A Dating Wasteland

I wonder if my dating karma is horrendously black and malformed...? Maybe that's why I'm trapped in this unknown circle of Dante's Infernal Hell --> Dating in South Florida in the mid-to-late first decade of the 21st century.

Nothing could be more pitiful or discouraging, except maybe being forced to watch episodes of American Idol.

What I've realized is that there is no guarantee that I will ever meet a mate -- in fact, it's statistically probable that I will end up alone for the rest of my life. Because this time I'm not going to settle and, truth be told, I may never meet another man who I am capable of falling in love with (who would also fall in love back). And that reality is a little too overwhelming to bear.

But here's what is amazing about it. I've always been the extremely jealous type, maybe even to a fault. Even jealous of my partners' past partners from long before we were together... Totally irrational and emotionally immature, I know. Certainly not something I've ever been proud of.

But today I sent a truth out to the universe that was fundamentally different -- I said, if there is a man in this world that I can truly connect with (and he connect back to me) my most sincere hope is that he's not alone right now. Even if he's not madly in love or happy beyond his wildest dreams (I mean, that's what meeting me is for, right?), I at least hope that he's not lonely and not feeling the same emptiness I feel right now.

And for once in my life, with no jealousy, suspicion, or negativity, I mean it. I hope in this moment he feels whole, I wouldn't wish what I am feeling on anyone especially not someone I'm destined to love...

Note To Self...

No matter how much you think otherwise, self, the following things are bad for you:

1. Spying on the beta. Stop it! He is not interested in you, stop spying on him.
2. Not getting enough sleep. You can work 16 hour days, but it won't fill the emptiness, so quit it! Get some rest and stop trying to work yourself happy.
3. Eating just enough to get by. This total pendulum shift from super-healthy nutrition girl to woman on the run with no time to notice she hasn't eaten is bull. Start paying attention again, stop slacking on the basics.
4. Saying you're fine. You aren't fine. Stop saying it. Stop saying "fine" in place of the truth.
5. Procrastination. 'nough said.

Get your shit together, girl. The wallowing is getting old.

Failing at My Success

Their were times in my past when I thought the only success would be artistic -- not that I ever thought I would achieve artistic success, because I didn't. What I thought was that the only thing I would ever count as proof of having succeeded was doing well at some artistic endeavor.

It's a long time ago since I've felt that way. Now I measure success with money and responsibility and recognition of talent and business and intelligence and not necessarily sticking it to the man. Don't get me wrong, I think in my own way I still stick it to the man, I just think I play his game, not my rowdy, anarchistic, crazy-ass girl-power game, while doing it.

Today I achieved the highest level of business and professional success I ever have with a promotion at work...one would think after all my hard work and drive and energy and dedication that I would be happy and proud. And I am.

But, moreso, I'm failing at my success, because in this hour of celebration I am stuck feeling empty and missing that damn beta. I like to imagine he would have wanted to see this moment of glory and to have hooted and hollered and drank champagne with me. I imagine it and it stings and burns and makes me sick, because it's not true. He wouldn't have cared. He wouldn't have been joyous. He wouldn't have loved me or been proud. He would have said all the right things, put on a grand smile, then sulked off into the corner when I wasn't looking to go online to talk to his other girlfriend. And I would have been so content and felt so connected to him and to the power of building our lives together. Even in my elation I would have been failing at my success.

So, option 1 -- which is no longer an option -- stay with beta in a phony life where I am hopelessly clueless to the fact that everything I believe is real is a lie. OR. Option 2 -- where I am -- stay with me, all alone and hurt; be proud and successful but not be able to escape the emptiness of what's missing that I never actually had.

I'll say it again for effect -- and because it's true -- I'm failing at my success and it hurts like hell.

Another Dark Tunnel -- Next Stop, Who Knows

There are changes in life that we accurately anticipate the results of (endings we know are coming because of the finality or impermanence of a situation -- graduations, births, etc. -- events where, should all things go as planned, the resulting outcome is easy to qualify and anticipate), but there are other changes that are so open-ended that there is no way to begin to surmise what their final result will be.

