The Crazy

So now I’m pissed at my best guy friend for up and Facebook-friending Jack after YEARS of not giving half a shit about him and frankly disliking him for the way he treats women.

Brad friended Jack. What the fuck. We all worked together once upon a time.. Brad left back in 2007 and literally has not talked to Jack since. And NOW, now that Jack is getting married, now that Jack has done so much to hurt me, now that Jack is somewhere between the love of my life who I lost and the object of my most penetrating hatred… Brad has friended him.

I’m so pissed I’ve tried four ways to contact Brad and tell him he needs to tell me why I shouldn’t be pissed.

Meanwhile, what did I do? Well, I went to Jack’s Facebook page, of course. We’re not friends, but some of what he posts is public. Including the new pictures of him and Gwyneth and the story of how he proposed during a marathon training run and “she gets her wish that I stop calling her my training partner.”

Memo to Gwyneth: he called you that all this time because he was HIDING YOU.

“We couldn’t be happier!” Jack says.

Good for you. Who are you, by the way?

Another memo to Gwyneth: the trail you were running on when he proposed was the one where I took the picture that’s framed in his condo. I gave it to him for Christmas in 2011. That’s my handwriting on the matte. He loved it. Loved it. I’ve never seen him react to anything with as much gratitude and emotion. I bet he never hung it because you would see it and ask about it. But it’s there somewhere. Hang it, please. So you have a reminder of where you fell in love. And where you got engaged. So he has a daily reminder of how he treated the woman who gave it to him.

I have called Joey and messaged Angie telling them I need them to talk me down given Brad’s move. And to once again stop me from sending Jack a really hateful message. Oh, it would feel so good. Here are some drafts:

You are going to ruin her.

OR

I heard you were marrying Gwyneth, eight months after throwing away ten years like it was nothing and telling me you were not capable of sustaining a substantive relationship. Good luck. You’ll both need it.

OR

How long were you sleeping with her and spending nights with me? When you cancelled on me Christmas night, telling me it was something that made you sick from dinner, was that because you were spending the night with her instead? Does she know you spent the next night with me? The night I gave you the framed photo of your running trail?

I kind of wish I could post a comment on his “could not be happier!” FB page that simply says, “Whatever.”

But I know that all makes me the smaller person. I know I’ve actually crossed into the Crazy that I always envied other women for being able to pull off. Brad says Jack contacted him via Facebook last week about tickets to an event and that’s why they became friends. I call bullshit. Defriend him now, then. You don’t even talk. I need to know that my best guy friend, who has been supportive and thoughtful and derisive of Jack, isn’t dividing his loyalties. Like Jack did.

Facebook is so unnecessarily… whatever.

I’m so upset I can’t even find words anymore.

Don’t Will Your Children To Me

My friend Meg recently told the rest of the Ohio 5 that, if she and her husband meet an untimely demise, she had assigned each of her children to one of us for safekeeping. She has four, so that works out, except it doesn’t work out at all because you can’t split four kids up in the event of their parents’ untimely demise.

And this past weekend confirmed that I’m not taking all four of them.

Meg and her family ventured out from Ohio to me for a Spring Break visit. And the kids, who are 5, 4, 2 and 7 months, were darling. But there are four of them. And they make noise. And one of them kept throwing up.

Seriously, though – I have lots of experience with and patience for kids. The kids were totally fine. They are very well-behaved and very well-mannered and they will eat anything (except “artificials,” because somehow my dear friend who I love has managed to feed her children nothing with artificial ingredients despite being on the dole because her boorish husband refuses to take up anything that provides steady pay…or any pay).

But, as parents everywhere but mostly who read this blog will understand, they wore my single, childless ass out.

Also, I inherited a nasty cold from my darling nephew on Easter Sunday that kicked into gear a few days ago and contributed to the exhaustion. Jesus is risen, but I’m down for the count.

The tribe arrived at my house Friday morning, bright and early, after spending the first part of their vacation somewhere else. They arrived from their hotel having not fed themselves. I wasn’t surprised; in fact, I had expected and prepared for this because one time they visited Joey (he gets the third kid) at his mom’s house in Ohio, having changed the plan from just Meg and one kid to the whole family descending, and the Boor sat on his duff and demanded lunch and dinner. But the Boor surprised me by making their breakfasts himself.

I had to go to work, of course, so they decided to make use of the day by being touristy. By the time they arrived back at my house, with keys and the alarm code, it was 10:45pm. I got home at 10:55. The kids were doing okay, but #3 was clearly in the early stages of Meltdown Mode despite having slept on the train, and #4 was getting very fussy. He has a terrible cold, too, and was hacking up a tiny little lung between wails. I knew how he felt.

Kids 1, 2 (that one’s mine) and 3 bedded down together in my basement, all in a row in the queen sized bed. #4 slept in a cushion on the floor in my room, which Meg and the Boor were using for the weekend. The grown-ups managed to toddle off to our respective beds around 1:30am. We were up at 7, with me in the kitchen making an egg bake full of veggies, because the kids love veggies.

Seriously.

I had used some professional capital to score a few free tickets to the children’s museum. I had never been there, but clearly I had to do something with these kids, and the museum wasn’t far away. So by 10:30am we were on our way to fun and adventure in the city’s largest Petri dish.

Honestly, all I could think, with my chest-rattling, throat-ripping cough and progressively stuffy head, was Germs. Germs germs germs. Snot. Poo. Germs.

I never used to think that way. But apparently in my stage of life, when I’m in a building full of howler-monkeys whose paws are all over everything, I can’t avoid it. Ironic, I know, considering I myself was a cesspool of infection. But I coughed into the crook of my arm, Purelled my hands every hour and tried not to touch anything. When I headed into a bathroom and saw myself in the mirror, a tired, watery red-eyed woman looked back. I washed my hands in hot water and used the paper towel to open the door.

When I wasn’t trying to track four kids at a time, I amused myself watching the other kids’ parents. Mostly the dads. They were all wandering around in running shoes or Tevas, high-end cameras around their necks, seemingly pretending to enjoy parental involvement on this early spring Saturday with their hover-mother wives. With newly-sprouted pot bellies and graying hair, they seemed to send up thought bubbles… “What has happened to my life? I used to sleep til noon. And then drink beer and watch basketball in my shorts.”

