relationships

Identical twin

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How I ended up with a broken – or at least bruised – heart isn’t terribly important. I lost my heart, temporarily, briefly, to someone who was ridiculously cute, with tastes ridiculously astute, and I struggled with it for a while. I had been swept up in something I could not control. It became clear that while I had really loved, for whatever misguided reasons, I had loved someone who did not really exist as he had temporarily existed for the brief moment we had. Maybe I did not really exist in that way either except for that moment in time. Who knows? It’s irrelevant now. It took some fumbling in the dark to realize that that’s really okay – it does not, as he had once said, take away anything from that moment. He was right. I was never in the game of pointing fingers and laying blame about anything – it was never like that. It’s easy to get lost in the maze of feelings, twisted up inside by injudicious expectations… until you map your way out.

Always life’s impossible balance between expectation and hope. Probably in my life I had expected that certain events would play out as though they were predestined – like when I was a child I imagined that it would be perfectly reasonable that I might be married and even have a child by the age of 25. I suppose I thought and even expected this because it was the reality modeled for me. My parents had me when they were 24, and they had been married just over a year. Their marriage to each other was already a second marriage for both of them. I didn’t consider that perhaps my life would take a different path, that I would spend so much time undertaking formal education, that I would want to uproot myself from where I came from to explore the world, that I would come to think of being 24 or 25 as being almost a baby still, that nothing I did would lend itself to ‘family life’. I didn’t like ‘family life’ as a kid or growing up, so as time went on, I realized that having some other form of family life – one I built myself – was not a priority. The expectation slowly went away, deferred for an undetermined hope of “someday, maybe”.

This hope was dashed early on for various other reasons, but I was still very young, so I had time to get used to the new paradigm, to build different expectations and hopes while convincing myself most convincingly (!) that I didn’t need or want this ‘family life’ or anything like it – ever.

Did hope die then? I don’t think so. It’s just that when you are in your 20s, you don’t feel like it matters. Expectation, though, was dead and buried. Year by year, one by one, all the friends become ‘family people’ (pod people?!). I live on my own island, making the best of, the most of, it. It’s fulfilling enough, but is it enough? Is there still, against all hope or reason, some hope remaining for something that is the unlikeliest of unlikelies? It’s hard to say for sure – there are glimmers. I have made my peace with it.

Still, the body gives and takes away. Strapping young armcandy-like men swoop in and buoy me up but also remind me that I am not 30 like they are. (Who imagined that one day I’d be old enough to refer to someone in his early 30s as ‘shockingly young’?) These virile ‘youngsters’ who casually exclaim, “Marry me!” because we both watch the same tv shows cannot understand how this (in)delicate balance becomes unbalanced – when expectation shifts to outside hope before toppling over completely. Nor can they understand the set of deeply conflicted, jarring feelings that accompanies this whole thing. The older, the wiser, the better.

He: Actually, I think about this a lot. At 6 AM, most 45-year-old men are probably shaving, putting on a tie and getting ready to have a family breakfast before the morning commute.
She: How do you feel about not being one of them?
He: Sad. Elated. Lucky. Hard done by. Jealous. Smug…
She: Heavens. That sounds exactly like me.

How doleful, but unexpectedly joyous, to consider this shared fate, this shared set of discordant, inconsistent feelings and to know, at least in some way, this part of making our way through the maze is not something we have to do completely alone.

Photo (c) 2013 Julie Pimentel used under Creative Commons license.

