Middle Aged and Menopausal

Hostages, Happiness, Hark the Herald Angels

Sun, 13 Dec 2009 22:08:40 -0500

I had the strangest dream last night; when I woke up it was fresh in my mind but as time went on the details disappeared. Suffice it to say, I was at a vacation resort and there was a takeover—kind of like those Russian hostage situations where the terrorists come in and take an entire place with hundreds of people hostage. I managed to sneak out - through a door that had just a turn lock. I was wearing a white suit. Then I made my way to freedom (it wasn’t hard) and then alerted the authorities. The rest of it is forgotten but that’s the essence.

At Mass this morning, the priest’s homily included this: we identify our happiness byt what we want, by what we don’t have.

That got me thinking. And I started to think about it in relation to my friend Carlene and then I realized it applies to me to. (It probably applies to a lot of people.) “If I had X or Y then I’d be happy.” Funny but it’s never about looking at what I have that makes me happy - it’s only about identifying a lack of something or a want of something. Remember that saying - be careful what you wish for, you might get it. But more than that, it’s about (for lack of a better phrase) counting your blessings.

This afternoon I went to a Christmas concert at St. Ignatius Loyola on Park AVenue - lovely church and the music was outstanding; There was a professional chorus, the church’s community chorus and a children’s chorus. All were wonderful. The musicians included brass, the church’s organ, strings—even a harp. Beautiful sound. The program included carols which everyone was invited to sing along with. Here’s the last line of the third stanza of It Came Upon a Midnight Clear: “O hush the noise and cease your strife And hear the angels sing.” That actually made me tear up.

Today was about reconciliation and freedom. Reconciling myself to myself, and reconciling between individuals (can you say Mommy and Me”) and nations.A lot of what I heard was about giving up, letting go, freeing myself — it hit me during the concert that in my hostage dream, I became free. (And my white suit didn’t even get dirty.) It gave me hope that I will be free of the things that I let bind me and hold me back.

After the concert we went to dinner at a charming little French restaurant on East 82nd, Le Refuge.

Sadness

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 22:09:56 -0500

Over Thanksgiving my father’s brother died.

Yesterday my friend Jo called to say her brother, Yves, died and she was en route to San Francisco.

Yesterday my aunt called to say cousin Elaine died.

Today Ana called to say her father died and she’s en route to Puerto Rico.

MOTHER’S LITTLE HELPER. It finally sunk into my head this...

Tue, 08 Dec 2009 05:47:42 -0500

MOTHER’S LITTLE HELPER. It finally sunk into my head this morning that there is NO job that has no sense of responsibility with it. I’m running scared at work because I’m terrified that I left something uot of the bid and we’ll be disqualified and I will get fired. That’s the normal catastrophizing I indulge in.

Everything I do is, in some way, a response to my mother. I don’t want to take on things - no, that’s not true, it’s not about not taking things on, it’s that when I do take things on (or they’re required as part of my job) I live in fear that I will be wrong. I always second guess - and third guess and worry and wonder and live with frear in the pit of my stomach. Sometimes it’s a huge lump of fear that fills me like a solid block of ice - no, not ice, but just filled - like a balloon about to pop; and other times it’s just a small, nagging sensation—kind of a rumble the way one’s stomach gurgles and contracts when it’s hungry - and food soothes and calmes me down. Doesn’t stop me from gorging or soothing myself in that fashion; but I’m aware of why I’m eating.

There are so many reasons I eat - loneliness is one. It’s not always fomantic loneliness either, it’s familial - that’s why Sundays are so hard for me. What will I do on Sundays when my parents are gone?

Responsibility. I didlike it because it means whatever I do is going to get me in trouble. Laura (my therapist) had an idea that perhaps subconsciously I screw up so I can provoke the rageful response and then get it out of the way - until the pressure builds up and I have to screw up again to get the rageful response. Instaed of waiting for the dam to burst, I poke a hole in it - sort of being in control. She said this several weeks back but only today as I write this can I articulate and understand what she said.

