddening that I am tempted to hurl one of my books against the wall, just to hear myself make a sound. Other days, I cannot bear any noise. The drone of NPR offends me, Beethoven a kind of ringing in my ears. And then I go out and see my friends and have a lovely old time.  But all the while all I want is to be home.

The days and the hours pass.  I am watching the clock.  One year.  I am fine, so far.  I don't know what will happen to me in March. Maybe nothing at all. Maybe everything.

My mother needs me to call her now, to give her some kind of comfort after a big old fight with my sister. But I don't call and I don't write.

I am reading a book about a large family and I see myself in each of the children.

Yesterday, I went to a synagogue in the Lower East Side/Chinatown for a little exhibit called The Last Word where people write on slips of paper things that they wish they'd said.  I got there before Wendy and on a piece of a paper I wrote: "I hope you weren't my last chance." I hesitated a few seconds and then I signed my name -- Zoraya.

I don't know if I meant the lost man or the aborted baby.

When Wendy showed up and started pulling out bits of paper and reading, I wondered if from the hundreds of sheets of paper rolled like cigarettes, would she find me?

Brava

I'm having one of those nights when I don't know what to do with myself.  There is no comfort to be found in sleep or in my books or in other people and so I just give in to this. The reprieve, I know, will come in the morning. Tomorrow, it will be as if tonight never happened.

Sometime last spring, maybe it was in May, I was at CC's boyfriend's office helping him with his dissertation.  It wasn't long after the breakup or the abortion.  I was a live wire.  CC's boyfriend told me that life would be strange for a long time, that at the oddest moments even after the crisis had passed, I would hear a song or see something that would bring everything back.  He was right.

Almost a year ago today, I was sitting with CC at a bar on Madison Avenue, telling her that A suspected I was pregnant and that I thought he was crazy.  Of course, I knew he wasn't crazy but I didn't know what else to say. CC went to Grand Central Station, and I, for reasons unclear to me, walked to a Times Square drugstore to buy a home pregnancy test.

This morning, A sent me and a few other people an email asking for an opinion on a pitch video he'd made for his movie.  I don't know why that email upset me so much. I told him I didn't want to be included.

That is the truth even though I hold on to him in some way I don't understand, even though I refuse to see him or even take a phone call.  Or maybe I do understand that this is what it means to lose someone.

Everything I pick up lately has a story about an abortion.  I'm seeking it out even as I hide from it.  It makes me crazy that what I deny shows up where I expect forgetting.  That's not fair, is it?

All my friends have babies and that does not bother me.  Just tonight, I emailed Secret Friend from Vermont telling her I wanted to meet her daughter. And I meant that sincerely.  Real babies do not upset me, it's the fictitious ones that bring me to my knees. Maybe it is because my baby feels like a fiction in many ways, most of all to myself.

On Tuesday, I ran into CC on Madison Avenue.  She has lost weight since I last saw her less than three weeks ago.   Even her wig seemed dull.  Next Wednesday, she will have a double mastectomy. I bought her a sandwich and for myself a cup of coffee and we talked about her losing her boobs.

After CC and I said goodbye, I ran into my friend AW's old boyfriend.  I'd thought that they'd get back together (but hoped that it wouldn't happen because I don't like this guy).  But from the awkward way he talked to me, I knew no reconciliation had taken place.

Then A called and then M and my friend Ann called but I didn't talk to any of them.

All that in one hour. Nothing out of the ordinary but I was reeling in the subway, my heart was pounding.  Some superstitious part of me was disturbed.

After all that, I made my way to Central Park West to a dinner party.  Nice people, nice townhouse, nice time, my angst slipped from me like molting skin.

Somewhere on Broadway after the party, one of the dinner party mainstays/hosts hugged me goodbye and invited me back.  Definitely you have to come back, he said. And I felt a thrill, not of desire or anything even vaguely sexual, but something that I imagine a performer would feel after having put on a good show.

What I Don't Want to Share

So if you know who I am and you happen to read this, mum’s the word.

I am alone on my birthday.  Up until 5 p.m., I had plans. But then I lied and said I had to work late. My phone is turned off and my friend Jonathan has called me three times wanting to talk. He has no idea it's my birthday and no idea that I don't answer the phone even on regular days.

This is the first time I’ve ever been alone on my birthday, and I hope never to repeat it again because I don’t ever want to be in the same place as I’m in right now.

This is what mourning feels like.

To badly quote something I read in the New York Times, there is no emoticon that could convey what life has been like this year. It has been one loss after another. But I always come back to this.