In all areas of my life right now, I'm faced with this total, all-out nebulous trajectory of not knowing. Everything is in a state of change and flux and there's no way to anticipate what the results will be. I feel like I'm riding on a train barreling toward the open mouth of dark tunnel with no idea where I'm going to arrive when I come out on the other side.

Notes on the Harsh Truthes of a Non-Dream-Like Vision

"In my dream I was drowning my sorrows
But my sorrows, they learned to swim"

For those familiar with the next lines in the song, this post's for you.

Last night I dreamt the craziest thing. My dreaming mind manifested an anthropomorphized version of The Catholic Church -- in my dream, the Church was a woman, a short nun-like Italian lady who was very, very angry at me. And rather than listen to her accusations, what did I do? I made every rude gesture known to man, flipped her off, gesticulated wildly, uttered foul remarks, did things I wouldn't do in front of my non-Catholic mother, and ultimately spit on her. I spit on an anthropomorphized version of the Catholic Church across a dinner table in a dream. And it felt fucking awesome.

And why? Because last night at dinner -- actually in-reality dinner, not the dinner in my dream -- my real-life Italian father had the nerve to insinuate that his youngest daughter, who up until recently was nearly about to undergo the most beautiful transformation from Whore of Babylon to wedded wife (we're talking about me here), was less than pure. Well, jeez, dad, I did live with a guy for nearly 7 years...

The contempt at which he suggested that I was in the situation I'm in because I "gave away the milk for free" (yes, he actually said it) and that I "gave in" to a man instead of staying on the path of "virtue" made me want to vomit.

Is he for real? I mean, is he for real??? And this on the heels of the guy I've been dating for the past 6 weeks breaking things off, because he was worried that I may want a relationship and he wasn't interested in anything beyond casual.

Newsflash, dumbass, neither was I. Why do you think I was dating you, hot stuff?

Is this really the world we live in? Is it just these Italian men or do men today still think sex is their game and everything else is ours?

Sigh. I'm really at a loss. I wish I could wax poetic about the injustice of this double standard especially in our contemporary world. But I'm actually too shocked to know what to say. All I know is that any man who thinks sex is more important (or less "special") to him than it is to a woman, ought to wake up.

It's not modern times or women's lib, jackasses, it's biology.

And we don't do it for you nor is it something we give to you nor is it something you can scare us away from -- not even my big Italian father can intimidate me into a new-found appreciation for "virtue." What's it going to take for us to prove our sexual power -- spitting on nuns in dreams?

Seems like a pretty feeble vision in an equally feeble reality -- reminds me how stupid men are. And I was just starting to respect them again...

Hiding

I used to pound phrases
out of concrete slabs

away when I lived
under shady trees --

but I gave it all up
to be here tinkering
with you.

And I can't say I'm
better for the wear.

I can't say I'm
much more
than lonely;

but life doesn't
want me to leave,
not even
you.

If I sink down
through the space
of lives clashing
too long
I'll never find
a way to express
even my most
mundane fears.

Like,
I wish I could have
a cup of coffee,
and ease the ache --
get beyond this mess.

But that's not easy
to speak
in this fragile
place.

I should know
we're in trouble
when it takes
two
car trips
around the block
just to
gather the knowledge
to say
"I'm hurt."

Love isn't a blanket

or a wall of hope and trust

it's not much,
really,
compared to loss

except that it lingers
half as close.

Why the Airport Depresses Me

The airport is, admittedly, one of my least favorite places to be. Here's why: it makes me happy.

Okay, how very Goth of me to hate a place that makes me feel pleasure. But, it's true. When I'm at the airport I get a feeling of such comfort and joy and excitement -- all the movement and travel and possibility of it. I feel the same way at train stations. I doubt a bus station would do it for me, however. Though South Station, which is a combo of both, certainly gives me the same warm and fuzzy feeling that any other train station does.

So, I hate airports. Why? Hope. Same theme that's presently floating in and out of my entire existence. Airports are all about becoming -- transference, maybe even transgression -- and crossing over from one space into another, from one existence into another. And at airports, I, unlike the vast majority of the world, fall head over heels in total love with humanity. No sarcasm here, it's true. I look around and I am giddy with love for all the poor schleps and their dumb ass lives and all the ultra chic jet setters and their asinine behavior and over-indulgence. And the yuppie 30-something families chasing after their gap-wearing kids. Seriously. I'm in complete all-out love with every one of them.

