It’s Always Good Until It’s Not May 26, 2009

I wonder just how long I’ll have to live before I can write a memoir about love, and about what makes a relationship work.  Is it the genuine love for and support of one another?  Is it intellectual compatibility and stimulation?  Is it someone who makes you laugh?  Or is it nothing more than our own attitude, with almost no relation to the other person involved?  What can be compromised, sacrificed, before we say uncle and find greener pastures (or mirages)? For the first time I can remember, the NYT had a female same-sex “Vows” column, and it set off nearly all my little land mines: one proposed to the other on their second date.  How very “U-Haul” lesbian.  One was vegetarian when they met, the other decided to cook them up some yummy beans…with bacon.  Nice.  But they both love words, have sharp senses of banter and intellectually-toothsome careers.  I know exactly what I’m doing – I’m comparing my insides to their outsides.  Yeah, yeah.  And I was so happy most of this day, most of this weekend, until suddenly and immediately I wasn’t.  I must be such a joy to be in a relationship with.  Moody, distant at a second’s notice – only a few days ago I was sure I was going to fuck up this greatest relationship of my life, and here I am in a matter of milliseconds questioning whether she and I are going to make it.  Oh, ye of no faith whatsoever.

There is good news, folks – I didn’t act out on it, I knew what I was doing, and even though C is the most emotionally sensing person I’ve ever known and has definitely picked up on my struggle, it hasn’t ruined anything.  But the bigger questions are these: if love is a decision, how do we decide to keep making it?  Is it the level of compatibility that allows some people to not constantly question and doubt, or a personality trait?  In one of the “State of the Union” columns, one spouse credited the success of her relationship to the fact that she said she simply never allowed doubt to creep into her mind, even during the hard times.  Part of me wants so much to do that, to just buckle down and say this is the person with whom I’m spending the next 40-odd years, so let’s start getting used to it and nail up all those back doors.  Something about that is so appealing to me.  And I do have so much here – so much support, love, humor, ease, pretty great and getting better sex, food likes, affection, expressiveness, generosity, a great dog caretaker – so much.  I don’t truly think I could get more in one package.  But the wit isn’t there.  The intellect isn’t there.  And I doubt it will ever be.  And sometimes that is so incredibly okay.  Until it isn’t.  And I need to get better at soothing myself during the “isn’t” moments so I don’t blow them all up and have nothing but charred bits in my wake.  I know how good this is.  What I can’t and don’t know is if it’s forever.  And learning to accept that is really the greatest challenge – that we make plans and God laughs, that I can try to force my will upon my life like shaping pipecleaners, but it’s really not mine to mold.  I can just pray for enough light to take the next right step, and know that every time I see a future – be it shining or desolate – it’s nothing more than a figment of my imagination anyway.  Maybe if I could put a little less stock in the happy-ever-after convictions I have sometimes, I could learn to put a little less in the sturm-und-drang ones, too.

If I Had No Love to Give, I Wouldn’t Give it to You March 21, 2009

I never quite understood what that lyric meant.  Joan Armatrading, assuming you’re reading this, could you please explain?  And yet, it knocked at my brain to be the title for this post.  This reader-beware post that will likely be more 15 minutes of neurotic panic than anything insight-bearing.

How can love just vanish?  My sponsor reminds me that it always comes back, and so far she’s right, but in the moments when it’s gone, it’s the scariest fucking thing.  I’m waiting for C to arrive, which was a change of plans as I was going to go to her tomorrow (today), which by the way I also resented because I’ve been doing so much driving this past week and it takes an hour and a half to get to her, and I’m putting on something a little nicer than the stained white turtleneck I’d been wearing most of the afternoon (it wasn’t stained when I first put it on, but that’s another digression), which I probably also resented as I was making a lot of headway work-wise and wouldn’t necessarily have stopped then, much less to prettify myself or change the sheets or tidy up the place, and I suddenly think, “this isn’t going to work.  I don’t enjoy talking to her.  I’m not intellectually stimulated by her.  This isn’t going to work.”

Now, if this were in any way new information, I might have reacted differently.  But this, sadly, is the flaw I bump up against every goddamn time I’m feeling distant from her.  And when we’re good, I’m fine with it: her emotional IQ is off the charts, she’s smarter than I first gave her credit for, I tend to be drawn to women who are not as intellectually agile/informed as I, yadda, yadda, yadda.  But it’s been 6 months, and my entire relationship life is peppered with these existential crises about my partners, only this time it’s not that she’s not loving enough, or doesn’t make enough money, or isn’t communicative or thoughtful enough – oh, no, all that’s perfect beyond my wildest incarnations.  She’s just a little slow in the verbal department sometimes.  A little obvious.  Lacking in subtlety. Boring. Repetetive.  Nothing at all like this rant.