So I provoke the rageful response. I guess it means I don’t trust myself or have confidence in what I am and in what I do. Which is fully - this whole undermining myself - because when I start something, like a project at work, I have (at the outset) very little doubt as to my ability to do the job and to do it right. I don’t get beset by my fears until it’s well under way, or like the bid last week, at completion. Because at the end, I’ve done the work and now I’m free to worry that it’s wrong or bad or just not enough and so will get into trouble.

Ah yes, the joys and repercussions of having been scared shitless as a child.

Back in the early 60s the Rolling Stones had a hit “Mother’s Little Helper”. It came out when I was 8 and I understood exactly what that song meant. I couldn’t (and didn’t articulate it to myself at the time) but I understood that a mother needed a little yellow pill to get through the day. I used to wish my mother had a little yellow pill of her own.

It would appear that the “Christian” spirit lives on...

Mon, 07 Dec 2009 21:30:28 -0500

It would appear that the “Christian” spirit lives on at Sayville United Methodist Church.

tiffany: I got this letter today. I’ve been voted out of church because I haven’t attended in 8 years. Merry Christmas to all!

Conversion

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 22:25:49 -0500

Anyone know a good free site that I can download a utility to convert .mp4 to mp3?

GOOD GRAVY I skipped Hamlet and took my parents to my...

Sun, 29 Nov 2009 20:35:50 -0500

GOOD GRAVY I skipped Hamlet and took my parents to my uncle’s wake. It’s tough to watch your 83-year old father cry. Saw a bunch of relatives and family friends I haven’t seen in a while (since the last wake). My mother was on good behavior - which I was kind of surprised. We didn’t stay for the entire afternoon visit - Dad wanted to leave before the crowds did. So we came back to the Island and had dinner and I got home about 7pm.

Carlene’s husband couldn’t make the play today either so we had 2 tickets to get rid of; I gave them to a friend’s mother; Carlene said the play was great and that the 2 women who took the tickets really had a great time. (Between you and me, I’m not really too sorry I missed it.)

Yesterday I actually made a really good gravy. I think the secret is that this time I used fresh garlic instead of the jarred chopped garlic. I also ran the tomatos through the blender so that they were less than smooth but not chunky. I’m please. I was so pleased that I took a couple of pork chops out of the freezer and defrosted them and fried them so I could throw them in the gravy to flavor the gravy and get really well soaked. Um, no. They were lamb chops. Oh well oh well

singulus: ” There’s No Place Like Home. ” The Approach To New...

Sun, 29 Nov 2009 05:18:13 -0500

singulus:

” There’s No Place Like Home. ” The Approach To New York City by Air …

Our Thanks To Marco Arment ♥

Here’s a shitty photo of an airplane wing, shot through a dirty, scratched window with a point-and-shoot digital camera. You’ve seen a million of these before.

It’s also an amateur aerial photo of New York City. Jamaica Bay, specifically, during a typical descent into JFK. I think that’s Rockaway Park in the bottom-right. You’ve definitely seen a million of these before.

Fortunately, I’m not posting it for its photographic or artistic value.

I’m posting it because this view makes me happy every time, and I always look out the window like an excited child seeing a city from an airplane for the first time. It’s my “welcome home” view, and it’s incredibly impressive regardless of how many times I’ve seen it before. (Pittsburgh residents are familiar with the sudden, amazing view of their city when entering via the Fort Pitt Tunnel. This is the New York version.)

Whenever I return to New York from a trip, I look forward to this, and it reminds me how lucky I am to live in a city that I like this much.

Bravo! neilmcloram: I remember back at school we’d choose a few...

Fri, 27 Nov 2009 22:48:07 -0500

Bravo! neilmcloram:

I remember back at school we’d choose a few famous people that seemed to be on the verge. Mother Teresa and the Pope were always prime candidates, maybe because it was a catholic school. We’d chip in 20p each week until one of the people on someone’s list shuffled off, and they’d get the cash. I vaguely remember a website popping up later that did much the same.

