Thinking

I got a comment. Check it out. There's also a link posted to another article from Shambhala Sun by Anne Cushman which I really enjoyed. It's about yoga, and its commercialization.

Here's how I feel about this--same ref I used yesterday--from another Shambhala Sun issue--okay I'm going to digress about Shambhala Sun for a minute.

I used to eschew reading this magazine. I really looked down my nose at it. All these trendy "buddhists" ...there were a bunch of them at Dartmouth and I really didn't like them. They seemed to be using their buddhism as a way to set themselves apart and look down on others. It became just another token of elitism. And elitism, while at the same time I just slather after it, really ticks me off.

The magazine seemed like it was just another fashion prop--also heavily Tibetan (and most Rinzai zen buddhists sort of secretly look down on the Tibetans, a reflection I think of the class system here in America, which I would love to go into but not right this second--I remember my few weeks at Tail of the Tiger 21 years ago--all those 40 something women arriving with their Louis Vuitton luggage for retreat. Gag me. (But, to be fair to the place, I also remember sitting in their meditation hall by the orange lacquered columns after hiking a few miles over the hills in the snow from Milarepa, and smelling the incense and warming my frozen toes and thinking, that maybe there was a chance for some peace here.)

The magazine seemed to just embody that sensibility. Vogue for buddhists. The ads for the sensitive financial management companies...the $125 zen clocks.

But then I turned 40 and something has changed.

I copped to myself. And I copped to my buddhism. I decided it was okay to show it. I began to understand the importance of the Sangha, something I'd never given enough value to before. The Sun is imperfect, but there's a lot of wisdom in its glossy pages, and it connects me to the larger sangha. I really can't do it alone. Which is why Hokukuan being on hiatus with no word from Seido really concerns me. Somehow, being down in my basement doing my morning practice by myself was okay when I knew the sangha was still going on. I would think about them--"now they're doing this, they're bowing, they're chanting" and I would feel connected, even though I couldn't get there physically. But now, I'm just down there by myself, and I gotta tell you, I feel like Robinson Crusoe.

Oh, well.

But back to yoga and grasping and commercialization. That's so funny that the Wii gives you bonus poses! Don't you kind of wish there really was something like that? Maybe that way I could finally get into the side crow--which absolutely terrifies me. I'm convinced I will break both my wrists and get a skull fracture. I've been trying to do it for a year...anyways. I think the commercialization of yoga is a good thing, because yoga is very sneaky, and people will change for the better if they start doing it even if they are doing it for the wrong reasons. I have watched this happen with two of the yoga teachers at the gym I used to go to, who you know, taught aerobics and then got yogafit certification under duress from the management. After two years they were unrecognizable. Hairy armpits, jewels in their bellies, even a little newsletter! Look at how trendy "going green" is becoming...that can only be for the good. And who am I to say what is right? Who am I to say this path is better than that one? I can't presume...I'm just happy more people are coming on board--because that means there are more yoga classes available--even in benighted Little Dixie.

Anything to get one out of a burning house.

Okay--that's my 1/2 hour. I have to go ride my bike to my shrink, now.

Namaste.

Karma knows

It's a beautiful day today. Like a jewel. Like a venetian glass bead. It's not too hot and the air is fresh and green. Coming home from the farm this morning, the mist was like a golden blessing. It's high summer. The grass is long and honey colored, the fields filled with queen anne's lace.

I found this great soft grey cotton cardigan by the side of the road and I've been wearing it everywhere. I love cardigans. It's perfect for a cool morning like this one.

We went swimming in the pond last night, then messed around. Afterward, the moon was shining like a beacon on the fields and we went running naked around the yard in the moonlight, eating peaches off the trees like two creaky Adam and Eves. It's supposed to be very good for you to walk around naked in the moonlight.

I am still mad about the cup. I keep having imaginary conversations with Anne. The conversations are brilliant. I say brilliant, pithy, cutting things, designed to make her feel like crap and make everyone else overhearing them flock to my noble self. Then I go "thinking!" and they stop, for awhile.

Thinking!

