Differences

The kids got back last night at 8. Jay got back at 6. We went shopping, briefly. Jay found about 6 books he liked and kept standing next to them saying, "hint, hint" I found 3 presents for other people. This is the difference between us: when we go shopping together, I look for things to give other people and Jay looks for things he wishes other people would give him.
Grrrr.
Then we went to Macaroni Grill and had a glass of wine. I felt wonderful yesterday. Mark put me off on call--"I figured you were still feeling under the weather, even though you hadn't called in"--so I stayed home and recuperated all day--drank nothing but fresh vegetable juices and spring water--did yoga in the afternoon and, finally, when the sun went down, had a little bit of scrambled egg and some organic bread from our local bakery. I felt so good. I even felt happy and in a good mood. My best frame of mind usually is this: "I'm not screwing up. I've done everything I was supposed to do today." And that's about as good as it ever gets. I rarely get beyond that. But yesterday, I really did. For about an hour.
When I was so sick at work on Friday, Wiz said, "One good thing about being sick is that you stop caring about what everyone thinks about you. You're just like..so what. Screw it."
I thought about that for a moment. I was sitting at the unit clerk's desk waiting for a physician to return my page. "I'm never like that, Wiz. I never stop being self conscious. Only one time in high school, when a mirror fell off the wall in the bathroom and gashed my arm--I was actually spurting blood--that's the only time in my life when I can remember not being self conscious. Isn't that awful?"
"Not at all. I wish I had that kind of self discipline and self awareness. You must have worked hard for it, don't curse it."
In my life, I had never looked at it that way. But it's true.
I asked for it. I got it.
I really did...ask for it.
I used to go to this religious summer camp in North Carolina when I was a kid, and the priest who ran it taught us one summer about breath prayers and meditation. You picked a mantra, one specific request, in 7 words or less, and you were to sit silently and repeat it for 5-30 minutes a day for the rest of the year. Mine was: "Oh lord make me aware." I guess it was granted. Until that minute with Wiz after throwing up in the trash can, I had always seen my discomfort as coming from me, something I needed to fix, but it's really just the pricking up of my ears to what's going on around me--and that's almost never comfortable.
So Jay and I had our glass of wine. I had Riesling. It was fresh and sweet and we broke apart the delicious hot bread they serve there. That's a good chain. I never eat at chain restaurants, but Macaroni Grill is a good thing to spread around the universe, I think.
"So, " he asks me casually, "what do you think precipated your little emotional upheaval yesterday?"
Hmmmm....I think....what could I say? Possible (I just forgot how to spell this word, I think.) answers...

• You spend all your free time with your married, cuckholding, narcissistic personality disordered bra-less, hairy arm-pitted ex girlfriend's child--who is, admittedly, very winsome, but who nonetheless is being used by her mother to keep you in thrall and away from real intimacy you might create with someone else..i.e. me.
• I'm 41 and my children are growing up and pretty much ignoring me
• I've got an ivy league education that seems to only have informed my taste in the novels I choose to read on my days off from my blue-collar job
• You don't have any photos of me anywhere in the house
• You never say I love you except accidentally and then you always change it..as in "I love you....uh....when you're naked!"
• you bought me a fleece for my birthday

But I say instead, "I don't know....just blue...November....you know..."

"Isn't it about time for your...um....I know you hate it when I think this...you know your...special time?"

"Oh, yeah--you're right. I forgot."

"I thought that might be it."

That's my 1/2 hour.