I’m not going anywhere, so it’s pretty clearly an opportunity to distance myself and not feel love.  But why?  Why am I choosing to protect myself rather than be close?  Because I feel encroached upon?

I’m off to a meeting.  That always helps.  Self-care, in general, usually does.

Would You Like Some Tea with those Keys? March 5, 2009

I did the thing that makes writers quake in fear and self-loathing: bumped into my little, ridiculously unstable TV dinner tray with my hip, and heard the slosh of my nearly-full tea mug as its contents tipped over this darling, brand-new little netbook.  And yes, the tea contained honey, though thankfully not milk, which I’ve now read is basically a laptop hollow-point bullet.

I’m writing on it now, but the bottom left keys just don’t have the click they once did, and I’m debating on whether to try to return it or not, as I’ve only had it a couple of weeks.

The truth, though?  I’m standing at my kitchen island typing this out on its keys, and guess what’s sitting right next to my arm?  A big ol’ mug of coffee.  With sugar and soy milk, no less.  This morning I realized I was grappling with a lot of shame over what I’d done, the parental voice shouting at me about how I’d treated something new and costly.  But now, I’m just a student/writer/gadget geek who likes a beverage with her stream of consciousness.  I’ll be more careful on that wobbly little Ikea TV tray, but truly, expecting myself not to drink, eat, or pet my animals when I’m working from home is a bit ridiculous, and these things happen.  Imagine if I had a puppy or a kid who knocked over the mug – would I scream at them about how they knew this would happen and did they know how much it would cost to replace?

Maybe I can think of this as more of an electronic hazing ritual: kind of like when we drop that gorgeous new cell phone on the pavement and it gets some huge scratch, but it’s otherwise fine.  We’re disgusted by our clumsiness at first, but then it’s just a cell phone, and it works just as well with its laugh lines and crows’ feet – the scratches and dings become part of its identity.  And we often don’t drop it as calamitously ever again.  What the hell is that about?  At any rate, maybe that’s what I’ve done, and my little machine now has a lazy “z” to remind me of what we’ve been through together.  Like we got a tattoo to drunkenly, stupidly mark this new love forevermore.  Or she did, at least.

Shame’s a toughie, though.  So incredibly useless.  So paralyzing.  Are there people who can feel regret or anger without it turning to shame or self-blame?  Could I interview them, please?  Or get a wee bit of their brain fused with mine?  Awareness, as always, is the first giant step, and I was very loving to myself every time I awakened during the early morning hours with a heaviness in my chest and a mild sense of persecution – I literally wrap my arms around myself and kiss my skin, saying “it’s okay, I love you” over and over again.  It helps – it really does.  It’s what a good parent would do, or a good partner/spouse.  It’s what C would do if she’d been here with me – she’d have talked me down, stroked my skin, suggested all the things that could be done to make the situation better.  To be able to do that for myself is seismic.  What I’d really like this morning is to get to a meeting, but as recovery-intensive as this area is, there isn’t one on Thursday mornings, at least that I know of.  I attend an open AA meditation meeting on Friday mornings that I’m definitely going to tomorrow – there is so much wisdom and humor in that room, and I think one thing AA folks have way over us Al-Anoners is their sense of humor.  When you face death and choose to return, I guess you can find a lot to laugh about.  Not that aspects of my life and recovery haven’t been pee-pants funny, but somehow as a group we seem to take ourselves far more seriously, always probing, thinking, processing.  I guess that’s why we can still drink.  Oh my, that’s kind of funny.

Newton Faulkner is my new music crush.  “Hand Build by Robots” is the album, and I just can’t stop listening to it.  He’s got this sexy, gravelly voice and great guitar skills, which pretty much amounts to love in my book, but he also writes some great lyrics and has a couple of rhythms that I hear in my head and can’t help dancing around to.  One’s on right now (for real – not in my head) – “All I Got.”

Okay, so the laptop’s performed well through this first typing test (all typos are the tea’s fault, though – not mine).  It’s time to get some morning chores done and then settle into using this for its intended purpose – getting my qualifying exam up to snuff.  And if I get stressed, well, maybe you’ll hear from me again later.

Love Heals December 29, 2008

If I could convey one message in the span of my life, it would be that.  Love heals.  it is the safety net that catches me when I try something new; it is the launchpad from which I grow and experiment and ultimately, seemingly, take off for heretofore uncharted and unimagined destinations.  It’s been over 8 months since my last post, and having now read them over, I cannot believe how far my life has come in that time.

