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?

I am a porcupine.

On Saturday I ran into A in the subway. I was struck by how ordinary our encounter seemed. I was walking down the length of the train and there he was.  I saw him first. I nudged his foot with mine and sat next to him.  After we said goodbye, he called. And then he called again, he emailed, he called, he emailed. It started to piss me off. Last night, I answered. I couldn’t stand his questions about what I’d been doing, I didn’t want to tell him anything. I started off slow and cold. Then something broke and I wanted to tell him everything.

Two objects cannot occupy the same space – this is what I have realized. If A is around, there is no hope for anything with anyone because there is no one I like talking to more, no one who annoys me so much, no one I love, no one who loves me more than he.  No one else I almost had a baby with. That’s a lot to say – even I can see that. None of it is enough to change anything. And there’s no one who replaced me faster than he did. That last sentence is a hypocritical statement. I tried the same thing – I tried to replace him.  The only difference is that he succeeded in finding someone else and I did not.

All these words and those men I fucked are just different ways of missing A. If only we had been brave enough.

I think this time we are going to do it – this is the parting that will stick. I could keep telling myself I’m getting over it and that might even be true. Some days, it is.  As long as he’s around, I’ll keep hoping (though I will probably never admit it to anyone) that he will wake up one day and realize that he loves me enough to take a leap of faith. Intellectually, it’s pretty obvious to me that that’s not going to happen.

As we talked, four and a half hours according to my phone, I realized that we are still very much attached.  It felt good – banter and tenderness. Then I felt demoralized and rather desperate.  That’s when I told him he had to leave me alone. “Help me get over this,” I said.

This is hard for me to write.  It’s an admission of failure in many ways. But it’s my fetus anniversary again.  11 months.  March might find me in worse shape. It took an hour to start typing – I will be embarrassed about this as soon as I post it.

How is it that I can write all this about A and then think about M and hope - naively, sincerely, foolishly - that something will happen between us? Why am I not smarter than this?

The Ramble

Frigid weather again. I have so many items of clothes on that I have a hard time moving.  This must be what it feels like to be terribly fat.

I need to stop talking to strangers.  Today a street vendor asked me to remove the scarf I was wearing and wanted to take a photo of  it. Then he asked me to wear it again and took another photo. I suppose he is going to go back to some sweatshop now and copy the design.  He gave me a pair of gloves for my trouble and as I was leaving, I heard him telling someone, “that scarf was expensive!” True, but no one's business but mine. I went from being amused by this man to being terribly offended. No mood swing if I could have just kept to myself.

·

Friday night, a pedestrian was struck and killed by a car on Broadway and 90^th Street.  M and I had just finished having dinner at some Belgian brasserie in the Upper West Side and were on our way to Riverside Park to have a walk when we happened upon the “crime scene”.

M was not prepared for the weather.  I gave him one of my scarves – a swath of magenta cashmere with gold and silver sequins.  I wrapped the length of it around his head and neck and then we forced his had down his head—a ridiculous look for anyone (including me, but I sometimes love ridiculous things). For someone as uptight as M, it was pee-in-my-pants hysterical.  I tried to take a photo but he yelled at me and demanded that I just “enjoy” our time together.  I told him he was cranky pants and he bitched even more but in the end ended up laughing at himself. 

I am not sure what is going on with us now.  I keep thinking this is all in my head but we have our nice times (really, these times are not so grand, but it feels, to me, just right). It seems impossible to me that I would be the only one who feels something.  Then again, stranger things happened.  We come very close to moving toward each other BUT we don’t. 

This is all in my head isn’t it?

He is moving six blocks away from me in a few weeks. I suppose we will continue our strange friendship and nothing will change but there is some part of me that hopes for clarity.  The only problem is that I don’t want to lose him. Wendy suggested I jump his bones.  I don't see this happening -- it's not my style.  But a funny thing to contemplate.

·

Saturday morning I ran into A in the R train on my way to the bookstore.  He was on his way to see a flick at The Film Forum, a Kurosawa.  Probably with his girlfriend and her friends.  Seeing him was not as bad as I have imagined it would be.  After we said goodbye, he called to tell me I looked great (really he is a bottomless pit of compliments, it bugs me) and that we should get together for a drink soon.

I’m not sure how I feel about seeing him on purpose.  I do know that I’ve been quite fine without him in the last few months.  So maybe a meeting would just set me back. This is not making me run to my calendar to schedule a get-together. 

Could it be true that I might actually be a little bit over him? Could it?

What does he want from me? It’s kind of weird.  I’m rather unpleasant when I don’t know how to act around a person. I imagine I must have been awkward this morning.  Mean, even?