Pebbles

Didn't sleep very well last night. Pebbles, the cat, decided she wanted to communicate with me. She does this by jumping on the bed and standing very close to your face while you're sleeping. Then she reaches out with one clawed toe and touches you on the cheek.
You swipe her away in your doze, thinking it's a bug.
Then she does it again, harder.
She keeps patting, gradually increasing the sharpness of the touch until you wake up.
"What the hell is it?"
Then she sits, staring at you with her black eyes."Meow."
"What do you want?"
"Meow."
She wanted under the quilt.
Sometimes she wants to go outside. Sometimes she wants food. Sometimes she just wants me to know she thinks I should be up by now, damn it.
Pebbles is a calico--all calicos are insane. She's very tiny and fat, and her coloring sort of peek-a-boos on her face, leaving it and her paws white. She's roughly the size and shape of a soccer ball. She's almost completely round.
Pebbles has issues. Xavier wasn't very nice to her when she was a kitten: he threw her against the wall a couple of times. To be fair, he was in the throws of his eventual complete break from reality as you and I know it, but try explaining that to a cat. For years she bit us every time we tried to pet her. She formed a relationship with Nick's green grinch slippers and slept inside them. When she got too big for the slippers, she adopted Lilly's stuffed tiger and pretended it was her mother, even sucking the fur into imaginary nipples.
Nick is the one who fixed Pebbles. He worked on her month after month, year after year. He realized, for example, that she would let you pet her if you used the back of your hand, and only very lightly. He fed her turkey baby food. He magically got her to stop pooping and peeing all over the house. Now she is almost a normal cat
Almost.
She still will crouch in the hallway some mornings and for no reason hiss and spit at everyone who goes by. If you ask her what's wrong, she will stare at you malevolently and snarl. When you open the door for her to go out, she will hiss and spit all the way out the door, running down the street as if you were chasing her with a flaming broom.
She also likes to tempt fate. She will lie in the middle of our street on her back with her paws in the air. She will not move, even when a car comes. The car usually has to come to a complete stop and honk. Then, and only then, will she roll over, very slowly, and stalk out of the way. Sometimes she will start to leave the road, then change her mind and walk back the other way. Sometimes she will not bother to get out of the way at all, but will merely roll over, look at the car and hiss at it. Then I usually have to come out of the house, pick her up, apologize to the driver and take her inside
Abuse does terrible things to people, even cat people.
What she is saying is, "I used to be pushed around, but you can't push me around any more! Even you, you big stupid car."
Abuse changes your perspective on everything. It makes you see threats that really aren't there, and it makes you underestimate and defy the threats that really are there. It screws up your gauges. Great way to ruin a personality.
Jay called last night. "Are you okay? Are you feeling better about everything?"
Yes. It helped that my ex fiance from college called. He recently was fired from NASA. He's an astrophysicist. Now he's trying, unsuccessfully, to make a living selling solar panels. It put things in perspective. We never really let go of the people we love. It doesn't mean we can't move on. It's not like he has the picture album out on the table. I went looking for it. I'm like Pebbles, crouching in the hallway, hissing at phantoms. So what if I'm like Hali. (She spells her name a little differently then I do). Jay's not so different from other men I've dated. Roughly the same social class, education, excels at a sport (weirdly, everyone I've ever dated is some sort of a jock, even though I'm a confirmed nerd) Yoga-ing, singing, rock climbing hippie chicks are a dime a dozen. I play the violin, so I do have some actual hard-earned skill--if you're attracted to one girl of summer, you're probably attracted to another. Our families have both been in Crockett County for generations--we probably even share genetic material. We have a mutual friend who told me "she's the earth side of your air coin."
It's hard to trust, you know? You're fresher and sweeter when you're young, you're more open and more vulnerable. I feel like I have so many shells, so many outer layers of protection, I will never be sweet and warm again.
But I am sweet and warm sometimes. Just like Pebbles. It's a gradual thing.
At least I'm not hanging out in the middle of the road.

That's my 1/2 hour. 29 minutes, actually. My kids finally called me. Turds. "I'm sorry," they said, "we just got caught up in stuff."