Odd, our obsession with celebrity death. People that we vilify in life (MJ being a prime recent example) suddenly become heroes and role-models once more. There’s very rarely a ‘good riddance’ attitude; even Saddam’s execution was considered tasteless and harsh by many.

And so it will probably go on. People we’d forgotten about entirely, suddenly become ‘much missed’. Those we hated, turn out in retrospect to have ‘done quite a bit for charity I suppose’.

Personally, I think the cartoon sums it up. Deep down, I rarely care about the person in question, but the media manages to get me thinking about what effect they may have had on my life, on the world, their legacy. Pah!

I’d like to think we could be unified in celebration when Paul Gadd departs this life, but then again… ‘Hello, hello. I’m back again’ is quite catchy isn’t it?

Cheers to Pez for tweeting the image.

I REORGANIZED THE LINEN CLOSET So yesterday I stayed home and...

Fri, 27 Nov 2009 18:28:50 -0500

I REORGANIZED THE LINEN CLOSET So yesterday I stayed home and it was good. I thought I’d somehow feel at loose ends or melancholy but I didn’t; I truly enjoyed being alone. My parents dropped by this afternoon to bring me a care package from yesterday’s dinner and a box of tissues. They both seemed so old. We were watching a cooking show on pbs and my father was saying the cook made pesto but no, she hadn’t; that was on a show they’d watched earlier at home. My mother sat down on the couch and almost immediately snoozed a bit. My father told me that his brother died last night; he got a call this morning from my cousin Rita. He’ll be laid out on Sunday and buried on Monday. I don’t know why I’m so sad but I am. I think it’s because he’s my father’s only sibling and now my father is the only one left—their sister died in 1978. My uncle turned 91 last month. I hadn’t seem him since his wife, my aunt, died 3-1/2 years ago. My father is going to the wake on Sunday with Rita. My mother’s not going. And that makes me sad too. My mother hasn’t ever liked my father’s brother and sister-in-law and children. 60 fucking years. Get over it. You should go to be there for your husband whose brother died. Bitch. When I stop crying I’ll tell Dad I’ll go with him on Sunday. I didn’t even tell them that I’m supposed to go see Hamlet but Carlene called and I told her and I just started to cry. Like I am now. I think what I miss is the idea of extended family I had as a kid.

We lived in our house and 2 blocks over were my grandparents who shared the huose with their daughter, son-in-law, and 2 granddaughters. Behind them was my uncle (Dad’s brother) and aunt and 2 children. When we went to visit grandman and grandpa we’d say “I”m going to the other house”. (That’s the house where, when when my parents got married, they lived in the upstairs apartment and my aunt and uncle and 2 cousins lived downstairs.) My mother never liked my aunt that I can remember - and my aunt never really liked my mother either - I don’t know why but my mother for almost 60 years of her marriage hasn’t like very many people. So there’s this fracture in the family. And it makes me feel bad because I think families should get along. And I think it’s pretty shitty of my mother not to go with my father to his brother’s wake. He won’t go to the funeral and that I can understand - he thinks it would be too much for him and I don’t blame him. But for fuck’s sake your wife of 60 years is going to let you go to your brother’s wake alone. That sucks.

When I reorganized the linen closet I found a box of tampons. I haven’t had my period in over a year and a half. I can’t donate them. What the hell do I do with them?

CoughChokeSneezeHack

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 15:18:54 -0500

I didn’t go to thanksgiving dinner with the family; I feel okay but I’m sneezing and coughing and hacking and blowing my nose all over the place and didn’t really feel the need to share it with family. I called my brother and he said he’d pick up my parents and bring them back tonight; I know they could have driven there in the daylight but night driving is not something Dad likes to do and Mom shouldn’t be doing.