So, in other words, I hate airports because they make me feel connected to everything and I'm not connected. I'm lonely. I'm isolated. My life is devoid of direction and meaning. And airports make me feel like other people's aren't (though that's doubtfully true) -- they make me feel like other people have places to go and people that they're traveling with. And, right now, I just have me. Being at the airport today reminded me what it was like when he was here and I had someone to share my life with. And it reinforced all my listless wandering.

I'm a bad flyer -- I can't stop envying everyone else and I'm left feeling nothing but alienation and emptiness.

April Is the Cruelest Hope

"April is the cruelest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain"

For those that didn't see that one coming -- where are you minds? Ever since the day I set the date for my now-canceled wedding, I've had those lines in my head on endless repeat. I knew I should have never picked a date in April -- I knew there was a problem all along. Compound that with the "curse" of my gown, and there was an air of gravity and uncertainty to that entire plan nearly a year and a half ago. Yet, still I marched on. Almost knowingly. Into the pitch-black caverns of a potential hell far worse than the one I had been living in (or the one I'm living in now) and I have only one cruel explanation: Hope.

If April is the cruelest month, which I do believe (and always have) that it is, then it is so by the very virtue of the fact that it elicits hope in people. That being said, hope is the cruelest emotion.

Hope breeds trust in unconfirmed happiness -- it's born of speculation and assumption. There's nothing concrete or real about it, just the dreamer's whimsy of possibility and fantasy of better days, better loves, better chances -- bright, endless future becomings. That and $4 still won't get me my morning latte. Hope is a poser of the most severe and sadistic kind.

Ah, cynicism. So comforting. [I could wax poetic here on the irony that cynicism is no less extreme and unrealistic as hope. How this emotion is an equal but opposite poser. How it breeds trust in unconfirmed loneliness and despair. However, to do so, would reveal the imperfections of my own current justifications, excuses, emotions, and theories, and, truly, why would I want to undermine my own argument?] Cynicism is the great bastion of defense against hope and all its minions: faith, joy, trust, confidence, stupidity.

Cynicism is safe -- especially as April approaches. I find it so reassuring to know that, in the end, I've abandoned these ridiculous notions of eternity for emotions that are encased in more defensive armor. After all, it's a lot easier to feel like a failure when hiding behind a shield of cold indifference than behind a veil of pink tulle and butterflies.

Alone in the Valley

"The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech..."

I wonder if I've ever before felt so far away from anything comforting or felt so alone. The last few days have been filled with my re-living the feeling of total desperation I felt when everything I thought my life was, dissolved into thin air. It's been months since he left, and months since I've felt so low, but here I am wandering alone in the valley and I avoid speech for lack of ears to listen and lack of confidence in myself.

And, do I even have anything worthwhile to say?

I'm heartbroken for everything I thought I had that never existed. And I'm so fearful that I will never find my way out of the darkness and fog of disappointment to something good.

The dichotomy of good and evil, female and male, yin and yang, fair and unjust is so strong in me right now that I feel pulled and drained by this fight. I was left, abandoned and alone by someone I wholly devoted myself and my energies to - by someone I worked so hard to nurture and care for and, though I'm not alone in my pain, loneliness, or rejection, I feel a million miles away from a kindred spirit or even a friendly face.

Reflections on High Fidelity

Back in October, I was one of the lucky few to see the stage musical High Fidelity in Boston, MA. Since then the musical opened and closed on Broadway and apparently was not well accepted at all...which I really can't figure out. I mean, truly, I thought it was the most hysterical show I have seen in my entire life. I don't think I've ever laughed that hard or smiled that much in a theater. The worst part about the show's lack of success is that I will live on with only vague memories of the brilliant music and lyrics -- there will be no original cast recording a la Rent or Wicked, etc., etc., to add to my collection.

Granted that's all a side note to the larger issue at hand, but more than worth a mention considering how brilliant and horribly underrated the show was. Truly, one of the most memorable and enjoyable theater experiences of my life.

What I really aim to address with this post is one of the moments in High Fidelity, the novel, that lingers with me most poignantly despite not making it beyond the page to either of the other incarnations of the story (musical or film)...