Kill switch / Hold on hope

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“Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.” -Anne Lamott

Feb 2017; Same old lessons, different day:

  • Be the adult: Don’t sit around and wait just to see what happens. Be the adult; be responsible and just hit the kill switch immediately. Do not give someone else the chance to jerk you around with their indecision and inability to find or voice their feelings. This is difficult if you have fallen in love or have more feelings than the other person. Someone jerks you around, runs hot and cold, shuts you out but gives you mixed signals and words, and behaves in an unhinged way; if they hem and haw, make premature declarations and backtrack or ‘aren’t sure’, you have your answer. Instinct and experience have handed you the hard-won answers: use them, heed them.
  • Acknowledge your own real feelings:  Just walk the fuck away when you know logically and through evidence exactly where you stand and where this goes. Be connected enough with your own feelings to know when you’re trying to convince yourself of what does not exist and are faking it to justify satisfying morbid curiosity.
  • Scrap the three Cs & adopt three other Cs: Don’t stick around out of curiosity, courtesy or compassion… or some rancid mix of all three. Look at context and content to see if someone is being a cunt (or whether you need to be one) and go from there. (And ‘cunt’ here is the strictly English way of using it…)
  • Turn around and run from flashing lights and sirens: You see flashing lights and red flags ahead and choose to ignore. In fact, you run right into the fire. DON’T! You hear the alarms and sirens going off and think maybe it’s just your fear. No: don’t wait; don’t give the benefit of the doubt; don’t make excuses on anyone else’s behalf; don’t ‘be noble’. Just run – fast – in the other direction.
  • Turn off the projector: When you have a whole shitload in common with someone, don’t overlook all the things that don’t connect. Don’t project attributes or feelings you possess (and imagine you share) or wish the other person has onto him/her, hoping s/he will embody them just because everything else is shared in common. It doesn’t matter that you were led to believe these things were shared at some point: don’t assume that it is real or will stay that way.
  • Tune the fuck in: “Goddamn, girl, you don’t gotta be psychic to know the truth. That boy don’t love you. At all.”
  • Remember that silence speaks volumes: Silence might not be permanent; it might not signal that someone is pseudo-“ghosting”; however, someone who cares is going to talk to you – whatever is going on – even if s/he is not sure quite what is going on or how s/he feels.
  • Kill the curiosity before it kills you: It’s very tempting to watch the whole movie even when you know it’s not gonna be a happy ending. It’s an extension of acknowledging your own true feelings – sticking around because you’re curious is a waste of time. It’s not good enough – that is, you are not being good to yourself – to tell yourself you weren’t doing anything anyway, so it won’t hurt just to watch all of this unfold. It will hurt. And if you’re not careful it could lead to something worse – ending up in a situation you really don’t want. (You know what I’m talking about here: you cannot even figure out why you want to be wrong because if you were to get what you tried to convince yourself you wanted, you would be miserable.)
  • Keep your eyes (and ears) open: It IS clear what is happening – on every level. But you want to believe it is going to turn out differently no matter what harbingers of doom lurk around every corner. It’s clear. Embrace the truth your eyes show you and ears tell you, not the misleading song of the heart. But don’t be so open that you become a sponge absorbing all the misery and anxiety of someone else while getting/feeling/experiencing nothing in return.
  • Refer back: When in doubt, when bending to someone else’s will or charm or even carelessly letting them dictate all the terms and conditions, the way you relate to each other: refer back to this list. In fact, print it out. Laminate it. Carry it around with you everywhere.
  • Identify triggers and patterns: It’s not anyone’s fault: period. But it is also not anyone else’s fault. You have triggers and patterns. Certain kinds of people appeal to you; learn to recognize the ‘signs’ that you have met one of those types. Recognize and put a halt to your own ‘enabling’ and ‘deflecting’ behaviors (similar to ‘absorbing all the misery and anxiety and getting nothing in return’ listed above). You have to be open to taking it to receive it – all this kind of shit takes two to do.
  • Hold on hope: Okay, so you don’t hold onto hope about a hopeless situation. Face reality and embrace it for the often hopeless dead-end it is. Nothing is ever surprising in that way. But it doesn’t mean you should declare hope dead. There are fragments of it floating around everywhere.