Yesterday I made sweet potato pie; I ~~used~~ referred to last year’s recipe; I couldn’t remember whether I needed evaporated or condensed milk so I bought condensed. Wouldn’t you know it, should have bought the evaporated. Oh well. I talked to one of the women at work and she said to skip the sugar so I did. I peeled the sweet potatos, boiled them and then instead of using a blender I mashed them with a fork. Added 2 eggs, 1 stick of butter (actually 1/2 tub (4 of 8 oz) of Breakstone’s whipped butter) 1.5 tsp of nutmeg and about 3 or 4 ounces of the condensed milk. Threw in maybe 3 or 4 teaspoons of sugar. Beat it with a fork, spooned it into graham cracker crusts and baked for 50 minutes or so. Very nice. Not as sweet as last years which is good. Imagine, left out 1 1/2 cups of sugar and went with whatever was in the condensed milk plus 3 or 4 teaspoons. Turned out really well - especially since the graham cracker crust pie has its own sugar.

I called work to see if the dinner I ordered got there - no one is answering the phones so I guess it did. Or if it didn’t they didn’t call me to tell me.

Happy Thanksgiving

BREATHING OUT OF ALTERNATE NOSTRILS Responsibility. Bravery. ...

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 07:11:56 -0500

BREATHING OUT OF ALTERNATE NOSTRILS Responsibility. Bravery. Growing up. Being rescued. I’m starting to connect the dots in a real way in therapy. We’ve been talking, and will continue to talk, a lot about my penchant for older men. Not just a few years older, but significantly older - 20 years (or more). I’d always rejected the notion that they are daddy figures and they aren’t. What they are are rescuers. As a child I was terrified of my mother; she’d explode and yell for no reason (or at least no reason I could discern) and I’d stand there and take it; or she’d just say what she felt—which was usually in a nasty way. There was no one to save me. So I’ve always wanted to be rescued; yes, it’s true—knight in shining armor riding in on a horse to pick me up and carry me away from everything I’m scared of. So part of the attraction of older men is that there is the possibility that they will do just that. That with them I’ll be safe.

It’s also why I resist responsibility. I don’t want to be the one at fault. I don’t want to be yelled at. I don’t want to be in charge. It was very nice yesterday to be talking about things that didn’t have me in floods of tears :-)

I’ve had this cold coming on all week and now it’s here. I think I’d better bring the box of tissues with me to my brother’s house. I’m grateful for Puffs Plus with Aloe.

Movies I want to see

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 17:38:35 -0500

Pirate Radio
The Blind Side
Broken Embraces
Staten Island
Me and Orson Welles
The Private Lives of Pippa Lee
Everybody’s Fine
The Last Station
Up In the Air
Invictus
The Lovely Bones
A Single Man
Nine
It’s Complicated
Sherlock Holmes
The Young Victoria
Creation
Precious
An Education
That Evening Sun

I’m planning a Movie Day with Carlene one day next month. We’ll go see a movie, have lunch, see a movie, have dinner, see a movie. I hope these are playing up around Lincoln Center - the AMC Loews is a great theater. I have a feeling, though, that most of them will wind up in my Netflix queue.

tiffany: This is still the funniest video on the internet....

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 15:48:15 -0500

tiffany: This is still the funniest video on the internet. Period.

Love that and this one, Star Wars Kid www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPPj6viIBmU

Giving thanks

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 15:40:59 -0500

for anti-depressants and a great therapist.

Social Thuggery

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 21:31:15 -0500

Isn’t that a great phrase? I read this article on the bus coming home tonight; of course, there was one woman SPEAKING REALLY REALLY LOUDLY ON HER CELL PHONE.

latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-alkon24-2009nov24,0,2649186.story

latimes.com

Opinion

Screaming kids and airplanes: Mayday! Mayday!

Parents don’t have a right to get on a jet with unruly children. In fact, they’re stealing from the rest of us.