Crumbling

I got sick.
Sort of sick.
And with it came all the crumbling hopelessness of sickness. I'm such a terrible patient.
Just a 24 hour thing people always say. But when you're in the middle of it, it's terrible. I went home early from work, which is the first time I've ever done that. But after throwing up 4 times, once in a patient's room, I decided not to be an idiot machita and just call it a day. My poor orientee. Abandoned. I lurched back to Jay's house, crawled into bed and shivered for the rest of the night. As a final coup de grace, at 3am, I shat myself. I made it to the bathroom almost in time, but my underpants were a mess. Fortunately it was all lovely watery mucousy stuff. I hid my underpants like a little kid. I'm not sure how hardy Jay is in the face of some of the grosser realities of life. Maybe I'm underestimating him. How horrible. I hope my patients aren't aware when they do this. I hope they don't feel this terrible sense of shame. My patient yesterday had alzheimers, and he did the same thing to himself while we were standing him up to transfer him to the wheelchair. I didn't feel very patient with him, and when he pooped, I vomited. I couldn't make it to the trash can, because I was holding him up, so I just kept it in my mouth. My orientee, a beautiful african american woman my age, hailing, of all places, from South Beach, chose that moment to ask me a question.
"Mmph mmmph mmmh" I reply
"Oh, no."
We got him back onto the bed, I quickly let loose into the trash can. Then we cleaned him up.
"You need to go home."
"I know."
"do you think that he saw that?" My orientee, Lela asks.
"I hope not, but since he's been mistaking you for Sharon all day, I think we're safe in thinking he won't take it to heart." Sharon is a white, 300 pound nurse on our staff about a foot shorter and a decade older than Lela.
"that's true. "
At Jay's, we watched Family Man. Jay cried, and I wondered if he would love me more if I looked like Tea Leoni. Then I threw up.
My fever broke in the morning and I woke up drenched in sweat, but feeling a lot better. Jay took off in the morning to go down to visit his kids. They live about 3 hours south of us. They're older--20 and 21--and things are a little strange and sad. Jay's daughter tried to kill herself last year. She was hospitalized for awhile, and now she's out and living on her own. But her behavior is still erratic and contact with her is always iffy. I've met his son, but not his daughter.
To be fair, he was really nice to me last night.
And then, after he left, I did something really stupid. I went through his photo album. It's not like it's hidden. But it got me upset. There are all these pictures of his ex--I guess it makes sense--I mean, they were together 15 years. Of course the photo album contains lots of pictures of her. But there was a card tucked in it with a picture of him with her new daughter and it said "I couldn't do it without you--and I wouldn't want to. Love, Us."
Fuck you.
And I just sat in that dirty bleak little house out there in the middle of the fields and I looked out at the grey november day and thought, why am I here? why am I giving time to this? I'm a ghost in this place, in this relationship. I don't get three dimensions. He doesn't even have any pictures of me in the house. He finally took down her picture in the bedroom last year. I'm a replacement. I'm as close a replacement to this woman as he could possibly find--with a few little improvements: I'm younger, truer, better educated, have family money and stable employment. We even have the same first name, for heavens sake. He's even making me into a climber. I just cried and cried.
Then I flipped a coin. Call him and yell? Heads yes, tails no. Heads.
Called him.
"Hey, baby, what's wrong."
"Nothing."
"Are you okay?"
"I'm a ghost," I wheeze incoherently,"I'm just a ghost,"
"Oh, baby, is this anything we can't leave til Sunday night to deal with?"
Asshole.
Well, obviously I can't tell him I've been snooping through his photo album and have decided that he doesn't really love me.
"I miss my kids." Which is true. The little bastards didn't even call me. "It's lonely out here."
"Don't I know it. It's terrible out there alone. They'll be back soon, honey, I know the holidays are hard on you, but remember you get their lives. You're just feeling bad, sweetie. It'll get better."
I got off the phone quickly hoping I hadn't dumped too much psycho energy on him. As most women go, I am not of the psycho variety. I am only rarely emotional. Usually after something like labor, or being up all night with a fever and throwing up for 24 hours and shitting on myself. So, you know.
Man. How did I get here? Choice by choice.
That's my 1/2 hour.
I'm sorry. Forgive me. I love you. Thank you.