Most of the thinking, most of the dialogue I engage in is so useless. Where does it get me? What does it solve? What do I miss when doing it? I was riding my bike a few days ago and embarking on some internal drama--and may I just say that, while I love my new bike (well--3 years old--but the last one was from 1967, and I'd been riding either on it or on the back of it as an infant my entire life) the old bike required a lot more concentration to ride. The shocks were terrible and it was perpetually stuck in third gear, + things would always fall off it. I just gave up on it eventually. All my groovy friends were like "Man, Haley, that bike was a classic" but my new one actually gets me places on time. However, it does give me more time to get lost in my head, which is maybe not the best thing.

Hey! Maybe that's one good thing about aging! Maybe the physical creaks and pains of the body are good for keeping you focused on the present. Hmmmm?

So, it is a beautiful day, but I know it will rain. Because Karma, my yellow lab, is refusing to come out from under the stairs. And she knows.

I was reading the latest issue of Shambhala Sun. There was an interview with a yoga teacher in it and she said something very interesting--hang on, I'm going to go get the magazine. Okay--never mind. That's not it. It's the article by Chip Hartranft. There was a quote that really hit home: "...it is difficult to perform a yoga pose without unconsciously striving to feel good, or improve the self or prolong life. Grasping and delusion follow us wherever we go, and thus both sitting and hatha yoga can become new, specialized arenas for perpetuating dukkha, suffering."
Not fair! He's so right. Vanity is the only reason I'm on the cushion, I think. I started meditating when I was a teenager because I saw pictures of buddhist nuns and they didn't have any wrinkles.

However, the world of illusion has been compared to a burning house--any ruse is acceptable to get people out of the flames.

I nurse my secret vanities like dirty little demons. He's right. My practice, both the yoga and the zen are about grasping--grasping youth, grasping health, grasping superiority. What a big fat bore I am. Oh well, I've been doing it this long....

Wheww. Well as Darlene from Hurlyburly would say, "Insight!" Now I have to spit on the floor because I've just quoted Macbeth.

Ah, the world of conditioned reflexes.

That's my 1/2 hour.

Blue Willow

My cup got stolen.

It's a blue willow coffee mug I ordered from Stash Tea. It's really pretty. The blue in the design is sort of a cornflower blue and the design on the cup is really crisp, not all smeary like some blue willow cups. I drank cafe con leche in it every morning.

I love this cup. I associate it with my friend, Jerry, who died a few years ago. He was my advisor in nursing school, and he became my good friend. He was like this cup.

Blue willow. American exotic. The pattern on the plates in Lassie, remember? Blue willow makes me think of pioneers--of hardworking farm people havine something special in their lives. It's conventional and beautiful and a little exotic, but in a very reassuring way. I like following the little story in the picture--the three men on the bridge, the lovers, transformed into birds rising above into the sky. The pagoda. The willow tree. Sunlight on the fields. Dinner on the table. Ohio. Sitting on the shore of Lake Erie by the willow, watching the heron take flight over the bay.

The morning Jerry died, I went to the doctor. I kept fainting. I didn't feel sad or upset, but I kept falling down. Why am I falling down? I wondered. I decided I had brain cancer and went immediately to urgent care. The doctor there was very, very kind to me, and explained that what I was really doing was having a vagal response to Jerry's death, that, while I didn't consciously feel grief over Jerry's passing, my body was reacting. He suggested I go home for the rest of the day and lie down.

So I cut class and went home. I made myself another cup of cafe con leche (2 in one day!) and took a bath. I drank the second cup of coffee and put it by the sink. I turned off the light in the bathroom and opened the shade. I just wanted to sit in the tub in the sunlight. I still didn't feel anything. But I thought a bath would do me good. I lay there in the tub, watching the sunbeam move across the tile, the water getting colder. The sunbeam moved slowly across the floor, then up the wall, then for about 3 minutes, it filled up the blue willow cup. As if it were pouring light into it. The mug glowed with this friendly Japanese lantern-like light. And I thought, that's exactly how Jerry was--plain, functional, a little exotic, and absolutely filled with light. A microwave safe, blue willow coffee mug, filled up with light instead of the regular joe.

And then I started crying.

So, that's why I carry that cup into work, because I am really bringing Jerry along.

Now, as you may have already gleaned, I am occasionally harum scarum. I leave things everywhere. And the day before yesterday, I left the cup. I've done this before occasionally, and it usually turns up--we're generally pretty kind to each other's stuff--but this day was different.