For a while, I sat in the tiny tot playroom with Meg and #s 3 and 4 while they ran or scooted about sock-footed and #4 gummed plush toys that I’m sure no other child had ever gummed before. Ick. Into our section came four hover mothers and their little ones. Their names were Phoenix, Mason, Morgan and Rain.

I tried not to bang my head against anything. No offense to any of you who may have kids with these names. It’s just that when they’re all in one place like that, it sort of makes me roll my eyes. I know trendy names have been cool since the 90s, but sometimes I think this generation’s parents compete with each other to find out who can fill a teacher’s classroom with the most pretentious set of monikers.

Soon Phoenix, Mason, Morgan, Rain and their hover mothers were joined by their camera-wielding fathers/husbands. Who looked at each other occasionally with glances that seemed to say, “Wanna go to the bar?”

After that, Meg and #3 and I went to another room meant for water play. Yep. Water play. #3 happily threw toys into a shallow table-pool full of pumps and sprinklers and the like, squealing and clapping and splashing around, and I obsessed over how many of the kids had put the toys in their mouths or grabbed them with grubby hands they’d just pulled out of their pants. I watched a baby nom on the edge of the table. Meg barely reacted when #3 suckled the top of a toy boat and soaked the front of her shirt. Another kid bent over and drank straight from the table’s 1.5″ of what I’m sure was super-clean and freshly filtered water.

Ew ew ew.

After hours of playing and picking up e. Coli and stuff, plus a walk around the touristy downtown spots and a very late lunch at which #3 whined until the Boor ordered her to lie down in the booth, at which time she promptly fell asleep, we piled back into the Volvo station wagon with the Jesus-related license plate. Upon approaching my neighborhood, the Boor parked the car at the park instead, and we all climbed out. The Boor ignored all hints, subtle and otherwise, about #1 needing a bathroom and me needing a couch, water and a chance to prep dinner. And this was six hours before I practically crawled upstairs to bed.

Up at 7. Pancakes and bacon. The Boor talking to me about democracy vs. fascism vs. oligarchy vs. something else I had no mental stamina to give a shit about at any time, let alone 7am. Lots and lots of questions from the kids. After eating, unable to breathe and completely lacking in energy, I sat on my couch while the Boor did the dishes and Meg repacked their bags. I did #1′s hair in a style like my own and answered more questions. Meg asked if I was tired of them yet.

The questions. Not her family.

They left at 9;30am. I had spent a total of about 39 hours with them. And I spent the next 13 on the couch, trying to recover. I reported to our friend Angie (she gets #1) on how things went with a single sentence.

“Dude, I could never hack parenthood.”

I Feel Like Sally Field.

I suck at dating. Several months ago, Rick mentioned that he hates dating. Now Rick and I are dating.

But it’s very, very early in this whole process, and since he just got out of a relationship about six weeks ago, and most of his stuff is actually still in that apartment while he crashes at his parents’ house and sleeps in his nephew’s pirate bed (sometimes with his nephew)…  we’re certainly in no hurry.

But in case any of you were worried that I would stop being endearingly neurotic… fear not.

Friday, we had plans to get together after I finished with work. His job is super-busy right now, and he’s new at it; my job requires me to work nights until 10 or 11, and then I have an hour drive home. That doesn’t leave a whole lot of options for us to see each other, and he was heading to New Orleans the next morning to scream his head off at the Super Bowl and get his ass grabbed on Bourbon Street. Because he’s a huge Ravens fan, and when your team goes to the Super Bowl and you can get there… you do. It’s a b’road trip. Or a bro’ad trip. It’s a road trip with a B in front of it to indicate that you’re with your brother.

But I was convinced he was going to cancel Friday’s date. He had spent his whole weekend before this working from home, and he had a lot of work to do all week long after he left the office. I was so convinced he’d cancel, my friend Sam and I had the following text conversation:

Me: We have reached the part of the evening in which you talk me out of being neurotic. Go.

Sam: If he cancels, you’re ok with it and find another activity to do.

Me: Yeah, that’s incorrect.

Sam: Which part?

Me: All of your words just then.

Sam: You’re not okay with it and you don’t have another activity.

Me: There you go.

Sam: Right, but he doesn’t need to know that.

Me: Right, no. But still with the neurosis.

Sam: Goooo sllloooooooowwwww.

Me: This from the guy who wanted us naked by now.

Sam: Well, that’s what I want for you. Mainly becasuse I’m convinced the global economy is dependent on it. Relax. What has he done to cause this freakout?

Me: Nothing, really. He’s going to NOLA Saturday, his job has him swamped, he cancelled Sunday as a result and I just have this feeling he’s going to cancel.

Sam: And if he does, you say ‘hey, I totally understand, been a crazy week all around and you’re skipping town. Snag something fun for me while you’re down there and we’ll catch up when you’re back.’

Me: Right. I’m not asking what I should say. I’m asking you to make me stop thinking it’s going to happen.

Sam: There’s always porn.

Me: Yeah, okay, clearly you’re having trouble focusing.

Sam: You’re in a good place here. You’re still in the ‘less is more’ phase.

Me: You know why I do this? To prepare for the rejection.

Sam: Yeah, stop doing that.

At 8:45pm on Friday, 15 minutes before I was to leave work, Rick texted that he was still working. With a frowny face. Well, now he’ll definitely cancel, I thought. Still, I left at 9 and headed up to where we were set to meet up, my head half-full of fears that I would be standing there at the doorway of the restaurant/bar he’d suggested, stood up, trying to look casually involved with something on my smartphone while I eyed every moving figure in the parking lot, and in would walk my ex-boyfriend Mitch, who loves that place and with whom I was already dreading the possibility of a run-in.

At 9:50, I texted Rick to let him know it was taking me longer to get there than I thought, and I might be a few minutes late.

Him: No problem. I’m just wrapping up here myself.

Oh. Oh! Oh… he’s actually getting ready to leave! To come out! To meet me! He’s not cancelling!

