Kentucky Building

I was in Paducah, by myself, and some friendly Kentucky boy tried to sit down next to me while I was trying to write.  I politely turned him down, and he sat on the next bench down, furiously texting someone and occasionally glancing at me. This derailed my planned Deep Contemplative Thoughts and led to me becoming a 13-year-old, writing in her diary about who likes me and who doesn't.

When did my heart stop growing?  Was it at 11 when my parents divorced?  At 13 when I was so deep in despair that I wanted to die?  At 18 when my first serious love broke up with me?  I picture my heart in my mind as a solid foundation, incomplete but well made, with a random patchwork of rooms and floors stacked on top.  Dead end hallways.  Windows on brick walls.  Rooms with no doors.  Some living spaces are bright, clean and full of air.  More often, walls are patched over with crumbling plaster and duct tape.  Bit of a mess back there -- under construction with nails sticking up and tools scattered all over the floor.

The foundation is strong, but this feels like a gut rehab.  I only hope I have the energy to see it through.

My Kind of Man

Yesterday a man asked me what kind of men I am attracted to.  I found that very difficult to answer, but now a picture is beginning to emerge.  I am drawn to men with anxiety issues.  Men like the one who asked the question.  Men like the Ex.

I don't know where this began.  With the ex?  Before the ex?  Who knows.  S says I have a caregiver personality, that that is who I am.  I question whether I should even try to change that.  Is it really so unhealthy?  Is there a way to make it more healthy?

This morning I got a text message from the man who asked the question, saying he was feeling "crushed under the weight of loneliness."  I feel for him in his anxiety, but it is not my task to make him feel better.  He says I am working through something psychological and I am, but so is he.  He says he feels calmer focusing on others -- and I think that is because then he isn't focused on himself. I have compassion for his suffering.  I will try to help as far as I am asked and able, but the digging and remodeling is his alone.  Just as mine is mine alone.

Couldn't these be thoughts from a healthy caregiver?  Couldn't this be a glimpse that there is such a thing as just anxious enough, just nurturing enough?

The Most Awkward Dinner of All Time

It was too soon, is all.  Before he moved out, we went out to dinner and talked about a settlement.  It was cozy and friendly and almost comfortable.  And there was wine.  So we went back home to the same place.  I sat n the couch and he sat in a chair, and through my wine haze I talked about how we could still go kayaking together.  Or learn how to windsurf.

A few weeks later he moved out.

A few weeks after that, he wanted to talk about the settlement again, to finalize the details.  He wants to meet over dinner.  My tiny little sane inner voice said "No," but the he suggested a good vegan restaurant I'd never been to.  Bribed me with food.  As it got closer, I got nervous.  My aunt said, gently, that maybe it was too date-like a setting.  Little sane inner voice agreed.  But, vegan food.  So I went.

And I had The Worst Dinner of My Life.  As soon as I saw him, I wanted to run out.  Everything about the place became oppressive, from the lights with no visible source, to the black-clad serving staff with their fucking friendly smiles and perfect vegan skin.  I went into defense mode, saying right away that I had to teach early, so couldn't stay long.  (Subtext: no wine and no friendliness.) We looked at the menu.  We talked business.  We ordered food.  We finished our business talk.

Then we were left looking at each other before our food even came.  He asked me, plaintively, I thought, if I would even have a glass of wine.  No.  I just wanted to run away.  His appetizer came.  He offered me some.  I said no.  (Truly, I felt like I would vomit if I swallowed anything other than water.) He offered again.  I said no.  He begged me to just take a little.  I let him put some on my plate, and I pulled it apart with my fork.

Our food came.  I choked down my salad, grateful that I had the foresight to not order anything else.  We finished eating.  The server, poor woman, entered the veil of awkwardness and whisked our plates away.  She packaged up his leftovers in the speed of light.  I think we were giving her wrinkles with the tension.

He offered his leftovers, desperately.  I said no.  He offered to settle up so I could leave and catch the train, and I was up and out the door practically before he finished his sentence.   Just another woman sob-walking through the West Loop.  Nothing to see.

And I spent the next few weeks trying to make it up to little sane inner voice, who somehow knows.  Always.

Stuff is Nonsense

Well, he finally came over to get the rest of his stuff.  He claims to have it all.  All the CDs, everything he wanted.  He did take away everything I set aside for him, even the crappy Christmas lights I didn't want to look at any more.  For that I am grateful.

