Happy New Year? January 1, 2008

It’s early, way early for having finally fallen asleep around 2am. I didn’t even think I’d make it to midnight, but there’s some fight in the old girl yet.  I’m debating whether or not to get back into bed – on one hand it feels very decadent, on the other it depresses the hell out of me. Do you ever not know which “voice” to trust? The one that beckons soothingly, almost seductively that I’m tired, wouldn’t getting back into bed feel so good? Reading a book and falling back to sleep? Versus the voice that says you know what path that leads down, and it’s often not pretty, so why don’t you get up and be productive and shake whatever last cobwebs of sadness or melancholy are curtaining your mind. But then, it’s my mom who always needed to be productive, who told me my ass wasn’t going to get any smaller by keeping my nose in a book, and I can pretty much do whatever I damn please because I’m a full-fledged grown-up now. So it’s back, then, to Elizabeth Gilbert’s question as the mantra for my days: what do I really, really, really want?

I wanted an e-mail from B to be waiting for me this morning. Yuck, but it’s true. I don’t know what I’d have done with it, but I wanted it there, forcing my hand. I almost wrote her yesterday. My sponsor and I were doing part of the 4th step and talking about love, and she said that she thought I’d very much been in love with B, and she with me, but that in choosing her, I’d gone as far as I could go without making some major transformations in myself. I hit a bottom in our breakup the likes of which I’ve never seen and hope never to have to see again. I may actually have to go get “Eat, Pray, Love” and quote directly from it, because much to my then-splintered heart’s relief, I think she captured what happened to me.

“a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that’s holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life. A true soul mate is probably the most important person you’ll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with a soul mate forever? Nah. Too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then they leave. And thank God for it” (p.149).

That’s what she did to me, for me. And I almost wrote her to say thank you, that I’m okay, even better than okay, and that I was grateful she had been the best I could do for myself with the tools that I had at the time. She “broke my heart open so new light could get in, made me so desperate and out of control that I had to transform my life” (ibid). She made me feel what it felt like to be truly seen and truly loved.

But I didn’t write her, and she didn’t write me, and that may just be how it is for awhile. I’m 99% sure we’re not going to be together again – have you ever been with someone where the feel of their name in your mouth just wasn’t natural, and it made you think “how could I be with this person in the long term if saying their name doesn’t feel right to me?” Am I nuts? But her name never felt right in my mouth.

And now, I am learning what it means to love and be loved, to love myself without exception, to see that the moments when I feel nerdy or loser-y or alone are not really me, just some old records with really deep grooves. I am learning to be alone and not lonely…in her blog “And the Damage Done,” the writer speaks of how being alone may be the way to discover who we truly are, but fears we may not know that before we’re in our 60s or 70s, and then what? I don’t believe that’s true. I think life is a journey and that each person who enters it in some significant way is here to teach us more about ourselves that we could not learn in the absence of that outside influence, but that there is a point when the work pays off enough to start bringing more positive people into our lives. I’m learning so incredibly much about myself, about how loving through joking sarcasm still slices and puts me on guard, about how full of light I feel when I am able to express my true feelings and be myself without thinking.

I saw Chris Noth in a Starbuck’s on 8th Street the week before last. The reason I’m bringing it up here is that his dark eyes made me swoon, regardless of the body that came along with them – B had very blue eyes, and while I grew to love them (and I am a major sucker for crow’s feet, which she had as much from smiling all the time as from 20 years of smoking), I fall into warm, brown eyes much, much more deeply. My girlfriend before B, C (I’m not kidding) had brown eyes, but they were cold somehow – not lifeless, but not expressive most of the time, either. Like her. So brown is good but warmth is better. Anyway, Chris was much better looking in person than I’d have anticipated: quite tall, casually but nattily dressed, and really, such huge, dark eyes. Yum.

So yes, I think, Happy New Year to all. If nothing else, it marks the start of a new year in which anything at all can happen. At this time last year, I’d never have predicted I’d be here now, so who in God’s name knows where the next 364 days will take me. But life is good. Still hard, but good. No regrets.