I had been so prepared for the stand-up, so sure he would cancel, that I had worked my way around to being okay with it, and now he’s not cancelling. Well, what a pleasant surprise that shouldn’t be a surprise at all since he had given no indication that he would cancel and I was just going by the voices in my head!

Gah, I hate those guys.

Granted, he was later than me. I was there about 15 minutes before he arrived, but that was okay, and he apologized. And then we split a bottle of wine and had, really, another great time together, and did not run into Mitch. We stayed out much later than he had previously said he’d be willing, continuing our coversation in my car after we were politely asked to absent ourselves from the establishment on account of they were closing. (Yes, a conversation. That’s not a euphamism.. although it was a very flirty conversation that involved hands on knees. Do you remember that feeling? The first time someone you like puts a hand on your knee? I’m a girl, so there’s a strange tickling feeling in my skin and then my stomach does a little flutter. Do guys’ stomachs flutter?)

Naturally, I expected radio silence pursuant to debauchery while he was in New Orleans for the Super Bowl. But no! I heard from him during his layover Saturday, and while he was out partying on Bourbon Street with his brother Saturday night (this was when I learned of the ass-grabbing), and on Super Bowl Morning before he headed out, and again at 3:30am after the game when he was back on Bourbon Street with his brother. And then while he was at the airport waiting for his flight, and then when he landed back home.

You guys. I think this guy likes me.

Merry Lead-Up

I am sitting at my kitchen table, looking out at my festive and merry living room with its golden light cast about by the white ones on the tree and the standing one in the corner and the frosted ones in the Dickens Village houses and their reflection off the yellow painted wall. I am under a kind of spotlight from above the counter-bar behind me. The kitchen window is open a couple of inches to cool the house down from its stuffy 72 degree temperature after having the oven on for the last four hours. It reminds me of winter holidays at my grandparents’ house, when they did the same thing.

I am so damned tired. I yawned tremendously, four times in three minutes while folding laundry a little while ago.

There. I did it again.

But a it’s good tired. (Except for writing. I had “it’s” and “a” transposed in that sentence just then. And then I tried to spell “except” with a pound sign.) I’ve been on vacation this week, which is glorious. I mean that fact itself is enough to make angels burst into song. Fine, the angels don’t give a crap. I’m the one bursting into song. The angels are working overtime right now and kind of resent my absence with pay.

So first one of my besties from college, Joey, came to visit. We dined late on Friday after his arrival, at a cute little French bistro where the onion soup named for its nation was over-salted (and that’s saying something), but the ambiance was lovely and the boeuf bourguignon was divine. The next morning we sipped coffee as he flung open my front door and sang a song to the neighborhood.

I’m not kidding.  He’s like that. Gay playwrights are like that. Not to generalize.

We baked his grandmother’s thought-to-be-complex-but-actually-only-four-ingredients cookies and strolled through the park to the kicky little hipster coffee shop on the other side for a cuppa joe and a grand conversation with the baristo.  We traipsed through a couple of sections of my fun city, popping into shops along the way, trying on fetching and/or ridiculous hats, for example. We perused an appropriately grungy and hip record shop. And then we ducked into a restaurant for dinner, which was fanfreakingtastic as I expected.

I love love love finding new places to eat in tucked-away locales with friends. They are so impressed with me when I do this, because I’ve planned to go here, I’ve mentioned the name. But really I’m totally just using them as guinea pigs for my gastric galavanting. Win-win.

When Joey left on Sunday, I had a day with relatively little to do.

Just that one.

I watched football and read. A book. Lots of pages of it. It’s really good.

Monday and Tuesday I baked and waited for the various repair-type people to come repair things. On Monday night I watched “The Polar Express.” Twice. Because I needed some transportive magic, and that one does it for me every time. Tuesday I had friends over for dinner – my fettuccine Alfredo from scratch, which I make once a year and only once a year because if I make it more than that my arteries will slam shut and I’ll die. After my friends left, I put on “Elf,” saw the first ten minutes and fell asleep through the rest of it. How is it that you always wake up right when it’s over and the DVD is playing the menu screen on a loop?

Wednesday, Sister 2 came with Youngest Neph (BIL 2 was working), and we hung out and went to see crazy Christmas light displays that I’d tried to take Joey to but he’d pitched a nutty about sitting in traffic and we turned around and went home. Sis and I ate up the wonder on my nephew’s sweet toddler face while he “whoaed” and “wowed” and “dis is amazinged” down the street. Then we had dinner and watched “While You Were Sleeping” because we love that movie and we always laugh out loud at the very best part, which is like five seconds of a newspaper delivery kid riding his bike, flinging a paper and falling over. She drank ah glass of pinot noir, her 32-week-pregnant self very happy to sip it slowly with the doctor’s permission.

When they left this afternoon, I resumed baking and doing laundry (washer’s working! Huzzah!) All baking comes with Christmas music from either Pandora or the cable TV channel or CDs. And that comes with me snap-scatting around the kitchen with Frank and Johnny and Michael Buble’ (they play way too much of him on Pandora). I was just pulling a dozen oatmeal raisin chocolate chip cookies out of the oven when there was a knock on the door and the declaration of a UPS man’s presence. Holy Fast Delivery, Batman: it was the two replacement wine glasses I’d ordered from Crate & Barrel Tuesday night after I’d shattered a second one of the four I had. They arrived in less than 48 hours.

Clearly, the folks at Crate & Barrel are aware that the world is ending tomorrow and some of us need our wine glasses pronto.

The UPS guy commented on how great the cookies smelled, so I offered him one. He totally wanted it, but he checked his watch and said he didn’t have time.

I don’t know what that meant. When I say, “Do you want one?” do you take that to mean “Please come in, sit down and have a leisurely chew?”

So instead, I ran back to the kitchen, grabbed two from the cooling rack and handed them to him through the door, with a “Merry Christmas” and a smile. He took a bite and groaned with pleasure as he walked away.

UPS guy was kinda hot, by the way. And so I fleetingly wondered what Brown can do for me as I walked back to tend my oven.

And now I’m sitting. Sitting and enjoying. And thinking. I have one more day off before it’s back to the usual grindstone, working through Christmas and all. I still have some Christmas gifts to buy, and I have cookie trays to assemble and deliver. And I have a few more movies to watch in order to complete my holiday traditions.

