I'll Always Love You Though, New York

There is a tremendous song by the incomparable Ryan Adams, that hightlights his love affair with New York city, and a girl, in parallel. And it reminds me, every time that I hear it, how serious a person's relationship with this place can really be. I borrow a lot from Sex & the City, and I apologize again because I'm about to make another point that Carrie Bradshaw has already made for me... but my relationship with this city is the best I've ever had.

In no other relationship could I ever expect to be afforded so much freedom, and provided so much substance in return. Never would I be allowed to be so fickle, so demanding and so rewarded despite it. New York provides me with every comfort my heart requires, and like every good boyfriend, is sometimes the only thing that I need when I'm feeling otherwise alone.

Today is probably as good an example as any of why I'm so in love.

I woke up, and the sun was shining brightly. Anyone's first thought on a hot summer day? BEACH. My roommate woke up just as I was knotting my bathing suit top. "We're getting on the 10:50 train for Long Beach," I said. "Get movin." Two hours later we were laying in the sun, sipping bottled water, working on our tans, breathing as much fresh sea air as our polluted lungs could take. We decided around 430p that we'd had enough, and headed back to the city on an express train. I bought two bottles of wine on the way and we went straight to our favorite BYOB chinese restaurant for dinner. Drank a bottle of Bella Sera, ate some chinese food, and rented a bunch of movies on the way home. We decided then to make a little detour to our favorite brunch spot for iced cappucinos when we heard the live Jazz floating into the neighborhood air. We were greeted by the owner with his standard "Hallo my fldiends!" As we sat outside of the restaurant listening to our jazz and drinking some cappucino, two of our friends sauntered by, and stopped to chat. We made some plans for later, or maybe never, (who knows, we're all flakey) and parted ways. Now I'm home, drinking more wine and watching some movies. Doing my laundry and lotioning the shit out of my sunburn. Someone might call in a few hours and we could wind up at a bar at 230am or heading across the bridge to someplace or another, some party or club. Or neither.

Like any relationship, its expensive and time consuming. It stresses me out sometimes beyond reason, and as often as not I'm bitching about something infuriating and out of my control. But that, my friends, is the making of any truly great love.

And as most of you know, because I never shut up about it, I've never been so in love.

I'm Running Away

Why can't I be one of those people who hates their job, quits, sublets their apartment and moves to the shore for the summer? What's wrong with me?

I've tried only to admit to a select few people that my job blows. But I can't help it anymore. Every day is worse than the day before it. With each day, my boss's hairy lip-mole compounds in size, while her thread-bare stretch pants, tired from saddling up all of her post-childbirth fat, seem to get tighter and thinner. Her attitude, of course, remains the same level of intolerable.

There are only two people who allow me a moment's sanity during the day. Tampa, the love of my professional life, just quit and the only other good one is on his way out. And now I am terrified that I'm getting what I deserve with this place.

I was warned on more than a few occasions, that taking a job with this company would potentially be dire straights in the big-career-picture of my life. "It's AWFUL" people said. But who were they? They didn't know me. My goals. My capability. This was the perfect launching pad, I thought. (After a moment, week, of hesitation.) Though I couldn't possibly have known either way at the time, I just CAN'T ever listen to people. God forbid I take some advice. Or shut the eff up and just listen once in a while.

It isn't to say that I would've been better off remaining stagnant. It's become more clear with time-passing that my "friends" @ TR weren't actually on my side, and the party was much more of a sad facade than I'd ever realized. Though there are times that I can't believe it is all over, I have to say I'm better to be out of it. But while it lasted, it was one hell of a party.

Presently, as I've mentioned, I'm having a lot less fun. I come in at eight thirty, check my yahoo mail, Gothamist, do some gawker-stalking and then sign into some company software applications (so it appears that I'm working) until my counter-part, Tampa, shows up twenty minutes late and we depart for the cafeteria. Or "The Club" as it were.