I work with a woman who is Hali's stepsister. Her name is Anne. She's a great nurse--energetic, smart, good with families--but she has a very strong, aggressive personality, and she can be mean to other nurses. She likes to keep her assignments for weeks and is not much of a team player. She isn't flexible, she challenges management decisions all the time. She's also a gossip. I've tried to curb this over the months since she's moved to our shift. Our shift is pretty nice. I've tried to be gentle--when she starts complaining about someone, I call the other person over and have her speak to them directly. I mean, we're just not going to have that kind of crap at all. How can you care for patients well if the staff is busy stabbing each other in the back?

Anyways--long story short. Her assignment changed--she took over my patient and I went home early to avoid having to MTO regular staff--our patient census became too low and Wiz and I can better afford to go home than the rest of the staff because we're exempt. So, we're doing her a favor, right? But she's still pissed, and very vocal about it. She called me at home about two really minor things regarding my patient, ugly on the phone. I had had to wrap things up more quickly than usual, and in the kerfuffle, left my cup.

And when I came in the next day, my cup was missing. Anne, of course, had called in sick.

"Anne took my cup." I said. "I bet she threw it away."

"You don't know that," Marcy says. Marcy behaves, but Marcy is tricky. Fortunately, she's not very smart.

"Here's how it went down..." I clear my throat and do my best gravelly Anne voice, "God damn it, Hali left her cup. Ughh. It's dirty, too. What is that cuban crap she's always drinking--look at that--look at that crust around the top. Well that's just ridiculous. I don't think it's part of my practice act to deal with dirty dishes. Maybe someone needs to learn a little lesson about leaving her stuff around."

Marcy is staring at me with her mouth open.

I start laughing at her expression.

"Oh my god, that's almost exactly what happened. Word for word. How did you know? Were you still here?"

I decided to go all mystic samurai on her.

"I know who my staff are, Marcy. I know you, too."

She gets defensive. "I didn't see Anne throw away the cup--otherwise I would have gotten it out of the trash."

"Of course. "

She brought me a cup of coffee later.

Kiss ass.

Oh, well. People are weak. What do you do?

That's my 1/2 hour.

Anger Management

So, the latest news on Jay's penis: it's a "fixed allergic eruption," per his dermatologist. I believe, however, it is a plague from St. Dwynn, my patron saint, who visited it on him because he was planning to fool around on me while I was in Ohio.

I was sitting in Yoga, and I figured out who he wants me to be.

He wants me to be like Candice Bergen in that movie she did in the 60's--what is that movie? Where she's Jack Kerouac's girlfriend? Remember that? She's classy and even and cool.

Wrong girl.

There's this great book: The Dark Side of the Light Chasers which really has some interesting things in it--nothing Jung hasn't addressed, but kind of a working take on it--on manifesting different sides of our self, personas--and I was thinking about it while I was sitting there and I found this personality inside. I'll call her Liesl. Liesl is very, very cool. She's like a cross between Angelina Jolie and Candice Bergen. She's like Colby Calle--however you spell it, without the puerile lyrics. Very together, very down-to-earth, a little tough, but accessible. She's like me, but with all the sort of insecure, people pleasing puppy like slathering and screaming meemie hormone informed jealousy washed out. She's not a very good writer (but she is a good marketer). Liesl doesn't use food processors and she's very hip, but not showy. After yoga, I decided to try being Liesl for an hour. I started in the entryway, and one of the guys in my class--this really cool guy--asked me out to coffee. I mean, all I did was think, "how would this person sit and put her Eccos back on." So I went. Hmmm.....

I think Liesl has some limitations--for example, I think her fiddling might suck, but maybe we could give Liesl responsibility for certain grown-up tasks and interactions.

And Jay. I don't know what to do about Jay. I'm hurt. Really hurt. And I'm so tired of hearing about his penis all the time. That's been like our only topic of conversation for the last 6 weeks. And I'm also tired of worrying about where his head is at and checking up on him. The town has become like a mine field. I can't do anything write. Liesl wouldn't give a fuck. Liesl would just keep going where she needs to go and keep doing what she needs to do. Oh, well.

He's so unhappy. How can I possibly fix that? How can I fix what he did or didn't do to sabotage a 15 year marriage? How can I make up for Hali cheating on him? How do I make his kids happy? How do I make his parents young and healthy? How do I make him skinny again, young again, full of life again? I can just hold him, right? I can just love him the way he is. The problem is, I'm starting to distance myself out of self-protection.