But that to-do list makes me smile. I’m glad I find so much pleasure in the things that lead up to Christmas, since I so often have to work on the holiday and miss that one day’s shining moments. More and more, it’s about the lead-up, for me.

Merry Lead-Up, all.

Heartbeaten

There is a danger in having nearly unfiltered internet service at work. Namely, it allows me to creep on Jack and then have a torrent of self-aware recognitions that lead to a steady stream of tears down my face on my hour-long drive home, culminating in pouring myself a martini even though I’d put the wine in the fridge to chill down a bit.

As all of us who are on Facebook know, Facebook is going to destroy everything. Like, for example, relationships. Because it lets one person look up another person’s goings-on without them necessarily knowing, to the extent that their settings allow. And when that throws up a roadblock, it allows us to see their friends, and then work backward.

It’s basically sanctioned psychosis.

And so I found myself on Facebook, looking at Jack’s page even though I have hidden him from my news feed so I’m not tortured by the rare but consistent posts referencing runs and marathons and Gwyneth. And he hadn’t had anything interesting to say since Thanksgiving when he posted a generic good wish. That was hours after he had texted me one on Wednesday (the day before the holiday, of course – because he does that – he acknowledges significant dates the day before, so as  not to give one the impression that he’s thinking of one on the actual significant date). I had ignored it – the first time he had communicated in two and a half months, and I was not in the least bit interested in engaging, because if there is to be communication between us, it had better be in an actual voice-to-voice or face-to-face manner. None of this cowardly electronic shit. Sack up, asshole.

So anyway.

He hadn’t had anything interesting to say, but apparently he’d attended a party last Saturday.

I clicked.

Gwyneth’s party.

There’s her address.

Holy f&*k. It’s not even a block away from a house I looked at.

That. Would. Have.

SUUUUUUCKED.

Aside from wondering whether she rents or owns, and, if she owns, whether that makes her better than me since she’s also eight years younger and I just bought my house…. aside from that, you know what this means.  It means I googled the public property records looking for evidence of whether she owns the house. (I told you. Internet = sanctioned psychosis.) It means that I (not really) narrowly averted living less than a block from the woman who had essentially stolen my man. (No. To whom my man, who was not really my man, had gone, of his own inexplicable volition.) It also means I know her address. It’s like two miles from me. Which means I could, theoretically, cruise by some late night/early morning and see if his car is there, thereby confirming the nature of their “undefined” relationship.

Or not. If his car wasn’t there.  Thereby perpetuating my hell.

Ugh… I am entirely too old for this shit.

If you haven’t been single since your early twenties, you are probably totally alarmed right now by the thoughts that have already been posted here. Because seemingly, people who marry by their mid-20s never think crazy shit like this. They never had to.

So lucky (provided they’re still happily or at least not adulterously married).

And so it was that I started thinking yet again about why this whole thing with Jack hurts so much. And so it was that I had those recognitions I mentioned earlier. That I still just don’t understand how something that had lasted ten years and been so meaningful could be so easily dismissed in his mind and his heart that he wouldn’t even try to maintain it when push came to shove. That it is not only deeply painful, but very insulting. That, in healthy terms, I should not care to be attached or involved or at all connected to someone who could care so little about something that had meant so much… but that there are reasons I do:

Because, after all, there were real reasons I was so attached, involved and connected for so long.

Because believing he loved me enough, even though he never said it, was better than anything else I’d ever had, because no one has ever said it.

Because I believe that something that was wonderful for a long time, but less than what I wanted, was better than nothing at all.

Because feeling heartbroken for him seems better than feeling nothing for anyone.

Because it feels like giving up on loving him will mean giving up on loving entirely.

At the risk of being dramatic (oh, like it’s not too late for that disclaimer): I’ve had my heart broken kind of a lot. And I’m not, you know, totally crazy and pathetic, all evidence to the contrary. I’m not a hideous hunchback who got hit in the face with a bag of hot nickels, and I don’t get irrationally hung up.  I’d like to believe I’m regular-crazy and pathetic, at worst, because I’ve seen a step above that, and wow. But when you’ve had your heart broken kind of a lot, and you don’t fit the profile of someone other people shake their heads sadly about with any regularity, you come to a place where you’re just not sure you can take it again. There seems to be a limit. And you’re pretty sure that one more time will kill you inside. So you don’t want to let go of this time. Even though it hurts like hell, even though you don’t want to feel like this, you don’t want to let go, because you suspect that it’s your last chance to feel anything at all.

And so it is.

I love Jack, and I still see so much reason to love him, even though he’s a selfish, cowardly, stupid ass. And I don’t know if there’s any way at this point to fix it, to make it better. I know the best of us, the most of us, is probably gone. We don’t even speak. He doesn’t even know I bought a house.

But I love him still, and I miss who we were, and I hate where we are now.

Obviously, I expect to hear from Maury Povich any minute.

******
Now on my bookshelf: Rules of Civility – Amor Towles

Paradox

Danger: torturous honesty ahead. This post will either kill your soul or make you want to smack me. I hereby apologize to the new subscribers I’ve picked up as a product of my last political post being Freshly Pressed. This post might leave you Freshly Depressed. Orientation: I write about all kinds of stuff, depending on where I am in my head on a given day. Normally I’m much funnier. And I will be again, and it won’t be fake or anything. Don’t feel like you can’t believe my irrepressible wit and snark just because this post exposes one of the reasons I’m witty and snarky in my real life.

End disclaimer.

*******

“What remains of your past if you didn’t allow yourself to feel it in the moment?”

David Rakoff wrote that. He just passed away at the age of 47 – the age he had previously thought he had been born to be. It was the sentiment he used to describe his tendency to avoid intimacy – not the sexual kind, no, the emotional kind – by using humor. It’s how he described the irony of wanting to be known without anyone knowing that which he liked least about himself.