Our cafeteria is much more a fashion show/dance party/acid flashback than an actual eating establishment. The walls are made up of color changing glass, (blue, to green to pink, to highlight "the different moods of the day" according to the memo) the windows are covered in smokey sheets of transparent drapery and the floor is the kind of shiny gray linoleum that makes you feel like you're filming the sequel to Gattica. It's like a spaceship down there.

Through trays and rows and stacks of every kind of food you can imagine (an omelet chef, organic peanut butters, yogurt, parfaits, a fresh fruit bar, espresso machine, carrafes of coffee) it's challenging to actually find someone who is eating. Despite this, my counterpart, fills up her plastic container with cottage cheese, eggs, fruit and a bagel. "I don't give a fuck," she says when I throw her the, "I can't believe you're eating in front of these people" look. I, myself, fill up the biggest coffee cup I can find. We spend 15minutes sifting half-heartedly through packets of splenda and stirrers and napkins until she seems satisfied to the point of turning on a heel and heading for the door. Then we have to make our way back through the anorexic, hungry little fashionistas lingering over the food that everyone knows they will never eat.

Tampa and I go over the events of the previous evening on our way back upstairs. The gym, the drinking, the boys, the bars. We laugh, and smile, and then we reach the third floor and beep ourselves back into the morgue where speaking is taboo, and all you have to show for a job well-done is a dirty look and the business end of a sliding glass door. We settle at our desks and begin emailing each other in desperate pleas for help.

"Wine after work? Or how bout just kill me?" etc.

Poor us. Her last day is Friday, and I know for certain that if I wasn't already serious about getting out of there, the departure will thrust me over the edge of what I deem to be tolerable. The club will be no fun, sipping coffee and making fun of the outfits by myself.

I want to be able to just tell them they're hideous and walk out the door to something better. The foreseeable problem here, is that I presently have nothing better to walk to. And even so, I don't know what I want to do.

In the mean time, I will try my best not to alienate the remaining friend I have, and look desperately for a better office environment in the meantime. And next summer, if my job still totally blows, I'm moving to the beach!

Lay Your Armor Down

“Don't wait
The road is now a sudden sea
And suddenly, you're deep enough
To lay your armor down…” --DC

I’ve hesitated terribly to write about him. Because despite all of the things I do not know about him, I do know that he may be one of the first to happen upon this. But then I’m compelled by the kind of overwhelming GIRLNESS, that all of the men in my life claim imbues me. And anyway, not writing it would be contrary to one of the primary things that I believe him to be fond of. Either way, I can only know in its failure if it was wrong. And then if it was, then I am sorry. (Truly.) It occurs to me that Paul Auster was correct when he said, “No one wants to be part of a fiction, and even less so if that fiction is real.” And this, in my opinion, is as real as my fiction ever has become. But for that reason alone, I can’t help but write it down.

I’ve heard my whole life that when you least expect it, a most perfect-for-you person will appear suddenly out of nowhere and sweep you off your feet. This is the fairy tale. This is the crank on which we raise our little girls. Supposedly, the following then goes something like this: blind love, happiness, abandonment of reason, self-sacrifice, heartbreak, loneliness. (Either loneliness alone, or together.) That is the pattern we have watched all our lives, and the one that every couple vows that they will shatter. That is the pattern of love as I’ve seen it. And despite all the criticism of my observations, I’ve yet to be proven otherwise. It isn’t sad, I’m not whining, that’s just the way that it is.

As all of you who know me know, I have been resistant to the cycle all along. Fiercely independent or just fucking stubborn, the idea of loneliness together, or sacrifice for others has never really appealed to me. It isn’t to say it doesn’t work for some people. It’s never been something I was interested in trying. So the wall I’ve been working on for the past- oh, decade- has become rather sturdy. Resistant to the urgings of family, friends, and especially the poor guys who have tried in vain to date me. (“What’re you, a fucking cyborg?” Is still my favorite.)