By Amy Alkon

November 24, 2009

A little late in making those Thanksgiving flight plans? Wondering how you could possibly afford your ticket — that is, without putting a kidney up for sale on Craigslist? Good news! You can get a free flight home on Southwest plus a $300 travel voucher. Just do what I plan to — get on a Southwest flight in the next few days, and when it’s taking off, shout over and over, “Go, plane, go!” and “I want Daddy! I want Daddy!”

Pamela Root got the free flight and the voucher, plus an apology from Southwest, after her 2-year-old kept screaming those things at the top of his little lungs as their San Jose-bound flight was about to take off. In fact, little Adam reportedly screamed so loudly that the safety announcements couldn’t be heard and the pilot turned the plane back to the gate in Amarillo, Texas, where the two were booted off.

Root was appalled when a flight attendant told her something to the effect of “We just can’t tolerate that [screaming] for two hours,” reported the San Jose Mercury News. Root insisted Adam would be “fine once we take off” — which, in my book, means either “He’ll be fine” or “It would be a serious pain in the butt to be stuck in Amarillo another day.”

Unbelievably, Root demanded the apology she eventually got from the airline (shame, shame, Southwest) and hit it up for the cost of diapers and the portable crib she says she had to buy for the overnight stay. Even more unbelievably, there’s still no word of any apology from Root to the other passengers.

There is a notion, reflected in numerous blog comments about the incident, that other passengers should “just deal” and “give a kid a break.” This notion is wrong. Parents like Root and others who selfishly force the rest of us to pay the cost of their choices in life aren’t just bothering us; they’re stealing from us. Most people don’t see it this way, because what they’re stealing isn’t a thing we can grab on to, like a wallet. They’re stealing our attention, our time and our peace of mind.

More and more, we’re all victims of these many small muggings every day. Our perp doesn’t wear a ski mask or carry a gun; he wears Dockers and shouts into his iPhone in the line behind us at Starbucks, streaming his dull life into our brains, never considering for a moment whether our attention belongs to him. These little acts of social thuggery are inconsequential in and of themselves, but they add up — wearing away at our patience and good nature and making our daily lives feel like one big wrestling smackdown.

Southwest sent the right message in yanking Root and her screaming boy off the plane. Unfortunately, it lacked the corporate courage to stand its ground, probably fearing a public relations nightmare from the Mommy Mafia. Yet, almost every day, I encounter parents who need to get the same message Root initially did. Trust me — should I long to hear screaming children, I’ll zip right past my favorite coffeehouse and go read my morning paper at Chuck E. Cheese.

I know, I know — because I am not a parent I cannot possibly understand how hard it is to keep a child from acting out. Actually, that probably has more to do with the way I was raised — by parents I describe as loving fascists. As a child, I was convinced that I could flap my arms and fly, but the idea that I could ever be loud in a public place that wasn’t a playground simply did not exist for me.

I hear claims that some children are prone to tantrums no matter how exquisitely they are parented. If this describes your child, there’s a solution, and it isn’t plopping him in a crowded metal tube with hundreds of people who can’t escape his screams except by throwing themselves to their deaths at 30,000 feet.

Granted, there sometimes are extenuating circumstances, reasons parents and their little hell-raiser simply must take a plane. Well, actually, there are two: dire family emergency (Granny’s actually dying, not just dying to see the little tyke) and the need for a lifesaving operation for the wee screamer. In all other cases, if there’s any chance a child is still in the feral stage, pop Granny on a flight or gas up the old minivan. It really does come down to this: Your right to bring your screaming child on a plane ends where the rest of our ears begin.

Amy Alkon’s book “I See Rude People: One Woman’s Battle to Beat Some Manners into Impolite Society” will be published this week.

By the way, the latimes site lets you share the article using any number of websites, but no tumblr. grrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

ROYAL PAIN Friday was an awful day. As I was leaving the house...