On the day,  even though I was on vacation miles away, I was destroying my karma.  I spent an hour reading about accepting, non-grasping, and having patience with those who hurt you.  Then I picked up my journal, and I wrote this:

"I hope he sobs so hard he can't put the tape straight on his pathetic little boxes of stuff.  I hope he picks up something and remembers something I said about it.  Something clever, funny, tender, simple.  Something you don't remember but can never forget.  And I hope his heart breaks."

It's a good thing I don't believe in reincarnation, because I'm sure that little outburst pushed me towards the cockroach scale.  I wrote it out, took a deep breath, did some stretches and had a solid, dreamless night's sleep.

When I got home and started looking around, I saw that he didn't really take everything.  He left this. Dance party in 3 . . . 2. . .  1 . . . .

Music is Back

For about the first six weeks after he told me he was done, I couldn't stand music at all.  That was almost harder to take than the leaving.  I used to love dancing around the kitchen while I cooked, listening to ridiculous pop songs and waving kitchen utensils in perilous ways.  (He always warned me to be careful, but usually he was the one who cut himself.  It was the protective powers of ABBA, I think.)

But right after my life split open, even the opening notes of my favorite songs felt like knives in my stomach.  One day, being careless with the car radio, I heard a few notes of Pink's "Learn to Love Again," and I started crying so hard that I had to pull over.  Every pop song is about love.  Finding love.  Losing love. Quiet love.  Loud love.  Love in the time of cholera.  I couldn't take it.

My solution was NPR.  Lots of it.  Morning Edition as I got dressed became a soothing background hum, and at times a reminder that my brain was pretty hungry for material.  This American Life at the gym was both a perfect timer (since most podcasts are just about an hour) and pleasant fuel for my little crush on Ira Glass.

The music is starting to come back, though.  It started when my good friend took me to see Sixteen Candles (the band, not the movie) at some street fests.  They play 80s music -- the music I loved before I knew him, and still love now.  A couple of evenings dancing like an idiot in the street, and I was ready to try some music in the car.  I learned that Taylor Swift still needs a hobby, Ke$ha is still ridiculous, Adam Levine's voice still makes me cringe, and that I can sing along to ridiculous pop songs again.  I reopened my playlists and started dancing around the kitchen again.  I don't feel that open, artless joy I used to feel yet.  Sometimes that damn Pink song still makes me cry.  But music is back.

Right now, I'm listening to a playlist I created a while ago, when things at work were unpleasant. The name of the playlist is "Defiance."  Time to dance.

**********************************

Some songs on the Defiance playlist:
A Better Son/Daughter. Rilo Kiley :  http://youtu.be/Lh6liDtDThk
Titanium. David Guetta: http://youtu.be/JRfuAukYTKg
Girl on Fire. Alicia Keys http://youtu.be/J91ti_MpdHA
Dancing with Myself. Billy Idol http://youtu.be/FG1NrQYXjLU
Lose Yourself. Eminem http://youtu.be/jgn-rq3ibzE
Lover of the Light. Mumford and Sons http://youtu.be/nMJUbZrNnA8

Interior Design

I have a fresh, new perspective.

I literally have a new perspective.  I just re-oriented the couch in the living room to the way I wanted it when we first moved into this place together.  Little cat got over her dislike of the change when she discovered she could now move from the window to the top of the couch without touching the floor.  She is playing "the floor is lava," and I am playing "I am an entire, complete human being."

He didn't like the couch in this spot because to him it meant you could only see a wall of concrete.  I see that wall of concrete, yes, but I also see a wall of windows and my own building reflected in the late afternoon sunlight.  I see spaces created and subdivided on a human scale -- carved out to hold and protect these lives we carry around.  In my view, but out of my sight, people are living their joyful, contented, complicated, messy, happy, grateful lives.  If they can do it, maybe I can, too.

Little cat comes down from her perch at the top of the couch, sniffing the cushions and silently meowing at me.  Briefly, her pupils enlarge and she pulls back into fight mode.  I understand her fear.  Change makes me want to fight, too, little cat.  I scratch her head and she relaxes, just enough.  She wanders back to her water dish, familiar and unmoved.  Meanwhile, I look out at the view and feel . . . different.  Joyful, contented, complicated, messy, happy, Grateful.

Episode IV: The Conclusion

Want to hear about my happy ending?

Well, like me, you're going to keep wanting.

He cancelled. Said he had a "work-related emergency" and had to fly back to California. What a waste of a pedicure and bikini wax. And now I'm supposed the get back on the horse that I never even got to ride in the first place?

Well, at least I got to feel sexy and desirable for a minute. That was fun. And I practiced some new writing techniques. Now, to the stables!