The Quell of Loneliness (get it?) February 29, 2008

Someone whose blog I liked very much has deleted it.  My head spins – why?  Where did she go?  Away from potentially critical, questioning readers?  She’d been miserable in her marriage and in relationships in general, started on a journey of self-discovery, and then met a man via this medium whom she decided was the answer to all her questions.  Many people congratulated her and wished her luck, but one or two cautioned her that she seemed to be repeating history.  I guess my fantasy is that she didn’t particularly want to hear the naysayers, wanted to remain blissfully ignorant and throw herself into the (unquestionable) joy of the beginning of a relationship without the buzzkill of cautionary tales.  And maybe she will, in fact, be blissfully happy.  Maybe for some, it’s possible to change a tune without learning a different instrument.  I’m probably jealous, more than anything.  Yes, I want what my higher power wants for me, blah, blah, blah, but I’d also like someone besides my sponsor (though she’s been right so far about everything else) to tell me that life will keep getting better and that I absolutely, positively will meet someone and be capable of a loving relationship.  Because most of the time, I honestly don’t believe it.

Being with my mother and the goddamn Blackberry that’s surgically attached to her thumbs for twelve days didn’t help matters any, to be sure.  I’ve never been so lonely in someone else’s company, yet here I am, sitting next to her, seeing the world and dying to talk to someone about all of it.  We might as well have been driving through Elizabeth, NJ for all she paid attention, yet we were driving through the streets of Mumbai and Manila, past local culture and sights unseen.  For sure, my recent ease in my own company helped me tremendously, but it was still incredibly lonely.  It made me miss B: suddenly I’m back to looking for her on Facebook, Googling her…someone with her name, living in her area, won honorable mention in a squash cooking contest.  A f–king squash cooking contest?  All she could cook when we were together was macaroni and cheese from a box and fried eggs.  So I start wandering down the road of “has she grown up?,” “should I contact her?”  Yuck, yuck, and yuck.  At least I know better than to listen to myself at this moment.  It’s just little drops of the drug, still stored in my veins somewhere, come out to haunt me.

One thing I WON’T do to quell this loneliness is sleep with boy C again.  All it did was make me miss women even more than I already did.  How do straight women deal with 5-o’clock-shadow-burn?  Or with all that hair?  If only I felt as much of an ease flirting with women as I do with men, I’d at least find someone to sleep with.  But that probably isn’t the answer, either.  I need to get back into my groove, to fill the emptiness myself.  I need to do what I think – correctly or not – my blogger-in-absentia was unable to do, to become truly at ease in my own company so that being with someone else never again has to mean abandoning a part of myself.  It’s a wonder I’m not emotional cheesecloth after being with my mother for twelve days: let me give myself the time to return to my former level of contentment before I start making any big decisions.

Journeys February 14, 2008

It’s been a whirlwind couple of days, and while I want very much to recount some of what went on, I’m also in a first-class lounge in London, on the first leg of my trip with my mom, and part of me just wants to be in the moment.

But some stuff happened that I think is important to document here.  C spent the night on Tues. night, as much due to the weather as any sort of lukewarm desire on my part.  The first time we had sex, I think my body was so hungry for touch that it could have been nearly anyone stroking my skin and I would have responded.  But the second time (Tues night), my head just wouldn’t shut up: I didn’t want to explore his body, didn’t particularly like the way he was touching me (it wasn’t bad, but it would have required a fair amount of coaching to be orgasmically effective), didn’t get very wet, and had a tough time staying present.  The wonderful thing, though, was how it made me realize that whether I’m lesbian or not (I’m not questioning that, per se, it’s just not the point here) I so-o-o-o-o do not want to be in a relationship right now, with anyone except me.  This new comfort in my own skin has been so hard-won, and now there are guards at the gate, making sure no one gets through.  He could have been my dream partner (he isn’t, but he’s lovely and kind), and I still wouldn’t be ready.  We talked about all of this, and he was extremely understanding, and we left on very good terms – I will look forward to seeing him again.  I’m just relieved to have given myself the space to figure out how I feel, and to have discovered this.

So, I’m on this trip with my mom, which in itself is an incredible statement, as I swore many years ago I’d never travel with her again.  One of the most helpful teachings for me in Al-Anon is how to recognize that people are not extensions of or reflections on me – I can like or not like her behavior, but unless it is directed at or involves me in some way, I can detach with love and just see her for who she is.  She’s being very solicitous so far, and we’ve mostly been reading or sleeping, and my excitement about traveling trumps any trepidations I might be having.  It’s exciting to be in the London airport, where B and I were just a few months back, and to be in such an incredibly different, far stronger place.  I’m happy, grounded, in touch with myself, and I look forward to remaining that way as much as I’m able, while eating great food and taking as many pictures as I can.

It Ain’t Always Sunshine and Lollipops February 7, 2008

The time that I’ve taken

I pray is not wasted.

Have I already tasted

my piece of one sweet love?