Excitement or Dread, it’s All Really the Same December 24, 2007

What I mean by that is that either way, it passes. Last year, B and I took a month-long break during the month of December (her choice, of course), and while she wasn’t going to spend Christmas with my family anyway (should I have known then?), I remember just trying to get through these days without thinking too much about her, because we’d be meeting up again in less than a week (New Year’s Eve day). I was SO excited to see her again, so nervous that I tried to savor each day of that week, knowing that seeing her again would only happen once, no matter how it happened, and wanting just to be present for whatever I was feeling throughout the last days of the count-down (a whole different use for an advent calendar, really). Now it’s Christmas Eve again, and my life is so different in so many ways, yet one similarity is the need to just be present for all that will take place, whether I am dreading it or looking forward (I vacillate between both). I was reading one of my daily meditation books this morning (I can’t even believe I utter such things sometimes), and the topic was on turning the focus from thinking about the options that other people have in terms of how they could behave or respond, and turning that question back to ourselves as the only one we really have any power to change. I have options. I always have options. But if I choose to focus my energy on wishing others would respond differently, it’s futile, even if at first it’s a hell of a lot easier than focusing my energy on my own actions and reactions. So that’s going to be my thought for today – remembering I’m powerless over anyone but myself, and very concretely remembering to stop myself from wishing that others would behave differently.

I have to wrap presents, drag my dog into the shower with me, and get out of here by 3pm. A Merry Christmas to all – even for this secular Jew, I think it can be an exciting time of birth and new hope.

Procrastination Expert December 12, 2007

Yes, yes, I know I’m supposed to be writing in this every day, and that I didn’t yesterday, so hurray for me that I’m doing it now, but truly it’s entirely to avoid reading 17 heady journal articles for a 15-18 page lit review due Friday.  Friday, you inquire?  Why, you have all the time in the world!  Alas, I do not, as I will be leaving my home by 7am on Friday in order to conduct a training, so that day is entirely lost.  And at 37, I’m not pulling any all-nighters, either.  So far I’ve ordered a highly involved christmas present, gone to court for a speeding ticket, gotten my oil and front tires changed…all in all it’s been a phenomenally productive day, just not in any way relating to this deadline.  But I’m ready for the snowstorm tomorrow!

I do this to myself, a lot – causing crises where there need not be any by waiting until the very last minute to accomplish something I actually want to do well.  Friends and therapists have hypothesized either that I’m sabotaging myself, that I’m giving myself an excuse for when the finished product isn’t up to snuff, or that I actually am doing the work…in my head.  This time around, that third and gentlest interpretation is essentially impossible as I can’t mentally muse on articles with which I’m completely unfamiliar.  This is my last final paper ever, in my entire academic career.  Unless, of course, you want to count my comps and my dissertation as final papers.  My very last class until I’m a senior citizen signing up for “The History of Wine” or some other intellectually dubious teachings.

I wake up cranky every mornning these days.  When I was with B, every morning got me up with a shot of adrenaline, knowing I would see her or receive an e-mail from her.  Now I feel overwhelmed at the prospect of my day, whatever I’m imagining it will bring, and recovering from a series of anxiety dreams that leave my jaw hurting from grinding.  I really do have such a good life: a beautiful home, enough money (though that’s a whole other story), great friends, a loving cat and dog, my health, a very cute little body and face that I’m overall quite satisfied with, and a seemingly burgeoning career that has had multiple lives and continues to thrive.  I wish I were more even-keeled.  One thing that’s very helpful (and that I appreciate more reading a few other blogs) is that without children or a significant other to point a finger at, I only have myself and my life and my head to “blame” for my mercurial nature – I’m moody even without finding fault with someone else, man.  I’m actually very relieved to be single and facing myself, even though not a fucking minute of it is easy.

I feel like I’ve been a pioneer all my life: bushwhacking through thorny, brambly, uncharted territory.  I’ve never really had a mentor, I don’t even know who to ask to chair my dissertation, and everything I’ve done to this point – starting a business, buying and selling real estate, moving away from NYC – I’ve done pretty much blind.  It’s all working out reasonably well, but the going is rough sometimes, and lonely.  For a while, I thought that B was going to be my trekking companion.  But we only walked in the direction she needed to go, and whenever I commented on that, she’d flee.  Until her final escape last May.  I can honestly say we weren’t right for each other, that we never will be, and I can wish her well, but when I’m thinking about cuddling with someone on the couch while watching TV; when I’m trying to remember what it feels like to have someone’s fingers inside me in just the right position, she’s who comes to mind.  Thankfully, we didn’t really have a “soundtrack” to our relationship the way my others did, we never lived together, and we fought or processed as much or more than we got along for the year we were together, so there are a lot of memories I don’t actually have with her.