“Every street is dark
And folding out mysteriously
Where lies the chance we take to be
Always working
Reaching out for a hand that we
can’t see
Everybody’s got a hold on hope
It’s the last thing that’s holding me
Invitation to the last dance
Then it’s time to leave
But that’s the price we pay
when we deceive
One another/animal mother
She opens up for free
Everybody’s got a hold on hope
It’s the last thing that’s
holding me
Look at the talkbox in mute
frustration
At the station
There hides the cowboy
His campfire flickering
on the landscape
That nothing grows on
But time still goes on
And through each life of misery
Everybody’s got a hold on hope
It’s the last thing that’s holding me”

-Guided by Voices, “Hold On Hope”

Competitive ghosting

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Mid-late February 2017

I am old enough to think the whole idea/concept of “ghosting” is a bad, socially unacceptable idea, but at the same time, I am too old, impatient and tired of nonsense to want to explain myself any more. Or to wait for or want weak explanations from others. My reasons for backing off, backing out, ‘giving as much space as needed’ should be plain and largely self-explanatory to anyone close enough to me that I would see fit to pull a disappearing act, as I don’t have the casual sort of millennial-style “hanging out” relationships to which the term ‘ghosting’ most frequently applies. Actual ‘ghosting’ is more literal. For me, it’s a conscious and deliberate decision to withdraw specific and individual care, put the walls back up, even if a person otherwise remains a part of the ‘coterie’.

This is particularly true when I am not the only one withdrawing, feeling all emotion ebb away. It may never have been an intentional “dual disappearing act”, a race to which one gets sick of this first or finds herself indifferent to it all or wherein he finds somewhere else to hang his hat. With neither one so crass as to stoop to actual ghosting – or aren’t we? – instead it quiets, slows and dwindles down to nothing. Heading it off at the pass, pre-empting any form of bastardized and… competitive ghosting, it is time I go back to being a stranger.

(I know that ‘announcing’ the intent negates the whole concept; it is not really disappearing without a trace, but I suppose I’ve got to preserve some decorum. I am, after all, old. And we will both, after all, be relieved.)

old souls – dead souls

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Yesterday I randomly came across this list of ’12 reasons why old souls have such a hard time finding love’. Normally I would think it was mumbo-jumbo – ‘old souls’? And who the hell is out looking for love?

Still it spoke to me in several ways. Truths:

  • Left unchecked, their hyper-intuitiveness can wreck relationships
  • They often have a greater purpose that must be attended to first – one that love would distract them from (They usually have to accomplish quite a bit on their own before they find love – this is because old souls love deeply, and completely. To be given love too soon would keep them from the other important things they are here to do)
  • They’re natural healers, and often attract people who need help, not love (at some point in time, it’s crucial for them to realize that they have to choose a partner, not a student, or a charity case)

I have written in recent months about how I have seen this final point repeat so many times that it is impossible to count by now. I went back to old journals and snippets I’d written down somewhere – the pattern has repeated throughout my entire life, a history I had not even guessed the depths of until I went far enough back into old journals. I remarked on this tendency so many times and more than once resolved to take another path.

But it’s so hard not to get ensnared: by the time you realize that someone needs help more than love, it’s already too late.

Sexuality

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In my experience, anyone who avidly, eagerly gives voice to his own ‘sexual generosity’, talking it up, is fooling himself. Why would you need to brag if your prowess speaks for itself? Also in my experience, straight men are the only people who, generally speaking, do this. (Always exceptions, of course.) They are, quite often, as with many other aspects of life, a lot of talk and very little action – and this mismatch between saying and doing leads to a whole hell of a lot of dissatisfaction and frustration.

Thus, it comes as no surprise to me or anyone else to learn that a recent survey concludes that lesbians give women far more orgasms than men.

“You could say that straight women are least likely to achieve orgasm during sex, but it’s just as true to say that if you have sex with a straight man, you’ve chosen the demographic least likely to make you come.”