- Sara Bareilles, “One Sweet Love”

Lest I need to be even more transparent about my feelings…there are definitely moments I worry about this for myself. There aren’t really times when in the moment I wish I were with someone, but more that I hope a healthy, happy relationship is somewhere in my future. I don’t feel lonely, and when I do, I’m usually able to follow the feeling back to its origins and see that it’s not rooted in reality, and occupy my head with more present thoughts. But is it possible that my “life’s purpose” doesn’t include being in an intimate relationship? There is something energy-diverting about being in an intimate relationship – or at least there is as I know them – and I am certainly more focused and driven not being in one. I am learning to see myself as whole, rather than a half looking for her other, but in doing so, am I relinquishing the passionate “I can’t live without your love” kind of experience? Can a person be wholly, excitedly, passionately in love and still feel independent and whole?

I can count the number of good relationships I know on one hand, and still have at least a finger free. My mom said the other day that she thought my relationship with my dog might be the healthiest partnership in the family, and it made me laugh, but she’s also right. My sister doesn’t respect her husband: she’s nasty and demeaning toward him. My mother didn’t respect my father, and my father sloshed around in his own depression and anger to his dying day – I can’t remember ever seeing him deliriously happy. My models suck. My sponsor’s in a great relationship, but it’s not one I would want, and I wonder, looking at them, if I’m too damned picky to settle for one person and all their quirks.

I’m a fabulous pet partner. I love them unconditionally, and I seem to “raise” mellow, loving, easygoing, independent animals. Part of it is their own starting temperament, for sure, but I can see the way my dog is becoming this secure, affable, personable being, and I do believe I have something to do with that. But to be that loving and accepting toward another human being? I’m honestly not sure I’m capable. I’d like to be…I think. As my sponsor’s husband likes to say, more will be revealed.

Transitional Objects January 27, 2008

I’m thinking about getting voice recognition software. I’m a quick hunt-and-pecker, but I wonder if my thoughts would go down differently if I didn’t have to wait for my fingers to catch up to my brain. Though I do like the tap tap tap on the keyboard, and I’d much rather learn to type quickly by touch, but will I, after all these years?

I have a lot of thoughts swimming around in my head. Sometimes I miss having someone to fuss over – to clean the house for in preparation for her arrival, to prettify myself, shave, smell nice for. I miss the drama of flirting. I attended a book group on “Eat Pray Love” this morning, and one member of the group was talking about how David was just a “transitional object:” that he was there to help catapult (my word) her out of her marriage and onto whatever was next. I started thinking about B in those terms: is that why the relationship only lasted a year? It happened a mere six months after C moved out of my house, and C and I were still sleeping together even in February of that year, I think, so I really think it’s possible that I jumped into the relationship with B in order to make a full break from all that was so unsatisfying with C. It only matters because it puts the relationship with B in a slightly different perspective – that she wasn’t really a serious relationship candidate, but more of a symbolic stand-in of sorts. And she did introduce me to my spiritual teacher (Al-Anon), and she did crack me wide open so more light could come in – she served her purpose incredibly well. But I don’t want to be a dog at the dump with a can stuck on my nose – I don’t particularly miss her, and I am realizing all the ways the relationship was a compromise for me, but I don’t have anything to replace it with at the moment except for excruciatingly cheesy episodes of “Beverly Hills Bordello” and “L Word.” I so so so so don’t want a relationship right now, and I know I can’t even choose well yet, but there are moments when I miss the lust, the electricity, the excitement, the…do I miss the distraction? Wow, less and less. I am becoming so much more comfortable with my life – even the fact that it’s a Saturday and I’m completely content to be home by myself, writing, reading, napping. I don’t feel lonely, I don’t feel afraid of being left alone with myself. A book called “The Joy Diet” was recommended by someone in the book group (even she conceded it was an awful name), and apparently one of her remedies is spending time with yourself and being still. I don’t know if she means meditation, but I do see that the universe can speak to me much more often and more clearly when everything around me is quiet. Just this afternoon when I arrived home, I was squatting down to put something away in my kitchen, and my cat clambered up onto my knees (one of my favorite things that he does). As I’m sitting still and petting him, I start looking around, and I just happen to notice that there is a leak under one of the radiators. How else would I ever have noticed, until it actually became a serious problem?

See, a friend just called and I didn’t even feel like picking up the phone. Sometimes people are a lot of work, much as I might love them, and as I’m becoming more at ease in my own skin, I find that being with myself is kind of fun and easy. Not to mention my dog just put his nose by my lap and my cat is flanking me on the other side.

I wonder how many days I could not shower and still not be disgusted with myself? I’m going on at least four days now, and with my hair up, you really can’t tell how long it’s been. At what point could I just not stand the smell or feel of myself anymore? Will I shower today, or wait another day? Stay tuned…

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.