Well, what does he like?

Plants, animals, wine. Books about africa. Nice leather bags. Climbing.

Maybe he's right. Maybe I don't know him.

I'll just try to hang on and keep sane and happy, I guess. Encourage him in any direction he feels he needs to take to get there. And do what I always do: listen. Listen, listen, listen.

He told me I was his best friend. Trouble is, he isn't mine.

In the meantime, I'm going to stop checking up on him and live my life. I re-enrolled in graduate school. I'm not going to change my work schedule unless he's committed to me as a financial partner.



Well, that's all for today, I think.

Scold Not Your Lover

I think Nick's reading my blog. Are you reading my blog, Nick?

Greaaattttt........

I checked the computer cache and found it visited--when I was at work.

Okay, that's right, Nick. I check up on you from time to time. Not in any big way, but just enough to kind of keep a general idea of what's up with you--who you're hanging with, where your head's at. I try to walk a fine line between invading your privacy and knowing what's going on with you. I think, as your mother, I need to have a general shape of where you're at. Since I love you, etc.

So, guess the blog is not anonymous. Which poses an interesting question. When it was anonymous, I felt much more free to write about my experiences with things like sex and herpes and drugs and rock and roll. Now that my kid is reading it, I'm kind of constrained. Hmmm....maybe you feel the same sort of responsibility towards me that I feel towards you. I'm sorry I've made you into sort of a parent, baby. I was the parent in my household and it sucked. It really screwed up my relationships with the opposite sex. A little. For a little while.

Okay, maybe not so much.

My dad wrote poetry--published. And it was all about sex. I found it when I was about your age, Nick, and it was just yucky. Blechhh. I mean, I guess it was good poetry, but sex + parents =ick. Acck! Think about that, Nick. Granddad. Your espresso swilling, junk hoarding, tweedy old granddad, writing things comparing women's snow white asses to running deer--that sort of thing. Aackkk!

Aackkk!

Jay and I almost broke up two nights ago. I showed my dark side.

About two years ago, he went on this float trip and these two people went with him--both were cancer survivors. One was a woman going through chemotherapy. She made a pass at him which he says he didn't accept. She was vulnerable and felt undesirable (her husband had left her with her two children when she got sick--asshole!)and they were sitting on the riverbank in the moonlight, that sort of thing....

I've met her a few times since then. She's gone into remission now and her hair has grown back, and let me tell you....she is the most beautiful, radiant thing around. Christ. She's gorgeous, a luminous woman. Hooray, luminous woman, I'm glad you're alive and you beat it, yadada. Quit hitting on my fucking guy.

So we're at a river relief party in this little town by the river on Saturday night. It's a beautiful summer night. Racing Dave grabs me the minute we walk up and starts waltzing me around. I like Racing Dave in this weird way. I find him strangely compelling...but that's another story. He's drunk. Everyone's a little drunk. I'm a little drunk--one glass of wine--but I worked 14 hours. Didn't mean to. We don't have a unit attendant and I decided to leave through back door in the utility room--where I found Wiz, surrounded by this mountain of stuff. Cleaning it.

"What are you doing?"

"Cleaning the equipment, of course."

It dawns on me. "You've been staying every night to clean the equipment?"

"Every night."

So I pick up a rag and start scrubbing, of course.

"You could have asked for help."

"I don't need help."

"How late do you stay?"

"Doesn't matter. Don't stay. Go home."

"Okay," I say, and keep scrubbing. We got everything done in an hour.

Wiz, man. He needs to learn how to ask. His world would be a kinder place if he knew it was okay to ask for help.

So I get out there late. And I'm dancing. And Jay is talking to Beautiful Cancer Woman. We finish and I walk over and he introduces us.

"Haley, this is Pat."

"We've met, actually. I know all about you." I say, cattily.

Jay looks at me like I've just taken a poop on the sidewalk.

I feel immediately awful and try to backpeddle. "All about you--especially the crack dealing."

After an initial sort of shocked and hurt look she gamely joins in--"no," she corrects me, "just pot."

"Oh, well that's too bad. I was looking for a connection. You must have read that Good Housekeeping article--the one about turning your hobbie into a business"

"That's the one!"

"good for you--I'm just trying to figure out an angle on human sacrifice...haha..." Jesus, I felt like a creep.

Drunken Racing Dave pats my hair. "You have beautiful hair," he says dreamily.