The River Rock

My shoulder hurts, left one, at the base of my neck. It's from belaying. Jay and I went climbing yesterday on the bluffs by the river.
I like myself when I'm climbing more than I do at any other time ever. Except maybe when I'm windsurfing. I like climbing more than I like sex.
The weather held again yesterday, beautiful and balmy. We rode our bikes 10 miles down the gravel river road to the bluffs, hardly saw anyone at all. No one but a very beautiful older woman with short, glossy brown hair in a pink and orange harlequin patterned one piece running outfit. "Hello," she said to Jay, in a faintly russian accented voice as she passed. Women are shameless. Women always flirt with men I date, right in front of me, as if I'm not even there. I think it's because I'm sort of mousy looking and I always end up dating these adonises. I mean, I'm not bad. I'm in good physical shape (a little squishy around the belly thanks to Nick and Lilly--but I'm skinny and squishy, if you know what I mean) and I'm well-groomed, but that's about it. I don't consciously choose gorgeous guys, I just think maybe gorgeous guys aren't necessarily looking for gorgeous women.
So we get to the bluffs. Jay put up most of these routes. He knows them like the back of his hand. "This is my favorite place in the world." he tells me. He's told me this before. It's funny, because it's always been one of my favorite places too. I used to come here all the time on my own, before I knew Jay, before I knew climbers liked to climb these places. The John Crows like this section of the bluffs and the Indians used to call this part of the river the great mother, and they thought that this particular section of bluff was the place from whence all creation had sprung. I used to sit at the top of the bluffs and the John Crows (vultures) would come flapping next to me, and I would think about my friend, Chet Alexander and how he said that these birds were the most noble of all the animals, because they didn't waste. So it's funny that it's one of Jay's favorite places, too.
He picks out a nice easy route--a little 5.6, which is right within my range. I'm not very good yet. He wants to work on my belaying, because he doesn't feel very secure with me on the ground. There's this technique, where you sort of fold your arms up together, pinch off with your left hand and slide down with your right. And I can't get it. I get hopelessly confused. There's another way I think would work, but he's adamant that I not do it any other way, so we've been arguing about it. I'm left handed, though, and I keep getting confused. Finally, I just say, "would you please just let me try it my way? I think it's basically the same thing, but left handed." So he does, and lo and behond, it works. I'm belaying smoothly. Although it looks all wrong. He takes a small practice fall, to see if I can hold him, and that's the last we speak of it for the rest of the afternoon.
He leads. He's so beautiful when he climbs. I don't know how to express this. I just want to munch on him. His legs look so good when he's up there, like a dancer, and he just looks absolutely in his element. It's like watching a seal or an otter. It's a little harder than he remembered. I watch how he goes up, but I never watch him too closely, because I can always find my own weird way up something. "Hmmmm.....I never thought about doing it that way," he'll say. Besides, he's about a foot taller and 70 pounds heavier, so what works for him physically will not work for me.
Then it's my turn. I'm seconding for the first time, which means I'm removing the carbiners--and I know any climbers reading this will probably correct my vocab--I don't have the jargon down at all, in spite of hearing about it night and day for the past 2 years. After climbing for the first time last thanksgiving, I spent last year working on my upper body strength, and I have to say there's a lot of improvement from last year. I can trust my arms a lot more, something I've never been able to do in my life til now. It's a little unnerving removing the safeties and clipping them to my belt. And I'm doing okay until about 3 feet from the top, when all the sudden, I can't think of what to do next, and I temporarily panic. It's funny how suddenly this comes on. I'm just humming along--phht, phht, phht, like a little monkey and then all the sudden I'm like, "holy crap." it's like I come to 60 feet above the ground on the side of a bluff. I'm terrified. I want to pee myself. The rock seems absolutely smooth, unforgiving, offering no quarter. I suddenly don't trust anything about my body--my feet, my legs. Do you remember Watership Down and how the animals go "tharn" when confronted by danger? That's where I am on this rock. Tharn. Jay knows this. I can feel the rope, loose til now, not even noticed, tighten.
"You can come down, if you want." He says.
Ah. Saved once again by my inner "fuck you"
"no, I'm good," I say casually. I start humming, which is what I do at the hospital during traumas and I'm panicking and I run my hands over the surface of the rock, up and down. And I find a surprise. The rock only looks smooth. Below my waste, where I wasn't even looking or reaching for, I find a tiny little ridge, maybe 1/2 an inch out, sort of lipped over. It was hiding from me, I'm able to grab it with both hands, hold myself in close to the rock and inch to my left, where i'm able to find a foot hold and a friendlier hand hold above me.
"Nice!" Jay calls from the bottom.
So, grasshoppers all, keep going. There's always a hold somewhere.
That's my 1/2 hour.

