My two competing interests these days seem to be my Netflix account and my LA public library card. For a while it was great to just come home and zone out to The Closer, but I finished season 3. So today we've got Freakonomics vs. season 1 of The Sopranos. I think we're tipping towards the book today... one episode of The Sopranos wasn't quite enough to suck me in, but the book's intro already has me on the edge of my seat. When I was in school, studying economics, I always said I was fascinated with it because, at heart, it's not really about money at all. It's the study of how people make decisions. And, as the authors put it, tantalizingly, it's the study "of how people get what they want." Might be right up my alley.
Plus, I think I'm ready to think again a little. Not that I haven't been thinking lately, just about different things. Since I arrived in LA, actually, I've blessedly learned a very important thing: how to be a being, doing person a bit more instead of always an asking and pondering sort of person. Really, I think I've learned how to live better in the last few years. But it's been awhile since I read anything that makes for good dinner table conversation.
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
The I Want to Die Post -- but it's not what you think
Oy, I just threw up on my feet. That was disgusting. I have apparently contracted some type of food poisoning or GI bug that put me in bed all day mostly wanting to die. I seem to have passed that point of the cycle, but am, unfortunately, still in no shape to get vertical. OK, now that I've grossed you out....
I've been doing alright the last couple of weeks. Up and down, understandably I suppose. About half of the last month, either Goat or I have been out of town on vacation and that made it easier. I've been doing pretty well here on my side of town, in the world where I was always known for myself, but I discovered last night that it's considerably harder to go back to the west side, where I feel like I was more known as half of a couple. So, it was much to my surprise that after a few weeks of cruising along, dealing with it when I come home at night but mostly engaging myself successfully in life during the day, I went to visit some friends on the west side and suddenly felt like I had jumped back a month in time to the first week, where I felt really fragile and emotional. OK, so I was also over there helping a friend plan her wedding, and was, unbeknown to me, well on my way to being violently ill, which didn't help, but let's just say I didn't have the fun, relaxing evening I'd hoped for.
Mostly I just feel really stuck in the "to have contact or not to have contact" department. The pros of contact are that I get to connect with a person I still have a strong connection to. The cons? Well, that's easy. Staying connected to a person I have strong feelings for but can't be with, which is gonna mess with my head.
But the truth is, this "no contact" thing? Not feeling much better right now. Will it in the long run? I don't know. Basically, when I talk to him, it just feels like this was the natural place things had to end up now, given reality or timing or whatever, and I just feel sad, which I can handle. But the longer I go without talking to him, the more hurt and flat-out-rejected I feel, as if I was weighed and measured and found lacking (basically, the difference between "we broke up" and "I got dumped," which can be a distinction quite lacking in subtlety).... which is bearable when I'm engaged in life during the day, but can tend to spiral down into Fear and Loathing in Los Angeles at the end of the day, or when I'm, say, laying in bed wanting to die from food poisoning. And yes, Ruthie, I know that was a run-on sentence.
I've been doing alright the last couple of weeks. Up and down, understandably I suppose. About half of the last month, either Goat or I have been out of town on vacation and that made it easier. I've been doing pretty well here on my side of town, in the world where I was always known for myself, but I discovered last night that it's considerably harder to go back to the west side, where I feel like I was more known as half of a couple. So, it was much to my surprise that after a few weeks of cruising along, dealing with it when I come home at night but mostly engaging myself successfully in life during the day, I went to visit some friends on the west side and suddenly felt like I had jumped back a month in time to the first week, where I felt really fragile and emotional. OK, so I was also over there helping a friend plan her wedding, and was, unbeknown to me, well on my way to being violently ill, which didn't help, but let's just say I didn't have the fun, relaxing evening I'd hoped for.
Mostly I just feel really stuck in the "to have contact or not to have contact" department. The pros of contact are that I get to connect with a person I still have a strong connection to. The cons? Well, that's easy. Staying connected to a person I have strong feelings for but can't be with, which is gonna mess with my head.