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 06:04:42 -0500

ROYAL PAIN Friday was an awful day. As I was leaving the house for work I checked my bberry and there were 2 messages from my boss timestampted 7:50 the previous evening—the stats for the meeting (at 8:30 that night) were wrong. My heart sank. I spent the entire ride into work sick with fear that all 40 charts (yes 40 fucking charts!) were wrong. Jesus but it was awful. I can’t explain to you the absolute terror that this news caused in me. I began to think and fear that this is going to be a replay of my last job from which I got fired after almost 9 years because I kept fucking up the reports. (It seems all I do is reporting via excel and it gets to me after a while.) And I don’t go back and double check and triple check my work and it’s all a mess and a muddle. When I got to work I looked and found that only 6 of the 40 charts were wrong. Small, very small, consolation. I knew exactly what went wrong - I added data and for some reason the pivots re-set themselves so instead of each pivot being for 1 month, each pivot was for the quarter—and so the summary charts were quarterly not monthly representations of the numbers. It’s 2 days later and I can’t really convey how awful I felt without sharing what I wrote in my notebook on the way to work:

I hate this! I hate this! I hate this!

Looked at my bberry this am and there were 2 messages that the call report stats were wrong!

Fuck! This is just like what was happening at the last job.

I hate fucking excel - no I don’t hate excel. I just hate being wrong - I hate making mistakes. I hate myself when I do stupid shit like this - I hate being less than good. I hate not living up to expectations - I hate working at stuff I don’t really care about. (There’s not a lot of love in this, is there?)

And mostly I’m afraid I’ll wind up getting fired for mistakes.

Physically, this mistake - being caught in it - makes me feel cold and number and will a dull ache in the pit of my stomach - the way your body turns cold with fear. It makes me question everything - it makes me question my ability, my competence, my validity as a work -

Yeah I know my response is overblown but knowing that & knowing why doesn’t make the response any less severe.

As soon as I got off the bus I called Carlene and just vented ranted and raved for 10 minutes. Which left me feeling angry on top of scared.

I got in and looked at the excel workbook and realized the first 6 charts were wrong and I knew why so I fixed them an reprinted them. Just at 8:30 my boss walked in and I said “Good morning. I’m sorry about the mistake” (or something like that.)

Her reply was “That does me no good.” (a few seconds of silence) “But thanks.”

Jesus talk about a slap in the face.

I felt like shit the entire day. Finally somewhere about 3 or 4pm it started to get a bit better. I was working on MORE reporting for a meeting on Monday and sent her the numbers along with how I sourced them. And it got a bit easier. Then about 5pm I was trying to drop a file (yes, another fucking excel workbook!) into the personnel folder in the shared drive and couldn’t. I called IT and was told that she’d requested the folder be restricted to her access only. Okay. Sure. Yeah. Fine. But then please move a few of MY folders out so I can access them—I had to put in a work ticket for that.

My first thought was that she dropped a note in my personnel file so she blocked access to the whole folder. Talk about lack of trust!

But I woke up this morning and my first thought was that she’s in the middle of performance and salary reviews so she locked access to the folder for that reason. Which makes me feel marginally better because it means that I’m blocked for general reasons not specific personal reasons. (I hope.)

So, Friday sucked. Big time.

Yesterday friends and I saw The Emperor Jones at Irish Rep. Great. John Douglas Thompson who played Jones was mesmerizing. With a run-time of 70 minutes, it’s a grueling 60 minutes of monologue for Jones. And he pours his heart and soul into it. It’s a descent into madness after his subjects rebel. The staging was inspired with the ensemble taking the role of forest trees through which Jones flees - which made me think of Birnam Wood advancing on Dunsinane Castle. Watching Jones go mad - an intelligent, arrogant man brought down by his own self. He knew he’d have to get out eventually but his arrogance made him blind to the fact that it was already too late. http://irishrep.org/

I'm exhausted

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 21:29:05 -0500

Therapy is 45 minutes long; I spent 43.5 minutes crying. A lot.