I don’t think I can rationalize avoiding this paper much longer.  Ooh, maybe it’s time for a snack…

Morning Pages, Day 1 December 9, 2007

It says something, though I don’t know what, that I’ve been looking forward to writing this morning.  I think, actually, that I’m routine-phobic or -averse, so right now this is new and different, and the shine may wear off sooner rather than later.  But for now it has me writing and hedging for time alone, and that in itself is a success.  Have I mentioned I can’t touch type?  I know where all the keys are, but I still hunt and peck with two or three fingers, which if I’m not looking down has a mediocre track record for accuracy.

what do I really, really, really want?  I want to end the class I’ve been teaching with grace and sincerity.  I want to be…ah, here’s a thing: I think I need to make sure the things I ask for are things I actually have some say in – I was going to say that I wanted to be a bit of a phenomenon in the school and be asked to revamp this class, but I have no control over the kinds of evaluations my students give me.  And that’s just where I could spend my time, too – on worrying that because I didn’t give someone a good grade on their midterm or because they for whatever reason don’t like me, they won’t evaluate me well.  At my core I am so truly convinced people will be cruel to me, will be threatened by me in some way nd actively try to thwart my success.  It’s my mother and junior high school all over again.  And again, and again.

That’s where this 12-step program comes in.  It’s been amazing, and it’s only been 7 months.  I was so completely derisive of 12-step programs before entering this one – I’d dabbled with OA in college and hated it – but there is such a gentleness and theme of radical, total self-acceptance to this program.  It’s like being introduced to my real self, and coming to realize that the derisive, self-destructive voices/beliefs are the disease. 

I got into this program simply because my relationship was falling apart, and our couple’s therapist suggested that I try it.  So I got into it to save us, and ended up getting dumped anyway 2 weeks later.  The relationship had made me into one of of those incredibly malleable pieces of wire, and I had taken my original shape and wrapped it around this woman, losing myself, making her feel trapped, and ultimately feeling completely hollowed-out when she left.  I was reading “Eat, Pray, Love” at the time, and thank God, because it said what I needed to hear: that this relationship would serve to crack my heart open and let some more light and air in, excruciating as the fault lines might be.  It was the most grief and pain I’ve ever experienced, though if I were to be totally honest, it wasn’t the first or even the second time I’ve felt eviscerated by a relationship ending: that had happened twice before, only I hadn’t really seen it as such at the time.  My pattern has either been to end up with women whom I feel in some way superior to (and eventually contemptuous of), or with women who are emotionally unavailable and leave me feeling at fault for the failure of the relationship.  The three in which I felt the latter all had periods of evisceration and devastation, only this time getting brought to my knees resulted in getting the help I needed in the form of this program and a therapist who is either in program herself or just incredibly program savvy/literate.  It was a gift, even though I still think about her every day, several times a day, and check my e-mail on a regular basis in hopes that I’ll hear from her.  I asked her not to contact me, so even if she wanted to I’m not sure she would, and I don’t really know what I would hope to gain from the contact: an apology?  Something that would confirm that I wasn’t completely to blame for the ending of the relationship?  I know that’s something I need to establish inside myself, and I do think there are parts of that relationship that were healthy and loving (or maybe unhealthy and loving?) that I am justified in missing.  What I don’t solidly, securely know yet is that I will meet someone with whom I will actually be happier than I was with…hmm, what shall we call her?  Crap, I hope I don’t spend 10 more minutes finding a name for her.  Names are hard, especially if I want to be even-handed in their significance.  Oy.  Forget it – it’ll come to me at some point.  At any rate, she’s who/what I have to reminisce about, and even though there were issues with our sex life, issues with our social life, and issues with our ability to communicate, her smile made my knees weak, she made me feel like the prettiest woman on the planet, and I loved her as well and hard as I’ve ever loved anyone.  Sigh.

How did I get there?  I know she’ll be coming up a lot and that’s fine, but letting her “rent space” in my head can be overwhelming sometimes.  Plus, the half-hour’s over, and it’s time to continue my day.  See you tomorrow.