Guardedness is, to some degree, natural. But I’ve always been more guarded than most. I’ve mentioned before that my intention in starting this blog was at least partly to be less guarded and more “out there” with how I feel about things. As is inevitable with me, I turned a lot of it into wry comedy. Well, that’s genuine. That is me. It’s more fun, it’s more appealing, and I tend to laugh at a lot of things in life, or at least employ biting sarcasm. But I haven’t generally allowed myself to be less guarded. I’ve done it in a few posts (to some readers’ alarm). But mostly, I had hit on a formula that made people laugh, that made people comment, that made people hit the “like” button so their shining faces and icons would line up neatly in a row (or two, now that I’ve finally been FP’d) at the bottom of my text. It made people like me. I’m Sally Field, over here.

I am, truly, a pretty twisted sister with a sick sense of humor. In my real life, I tend to be awfully intense if I’m not making jokes. I’m not one of those obnoxious people who is always on and never shuts up, like Robin Williams. You don’t listen to me and immediately think, “She’s covering something up with her humor.” I just happen to be pretty quick with a quip. But yeah, I’m intense if I’m not joking. Like, it’s got the potential to freak people out. My friend Joey once said he thinks I feel things more deeply than most people do. Joey, by the way, is a playwright in New York whose two younger brothers died, less than a year apart, in auto accidents, and whose two stepsisters no longer speak to the family because they’re suing his mother over their late half-brother’s trust, which was bequeathed when their father – Joey’s stepfather – shot himself in the head 11 years ago. Joey is also a recovering alcoholic. And gay. So for him to say I feel things more deeply than most people do… Oy. I didn’t know – still don’t – if that’s true, but I worry that it is. I don’t know if it’s good or bad. It’s a miracle I still have both my ears. (Somewhere, Vincent Van Gogh just cocked his head and said, “What?”)

How do you balance wanting to be just like everyone else with wanting to be unlike anyone else?

Jack ran his Iceland marathon with Gwyneth today. I woke up for no reason at 7:30am and immediately wondered if I were somehow psychically connected to him. What time is it in Reykjavik? I had no idea. Maybe they just finished…?

Why do I care?

When I read the Facebook post about how the run had gone, I bristled as soon as my eyes lit on the word “we.” “We.” Since when do you use that word, Jack? In ten years I don’t think I’ve ever heard you or seen you use that word. You’ve performed linguistic gymnastics- with stunning ease- to avoid using it. Now you’re playing it fast and loose like it’s nothing, like you’ve used it every day about everybody since time immemorial, and you claim it’s completely meaningless. “We finished in 3:31:53, a personal best for Gwyneth in her seven-marathon career.” 

Okay, first of all, you know what? Fuck her personal best. Fuck her seven marathons. Your Facebook friends don’t even know her, except for seven of us who have worked with her. Why should the other 190 even care about how she ran? “We finished in 3:31:53.” You had to cross the finish line together? Why can’t you run your own damned race? You could have finished faster, I know it. You let her slow you down.

So he could be her hero. So he could be there for her. Step by step. “Just running buddies.” We.

It enraged me.

Which makes, by the way, absolutely no logical sense whatsoever. I mean… they were just… running.

And that’s the kind of stuff I generally suppress. I don’t allow myself to feel that kind of senseless anger, or any sort of knee-jerk emotion, without stopping, figuring out why I feel it, and then massaging the less comfortable parts of it away like so much muscle pain. I think it’s the grown-up way to handle one’s proverbial shit. But thanks to Ali Velshi, my new therapist, I’m assigned to try embracing the knee-jerk a little more. Oh, joy. His point: my tendency to suppress my feelings is usually because I want to be “fair” to the person to whom I’m reacting, even when they’re not around. I’m assuming, he says, about 70% of the responsibility for that which is only 50% mine to bear. What about what’s fair to me?

For the record, I didn’t comment on the Facebook post, for two reasons. One: all I could think to say was something nasty and low, and even though I’m supposed to stop caring so much about what’s fair to someone else, I am an adult in my mid-30s and I was still raised not to be a total immature snot. And also because (okay, mostly because) if I had commented, or even clicked “like,” (which herein would become merely a twitch of support rather than an actual tacit approval of all the words Jack had used), I would have been exposed, over and over, to every comment anyone else would make, thereby forcing me to reread the post any number of times to make the stupid red notices on the screen go away, thereby making me bang my head on the desk exactly that many times.

I didn’t cry. I couldn’t find a word to describe how I felt. I let myself feel whatever it was without knowing what it was. I bent forward in the shower, stretching my back, letting the hot water sluice over me, my mind a dull, nonspecific ache of getting ready for my day while letting go of a never-defined relationship in which I had loved someone more than I ever had before, trusted him more than I’d ever trusted anyone before, while never quite letting him see all my flaws because I knew they would scare him away.

Should you happen to be possessed of a certain verbal acuity coupled with a relentless, hair-trigger humor and surface cheer spackling over a chronic melancholia and loneliness – a grotesquely caricatured version of your deepest self, which you trot out at the slightest provocation to endearing and glib comic effect, thus rendering you the kind of fellow who is beloved by all yet loved by none, all of it to distract, however fleetingly, from the cold and dead-faced truth that with each passing year you face the unavoidable certainty of a solitary future in which you will perish one day while vainly attempting the Heimlich maneuver on yourself over the back of a kitchen chair – then this confirmation that you have triumphed again and managed to gull yet another mark, except this time it was the one person you’d hoped might be immune to your ever-creakier, puddle-shallow, sideshow-barker variation on adorable, even though you’d been launching this campaign weekly with a single-minded concentration from day one – well, it conjures up feelings that are best described as mixed, to say the least.

~David Rakoff, “Half Empty”

How to Clean Grout Using Nothing But Elbow Grease and Tears

Jack’s toothbrush is too soft.

I learned this while using it to scrub the grout in my shower.

For the last two weeks, I’ve spent most of my emotional energy alternately wanting to stab people and crying. Turns out, there are more people in need of a good gashing than I previously understood. Sure, my emotional state may have had something to do with my urge to cut them, but really, I think under normal circumstances a lot of these people could benefit from a bit of a knifing, and upon hearing all the evidence, not a jury in the world would convict me.