"Okay," Jay says, "gotta go!"

Walking the car...."What kind of crap was that? What did you say that for? That really bothers me."

"You know," I reply, probably the wrong way, "I don't really care whether that bothers you or not. "

"She has cancer for christ's sake!"

"We're all going to have cancer. Big fucking deal."

"You're a vicious person." he tells me. "You're a vicious, jealous woman. This is why I never take you out with my friends."

"Is that the reason? I thought it was so you could keep your options open and no one would know you have a girlfriend."

And so on. I got to hear the litany. "Here's what I hate about you..."

1) I'm mean.

2) I'm obsessed with social class.

3) I have medeival expectations of how men are supposed to treat women.

4) I don't think like him. I don't think like other people. And because of this, he will never marry me. If he married me, he would just become my errand boy.

5) I work too much. I work weekends.

6) I'm jealous of other women. For example, he wants to have his ex girlfriend, a beautiful french expatriot rock-climbing artist (okay, she's not really that beautiful--but she's very muscular and very talented) and her niece out to the farm, but he feels that it would be awkward to have me around as well, given his past with her. And I mind this. So I'm crazy and jealous.

Hours of this.

But at the bottom of all of it...I heard a lonely, lonely man who has burned many of his bridges and is looking for someone, anyone to blame but himself.

Yeah, I'm jealous, but I think I'm pretty typical. The intense relationships he has with his exes bother me. But I have intense relationships with my exes--they just happen to be in different states.

And I am obsessed with social class--but not in a really judgmental or exclusionary way. I just think that American culture is much more stratified than we realize and that many so called political issues are really class issues. I think we all labor under this fantasy that America is classless, and I think that's to our detriment if we want to move forward as a people. I think the race issue is just a little bleep when you compare it to the class issue--in fact, I think the race issue is part of the bigger class issue. I would never personally exclude someone based on social class. And the proof in the pudding is my strong enduring friendships with people from all walks of life--all through my life. I make friends with souls. But, yeah, I think about it a lot and talk about it a lot and I don't think Jay is really smart or subtle enough to get the difference between my interest in it vs. making judgments based on it.

I think if I drive 20 minutes out to your house and fuck you, then get up ass early in the morning to go to my job as a trauma nurse, yes, fuck yes, you should get up and walk me to the FUCKING DOOR. Not medeival. And if it is, so FUCKING WHAT!

I don't think like him. I mainly think about other people. And how they're feeling. Except on some occasions--like when I've had too much white wine and I'm dealing with someone who's made a pass at my boyfriend. Then I'm an animal. I also think about how to be of significant service to the world. That is right. I do not think like him.

I work too much. I work weekends. True. So do something. Move in with me. Split my mortgage. I've raised two kids without child support. I've sent them to private schools. I'm sorry I work too much, but I don't see another option. There isn't one at this point. You do the best you can for your children. Period. Everything in your capability. You only get one shot. I think what he really hates about this is that he hasn't put as much on the line for his kids as I have for mine. He hasn't made the sacrifices. His past 15 years were about his ex, Hali, not about his children. And they should have been about his children. His poor children. My investment with my kids shames him.

Well...what do you do?

He left me a message the next day apologizing for saying mean things. I restrained myself for the most part, apologizing for being catty (and apologizing and apologizing). I did criticize his tendency to give his dogs people names(like Mike and Annie....I hate that. My grandmother did that. She named her border collie Haley. Who does that? Weirdos.)

I guess we try to figure it out.

"scold not your Lover," Rumi says.

One hour on this. Guess I was lit!

Gifts

I only have a few minutes today. I finally got my computer out of the computer ICU--$240! New keyboard, disk drive, lalalala. 12 hours later...the mouse froze. Back it went. So no computer. Just the library--and I can only use this one for an hour--and I have 14 minutes left, having spent the last 46 minutes filling out financial aid forms and answering emails and paying bills online.

Our library here in Little Dixie is really quite the thing. At first I hated it, but now I love it. But in my heart is still the old library. When I go to the library, or make a plan to go to the library, for some reason, that library is still the one I expect to walk into. I'm always surprised when I walk into this, past the flame colored metal sculptures depicting Don Quixote, into the round foyer--I'm always surprised. I have the old building memorized, and it's there I wander. When I think about a book I want, I always think I know where it is, then I come in here and stop..."Oh, that's right. That building isn't here anymore."