I’m ignoring the “you’ve chosen” statement above, as most people don’t choose their sexual orientation or the ‘demographic’ from whom they seek sexual pleasure (although I grant that anyone could at any time choose to have an experience with just about anyone if they want to). But clearly the idea that it’s a choice is still something pervasive for a lot of people. When I shared the original article via social media, there was the inevitable comment: “So are you converting?” Could there be a more idiotic question? It’s no wonder things are the way they are in the world. Even if there were a choice, this assumption that someone would choose the option where she gets more sexual completion ignores all the other parts of interaction and relationships?! As if the orgasm is the only thing that matters to anyone in the long run. I guess we know where the person who would ask this question places importance.

The survey attempts obvious explanations, e.g. women intimately know the anatomy of other women, so of course they will give each other more orgasms. I tend to agree with the article in that it criticizes this glib conclusion. Every woman (and man) is different and responds to stimuli differently. Even ignoring interpersonal, individual chemistry, it does not come down to mechanics and technique alone, although those factors help. The article points out – not that this will come as any surprise either – that heterosexual sex is, implicitly, focused on the man’s pleasure and outcome first and foremost, so when it’s done for the man, the whole experience is done.

And, as poet Howard Nemerov will remind us anyway – and this is probably true for all of us, no matter our orientation, gender or age – “We think about sex obsessively except
During the act, when our minds tend to wander.”

Reading Pornography in Old Age
-Howard Nemerov

Unbridled licentiousness with no holds barred,
Immediate and mutual lust, satisfiable
In the heat, upon demand, aroused again
And satisfied again, lechery unlimited.

Till space runs out at the bottom of the page
And another pair of lovers, forever young,
Prepotent, endlessly receptive, renews
The daylong, nightlong, interminable grind.

How decent it is, and how unlike our lives
Where “Fuck you” is a term of vengeful scorn
And the murmur of “sorry, partner” as often heard
As ever in mixed doubles or at bridge.

Though I suspect the stuff is written by
Elderly homosexuals manacled to their
Machines, it’s mildly touching all the same,
A reminiscence of the life that was in Eden

Before the Fall, when we were beautiful
And shameless, and untouched by memory:
Before we were driven out to the laboring world
Of the money and the garbage and the kids

In which we read this nonsense and are moved
At all that was always lost for good, in which
We think about sex obsessively except
During the act, when our minds tend to wander.

Extremely Disappointed: Tout de Suite

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Why is it that we place outsized expectations on things that only feel like they portend something amazing – but forgo the things we know will be amazing? You know, bundled up in hope, we impetuously run off to faraway cities, skipping seeing our beloved, warm and supportive friends there, for the remote promise of something else? Are we addicted to the almost inevitable disappointment?

As a near and dear darling said, the disappointment of whatever we tried to do is only the first layer of disappointment – the even bigger layer comes later – the disappointment in ourselves because we “Should Have Known Better By Now”. Oh, she is so, so right (right down to the all-important capitalization). We DO know better, but as she goes on to ponder: what is life, though, without hope? And I say, “Yes, you never know.” That’s why we keep beating our heads against a wall, repeating likely failures (insanity): we never know. We know better, but we never know at the same time. A fleeting chance exists that hope will lead us to something transcendent or real, even if ephemeral.

We do it, against better judgment, because we need to feel alive. As she said, to shake things up, to shake herself up. Maybe just going on a vacation would accomplish this, but sometimes we need a deeper shake. What, more than disappointment, makes us feel more alive (even if it briefly makes us wallow in wishing we weren’t)? We are almost certain before we even embark on these ‘adventures’ that they will yield visceral, howling disappointment accompanied by a self-walloping chastisement. But the hope! It might not disappoint at all. It might turn us around, lift us up, restore our faith!

Or not…

On Hope – Sándor Petőfi
Man, what is hope? …a horrifying whore
Who doles to everyone the same embrace.
You waste on her your most precious possession:
Your youth, and then she leaves without a trace!

Misinterpretation – Falling for it

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Liberation
–Louise Glück

My mind is clouded,
I cannot hunt anymore.
I lay my gun over the tracks of the rabbit.