But the truth is, this "no contact" thing? Not feeling much better right now. Will it in the long run? I don't know. Basically, when I talk to him, it just feels like this was the natural place things had to end up now, given reality or timing or whatever, and I just feel sad, which I can handle. But the longer I go without talking to him, the more hurt and flat-out-rejected I feel, as if I was weighed and measured and found lacking (basically, the difference between "we broke up" and "I got dumped," which can be a distinction quite lacking in subtlety).... which is bearable when I'm engaged in life during the day, but can tend to spiral down into Fear and Loathing in Los Angeles at the end of the day, or when I'm, say, laying in bed wanting to die from food poisoning. And yes, Ruthie, I know that was a run-on sentence.
Thursday, July 03, 2008
busy bee
So, I have discovered this week that the problem with "keeping oneself busy," is that one is always busy.
And thus, tired.
It's actually been an OK week. Certainly full of ups and downs and a daily cry, the intensity of which has been downgraded from Red Alert ("Severe") to Yellow Alert (merely "Elevated"). Early in the week I pretty constantly felt like I was pushing down a giant knot in my stomach, but by today I've actually been able to get so lost in office chaos that I've been able to feel normal for a whole day at a stretch. The hard parts still come when somebody calls and asks how I'm doing -- so if you ask, and I say I'm fine, it just means I don't want to go there right now. I'm sort of reserving it as a topic for conversations that last more than 15 minutes, so that I actually have the chance to get through the knot that comes up, instead of having it get stuck there floating around in my stomach like I swallowed a beehive.
Because the hardest part of the day is still coming home, I've been happy to have plans the last few nights to connect with friends. But today I found myself totally, utterly exhausted (to the point of almost crying when my last client actually showed up, and then again when I ran into her mother in Target and was trying to gently, then firmly, suggest that she call me next week instead of trying to get a session out of my while I was buying shampoo).
Anyhow, I realized how much easier it was to spend time alone when I was in a relationship, because I knew that at the end of the day, I was going to connect with someone who wanted to hear all my stupid stories and trivial thoughts, and would stay on the phone while I brushed my teeth. Before we started dating, Goat asked for my phone number and I told him that I hated talking on the phone (someone, please, teach me how to flirt). Well, it turns out I was wrong, and in the last 2 1/2 years, other than weeks where one of us was really out of town (like, in the woods), I think we barely went a handful of days without saying goodnight, often talking for an hour or more. Now, to get some type of human connection, I have to make plans, go out, initiate. And I forgot how exhausting it is to be always talking about something with people because they're really not interested in the volumes of nothing that you really feel like talking about.
And thus, tired.
It's actually been an OK week. Certainly full of ups and downs and a daily cry, the intensity of which has been downgraded from Red Alert ("Severe") to Yellow Alert (merely "Elevated"). Early in the week I pretty constantly felt like I was pushing down a giant knot in my stomach, but by today I've actually been able to get so lost in office chaos that I've been able to feel normal for a whole day at a stretch. The hard parts still come when somebody calls and asks how I'm doing -- so if you ask, and I say I'm fine, it just means I don't want to go there right now. I'm sort of reserving it as a topic for conversations that last more than 15 minutes, so that I actually have the chance to get through the knot that comes up, instead of having it get stuck there floating around in my stomach like I swallowed a beehive.
Because the hardest part of the day is still coming home, I've been happy to have plans the last few nights to connect with friends. But today I found myself totally, utterly exhausted (to the point of almost crying when my last client actually showed up, and then again when I ran into her mother in Target and was trying to gently, then firmly, suggest that she call me next week instead of trying to get a session out of my while I was buying shampoo).
Anyhow, I realized how much easier it was to spend time alone when I was in a relationship, because I knew that at the end of the day, I was going to connect with someone who wanted to hear all my stupid stories and trivial thoughts, and would stay on the phone while I brushed my teeth. Before we started dating, Goat asked for my phone number and I told him that I hated talking on the phone (someone, please, teach me how to flirt). Well, it turns out I was wrong, and in the last 2 1/2 years, other than weeks where one of us was really out of town (like, in the woods), I think we barely went a handful of days without saying goodnight, often talking for an hour or more. Now, to get some type of human connection, I have to make plans, go out, initiate. And I forgot how exhausting it is to be always talking about something with people because they're really not interested in the volumes of nothing that you really feel like talking about.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)