And then he appeared, from somewhere. And all those years of defensive training, I suddenly can’t remember what I was defending against. It could be heart break, and he sees it in my eyes. “You don’t trust me, entirely,” he said. “I wish you would.” And I don’t, he’s right. But before I could say anything, he laughed, because I don’t think he trusts me either. And I like that. It makes me feel less helpless.

And every time I worry about abandoning my power, he gives it to me willingly, with few words, or even a gesture, that I didn’t have to fight for. And I remember how it was before him.

And when I’m trying not to miss him, and I hope he misses me, suddenly, somehow, there he is. And I didn’t have to ask. And I don’t have to apologize for wanting him around.

And when I am lying to myself, staring, anywhere but at his eyes, because in moments it all scares me absolutely to death, he says the most perfect, flippant thing. And I’m laughing. And I forget why I was afraid.

And it all might end tomorrow, if it’s even really begun. And that would be OK. Because my wall is still in place, for when I need it. For now though, for the first time, I don’t want to fight at all.

And in an effort, to spare you all some time and energy… YES, I know you told me so.

Romeo and Juliette

"When you gonna realize, it was just that the time was wrong..." --Dire Straights

My roommate and I spend a lot of time trying to solve life’s big problems. We’re both hyper-conscious of ourselves in relation to the people around us, and I find that we rarely tire of our attempted exploration into this understanding. I can only speak for myself here, but it’s important for me to know where I fit.

That said; we’ve never solved an actual problem in our lives.

One of our favorite fruitless efforts: the relationship problem. It’s a timeless pursuit of understanding, for men and women alike. And despite all of the books, movies, bad sitcoms, magazine articles, research, discussion, therapy sessions and blogs that we all pore over in hope of understanding, still, it seems, no one knows what the eff is going on.

I used to think it was a “girl” thing. This is a product of all of the men in my life having been uncommunicative, macho and surly. I never saw my uncles, my grandfather, my father even, until very recently, giving a shit about their wives, girlfriends, etc. (As an unfortunate bi-product of that, obviously, those are the kinds of guys I go for.) These men didn’t wonder what the women in their lives were thinking. What they might’ve done to warrant the silent treatment. Where their relationship might be headed. I can assume, by having grown up very close to all of these guys, that the relationship question never crossed their minds.

Fast forward. All of the men in my adult life are completely different. My friends, mostly dudes, are some of the most introspective and communicative people I know. They think about things (even relationships!) as much as, if not sometimes more than my girlfriends. It’s astounding. Still, their motives are different. It’s less, “why isn’t she calling me back” and more, “dude, if she doesn’t call me back I won’t get laid!” Testosterone firmly in place.

The fact that they think about us at all is surprising to me. I was reading an interview recently with Greg Behrent, famed author of the stupid-girl’s-guide-to-breakups-book, “He’s Just Not That Into You” (it isn’t to say that the book is stupid though I haven’t read it, but ladies, come on, do we need this?) and he said he was planning to write a similar version for guys. He wanted to call it something to the effect of, “Dude, Get Off Her Lawn.” Apparently, the boys have the capacity for caring a little too much too?

The roommate and I were posing the very same question.

“Do you actually care if we call you, though?” I asked. “I feel like if we didn’t call, you never would, and that would be the end of it. Especially if you’ve already gotten what you wanted out of it.”

“You should definitely call us back,” he said. (On the heels of an unreturned call from new girl #2) “But don’t initiate too many calls on your own. It shouldn’t seem like you can’t go a day without talking to us.”

We started discussing most girl’s numero uno mistake of seeming NEEEEEEDY. I don’t generally have the neediness problem, since usually I break up with people for wanting to spend too much time with me. But, I said, “If I actually like you enough, I’m going to want to talk to you. Is that not allowed?”