It was as though I became that creature
who could not decide
whether to flee or be still
and so was trapped in the pursuer’s eyes-

And for the first time I knew
those eyes have to be blank
because it is impossible
to kill and question at the same time.

Then the shutter snapped,
the rabbit went free. He flew
through the empty forest

that part of me
that was the victim.
Only victims have a destiny.

And the hunter, who believed
whatever struggles
begs to be torn apart:

that part is paralyzed.”

It’s rare that I misinterpret another’s feelings, reactions and actions. Even when a person says one thing – s/he acts in ways that not only contradict the words but also make the real intent and underlying feeling perfectly clear. S/he may make excuses, offer explanations, justify and even (try to) believe something else. But actions almost always do speak louder than words. And what speaks louder – screams, even – than inaction?

I may not always correctly interpret the source or reason for inaction, but the existence of inaction means that the underlying motivation or impetus must be, in some way, missing. And isn’t that all that matters?

On rare occasions, though, I have been surprised by my misinterpretations. Once, someone asked me to listen carefully as a strangely disconnected, out-of-nowhere story unfolded, and didn’t contextualize why. It felt a bit, as I listened, like a pre-emptive accusation, but it was actually an invitation to understand something – him, in fact – more deeply. It was him cracking the door open, him starting to let me in. I had been suspicious, and I was wrong.

It is in large part because of this slight possibility of misinterpretation that I am still here, asking all the questions and feeling all the feelings. Every action or inaction is not about me – in fact most of them are not. I return to the source and find patience, compassion and love without analyzing anything through the prism of my own self-involvement. (And find the delicate balance that enables self-preservation.)

In a completely different situation, one fraught with years of on/off frustration, there should be no mistaking intent when someone issues you a direct invitation. He literally says, “Come here this week. I will be at the airport waiting.” And yet, everything about it feels false: on one hand, pushing and eager, “Here’s a link to the airline – direct flights daily – just come – now”; on the other hand, how many times have I fallen for that? Black-and-white failures to follow through, leaving me stranded and making excuses later – I should not hold these failures against someone else, but it’s a case of fearing fire once burned. It leads me back to questioning inaction and desire… succumbing to doubt or naively falling for what I want to believe.

And around and around we go.

Photo by Sebastian Davenport-Handley

Judgment day

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I am always analyzing and processing and trying – wanting – to understand. I don’t, for example, understand addiction from the point of view of an addict. I try to understand it scientifically, clinically, neurologically, and of course gather the perspectives of addicts I meet and know. I may never gather all the insight I need or want, but I keep trying to learn.

I feel like, as I move along through life, getting older (hopefully a bit wiser), I am becoming more understanding, more compassionate, more interested in understanding, more caring, loving and accepting. What surprises me, though, is how one of the closest people to me is the exact opposite. He has become so closed, so judgmental – about everything. A total Besserwisser: he knows best (and is, perhaps not ironically, judgmental of all the people he meets who are equally know-it-all types!?). Addiction is just an example of a topic that I examine and think about a lot – and he and I diverge on this subject in a major way, but there are so many other things where the chasm between this close person and me keeps growing wider and deeper.

I’m not sure what to make of it because I don’t really want to feel judged, demeaned, second guessed or guilt-tripped every time I talk to this person. Because of his emotional proximity to me, it is not like I can or even want to write him off. In some ways, we are so close and the only people who can understand each other and our histories. I don’t like the idea of losing the connection but come on.

Photo (c) 2009 Brian Turner

used… and more used

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The inconsistencies, excuses and indecision got under my skin. As someone who is all or nothing about change, the dragging things from the past and present into the indefinite future, never moving on or moving forward (case in point: saying for six years that the time had come to leave the city he lived in; he is still there), living in a perpetual state of dependence, holding each other back, was not at all my scene. By joining him, I would have become part of this floating and unstable but static life of which I wanted no part. No offense to him and his choices. It is simply not a lifestyle I wanted to be a part of. And frankly, he wanted very little of mine either.