During my somewhat miserable childhood, after one or two of those incidents that involved my crazy family, I remember striking deals with God (that seems like the wrong thing to say – I don’t think I ever believed in God) – “okay, I’ll do it, but no more after this” or telling myself that whatever the bad thing was had to be the absolute last bad thing that could happen because life wouldn’t be fair otherwise.

What I have learned is that life, with all the moments of happy and wretchedness, is quite indifferent to us humans.

My shrink asked me why I wanted to do be alone and I didn’t have an answer at the time.  Now I do – it is because I want to look at myself. No liquor, no friends, no exes, no family.

I’ll never know why I didn’t keep my baby. All the rational thoughts that led to that decision could be written down, but right next to that column, would be just as many reasons for keeping it.

I wanted that baby.  It’s hard for me to admit that even now because it makes me wonder how I could have done it. I do know that I want any child of mine to have better childhood than I did, and at the time, I didn’t think I could provide. I wanted to be fair.

I don’t know if I will ever have enough guts to decide on whether I was a brave girl or a scared girl or if there will ever be a time when making a judgement on myself won't be so important.

On very bad days, I find myself saying “sorry, baby” again and again as if I’m talking to a person.  It is all I have to say and it’s not enough and it’s too much at the same time.

What kind of girl am I now?

Love After Love

Derek Walcott wrote that poem and I first read it years ago in a piece of shit book.  Someone else’s words were the best part of a 400-odd page novel. I ripped that poem out of the book and have had that page somewhere in my apartment for the last four years, something I read once in a while, sometimes out loud.

A called to wish me a Happy Birthday. Three days early.  I think he did it on purpose to show me he’s forgotten or maybe he did forget.  But never mind that.

Happy Abortion Anniversary, Lucy/Reticent Diarist/whatever I am today. And oh my body remembers.  I am sick again.  I almost didn’t cry today.  Maybe one of these months I won’t.

It is cold tonight, the wintery sort of cold that gets in under your skin.  Unmistakably the beginning of another season. I keep track of time in a different way now, as if I feel every change on my skin rather than by what the calendar reads.  I don’t know what all of this means, if anything at all. But I remember what it was like to take a walk in the summertime and in the fall and now when it hurts to breath because it’s so cold. With each season, I am more myself. I am less hurt.

It probably doesn’t sound true because tomorrow I will wake up with puffy eyes and a hoarse voice.  But these episodes pass. And it is less about a lost relationship and more about a baby.

With my shrink last week, I discussed how joy and grief can coexist. I think now that the good times were almost a kind of punishment, it underscored the grief.  The joys of the last few months were so fleeting; and at home at night, it is not what returned to me.

This is what comes to me at night now – sometimes nothing at all, sometimes words from the book I happen to be reading or the memory of someone else’s body. Always there is fear of remembering and forgetting. Both things can’t happen, can it?

I think of jewelry.  I pass by the windows on Madison Avenue and imagine myself plunking down one of my credit cards for something shiny. Not because I need another bauble but because I want a kind of memento for this year, to keep close to me.  That probably sounds morbid and a little bit shallow.  But I would like a little memory to remind myself of something I had but couldn’t keep. Hello, Lou Reed.

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.  

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?

Lucy Writes

We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us.          – E.M. Forster

Maybe I’ll start calling myself Lucy in honor of Miss Honeychurch, E.M. Forster’s heroine in A Room With a View.  This could be the Reticent Diarist’s pseudonym.  Reticent is not so catchy, is it?

I’m writing almost every day.  This is unusual for me but maybe not that surprising given the workless days. It occurred to me that I might write about things that happen that have nothing to do with heartache --is that even possible?  I toy with the idea of dividing each entry into sections: FUCKING SAD and NOT SO BAD and GREAT.

FUCKING SAD would have to be a major category because there is a lot of that in my life right now. But I don’t want to be a drip or seem like I sit around collecting sad stories.  I do believe that it is in the misery where our characters are formed. But in the midst of all that there is fun and hope and dirty jokes and weird/stupid stories that make a lot of things worthwhile.

Personally, I’m willing to put myself through an unusual degree of weirdness in the hopes of finding the good. I think this is a good character trait. It also shows that there is a part of me that is a gambler. And all gamblers are stupid. That is not a criticism, exactly.

But when I write to you, dear reader (well, when I write to myself), I find I turn away from what is almost happy.  Guilt perhaps?  There’s no perhaps – it is guilt, pure and simple. And fear. 