Jack and I have always had what you’d call an unconventional relationship. We’ve known each other for ten years, and for most of that time we’ve been especially close. I value that. The power and depth of our connection has brought blessings and joys to my life that I have not experienced from any other relationship. I knew early in our acquaintance that he was an extraordinary person, and I felt strongly that it would be wrong not to know him as well as I could. I believe he is a gift to my life, and he has made me a better person.

But we’ve always been more than just friends, and less than romantically linked. For ten years, we have been an almost daily part of each other’s lives, sharing fears and hopes and worries and joys, sharing petty annoyances, jokes, late-night television and schtick, sharing the thoughts that keep us up at night, the things we never tell anyone else, sharing flirtation and emotion that, in any other human connection, would lead to something more.

Others have noted our seemingly natural fit. In light of its depth, some of us wanted it to veer more in the romantically linked direction, while others of us apparently preferred to run marathons and be evasive. The toothbrush was in my house because there have been times when Jack has spent the night, and there have been, oh, less abstruse connections… but I have some pretty solid rules about what I do and don’t do with men who run marathons while being evasive, so don’t let your imaginations run wild about my morals. (Which is not to say I haven’t let my own imagination run wild a time or 7,000.)

But don’t get me wrong, either: it’s not like we’ve been waiting around. We’ve both had dates, relationships with significant others, etc. in those years. And I’ve known for a long time that it was probably not going to veer in the established-couple direction and dealt with that as well as I could. But for me, it’s always come back to him. And for him, it seemed to always come back to me.

Well, that’s what I told myself, anyway.

Recent events tipped the scales of what I have always tried to keep in balance in our relationship. For the first time in ten years, I finally got mad. Jack has always tended to isolate himself for certain periods of time,  from everyone. But more from others than from me. This time I got mad because Jack had distanced himself so much for so long that it was really changing our relationship, and he had not given me the courtesy of acknowledging it despite a few truly gentle expressions of my concern. There were several things he had done or said that made me feel minimized and marginalized, and he knew it. It all came to a head, and I had finally had enough.

The two-hour Come To Jesus conversation that followed was at once frustrating and revealing. We both know we have our own issues, of course, and he offered that his is the worst kind of emotional unavailability. He told me I would be his perfect mate, if only he could let himself even consider loving me. And I knew that I had held on to hoping for an us that was more conventional because I had never had anything like us, and feared I never would. And then Jack needed a week and a half to answer two very easy questions: Given your self-imposed isolation, do you want me to leave you alone? and Do you feel that I am a significant part of your life?

Ten days to answer those two questions.

This would be the part where the stabbiness really kicked in. This would be the part where I became an emo barfburger with extra wretch-up.

And of course, I knew that the fact that it took him so long to answer those questions is, in itself, the answer to those questions.

At some point, I started to believe I could make do with the mixed pleasure and pain of what we had because it was better than not having it at all. During the ten days of silence that followed our long conversation, I was gut-punched with the knowledge that I might have to give it all up. I was devastated. But I knew that we were at a crossroads that could no longer be circled. I knew that I did not mean as much to him as I had thought. I knew that, no matter what came of our conversation, whether he returned with answers or not, I had to find a way to stop loving him.

He did return with answers (in email form, which pissed me off and I told him so – where did I leave that knife?!): that he wanted my close friendship but not more; that he knew it would require him to be more available and less isolated. This was not news. Rather, it was the boiled-down remains of what had simmered in him for that time, and, really, for years before, and it was all that he was willing to offer. We have had conversations like these in the past, but we have always danced around the real point for fear of losing ourselves and each other. But now there was nothing left to garnish the reduction. It was time for me to stop trying. It was time for me to redraw the lines that distinguish our friendship from the deeper love I have, until our friendship is all that I employ. Because I do not want to give up the blessing, the friendship that had made me better. But I could not keep believing it was more.

In my shower, I scrubbed at the grout of the tile for the first time with more than the rub of a finger. I used his toothbrush, possibly out of spite, but the only cleanser was the caustic acidity of my heartbreak, which was literally and metaphorically both profound and really eye-rollingly annoying. I was finally doing something more than looking at the collecting grime of what seemed harmless but wasn’t, and pondering the best solutions without acting on the answers. Minus a true cleaning agent, I might have more work to do in the end. But this was a start.

Back Home Again

Indiana is flat.

Flat, like, the flattest table you’ve ever seen kind of flat. You could put a pencil down and it wouldn’t move for centuries, but for the wind that blows straight on through because there’s nothing to stop it.

Flat as this map.

I spent 15 years in the midwest, but now that I’ve been “back east” for 10, I’m always surprised when I see just how flat it is there. When the plane approaches the airport in my former homes of Columbus or Indianapolis, the downtown buildings stand up like Lego structures on a plywood board covered with that green stuff that’s supposed to look like grass in architectural models.

You can see to Kansas from these places. You can smell a dinner that’s cooking the next town over.

I went to Indy to visit my godson. And his parents, who are still obligated to live with him, since he’s not quite two and a half. His father and I went to high school together. Happily, we are friends who have changed toward each other instead of away from each other since we left the halls of our Catholic (but impressively forward-thinking) school. By this I mean that most of our beloved friends got more conservative, more religiously indoctrinated, less likely to explore the world beyond Indiana’s borders. Matt and Jeannie thought differently, believed differently (though no more or less deeply) and eloped to Canada. They’re something other than Republican. If all my friends are the incomparable John Mellencamp (except I’ve just compared him to my friends), Matt and Jeannie are Springsteen. Humble roots, happy to claim the small town, but born to run.

And they’re raising this dynamite little guy. I call him Boy Wonder, because Jeannie had a lot of reproductive issues and all understandings were that children weren’t possible. She was 39 when she found out she was 20 weeks pregnant, and that kid doesn’t have a single problem except that he has no butt to hold up his pants. Also, he’s a damned genius. Which actually might be a problem – his mother and I are debating that. At just shy of two and a half, the child can hold an entire conversation without once misunderstanding so much as an idiom. Verbal? Verbal doesn’t begin to describe it. The lisp is the only thing that makes one realize he’s not walking around with a grown-up brain in his little head.

We figure that’s down to Jeannie, because Matt frankly is more of the Grunt and Stomp method of communication. He frequently speaks Cave Man to drive that point home.

Also? Boy Wonder never throws fits.