In the start, there must have been some part of it that seemed appealing… the idea of change, and a wholly different life, had a certain ring to it. Enough years (almost 15) had passed since I had spent one, interminably long, miserable summer with someone I could only describe as a directionless loser that I had forgotten the pain that came with it. I did not see the similarities early enough to avoid a repeat of this mistake I had promised myself I would never make again.

Ultimately the repeated mistake was not long-lived or permanent, and it was nowhere near as painful as the first confusing experience of youth. It had been as painful as it was then because it came among a whole series of firsts, and I had been young, naive, sheltered and completely inexperienced; this time, well, I had the tools to walk away and understand that the issues at hand were not mine nor mine to deal with.

He didn’t actually like me as a person – this “square” me who didn’t do any of the stuff he did and couldn’t deal with most aspects of his stumbling, directionless life. All the slow-boil commentary on how maybe things would change and maybe he would then like something more pastoral and calm only proved it over and over again. He wanted this – some part of this (in a limited capacity that he dictated) and everything else, too. But he could not have this if he kept everything else. And in terms of “this” (meaning this “involvement” because I would not have gone so far as to call it a relationship), he was interested enough only in certain aspects that pertained to what he could get/gain and how he could extend what he got from or through me to people he actually cared about (the “everything else”).

He chose to go on living his life the way he always had, not willing to make changes or sacrifices to the degree that people are when and if they want to be with someone. Meanwhile, he criticized, always finding fault and things wrong, while I tried to find what is right about him. He was content to show up, lounge around, have me pay bills, buy things and be cared for but … it was a one-way street. What I wanted, upon reflection, was some minor glimmer of affection, emotional support – things that are free and have absolutely nothing to do with money. (He came back to this excuse frequently, “But I don’t have money – I don’t have anything to offer.” It may in fact have been true that he had nothing to offer because he was emotionally empty/bankrupt and had no true affection for me, but it was never a matter of material exchange. I do recognize, then as now, that affection and emotional support, too, cost something – but it is a very different matter.)

But no, he never cared at all unless he had done something directly to upset me, recognized it and somehow had to make amends quickly to set things back into balance (i.e., to keep the engine of getting what he wanted running).

At the end of the day, he could only be who he was. Me too. We might have pretended to be something or someone else. We might have pretended to feel something we did not feel (or deny feelings we did actually feel). But we could not keep it up forever.

the whole cake

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It strikes me every time I read something from several years ago how many repeated patterns there are in the lives of all the characters involved, including myself. It shouldn’t come as a surprise – I am a certain type of person, and despite changing my surroundings, approaches, and putting up solid boundaries when needed, it does not change the fact that I am the same person at my core, and the feelings with which I respond are essentially the same. It also does not change the kinds of people I encounter in my life, or the preferences my heart (or mind) seems to have. None of this is a value judgment – just observations about how fundamental, deep change is not easy or quick. If it happens at all, it happens like soil erosion – it is happening but isn’t visible to the naked eye or even perceptible for many years.

Autumn 2011 (?) – excerpts from an email

A weekend of major baking (1200 cookies for a PR event at work). I invited a young German assistant to come and help me.

Latest drama: Mal is convinced he is going to die, like a total hypochondriac, despite not actually having real symptoms of anything. All I could do was roll my eyes, even if I wanted to be sympathetic, because 1. what a total overreaction, 2. go to the fucking doctor if you are so scared, 3. he was sooooooo unsympathetic when I had my own much more realistic health scare not long ago and has not been sympathetic or understanding when I have told him about the actual health problems I faced. Eventually he saw a doctor who told him that his symptoms were imagined/psychosomatic. Being the dramatic manipulator he is, he uses even fake health crises to milk what benefit he can get from them. He told me he feels he has had a “near-death experience” now. Oh my god. Seriously. Until they are cutting your balls off and shooting radiation into some part of your body, don’t even talk to me about near-death. He apparently told a mutual acquaintance that if he had been diagnosed with something terminal, he would immediately pack up and move here, as if he had been invited to die at my house. At some point he told me the same thing, imagining I would be flattered that he would choose me as nurse and caretaker for his final days?! Me, being the cynic always believing the worst in people like him, I said, “Oh why… better free medical care in Sweden?” He got offended and said, “No! To spend my last days somewhere beautiful with someone who really cares about me.” I guess that is a nicer sentiment, but note that it is always about who cares about him, what he can get out of it and not about for whom he cares or some kind of mutual care or respect.