FUCKING SAD

•  My abortion
  
•  My dear friend has cancer
  
•  Ex/impregnator fell in love with my less cute doppelganger in a matter of weeks post break-up, causing me to question how much/how little he valued our relationship
•  My mother is nuts and regretful about her entire life
•  I am hung up on my ex even though I know it ain’t happening anymore
•  I had sex with a beautiful man who had the smallest penis I have ever met (and I’ve met a few)
  
•  Dating too much with little success
• Loneliness
• Having sex with my ex (the one now in love with the ugly version of me—I realize this is mean, but give me a break.)
  
• Not having money due to unemployment
  
•  DID I MENTION MY DEAD FETUS and my broken heart?  This occupies five bullet points each, just so I’m clear. FUCKING SUCKS.  I miss my A like a missing limb; I’ll miss my baby forever.

 NOT SO BAD

• I had sex with a beautiful man who had the smallest penis I have ever met (sic)
  
• Dating
  
•  Trying to be friends with my ex
  
• My attempts at dating have been met with little success -- but really, am I capable of having an honest relationship at this point?
• Unemployment
  
•  Having sex with my ex – it’s good for my ego
• Drinking
• Loneliness

GREAT

• Writing 
• A man in Boston who I might never meet who tries to help me with every dilemma I throw at him, including finding a person at Memorial Sloan Kettering who would be able to help my friend CC get better treatment
  
•  Interesting men that I’ve met who I'll never see again
•  The man with the small penis also came too fast. He could do it multiple times, each sex session lasting all of three minutes or so -- sorry for not being more accurate as I did not think to set a stopwatch before each encounter. After Round 2, I observed that he was quite sweaty and he replied, “It comes very fast.”  I died laughing, but I was the only one who got the joke.
• Meeting Michael, who I thought might turn out to be the greatest rebound boyfriend of all time. But it turned out all I wanted was to be his best friend and he wasn’t so pleased about that (this last bit makes this bullet point an eligible entry for FUCKING SAD but I have bigger fish to fry).
•  Making new friends in desperate attempt to distract myself from misery
•  Reconnecting with Jon in real life and remembering how much I love him – I have my doubts as to whether or not this would have happened if events in the FUCKING SAD category did not occur  
•  My ex and I stalking each other on OKCupid and sending each other stupid notes
•  Stealing the apartment/sex analogy from my friend DY and taking it to a whole new level of absurd with his sister LY. I will write about this later.
•  Making a kick ass apple pie for my sad sick friend – it is a stupid thing to do, but it was what she wanted and what I could give
•  Re-finding another Michael, my reluctant male friend.  He gives me rides on his motorcycle and drives us over the Brooklyn Bridge
•  Going to the beach with CC
• New York in the summer
• Loneliness
  

So does the categorization work?  Probably not.  Too pretentious.  A too-self conscious attempt to be funny.

But I'm keeping Lucy.

I'm going to gamble.

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?

Goodbye to All That?

My ex showed up on Friday night carrying a bunch of flowers.  When I saw him, it was as if no time at all had passed and I put my arms around him.  But his body felt different, leaner and harder and not quite right next to mine.

I wrote a letter to the dead fetus.  He wrote a letter to the dead fetus. Then we went to dinner and A playfully grabbed at the sleeve of my sweater, where my hand would be if I were wearing the sweater properly (I had slung it over my shoulders). 

We went to the church, two atheists starting at the imposing doors, church closed to us. We walked to the park, my first time there at night. We walked towards the water and I cried. Oh did I cry.  I don't know how long we stayed there.  I don't know what I was feeling when I wasn't crying.

I wrote a letter to the baby I chose not to have.  I will never see that letter again and maybe it's just as well. 

I don't know how A was feeling. 

We went back to my apartment and he told me about his new girl.  I told him about my little dates, my infatuation with Michael and how quickly it passed.  Then we went to bed and at first we only held each other. I couldn't stand the feel of clothes separating us so I peeled off my shirt and we had sex and we slept and woke up and had breakfast and said goodbye.

I don't know what happens now. I haven't cried at all since.

Oh Baby

Every few days, I find myself rereading all my posts.  There haven't been that many, so it doesn't take much time. It seems narcissistic do keep reading yourself, but I'm not looking for signs of brilliance. Only progress. I'd like a little hard evidence that I'm getting better.  

I suppose I have to admit that I have made progress. The problem is that the grief has not lessened in intensity. Nope, not less intense. But the bouts come less often so I become convinced that I am almost done with it. 

Finding a job would probably help me more than I am willing to admit.  I look half-heartedly. When I think of what I am doing, I see this ridiculous picture of myself sewing. A Pieta-like triptych, only I am not holding some grown man but some other version of myself in tatters. And there's never any angel.  Just a third version of myself watching. Everything I do now is an effort to put myself back together.