Last week, I ran into that tall guy I briefly dated over the summer (6 foot 7 to my 5 feet). It happened at the bookstore.  I couldn’t stand the thought of talking to him so I actually hid from this perfectly nice man. 

Maybe I need to find somewhere else to spend my Saturday afternoons.

·

CC had a double mastectomy on Wednesday.  She seems to be doing fine.  I am so scared for her.  What happens when the pain medication and whatever dope they have her on wears off and she realizes, with a fully lucid mind, that her breasts are gone?

The other night at dinner, I said to M, “we are sitting here having dinner like nothing has happened, but just a few miles from here, my friend is sitting somewhere a totally different person.”

M is not the kind of person who can have such conversations. I didn’t elaborate on it. But I thought of CC all night.

·

On Thursday night, an unexpected trip to the opera house to see Turandot. The opera makes me wish I were rich and could see performances any time I want.  Oh well.

Tomorrow, I am going to see Carmen. I swear I live my life like an old lady. But that’s quite all right.

January

I had one day alone in L.A. because I worked for a few hours at my friend's shop in downtown. If not for the sandwich adventure, there would have been no solitude at all.

After my tour of duty was over, I wandered around in search of this building.  I passed Bunker Hill and the Los Angeles Public Library, walked up the hill of Grand Street and wandered into the MoCA store where I bought a calendar for 2010. Further up was the Disney Music Center.  For years, I've wanted to go there but this was my first time.

 I had dubbed the building Frank's Folly before I ever saw it up close. I think Frank Gehry is silly, the guy people go to if they want something monumental but ultimately end up with something prefabricated. Didn't he already do this in Bilbao? And how are the acoustics? In a way he really is a Los Angeles architect.

That said, this cynical diarist fell a little bit in love. And it was then, standing in front of this building, that I realized that I am a little foolish and a lot romantic.  The kind of person who admits to falling in love with a building, who goes out and buys a calendar with a not-that-great picture of a skinny man whose resolution is to stand up straight, who talks to strangers with hope of hearing about an interesting non-creepy life.

Here is my January man:

and skinny cartoon man's New Year's resolution although I doubt it will be readable in this tiny space:

I was in a sentimental mood, I guess.  I bought a Beethoven CD and some woman named Kristina Train.  If I weren't heartbroken, I would probably find her annoying but now her songs resonate with me, a new way to say what I've been thinking all these months.

M called me on Christmas to say hello and on New Years Day, a few hours after I returned to New York, he came to my 'hood and we ate ice cream in the cold and walked around. Romantic one might say. He showed me the apartment he is buying -- ten blocks south of me.  And the end of the story is this -- still nothing happened.  I guess I would be more surprised if something did happen between us at this point.  We are a done deal, destined to be almost something.

One might ask why *I* don't do something about it. I'm chickenshit hiding behind the excuse of being an old-fashioned kind of girl.  It's pretty simple. And anyway, is he interested at all in me? I was thinking maybe he is a little bit interested -- who the hell calls someone to say Merry Christmas anymore? But then, there is the NOTHING.  So maybe he isn't interested.

Thirty six year old women writes like high school girl.  Jeesh.

So in my nine days in California, I saw my oldest friends, the ones I've dreaded seeing all year.  I saw my relatives.  It was a fucking reunion tour.  And I liked it.  And I loved all those people. And I was so happy to come back to my little apartment.

I didn't freak out at all.  When I saw my friends Daniel and Maya, I was afraid I'd break down. But nothing.  Is that progress or compartmentalizing?  All my friends and their lovely children. And then there was me. I think about it now and I get sad but while I was with my friends, it was fine. I have not lost my ability to be happy for people.

A called while I was in L.A. I didn't answer and I didn't call him back.  Is that progress or is that putting off the inevitable phone call I will make in a few days?  To my credit, I could have called by now and I have not.

I missed him while I was gone.  What a stupid thing to say.  It's not as if I have been not missing him before. What struck me was how I could miss him so much but have no desire to make contact and how whenever he asks me anything, I get angry and share nothing of value. Back to the drawing board, I guess. But I'm a little further along.

Book Love

One of the first books I ever stole was The Heather Blazing by Colm Toibin.  I still own that book (my old flame AL called it my trophy, this before I told him that I used to be a book thief which I think amused and then put him off). I still haven't read it. But just now I finished Toibin's newest novel Brooklyn and was fairly wowed.  I wonder if I will pick up the other book(s) now? I mean to buy since I don't steal anything anymore.