That must happen to old people a lot. They just walk around in a completely different world then we do. Ghosts do too, probably.

I mean, I even have the rubbed out formica of the counters at the old one internalized.

Sometimes, at night, I lie in bed and think about my grandfather's living room. It seems so real to me. I wander through, smell the old wool carpet, the placid pale blue velvet furniture, the quiet gleaming tables. The pictures of venice my grandmother painted in her oil class in college in small gold frames. The other ancient dark oil paintings--you could see a cow in one of them. That was about it. I'm always 4 in this living room. I'm always up before everyone else, trying to get onto the patio to catch lizards.

Much of the furniture from that house is shrouded in my garage now. But the living loving space they created is still in my heart, there for me to wander through.

I found out later about the dramas and petty betrayals--when I was an adult and could better understand ambiguity.

But these gifts I always have. These gifts are ours to give, as well. Remember to accept the simple things from people. Remember to give them too.

the Cave

Just finished sitting.

Something different happened.

How to describe it?

When thoughts arise, according to Pema Chodron's advice, I look at them for a second, label them "thinking" and go back to my breathing. Lovely.

You miss so much beauty when you are hallucinating on your own dramas.

So, today, I'm sitting in the peace room--which Nick has taken over as his pad this summer. So now there is a Wii and a television set, as well as his 600 page sci fi novel that he's been working on since 2nd grade. At the last minute, right before we were due to fly off to his dad's, our state supreme court called Nick to interview for an internship he had applied for in February. Talk about timing. He got it. So he's with me all summer. He cut his hair and trundles off to the capitol every day. He's doing a lot of xeroxing and making minimum wage. It's his first job. "Mom," he says, "Do you realize that by the end of the summer I will have earned one THOUSAND dollars?"

I didn't have the heart to tell him about social security.

Anyways, the basement has sort of evolved into his pad. We're leading this sort of parallel existence. No living with Jay, as I usually do. I miss that, but the time with my son's pretty precious. And he'll be off in adulthood soon enough. Sniff.

So today, I'm sitting, and breathing, and all the sudden it felt like the top of my head had come off. You know those images showing a big light coming out of someone's skull? That's what it felt like. I felt suddenly that nothing I understood about the self was accurate. I felt that my skull was a cave of horrors, ego demons, and that all the sudden the rock rolled away and I was free. I felt this stab of sorrow, that we're all so locked in, and that it isn't really true--that we're all just part of something immensely bigger. I felt the world all around, above behind below front--then I thought--Wow--this is fantastic--and started getting caught up thinking about my romantic dramas.

Whenever I have a transcendental experience like that in sitting, my ego seems to reassert itself in really crappy ways that day--it's like it wages a war--"remember me? remember me?" and the biggest weapon it uses against me is my sense of self-righteousness. The "it's not fair!" response--"I'm not getting my due" I happen to be particularly vulnerable to this trap because of the domestic abuse I suffered through in my twenties. I swore I would never let that happen again--so I'm hyper vigilant. But it still happens. I'm terrified of getting screwed--and as a result I get screwed all the time.

So the minute I got off the cushion, I get this urge to check Jay's email. But that makes my day about Jay, and his lying is his business--it's his cave of horrors, not mine. He's not being straightforward about something--I can feel it. I don't think it's anything horrendous--but it's probably something I wouldn't agree with or like. Some bit of guilt. If I do anything, it will somehow be blamed on me--so I'm just letting him stew in his own juices. My duty is to be as happy as I can. I'm sure I'll find out everything I need to know. Checking up on him is demeaning, I've decided. He told me he was going to his parents Sunday night, but as I was riding home on my bicycle on the empty Sunday summer streets from work, he passed me in his car. Then, yesterday morning, he called.

"How are your folks?" I asked, knowing full well he hadn't gone.

"I didn't go...I just didn't feel well. I didn't call you because I knew you'd feel torn about leaving Nick by himself and coming out...so I didn't want to put you in that position."

What a load of crap. Oh well. Not my problem. I imagine with that big weeping sore on his penis he didn't get much action. He'll figure it out.

When someone is having a relationship with you--only it seems as if the "you" they've made is a complete fiction--the only cure is to step away, I think.

Sometimes, I am very, very lonely.

That's my 1/2 hour.