Regular Happy Day

Here we go. No kids for 7 days. I don't know what to do with myself. I'm sitting in the basement blogging and eating cheezits, the new "Cheddar Jack" kind. Lilly was home yesterday. We had a good day--we all went to Ernie's at 6:30 in the morning, drove Nick to school, went to the library, went to yoga. Then we went out to the local state park and hiked around in the woods, which was really beautiful. We split a chocolate malt afterwards, picked up Nick from school and went to get his glasses fitted. $240.37 for glasses. It was so beautiful and warm that we put the top down on the convertible. It's really lovely driving on these small country roads, with the leaves blowing into the car and the wonderful grassy smells of fall all around. Just a perfect day.
"Oh my god--" Nick says, "I can see individual leaves on the trees!" He was twisting his neck around, staring at things, really entranced, reading signs out loud.
I felt really guilty. For some reason, I haven't taken Nick seriously when he complains about his eyesight. I mean, his grades are pretty good and he reads all the time and doesn't seem to have any trouble playing video games, etc. Finally, at the drivers license bureau, when he was taking the visual test and kept getting everything wrong, I decided that maybe there was something to it. Nick, to be fair, can be somewhat of a hypochondriac. But guess what--he really does have eyesight problems. Oh well, better late than never.
They took off in the afternoon. I really worry about them being on the road. I think it would be safer in a plane, but my folks, who write all the checks, refuse. And I certainly don't have extra money for tickets.
After they left I went to a staff meeting at work (it's kind of a pain in the ass that you never really get a day off from the hospital--there always seems to be a reason to have to drop in)--'just an hour' but it kind of screws up your whole day, you know? I mean, you have to dress up and say the right things to the right people and I don't know about you, but I need like 24 hours at a time when I can just retreat into my schleppy myself, you know--not worry about stray chin hairs and ragged fingernails or matching socks and ironing things. This is probably why I'm not married....
The meeting only lasted an hour, but it was still a pain in the ass. I made innocuous conversation about my dog, bought everybody chocolate. Argh.
Then I went out to the farm. Jay's back from a hunting trip, and he looked pretty rough. He's filming a hunting show for tv now--he didn't actually hunt. "animal snuff films" he calls them. But he had a good time on this one, I think. We fell asleep at 9. Then we woke up about 3 hours later and made love.
"Wake up," Jay said, "the moon's up."
And it was, filling the room with magic light. You could have read by it. So we tried to live up to it. Tonksie, my little injured dog was in bed with us, because I didn't want to leave her alone at my house, and in the middle of all the action, she decided she was being left out, so she engaged in some surprise strategic licking, which made Jay yelp and me almost fall off the bed laughing-but it all turned out okay. With a happy ending, as they say in the biz.

And that's my 1/2 hour.

