is the word 'diary' better than the word 'blog'? probably not.
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Here I Am.
I was thinking last night as I lay in bed not-sleeping. Sometimes that just happens. You think you are tired. You haven�t had any caffeine or other stimulant. You have had a long day. And yet you cannot sleep. So you lay there, and your mind starts wandering to random things, and then it gets stuck on some of those things, as if it were turntable with the needle stuck in the scratched groove of a bad song. Last night bad songs included: 1) quasi-woe and frustration at the uselessness of anger over it; 2) frustration with some noncommunication between myself and my summer subletter; 3) frustration with a longstanding friendship I�ve had with someone that may be ending; 4) aloneness. Normally I don�t mind aloneness. In fact I am very comfortable with it, to the point of craving it when I don�t have what many would already consider an overdose of it. I love people, especially particular people such as my friends and family. But the part of me that loves people is made possible by the part of me that can be away from them all part of the time. But of course being away from them all ALL of the time is tiresome. And frustrating. Which leads me to 5) the job market. O! hateful masterpiece of dire villainy! Why must this job-life that I love in so many ways make it impossible for me to choose where I live?
Anyway, so, amidst all this frustrating nonsleeping latenight thinking about frustration, it occurred to me that, though I very much appreciated Evany�s recasting of my recent dating history in terms of me �liking people who are inspired� (and, really, that was an inspired statement, so no wonder I LOVE EVANY), it also misses the fact of my plain old bad luck. (She will not have missed that fact. It just wasn�t worth stating it at the moment she made the other statement.) Most of this has little to do with my choices. (Well, first of all, love often has little to do with choice. But currently I mean this in a less romantic way.) It�s bad luck. Because, though I could struggle to find the ways that all these �disappointing men� are �inspired� on some level, they are all so very, very different, that it would be impossible for some impartial observer to locate in my trajectory anything like a pattern of choosing a certain kind of unreachable guy, or a certain kind of solipsistic artist, or a certain kind of emotionally damaged (metaphoric) baggage handler. As Sunny once said to me, of a night at the fabulous Lexington Club, when we were sitting around drinking and laughing about the �types� of people we all tend to date: �Jill, you don�t have a type.� Me: �?� Her: �You just DON�T. I KNOW these things.� So I don�t have a type and you can see that if you try to connect the dots of the last five years of my dating �choices.� Bad Luck and Aging is what we have here. Aging means there are fewer single guys and, amongst that smaller number, fewer guys who are still capable of taking the risk of getting hurt by loving someone. Aging makes some people bolder and others more scaredy.
A rather bold friend of mind was recently counseling a friend of hers, a friend who got married when she was in her hot 20s, that she should think carefully about getting a divorce. First of all, there is a child involved. Secondly, there is a foundation of love in the current relationship that might be able to save the marriage. And thirdly, and the most perceptive of points, this friend-of-friend�s memories of what it was like to be single and to date are stalled at an age where dating just tends to happen to you. �Everyone�s doing it.� That is no longer the way things are in the late 30s early 40s. Things change. It doesn�t mean you should stay in an unhappy marriage. But nor should you leave a marriage thinking that something better will come along any time soon. It might. It might take a long time. And it might never happen at all. THAT is the truth with which you make your decision.
I am so much happier now than I ever have been, with myself. Luckily I seem to have been born under a star of optimism so I still believe it must be true that sooner or later someone else will appreciate the fact that HERE I AM. However I am also very practical, and so I must also admit the possibility that that might never happen. It doesn�t make me regret anything I�ve done.
2:38 p.m. - September 25, 2006
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