“Umm…” he actually had to think about it. “We’d probably rather you talk to someone else? Or at least, have someone else you want to talk to as well.” This from a guy who’s upset over an unreturned call. I’m suspicious.

And when the conversation turned to him, the same insecurities surfaced. He’s just suffered a drive-by emailing from an ex-GF who really left her mark on the ego. It’s been almost a year since they lost contact, and he jumped at the chance to email her back. But she never responded again. Did it seem too anxious? Maybe girls don’t appreciate neediness either.

We agreed over Coronas and enchiladas suizas that there is only one answer to all of the questions in the relationship question.

Timing.

A hundred things could go wrong with a person you like, who happens to like you back, and no damage may be done. (Refer to the entry in December when I bit it in front of the new guy I was dating in the lobby of the Moma.) But if one of you is more into the other than they are into you, sneeze too much and relationship is over. Timing is everything.

Hopefully you’ll run into someone at some point who is ready to run into you too. This isn’t something you can force, so no matter how much you may like them, sadly I think it’s all in the hands of the clock. This is an important distinction, and one I myself should try to remember. The worst thing you can do with bad timing, is trying to force the situation.

So that, my friends, is what took my roommate and I one Mexican dinner on a Tuesday night to establish. Consider yourselves enlightened.

Happily Never After

So my lovable family has guilt tripped me into going home to visit them. I have now committed myself to a Labor Day weekend that I was hoping to spend uncommitted. (And a few hundred miles away from Pittsburgh.) It isn't that I don't love them.

Everything in my life is changing. Everything. And as long as I'm here, and dealing with myself, I don't have to be there, and dealing with them. It isn't to say I wouldn't normally love going home to visit. That was before the divorce was announced and my parents decided to sell the house I grew up in, my grandparents bought a condo in a nursing home community and began the months long process of moving out of their big wonderful old house that I also grew up in. Before all of this, I would go home for almost no reason at all. Just because I loved home. And regretablly, it seems, those times for me have gone.

This will be the last time that I am able to walk into the only home I have ever known. It will be the last visit to my family when my family is still my family. I will have to say goodbye to two thirds of my childhood, to the first twenty-two years of my life, and the yards and walls, windows and ceilings that own every memory of all of those years. I will be in the bedroom of my childhood for the last time, looking out of the window that I used to watch thunderstorms through. I will stand in the backyard I used to sledride down and beneath the basketball hoop my brother and I played on during the summers before he left us. I will see the trees that held our christmas lights every year and I will take a bath in the baby-pink porcelin tub with its broken drain for the millionth and last time. I will lay on the couch in the livingroom where I laid the Christmas I had strep throat and fell asleep watching Rudolph by the light of the tree. I will probably cry the last tears I'll ever cry there.

But I assume they won't be the last tears I cry ever.

I'll go to my grandparent's house then, and again face saying goodbye to the place I spent almost as much of my life. I lived there for a time, in the room my mother and her sister once lived in. I'll say goodbye to the pool where my cousins and I played, the basketball court where our roller-hockey tournaments were held, the basement that to this day scares me beyond adult reason, the air hockey table, the baby grand piano where I learned to play the cannon in D and my grandmother played all fourteen pages of kitten on the keys. The den that smells like wood polish and carpet. I'll probably sit on the swingset, and look across the flagstone yard to the hammock, where someone was always laying or playing all the summers of my life. I will stand in the stepdown and look out the windows and cry. And I will remember the summer I lived there, how during a thunderstorm my grandmother taught me to jitterbug, and I played an old black sabbath record for her and generations collided during that storm. I will say goodbye to the chalk room where I used to draw and to their bedroom and it's green carpet and sliding glass door.

And while I understand, as I have always understood, that a time would come when I would lose those times of my life, it makes it all the more harsh that I'm losing them all at once.

I realize it's hard for my parents, to hear among other things, that I am angry and sad and would rather ignore it all than to come home and see it with my eyes. They are both being very rational about the whole thing, and are friendly and lovable with each other moreso it seems sometimes than normal. They tell me that when I see they're OK...it will remove the power of the divorce, and become just a fact with which I can deal.