My ex, my first love (not to be confused with the newest ex), randomly emailed me yesterday.  It was a cold email.  I wondered why he sent it at all.  My memory of the end of our relationship is not good.  I think he hated me a little by then.  And I desperately wanted him gone. 

He taught me about buildings.  Every time I walk into the Guggenheim, I think of him even though we never went there together.  

So back to the present -- I emailed A (the current ex) and requested a talk.  So talk we did.  It was nice. Sad, loving, funny. It helped in a way.  I remembered what it was that made us good. That makes us still good. He does not mourn the loss of the fetus as I do. But A is a good man.  I wish I could say something else about him, something mean. But I don't think I'm made that way. And neither is he.

So it occurred to me that I blog without having any idea how this all works.  I write key words in "Labels" but I don't know how they help.  I'm not very tech-savvy.

Morning Craziness

Every day, I have an hour of being crazy (sometimes more than a few hours). Did I ever mention that before? Nah, probably not.  I try too hard to be better so I tend to pretend the morning crazies don't happen.  Sometimes I even pretend it was something I dreamed up from the night before.

The morning crazies come in two forms -- helpless crying (that's abortion-related these days) and stalking (that is ex boyfriend-related, always). I don't know what I feel worse about. 

Well, since I vowed to be as honest as I could be with this blog, I will admit that it is the boyfriend who makes me feel worse.  I think less of myself for not being able to shake him, for responding to his ridiculously casual emails wherein we both pretend there is nothing left to say.  When you get down to it, the man really didn't love me all that much.  Forget about the pregnancy for a minute and I'd still say that he didn't love me much at all.  I was a pleasant diversion who had funny things to say and a compatible sex drive. So my pride is smashed to bits every time I miss him.

I went out on another blah date last night.  The man was short, shy and not into me.  And I didn't mind at all.  I had a nice time anyway.  Sometimes it's a great relief for me to talk to total strangers.  

Do other people understand their motives for bringing new people into their lives as well as I do mine? Some people have booze.  I turn to strangers. 

I want new people because it's the closest I can get to stop being myself. When I think of myself now this is what I see -- someone who willingly made a fool of herself for a man, who got rid of a baby she loved more than she can ever say because she could not bear the thought of the baby paying the price for her bad judgements. 

The thing about strangers is that if we become friends or lovers, I will go out of my way trying to get them to know me.  So first I want to be no one and then I will want to be myself again. Does that even makes sense?

Wow, if I keep posting these kinds of entries, I will never gain a wide readership. Ha.

There are a few funny things I can share about my life.  It's not been a completely shitty few months.  But whenever I sit down to post, the last thing I want to be is funny.  Go figure.

Writing to Strangers

On Sunday, I found myself trolling Craigslist for any posts about abortion. There was a post from a woman who was looking for someone to tell her what it was going to be like before and after an abortion. I wrote to her.

There were people who posted responses saying they were glad someone had an abortion so that their tax dollars would not go towards supporting someone's mistake (I'm paraphrasing here).  There were people who posted photos of Al Sharpton, labeling it an abortion that lived. I find that a bit funny even though it pisses me off. 

But back to the woman who had a question about what abortion is like...I will call her K.  I have no idea who/where/why K finds herself in this predicament.  I wonder how old she is, and if she decides to go through with it, will someone will be there to pick her up from the clinic afterwards. I don't want her to be alone. I badly want to help this total stranger I will never meet. I badly want to help myself (are my altruism credentials nullified by this admission?) . 

I hope she keeps writing to me.

She asked me if it would be better if she went to another town to have the abortion so she could leave the memory of it behind.  That had never occurred to me when I was going through the decision-making process.  When I think of it now, I wonder if it would matter.  It stays with you now matter where you go and what you do. 

If it's so awful, why should anyone do it? Again, I have no answer to that.  The reasons for doing doing something become less clear once the consequences have to be dealt with.  It's the same for any big decision be it leaving a job, having a baby or terminating a pregnancy, or ending a relationship.  

I have to tell remind myself the reasons why I did it and why I ended my relationship afterwards because sometimes I am so sad I don't know what to do. It usually happens on weekday mornings when I hear children playing in the schoolyard next door to me. Their voices rise and fill my head with noise I can hardly bear.  So I turn on the radio to drown them out. But the radio commentators -- NPR, usually -- sound hollow and somehow from another life. 

It's hard to look toward the future when you struggle to make it through the mornings.