Call

Oh, magic--I got called off yesterday. It's the kids' last day in town--they're going to their father's for thanksgiving. My parents are driving them. I don't understand why we can't just put them on a plane, but my parents are terrified of planes. The kids are getting really tired of driving to Florida every holiday, especially since my mother's a little hard to deal with. I mean, really hard to deal with--constantly angry and critical. This endless litany of wrongdoing. One time I taperecorded her, just to prove to myself that it really was that way. She once talked an hour and a half, just this rant against me, without interruption. My ex husband, used to do that. I think it's a form of abuse--I see the tendency in Nick, sometimes, and it really scares me. We've worked with him a lot on his temper. He now takes a walk when he starts yelling. I don't do that--I don't go on and on. I'll discuss something, but I keep it short. Hammering somebody doesn't ever help, it just makes them want to chew off their own paw to get out of the cage.
So yesterday went beautifully slowly. The weather is really good--almost balmy--and the leaves are still on the trees--it's the most beautiful fall I can remember. Lilly had spent the night with her friend, Samantha. Samantha's family is like ours--a little dysfunctional, messy, intellectual, kind. Her dad, George, used to be a nurse, but he had a nervous breakdown and now he stays at home with the kids, puttering around the house, playing his guitar and undertaking really strange home improvement projects. (the latest: 8 foot tall copper poles circling the house--something to do with keeping the house safe from lightning--he's decided their house is at high risk for being struck by lightning). His wife, Nan, is a dentist, and she just takes it all in stride. But he's fun to talk to, if a little bleak. I picked Lilly up and hung out a little bit playing guitar in their living room. Then we went home. Nick was marching in the holiday parade, so we drove him out to the school to get his uniform, then we went into town for lunch. He refused to get out of the car. "I look ridiculous." So Lilly and I went into the bakery to grab him something. Then, as we were scooting around to the parade drop-off, Nick says,
"um, we have to go home."
"Why?"
"I forgot something."
"What did you forget?"
"Just something."
"Well, if it's no big deal, you can just deal with it."
"It's a big deal."
"What did you forget?"
"Just take me home, okay?"
"No."
"Okay. My trumpet."
It was so funny, I couldn't even get mad, I just laughed. Of course, the route home was the parade route, which was already completely blocked off, so getting home was interesting. But we made it back.
Nick's band was 19th in the order, so I figured we had a long time to wait for him to appear. Lilly and I went to the coffee shop to kill time. She sat reading Beowulf, and I was reading the ACLS trauma manual. After about 15 minutes, we walked up the street to watch the parade and wait for Nick.
The Holiday Parade in our town is actually kind of low rent. The newer fundamentalist churches all have floats--if you can call them that--and a lot of businesses have representatives wearing santa hats. The skinny peaceniks march, trailing clouds of patchouli and throwing no candy, of course. Then the young republicans and the shriners follow--and they throw lots of candy. And this to me in a nutshell is why the liberal left will never gain any ground in the heartland--because they overlook the basics here--we eat fried chicken and we like candy. I mean, I religiously honk for peace when I drive past them standing on the corner with their signs--they can't spring for tootsie rolls at the holiday parade? What? We're just supposed to envy their skinny fit hairy bodies? And they feel so superior to the rest of us--and it so shows.
Arghh. Enough. So Lilly and I stand for this a little bit--then I think, more than 19 groups have gone by, where's Nick's school? "Where's Greenway?" I ask her. "You think they changed the order?"
"Oh," a woman says, overhearing me, "they changed the order. Greenway went first."
"Crap." Lilly says. "We always do this."
"Don't say crap. It's coarse."
"We're going to have to lie, now." she says.
"We didn't do it for either of the homecoming parades this year." I point out.
"Yeah, I guess we're getting better."
Nick is sitting on the curb by the post office, waiting for us.
"How did you like it?" he asks.,
"You looked great!" we assure him brightly.
He seems satisfied with this.