When I was little, and I had a bad dream, I would run to their room and my mom would take me back to my bed and she would sit with me while we deconstructed my dream. "It's only scary because you didn't feel control over it," she'd say. "So let's change it now, to end how you want it to end." And I would take great joy out of developing tales of heroism in which she herself would track down the big bad wolf and punch him in the nose. Or Dracula turned out just to be lonely because he didn't look like everyone else, so we invited him over for dinner. Or when all else failed, we would just talk about Christmas until I fell asleep.

I can't change the ending now. And Christmas is going to be spent apart, a family divided. I am grown-up enough now to understand the absence of happily ever after. But the bad dream is kicking my ass on this one, and even my mom doesn't have the power to change it. Which is why it's very important to me not to lose sight of what exactly is required to maintain control over my feelings. Being immersed in so many goodbyes, all at once, seems almost more than I can bare. And I want, more than anything, to change the ending to a happily ever after that it seems will never come.

I'm Never Drinking Again

I come to you this morning from five hours of sleep. That's not bad, I suppose, if I hadn't spent the sixteen hours before drinking wine. Truly...no one should drink wine for sixteen hours. My head, or what used to be my head, is... my god it hurts.

It was supposed to be "lunch." But when my GBF suggested coming back to his apartment to lay out on the roof, it seemed like a decent enough way to pass a hot and sunny Friday afternoon. "OK," I said. "But I need to be home by seven." It was four am when I poured myself into a cab for Brooklyn.

The problem, as I see it, isn't a drunken day of hanging out with friends. I can actually justify sixteen hours of non-stop drinking if there isn't anything otherwise constricting your schedule that day or the next. The problem is that I can't just hang out with my friends and drink. I have to CALL people. I have to send text messages. And most recently...and this is the part I hate the most...I feel the need to drunken Email.

I dont' know where this proclivity for drunken communicating comes from, because admittedly nothing good has EVER resulted. I usually wake up the next morning hating myself, dreading the uncomfortable follow up conversations. It's embarrassing. Probably as much for the recipients as for me. Thus is the reason the Myspace account was disabled. Did you know that there's no security option for prevention of drunken myspacing? The comments were astounding. People I don't even like, or hadn't seen in years getting heartfelt shoutouts from yours truly. Again, as uncomfortable for them as for me.

I'm going to sleep again. I'm supposed to be at a concert in Coney Island today. And I really plan on going, but I'd probably throw up on myself if I tried to get on a train. So a nap is first. And hey, if I drunkenly communicated with you last night in some weird fashion, (Pam, memorybruise, Missie, etc) my apologies.

alright already

"so i think sometimes in the midst of trying to find ourselves, we get so caught up in ourselves that we forget about the people around us. i think it's easier to find ourselves when we aren't looking. i think things work better when we work through it.. instead of trying to figure it out." --JM

i've come under a lot of criticism lately for taking myself too seriously. my new friend Tampa has been saying recently that the reason i have such a terrible time with relationships (not that she's had a particularly successful one herself) is because i think way too much about it. "just have fun," she says. "the rest will work itself out."

i've always wanted to be one of those people who doesn't feel burdened by life. who can just "go with the flow" so to speak without having to regard everything with the kind of severity generally reserved for life's big dramas. i haven't been able to harness that power yet...but i think i should start trying harder. no one enjoys deep, sorrowful introspection in their friends. and no one wants to date the deep, and sorrowfully introspective. maybe this really is my problem? i thought that the abandonment of that frame of mind coincided with growing up.