Of course I am not supposed to be talking to him at all since my deadline for getting rid of him was September 30. It really had become such a chore and difficulty that I literally had to give myself a deadline. It is beyond difficult to just cut someone off, even someone so destructive and selfish. I have put a lot of distance between us, causing him to call me a “frosty fucker” the other day (haha). I enjoyed being called a frosty fucker so much that I just had to repeat it. It has grown easier, though, because I’ve been working and dashing constantly from place to place – Oslo, Trondheim, New York, Seattle, Stockholm, and will be right up until the end of the year, meaning there is no time to mess around with his nonsense, inconsistency, excuses and bullshit. I sometimes find myself in the position of sort of missing him when we are out of touch for a while, but as soon as I talk to him again, listening to his stupid excuses and bullshit-filled banter, I am back to wanting to forget that this summer happened at all…

Actually being around R (the dentist), I was just struck again, hard, by the realization that it is just so easy to get worn down into a pattern with some people (ML) where you accept and think something, some pathetic behavior, is okay or even normal, which it totally is not. R is open, funny, generous, warm … he barely knows me but he invited me to stay in his house during this extensive dental treatment. We had some great conversations and even greater laughs… and you know, he did not have to do any of that – I was not his friend, but his sister’s, but he still did. I like to think I am a lot like that most of the time. I am not a taker, so when I am taking (like from R this past week), I am extremely grateful and gracious, offer to help in any way I can, offer whatever I have (in this case, I brought a shitload of cookies to him). I just don’t understand people who can take and take and barely register that it might require a thank you.

I was telling R about this situation with Mal, and he laughed and said, “It sounds like an indie movie… full of unknown actors.” It made me think… maybe I should write a screenplay or something out of this ridiculous summer. Then I would at least feel like I walked away with something.

These days, after this stupid summer entanglement and its idleness, I am oddly contemplative/reflective on what it is I really want to do in life… ever since Steve Jobs died the other day and I re-watched his Stanford commencement speech about death (or threat of it) being the best catalyst for taking action in life. Do I want to write product sheets about the Android OS for the rest of my life? No. The last thing I want is a routine life.

…And then on compatibility, with your husband and with people in general. I understand what you are saying about choosing the “right qualities” when you decided to be with him… his stability and some of the more fundamental things. Yes, you might have liked to have been with someone who wants long, deep conversations and shared literary interests, but it is rare (if possible at all) to get a whole package. Isn’t it a matter of what is most important – and how you can get by and relate in the day to day? And I guess, as we may have discussed before, you can get some of the more in-depth conversational needs taken care of with close friends, even if it is still not quite the same thing.

And if love is important – or what makes you feel loved, rather – I just talked to my German assistant about this. She is young, so inexperienced. She asked whether she should wait around for someone if she is in love with them and they just don’t respond to her in kind. I assumed she was talking about Mal (and if she wasn’t, that means she has gotten herself into yet another unhealthy situation with someone else), and it made me so intensely sad for her to know that she KNOWS it is not going to change. She is just an accessory and a “safety/back up” for him. It is not that he does not care at all about her, but that he cares more about himself. Obviously. He is always going to give her a few crumbs to keep her hanging on but will never give her the whole cake, so to speak. To which I almost screamed, “Don’t settle for stale crumbs. Wait for – and accept – only the whole cake.”