Herpes

I had a dream last night about Ayhan. It was a very sweet and simple dream: I was walking down the street in the evening in a strange small town somewhere on the coast. It felt like Cape Cod. It was winter, and even though it was early in the evening, it was dark. Suddenly, up ahead of me, I saw someone else walking. As I caught up to them, I realized it was Ayhan. He looked at me, but didn't say anything. We sort of walked together in silence--I guess we were going the same direction--and then I thought, 'this is ridiculous.' so I said, "Hi, how are you?"
and he said, "I don't want to talk to you."
"Don't be silly," I told him. "I just want to know what you're up to." And then we started talking, and I woke up.
"Were you dreaming?" Jay asked me. I mutter a lot in my sleep.
I didn't tell him about the dream. I asked him about his dreams and he launched into a big long story. He always forgets his questions if you get him to talk about himself--it's sort of funny how well it works.
But I started thinking--it's strange that Ayhan and I both live in this small town and know the same people and like the same things, and in almost three years we have not run into each other once since our breakup.
Ayhan was the best boyfriend I have ever had. We went out a long time. But he lied about something essential. I tried to forgive him and get over it, but in the end, I couldn't make a future with him. It was too big of an obstacle. It was sad, because I really cared for him. People thought I was just crazy for breaking up with him--if you met him, you wouldn't be able to imagine a better man. Beautiful. Looked like Armand Asante. People would come up and ask for his autograph. Courtly. Kind. Always remembered birthdays and occasions, always dressed beautifully--Armani suits, linen handkerchiefs, handmade shoes. But he had herpes. He knew it, but he didn't tell me about it, and so, after a few years, I got it, too. Looking back, I see that he tried not to give it to me, but he didn't try hard enough, and, most importantly, he didn't give me any choice about getting it. I should have been smarter, I guess, but we went out a long time, and frankly, when you go out with someone a long time, you relax on some things--like always using a condom.
The funny thing is, if he'd told me, our relationship probably would have slowed down--I would have had to back off and consider whether I wanted to get involved and take the risk--but you know, he was lovely and when you get older, something like herpes isn't really the big deal it would be if you were in your teens or twenties. I would have respected him for being honest, and we probably would still be together.
I didn't realize how awful not telling me was until I met Jay. Jay started out being my friend--I knew him through some other friends--and then, when I realized he was romantically interested in me--I felt absolutely compelled to tell him. We hadn't even kissed. But I didn't even want to lead him on a little bit--I didn't even care for him that much yet, it was just the right human thing to do. In fact, it was impossible not to tell him. How could Ayhan not do the same for me? And of course, he backed off, and I thought I'd lost him, which was really disheartening. But he came back about 6 weeks later. So when I get frustrated with him and start comparing him to Ayhan--which happens sometimes--I just remember my valtrex prescription--and how Jay makes jokes about it but still wants to make love to me anyways--and I feel really grateful. But I always have this little nagging voice that says, "you're icky, you're diseased" and I know that, even though it's not my fault, it's mine to carry always. And that's a horrible thing to give a person, this little daily frisson of shame, and it is unforgivable and intolerable that a potential mate would foist it on you unchosen.
So anyways, back to now, Jay's out deer hunting this weekend, Nick's at a debate tournament, and Lilly and I were on our own, so we went to the Macaroni Grill, which was really okay. Lilly's facing the door and suddenly she says, "Oh my God, guess who walked in!"
"Ayhan." I guessed.
"Aren't you going to turn around and look?"
I thought a moment, thought about my nice dream where we got caught up. "Nope."
And then I put him out of my mind. I mean, I really did. I went back to dinner and enjoyed it and had desert and coffee and focused on Lilly and had a good time.
This probably isn't very buddhist, or christian for that matter, but sometimes, you just have to be very solidly in your own camp, and when someone wrongs you, don't waste another minute on them. Men being stupid men you can get past--erratic phone calling, doing stupid men things, being weird about commitment, etc. But you can't let someone be dishonorable. It hurts you and it hurts them. I hate to sound like a gangster, but that has to be IT. Wiz says, "when someone reveals themselves, believe it."
Believe it. And move on
And that's my 1/2 hour.