Ever.

Matt and Jeannie think he’s melting down if he gets a teensy bit whiny. And by “a teensy bit,” I mean it lasts about a sentence, they speak to him and he immediately becomes completely amenable to whatever they suggest.

It made my 48 hours at their house much, much easier than it would be if he were a normal toddler.

And I really like the little town they’re in, outside of the state capital. It has a charming “downtown” full of old brick buildings. There’s a fantastic coffee shop Jeannie frequents where they know her and Boy Wonder intimately and their photos are on the walls. There are trunk sales at the little shops and the owners tell Jeannie to come early. They know their neighbors, and, more than that, they know the folks who live three streets over and a block down. And everyone lives in fantastic old Victorians with wrap-around porches – not showy, just well-kept. Nothing cookie-cutter, and few of the squat, bland ranchers I find so depressing, which are so prevalent in that part of the country.

I think there’s something very sweet about what I find to be a very simple life. It’s unflaggingly virtuous and honest and unassuming and unpretentious. It’s about home and family and staying close to where you came from. It seems people are happy, or at least not so unctuous as to complain.

But it’s not for me.

I found myself wondering, as I stared out their kitchen window on a typical Indiana morning, who I would have become if I had not left the midwest. If I had not moved back east with my family for my senior year of high school, I might not have chosen my career path, which has been anything but boring. If I had not moved back east after six years in Ohio for college and work, I might still be there, looking out across an unbroken plain under rolling gray skies and wondering where it met its edge. I might be married with three children, trying to keep up a home while my husband drove a truck or surveyed roads or worked at the corporate bank office. I might be plump on the steady midwestern diet that’s heavy on carbs, turning my words with a bit of a twang and never even thinking of the things that occupy my mind in my place in the world.

Or I might be restless, frustrated by something I understood within myself just enough to know that I did not belong in this place, that I should find the spot far away and perhaps beyond my imagining where I could more naturally grow to be who I was meant to be.

Oh, how I have changed. Of all our friends from all those years ago, I have changed the most. Ten years ago, I was much more like them, but my life led me to different places, different experiences, a hometown I made for myself rather than stayed in, unquestioning, since childhood. And while I love all those friends, and I smile at their happiness and content life, I know I could not live it. As much as I had grown to love the midwest after all those years, and as hard as it was to leave at 17, I believe I was meant to go.

As my plane approached the East Coast city I call my home, the endless patchwork of unvaried land had given way to a topography that felt warm and lush. I saw my place in the world laid out below me with hills and valleys and waterways and dense woods, changes in light and inconsistencies in terrain. It occured to me that my plane left a land of steady people whose lives never waver and traveled home to a land where the people move in jagged lines and the earth throws curves.

With warm memories of a former, more constant life, I touched down where I belong.

The Fourth Day of Christmas

On the fourth day of Christmas, I woke up feeling like the holiday had never even happened, like I was still anticipating it. Except I did absolutely nothing productive for the first time in a month. And I liked it. The always-comical visit to Art the Indistinguishably Asian Massage Therapist (“What you been doeeeng? Yoah IT band tiiight.”) was the only thing that motivated me to even take a shower before 5pm. I ignored the nagging voice in my head that said, “Your home is still a God-forsaken mess. Do something about it” with a counter-argument that this was my do-nothing day, cleaning and laundry would ruin the physical therapy, and I would do it today instead. I won the argument.

In the evening, I headed out to meet up for dinner and drinks with my friend John. We had agreed on a funky little neighborhood in the city that we, I realized as I parked, tend to flock to pretty consistently this time of year. It’s full of a great combination of kitschy shops and antique stores, approachable restaurants with appealing menus and wacky decor, and houses with I mean ridiculous amounts of lights and decorations on their postage-stamp yards. In any other place, I find this amount of decoration tacky and trashy. Any other place but here.

I smiled as I walked the two blocks from my parking spot to the restaurant, passing toasty (from drink, not layers of clothing) people in Santa hats out for a holiday stroll. I love it when a community doesn’t end Christmas at midnight on the 25th. It gives us all a chance to enjoy the vibe when the craziness of the holiday is done. In my long red zip-up hooded fleece from my Crazy Aunt (the fourth zip-up fleece I’ve received in a row now), I looked like Little Red Riding Hood reflected in the storefront windows. The air was cold and clear. The people on the street were happy and pink-faced, walking in clouds of breath-fueled vapor. It felt like Christmas.

The restaurant was just the right kind of full, so John and I opted to sit at the bar rather than wait 15 minutes for a table (not that we thought 15 minutes was long). We met about eight years ago through Jack, but we hadn’t seen each other in months, so we toasted the season with our beverages and set about the catching up. John is one of the most naturally interesting people I know. It’s not that he’s got an amazing life or anything; it’s just that he’s so easy to talk to while being very, very smart. He’s 53, but the only giveaway is the ratio of salt to pepper in his hair. He’s handsome without being obvious, 6’3″ without being imposing. He’s got a great laugh. And he’s an idea guy. His brain works in really fun ways without being crazy. In a past life, he worked for an investment firm, but now he’s a renaissance man, and not the annoying kind who only says that’s what he is while wearing a pinky ring and a dickie. He’s developing several nonfiction TV series right now, two that are in some stage of greenlight or another. Which is sort of crazy considering he lives in our humble city in a tiny house (with a stupidly high property tax rate). He’s got brilliant, audience-ready concepts out the wazoo, but presently precious little income. “I’m thinking if my plans for prosperity in 2012 don’t work out, I might put myself up for adoption,” he deadpanned. Then he picked up my tab.

He’s the kind of friend that makes you feel cooler just by being your friend.

Alight on our stools, me with a quesadilla and he with a po’boy sandwich, we updated each other on our lives, our jobs (well, our work – he’s a renaissance man, he don’ work for nobody), our families and how we spent the holiday. He got the bartender to pour me another glass of wine when I felt certain I’d done something to make him hate and therefore ignore me. (I had turned down his suggestion of French dressing on my salad…might that have done it?) Other than the unaware bartender, the world faded away as two friends spent an evening in warm and comfortable conversation, and vowed (as we always do) to do it again soon.