i've seen it in two of my slightly older friends. two of my former RA's, both in their late twenties now, and both of which i've just come to reconnect with. i liked them so very much at first, for among many other reasons, because they were thinkers. they took themselves seriously and i modeled myself in that first formative year of adulthood mainly after the things in them which i someday hoped to possess. the hunt for self-actualization being one of those things. but it turns out, now that they're "grown up"...they've abandoned the adolescent-esque search for self, and become instead, normal, well adjusted people who understand much better than i do, that self isn't something you have to search for. so maybe this is a lesson that does come with maturity.

and it seems i've done it again. thinking too hard about not thinking so hard. same as it ever was. i do know one thing. if i don't knock it off pretty soon, my roommate and Tampa alone are going to force it out of me. they're tired of it. today at brunch, Baller told me that i need to abandon all of the thought that i put into the day to day. "quit trying so hard," he said. "you don't need to wear a gown every time we go out, you know. we live in brooklyn."

point taken.

I Even Miss Cabrini

I knew I would miss college. But I'm a little surprised at how much I miss Cabrini in particular. I would definitely have predicted my heartache for Gannon, since they forced me out after graduation, against my will. But Cabrini I left intentionally. The point, though, and I've been trying to prove this to the people I left behind for years now, is that although I wanted to leave the school, I never wanted to leave them. But such is the way when I've made up my mind. I sever ties immediately and without consideration, and even the best of my friends are left to fend for themselves, and retired to a distant corridor of my memory bank.

Those two years I spent at Cabrini, however, are especially haunting compared to other times in my life. I'm not sure if it's due in part to the circumstances under which I left, or the particular kind of craziness I suffered while I was there...but it's tiresome even trying to relive in hindsight. With the resurgance of a lot of Cabrini people into my life recently (Tree's up-and-coming nuptuals, my surprise reconnection with Melanie, a recent email from Jamie) I've spent a little time re-reading old journal entries, emails and letters in the past few weeks.

It seems that two or three people especially, occupied almost all of my time and energy, especially that first, daunting year. I spent tireless hours writing to, and about them, in an attempt to better understand their respective roles in my life. It seems that I never figured it out. One of which, was my best friend at the time, we'll call her Nika. (Because that is, with a fake Russian accent, for some reason what I called her at the time.)

The story of Nika and I was this: We used to climb out of my tiny bedroom window, in the afternoons when everyone else was sound asleep between classes. We would just have thrown up our cafeteria food lunches and showered again. We'd both be wearing her boyfriend's or Melanie's sweatpants (another of my inexplicable obsessions that year), and some kind of Cabrini t-shirt. We'd sprawl on the gravel covered roof, on beach towels and quilts from my bed, and watch the trees sway. Hours of this. Usually there would be some kind of creepy emo depression soundtrack blaring from inside of our Tudor dorm. We'd cry, alone together, or just talk into the air. Not about anything in particular. Just to hear ourselves. We thought this to be quite poetic and meaningful at the time. And my roommate probably reported me repeatedly to health and social services. (I eventually came to spend an entire semester with the campus psychologist, these afternoon roof-sessions probably lending themselves forward.) And I have no idea to what end I did this. I don't know that it accomplished a thing. Much like the all night soul-searching we all did in someone's randomly selected dorm room over a bottle of parrot bay and some valium. It just existed. I guess, at the time, like me.

But why then, do I miss it so? I assume that like most things, when I left Cabrini, in all of its drama and chaos, that I never provided myself a single moment of grief. Which a person needs, apparently, to be able to effectively move forward. So now, when I glance back, at the memory of Melanie and our cross-state drive in her Toyota, or Nika and her Parliment lights and ever-repeating Dido CD, or Jamie, or Sean or Grace or the Chapel or Tim...that it's all just a dangling memory. The drop of sweat on the side of your neck as you heave from the run you just finished. As you bend over to breathe then, it's only a moment from falling off of the world completely, inonsequentially, but for now, you can feel it sliding down you nonetheless. I think it's like that for me. Cabrini, that is. Not really a part of me. Per se. But running down me. Touching, but not remaining, the way I so desperately hoped it would on those moments on the roof. The reason, maybe, that it hurt so much to figure out then, was that there was nothing, afterall, to be figured out. Maybe it was all there, just for me to miss it.