Towards the end of Brooklyn, there is a passage that is simply gorgeous.  I say this fully admitting that I am somewhat biased because it was a scene that could have been lifted from MY life, circa 2009 versus 1950s Brooklyn/Ireland.

The mother in Ireland avoids talking about the daughters life in Brooklyn.  The daughter wonders why her mother doesn't seem to have any interest in her new life.

The reading A.D.D. has passed I think.  Now I am on to compulsive book-buying and book-reading.  Purchases in the last month:

• The Museum of Innocence
• Lark and Termite
• Brooklyn*
• Love Begins in Winter*
• Generosity
• Gourmet Rhaphsody
• Prelude
• The opera reference book
  

*read so far

I'm missing a few more but this is what I can think off the top of my head.  This happens to me in the fall -- all the good books come out and I go a little nuts.

When I was insane, jobless, newly single and newly un-mothered, I started volunteering at a bookstore downtown to keep myself occupied. It was a bit of a pain in the ass, customer service is not my forte.  But now I realize that I love the time I spend at the store. I've found my niche -- I don't have to talk to anyone, the people who work there seem amused that I say very little but work faster than any volunteer needs to. I listen to old opera records in the sub-basement while I clean the old books. Sometimes some of the clients are there and we listen to the old music together. We don't talk to each other. The four hours go by quicker than I'd like and I'm always sorry I have to leave.

Beginning of this year when I was pregnant and A was in Upstate New York shooting a movie, I holed up in his apartment surrounded by his books.  I imagined myself reading to my baby or a child at a later age reading next to me. Then I would freak out and smoke to banish the image.

Then after the abortion, I would sit around and cry and stare at my books, wishing I could find any one of them compelling enough to read and lose myself in.  But those first few months were rough.  I did everything half asleep.  I read a lot of books and remember none of them.

It occurs to me that I expect my books to give me comfort.  Or maybe it's not books so much as words.  When I was 14, I wrote endless letters and I read shitty romance novels borrowed from the Los Angeles Public Library.  All those words made me less miserable. And when I was happy, the words keep me from being too happy.

Good deal for a few bucks.

The Opposite of IT

This morning I was frantically trying to find the right necklace to wear with my black dress. I gave up, grabbed the thing that was closest to me.  It turned out to be the perfect thing.  

Why am I writing about this?

So A is back. He managed to keep out for a week. First a random email late in the afternoon about some lecture he thought I would want to listen to.  Then an email an hour later. Then a phone call soon after that.  I admit that I am amused.  And unsurprised. I understand this all very clearly in some ways and then I don't understand it at all.  I don't feel like talking at all.

It makes me wonder what he's thinking. I don't think he's thinking. And I am tired.

My evening with M went well and then not well.  He and I are like a bad romantic comedy -- the same peccadilloes, the same likes, the same brittleness, the same awkwardness, the same it's-never-going-to-happen-between-usness.  And that may not be a bad thing.  There is something that repels us from one another.  What is it?  It is the opposite of IT.

Aida was wonderful. More and more I love the opera.  In the midst of my misery last spring, I found the energy to get myself to Lincoln Center. I would be happy just to be able to watch the chandelier cables retracting.  I would be happy to listen to that Aida song over and over again.  

In my rush to leave this morning, I left my book at home.  All day, I had to fight the urge to go to a bookstore and find something.  I missed the weight of a book in my hand.  

Going to see my shrink in a few days.  It's a been a long time.  I keep thinking I can quit her now. But really, that is just hubris. She is my insurance policy. One of these days, I will be fighting tears in the subway again.  I need to have someone on retainer when those days come because really, I realize that I am incapable of full disclosure with anyone.  Even with my shrink I do not say everything.  But it's close enough.

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.

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?

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?

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.

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.

Five Months

Today is it five months since the abortion. I don't know if I ever said when I did it. Maybe I lied before, made it seem like more time has passed.

Sometimes, I'm not so consistent. I don't mean to lie.  

This morning, I told my ex A (via email) that I was sick over the weekend. He called me in a panic wanting to know if I had a fever, what my temperature was, if I was going to see a doctor, if I had food, etc.  Nice boyfriend stuff from my very nice and definitely EX boyfriend.  It was lovely to be thought of and now I feel awful about it.

See, I did it on purpose. I was being manipulative. I wanted to hear his voice today. It's funny that I didn't even realize what I was doing until I heard the phone ring.  We talked for ten minutes. I told him I was fine.  I never mentioned the abortion at all.

I want to talk about how hard it is to know that two people love each other but have to separate.  That seems like the most logical paragraph to compose.  And I do think about that.  I also think a lot about how he didn't love me enough. Is that true?  I don't know.

Five months -- I can hardly stand it.  

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.