Yesterday I wrote about maybe I want things I can’t have. I want to be “rescued”. I want to be safe - and that’s part of the attraction for me of much older men because there’s the prospect of safety and security and comfort and care and being rescued. (If only I could type as quickly as I can think the words but I can’t so it’ll come out all jumbled. But bear with me.)

There are 3 fear responses: fight, flight, or paralysis. I’ve always opted for paralysis. That made it easy for my mother to be nasty when she yelled. And there was never anyone to rescue me - to tell her to stop. And what I wanted was for her to love me - in an obvious way, not a way in which I would have to figure it out - kids don’t like to figure this kind of shit out - we just want to know that what we need and want is there. And so what I wanted - love and kindness and rescuing - I never got. And so I’m attracted to people who can’t give me what I want. I know that sounds absolutely bizarre but it’s not - at least not when I thought about it at 8:15 this morning; at 9:30 tonight it’s a bit murkier because I’m wiped out.

I have to sleep on this and think about it.

But I can tell you this - I’m soooooooooo pleased with this therapist. She’s able to get me more in touch with what’s going on deep inside me - stuff I don’t even recognize until it comes pouring out in her office.

ferrydust: crashinglybeautiful: counterforce: echohotel: Onexpos...

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 21:53:43 -0500

ferrydust:

crashinglybeautiful: counterforce: echohotel: Onexposure - 1x.com - Photo: Bridge to Mysterie by b.neeleman

BE ITALIAN! I can’t wait for Nine to come out

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 21:52:18 -0500

BE ITALIAN! I can’t wait for Nine to come out

I JUST PAID THE BILL YESTERDAY DAMMIT! On the bus this morning...

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 20:30:34 -0500

I JUST PAID THE BILL YESTERDAY DAMMIT! On the bus this morning I just started to feel crappy like I was getting majorly sick - I thought I was going to throw up I was so nauseous. Made it all the way in to work and so I got tea and a plain buttered bagel from the coffee guy; that made me feel so much better; can’t believe I was so hungry I was nauseous. Ugh. Anyhow, made it through the day.

Talking to Mary last night was good. I don’t often open up - and I didn’t, but it did make me do some writing on the bus this morning. So here’s what I wrote (mostly)

The whole “we’re friends” thing with John has put us on a bit of an awkward footing. It used to be that when we said goodbye it was a hug and a chat and saying goodbye took time—for both of us. Now, it’s “goodbye” and a quick peck on the cheek. I miss the old way. But I knew things would change - they had to. But it’s a bit of a loss. I’ve also lost illusion - the possibility. That’s the real sad-making part. I still think he feels the same but he’s decided to do what he feels is right - and that means not me. So suck it up and deal with it.

And right now I can’t tell if I’m getting sick or having an anxiety attack. My stomach is a bit weird and so, of course, then I feel all cold and tingly and anxious all over. I think I’m hungry. Maybe a plain roll will help when I get to work.

Back to John - just 2 months ago when he was going to be at a different mass he called twice in the week before to make sure we’d still have breakfast together; now it’s different. I told him I’m at a different mass this sunday and he said ” I we won’t see ~~you~~ each other for two weeks” - just as a statement of fact.

So how do I feel? as if every time I put my hand out to say “I want that”, what I want gets taken away.

If I don’t do the pursuing nothing will ever happen because there’s no one pursuing me. So yeah, as soon as I say what I want, it gets taken away—out of my reach.

Or is it that I want what I know I can’t have? That seems to be the only thing I want—chasing, wanting the unattainable so I don’t get too hurt. I’m willing to get a little bit hurt because that’s all I can handle.

I’m so annoyed. I walked through a doorway this afternoon and my sleeve got caught on the doorjamb and made a huge pull in the sleeve. I managed to smooth out most of the pull but there are some fibers that have to be restored. Luckily, none of them broked; but it’s going to be a pain in the ass because of the lining—if it were a sweater it’d be a cinch. I just paid the Macy’s bill yesterday too. Shitfuckhelldamn.