Oh New York, You So Crazy

No. I did not get attacked with a hand saw on the subway today, for those of you who watch the national news. (I fielded a few concerned phone-calls this afternoon.) It seems sadly, though, that someone else did. He survived, thankfully. I think he'll be just fine. And the teddy-bear-wielding lunatic who sawed into him was apprehended. Especially shocking, is that this attack came just weeks after a said "gang initiation" drove a Harlem teen to stab a series of four or five tourists in a matter of twenty four hours on some uptown Manhattan trains. It all makes the subway system sound like a very dangerous place to be. But I can assure you, thus far, I have never even been attemptedly sawed, stabbed or assaulted.

Unfortunately, my good friend who is brand new to the city-- we'll call her Tampa-- was held at broken bottle's edge for a few frightening minutes on an empty subway platform last week. She eventually derived an escape plan between the lunatic and the wall which flanked her. She quietly tried to talk him out of an attack, without sounding confrontational, and when she spotted the opportunity, ran for her fucking life. I congratulated her quick thinking.

"I was just lucky," she says in her Southern accent. She's only been here two months and I feel terrible that this happened, let alone so soon. "He just decided to let me go. If he'd wanted to hurt me, there would've been nothing I could do," She sighed. A scary prospect.

Maybe I don't take regard the risks of the city with enough severity. I have to admit that the recent outpouring of violence talk has gotten me thinking.

My roommate has calmed my nerves slightly, however, with this simple truth. Maybe it will help you to put it into perspective too. Yes, there are crazy people here. There are a lot of them. The city attracts a certain number of crazy people...because that's what cities do. But there are also a tremendous number of completely normal people here as well. And we're all, normals and crazies alike, REALLY close together. With a few million people of any kind, surrounding you at any time, you run the risk that at least some of them are going to be out of their minds. (Just like some of them are going to be Italian or White or Men, Women, Elderly, Jewish, etc...)

Unfortunately, whereas in the rest of the world, you have the ability to shut your car door, buckle your seatbelt and lock the world and its crazies out of your SUVs...we're riding to work next to them every day. Brushing past them on platforms. Sharing a bench on the train. You have to be smart. Any one of those few million people (especially the Teddy-bear-weilding variety) may just be on the verge of crazy. New York is the only city I've ever heard of people being stabbed for looking at you the wrong way. (That doesn't make you crazy. I've almost stabbed someone for looking at me funny any number of times.) It's an occupational hazard. An overpopulation problem. And something to keep an eye out for.

In the meantime, I'm just fine. And everyone I know is fine, too. I realize this can be a dangerous place. But so can anywhere else! I'll keep an eye out, and I promise not to intentionally upset anyone who looks too crazy.

July 4

It's the Fourth of July. I should probably be getting ready for a party. But I've decided to opt out.

I like the fourth of July but I'm having a hard time getting into it this year. It's always strange when you can compare the years of your life by one day. This fourth of July, for example, I'm living in Brooklyn and spending the evening probably doing Pilates, taking a bath and falling asleep by 9. Last year I was in Harlem, with the guy I was dating and his sister and brother-in-law, grilling steaks on my roof and wandering around the city, laughing and drinking like tourists. It would be the last time I saw any of them. It would be the last pseudo-relationship I've had, not counting the two or three short disasters last winter.

The year before that, I was in Charlotte, with the one before him. We'd just spent the weekend at our friend's lake house in South Carolina (the Dirty Dancing filming locale) and came back to Charlotte that evening. We went to dinner, drank too much wine, and he drove my car home beneath the fireworks puncturing the night sky. It was our first weekend together. He told me, as I rested my head on his shoulder and watched the fireworks through the open sunroof, that it would never be better than that. He was right.