On the fourth day of Christmas, I soaked up the joy of city living and easy friendship.

On the Third Day of Christmas

On the third day of Christmas, I was decidedly uncharitable. Like, hellbound kind of uncharitable. The kind that makes you feel like a monster, but full of your own virtue at the same time. A smug b!&*h.

I have a dear friend who announced yesterday that she is expecting her fourth child. Obviously, it’s wonderful news. She is a very loving mother and she genuinely enjoys the ride.

The thing is… she’s underemployed, working maybe 20 hours a week and paid from her church’s fluctuating parsonage fund. Often, she takes the kids to work with her. She’s not considering changing jobs. Her husband is chronically and uncaringly unemployed. They get a lot of government assistance in a state that’s making serious cuts, and her retired, widowed mother-in-law supports them financially. As in, bought them their house and the house before it, as well as a lot of other help. Neither my friend nor her husband is disabled or ill, and they’re having this child on purpose; she had told us in September that they wanted a fourth. In her emailed announcement, she issued a post-script: “don’t say anything about this on Facebook. Mother-in-law is dead set against us having another baby, so we’re trying to keep it quiet until I’m through the second trimester. What grandmother wouldn’t want more?”

My jaw gaped. I nearly banged my head on my desk. I oozed frustration at my friend who I felt was ignoring the cold truth: that she is condemning her children to poverty without a plan or a will to lift them out of it, teaching them that it’s okay not to work, to take advantage of another person’s amazing generosity and discard their completely legitimate concerns so that you can do what you wish. And to deceive them for as long as possible so you don’t have to deal with their disappointment.

I don’t think I’m wrong. But I am kind of horrible for thinking all that about my friend. And for talking about it with the other three friends in our gang. On a conference call.

Yeah, I cringed when I typed it.

Also yesterday, Sister 1 sent out an email to about ten people including me, telling us all that she has to have a hysterectomy. I’ve expected this for about two years now, but reading the decision still broke my heart. She wanted a third child, to give Twin Nephs a younger sibling, but their existence is wondrous as it is; for her to have another would be a tremendous challenge, and delivering would push the limits of safety. She was willing. As much as I wanted her to be happy, and would have cherished another nephew or a niece, part of me wished she wouldn’t try.

Here’s where I become monstrous again.  The email bothered me for reasons other than its sadness. I share all my sisters’ hurts and joys, and this one carries so many implications it’s hard to put it together right now. But Sister 1 has a tendency to send out mass emails detailing her reproductive difficulties at least twice a year, and with this one, of all of them, I found myself feeling annoyed.

It’s hard to understand that, isn’t it? I don’t even understand it, myself. I’ve been trying to figure it out for hours now. I think it bothered me that it was so long – even though I know that she needs to say what she wants to say. I think I was a little put off by the number of people who received it, even though I know she needed to say it all at once instead of ten times, like ripping off a bandage instead of prolonging the sting. And I felt – it’s terrible to say it – manipulated. She said she did not expect anyone to help, but “it sure will be difficult feeling so helpless for weeks with two four-year-olds running around. Again – we do not expect you to do anything. But don’t be surprised if we call…”

As if anyone who received this message – and especially her sisters – would do less than everything they could. She’d begun the message saying plainly that they would be reaching out for help. I felt unnecessarily played with the change-up. It wasn’t a matter of the way some people have a hard time asking for someone’s kindness. It seemed like something akin to martyrdom.

What a horrible thing to think in a situation like this.

But I do think it.

My sister and I are opposites in many ways; I’m intensely private, and she, frankly, tends to “over-share.” (Says the woman writing all this on a blog. Good thing I’m anonymous. And have precious few readers. Who are wonderful.) Faced with her situation, I’m sure I would tell those who love me. But it would be quite different. Maybe it’s that difference that contributed to my divergent emotions. Maybe a few other things I’ve noticed in recent months piled on. And maybe it’s partly that, as her big sister, there’s nothing I can do to fix what hurts. It’s not like I’ve never said or done things that were akin to martyrdom, too.

Sister 2, meanwhile, is still suffering the physical effects of a recent miscarriage, let alone the emotional. And also yesterday, another dear friend announced (on the immediate heels of Meg’s news) that she, too, is expecting. Her second, and very soon after the first; he’s 13 months old, and Angie and her husband did not want another one so soon. She is overwhelmed, still trying to get used to the unmet expectations she had for herself in the last year, still trying to settle in to the demands of motherhood. She’s not sure she can cope with having two so close together.

Sometimes I feel like I’m surrounded by reproduction trials and triumphs. I love babies, don’t get me wrong. But as someone who’s sitting it out, I swear, it overwhelms me sometimes.  There are now four conversations I have to have today, and I have no idea what to say in any of them. My sisters’ heartaches and my friends’ intentions and fears have nothing to do with me, but they’re knocking me around anyway. Even my coworker is about to go on maternity leave and change the dynamic. I feel selfish for being affected by things that aren’t about me, for being a little irritated that a coworker’s baby changes my job, that she is the third coworker whose baby has changed my job in the last year. Aren’t I the woman who asked for details on the maternity leave policy at my last employer not because of my plans, but because I wanted to know how they treated women? Where’d she go? How did she get replaced by someone who judges her friend as white trash for choosing to have a fourth child in poverty, and her sister as having a martyr complex for sending a long mass email about her impending hysterectomy?

Late last night, as I was trying to work through this post (which took me forever to write), it occurred to me that Christians are celebrating a birth more than two thousand years ago that no one planned or predicted, that threatened the social and moral perception. We believe a virgin gave birth to the son of God. Mary, by historical theologian accounts, was probably all of 14 years old. If we go by scripture, she delivered the Son of Man in a manger stall after a hard trip on an animal’s back. And no matter how peaceful the picture is now, she had to have been completely baffled and terrified. Joseph, too. All their hopes, their ideas for their future, their plans, were all gone in the moment when Mary learned of God’s plan for her. I’m not so sure everyone else’s children are the result of a divine idea in such a direct manner. But on the third day of Christmas, it helped to remember that even Mary must have struggled with what motherhood and womanhood meant… and what they didn’t mean. For her, and for everyone else.