At one point, as the main character, Rob, is reflecting on his life he talks about memories of childhood and how he looks back at himself at 8 years old, let's just say, and wishes he could apologize to that kid for what he's done to his life. At 8 he had full potential to go anywhere, be anything, see and do everything imaginable, but at 30+ he's tapped out, tired, stuck in the course of the decisions he's made, and he looks back and feels guilty for fucking it up for that kid who had so much hope.

For someone like me who's always prided herself on having no regrets -- the obvious thought process has always gone something like this: we wouldn't be be where we were if it wasn't for the sum total of everything leading up to that point, so really how can you regret anything (if you're living a good, honest life) if it's gotten you to the point you are presently, and the point you are presently, being the only thing that exists, is all you have (the future not having yet arrived and not being a guarantee and the past already over and impossible to regain...) -- well, being such a person who lives so fervently without regret, it's amazing how much I can empathize with this guilt over what the adult version of the life has become.

Just like Rob I would like to go back in time and apologize to that kid -- the little girl that was me -- because really I've screwed it up. And, maybe, someday I'll look back and say, "Oh, yeah, this cross crosses this t and that dot dots that i and it makes total sense that x came before y, blah, blah, blah" and I'll subscribe some meaning to the course of the events of my life that will make me feel better about why I did what I did or became what I became. But, really, in my heart, I will always know that assigning meaning after the fact is nothing compared to the honest-to-god earth-shatteringly powerful feeling you get when, in any given moment, you are living and doing exactly what you know you should be. And that's not a feeling I have very often. Especially the older I get.

Ostensibly, High Fidelity is about love and romance and relationships (not to mention the more important topic of pop music as the soundtrack of our lives!), and the "fidelity" is an obvious play on words for recorded sound as much as for commitment within relationships...but there's something else in there: Fidelity to oneself. Truth, honesty, and fulfillment to oneself. Sure, Rob may be a complete commitment-phobe who doesn't want to grow up, face responsibility, or settle down with one girl and miss out on all the other fish in the sea -- he's a perpetual beta male of the most attractive and repulsive kind.

But, more than that, Rob is struggling with his lack of fidelity to self. We require our partners to show devotion, care, honesty, and monogamy to us, but we don't really show it to ourselves. It's ironic, actually, that we ask so much more of the other people in our lives than our own selves -- it really doesn't make sense. Because, in the end, if we're alone in our skins, shouldn't our own fidelity mean more than someone else's?

Ultimately, and I know this from the experience of having been betrayed and left and cheated on by someone I deeply trusted and cared for, we are more concerned with how faithful other people are to us than our own faithfulness to ourselves. And that's completely ass backward. But I feel it, even now, I feel how I want my friends and family and those around me to honor me, to be true to me -- I feel so acutely any pain of judgment or criticism from them, how much I want to be cared for and treated with faithful regard. Yet, I disregard myself -- and is this the same as not setting boundaries? This feeling of complete and total unfaithfulness to self?

So, here's my apology to an 8-year-old version of myself -- so pretty and spirited and independent and knowledgeable beyond her years; a girl who, in my feeble capabilities, clearly never had a chance to grow into her full potential -- I'm sorry I put you second and everyone else first. I'm sorry I didn't honor your needs or require more of those around you. I'm sorry I stayed with that beta for 6 1/2 years and didn't question or challenge the emptiness I felt. I'm sorry I didn't hear you. I'm sorry I held you to an impossible standard of strength and emotional distance and that I didn't accept your weaknesses as human and forgivable. I'm sorry I didn't ask for more. I'm sorry I made you give away so much.

In a perfect world, I'd right some of the wrongs. I'd ask for more, give less. Be true to myself, not sacrifice so much. Require something more of myself. But I don't have it in me. And if I do, I'm too scared to let it out. Instead, I'm going to put my head down and keep working and -- quite ignorantly -- hope that my karma is good enough to bring something worthwhile in.

I'm going to continue to look outside myself for validation and fidelity. And, maybe the scariest truth is that I've always dated beta males because I myself relate to them personally in that I, too, am ineffective and weak...

"I'm just a mirror of a mirror myself. All the things that I do. And the next time I fall I'm gonna have to recall it isn't love its only something new..."