Because the two relationships correlated (that one is hard to explain), it seems kind of like the first fourth of July marked the beginning, and the second marked the end. It had come full-circle for the disastrous triangle that no one created but me. It was one year, flanked at each end by a different relationship, a different city, and a different kind of July 4th entirely. My entire world was turned completely, strangely on its head in the long months between those two days. And now, since then, has become completely different again.

I'm pretty sure I'm in a much less complicated place now. Even more sure, in fact, that in general, those things weren't as good as they seemed. One of them asked me recently if I had any weird feelings about the place he'd come to in life without me. I thought about it as an actual possibility. But no, it turns out, I'm not jealous. What I do feel, though, is a sense of detachment from those times, as if someone else entirely had lived them. I am surprised that everyone has moved on but me...but not sad or jealous. Just surprised. I can't understand how when I look back on the situation, like I'm watching a movie, that if it happened the way it seems to have...that I came out of it the only one alone. But I consider it to be for the purposes of reflection, and try not to question the obvious.

So perhaps next July 4th will be strange in a totally new and different way. I hope that I don't still think about the ones past. And I hope that I have the energy to do something more than Pilates and a bath. But for now, that's where I'll be.

Happy 4th of July!

Helpless

My mother has this tendency to be the most insightful person on earth.

It's annoying.

She will always say the right thing, and frequently I find myself recycling her wisdom on other people. When I tell them where my new-found depth and understanding came from, ("wow, that was incredibly insightful." 'yeah, i got that from my mom,') they always tell me that I'm lucky to have a mother who so astutely connects with life.

And I tell them it's annoying.

When things go wrong for me, I always call her. Always. When I was new to the city, and realized that despite having found my Oz here in New York, I was still sad...her response was, "I hope you didn't expect that poor city to support you on its own. No city is that strong, Jennifer. No one is that strong." Damn her, she was right.

When I told her I was failing at my new job (which she corrects me, "you're flailing Jennifer, we don't fail, we struggle) she indicated to me that I would not be doing poorly if it were something I wanted to do, and that doing poorly was a choice. "You can do anything you want to," she said. "So decide that you'll do it, that you'll do it well, and then look for something to do that will actually make you happy." Right again.

I can't understand where she comes up with this stuff, but the pool of wisdom seems never-ending. I can't manage to get myself into a problem that she can't Yoda me out of. And believe me, I've had a couple of problems.

So now that she's sad, and things aren't going well in her life, I want to be able to help her. I want to be able to bestow upon her, the same kind of insight she's granted me a million times in my life. I want to be able to tell her what's required to fix it and carry on, and I want to make it go away. The problem, however, is two-fold. First of all, divorce makes even the most adult of children feel like they're five years old. I'm powerless to help them, because I am their child, and children can't help anyone, including themselves. So, realizing that my "help" would only wind up causing her to have to help ME, I decided only to weigh in as infrequently as possible, and provoked only by conversation initiated by one of my two parents. And when I do try to assess one of their present complications with any insight, it turns out only to be her insight, recycled upon its originator. Foiled again. I can't help anyone.

The second part of the problem, is that the child in me is dying to scream at them, tell them they're being ridiculous and they have to stay together. That I know they still love each other and that they always will. The wisdom in me, provided by said knower-of-all-things, realizes that sometimes the more uncomfortable choice, is the better one. That yes, you could remain, whatever remaining may mean in your situation, but that growth and progression would be squashed by the complacency of that decision. That what keeps you there, may be the very things you should abandon. I know these things, and so when the child in me cries, the adult in me wipes my eyes and leaves the hard decisions up to them.

There isn't a damn thing I can say to her that she hasn't already realized on her own. She's far more progressed emotionally than I am, and has more understanding of the sacrifices and decisions that are associated with this divorce. She has her life to reflect on, and her own lessons to learn. I hate knowing that I can't help her. But I think the insight that she's given me, might help me to help myself.