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This morning I was feeling solidly fucked up. 30 Rock viewing did not help me, as even the slightest similarity to my current situation is liable to give me false hope which is subsequently dashed by the vagaries and whims of television writing, which then causes some kind of fissure in any semblance of rational thought I have put together for myself, made of tenuous, fragile bonds.
It doesn't help, either, that practically everything is somehow related to Andy. He'd become so completely, comfortably enmeshed in my life so quickly, and then just as quickly, completely ripped from it. It's been almost a month now. A whole, sad, month.
And so, I walked to therapy today, which I've been excited about for the past few days, which, having been in and out of therapy for the last 20 years, I am fully aware of how beneficial a session can be, but I cried as I walked, somehow still able to be sad despite the Lady GaGa thumping in my ears.
And I cried in my session, with a perfect stranger. Three times. I saw my previous therapist, Monica, for about four months and didn't cry once. The eyes welled up, but no actual loss of saline was made. Monica pointed out numerous times that I seemed to be detached from the tales and problems in my life, that I could talk about very emotional situations and express no emotion about them at all. Which was curious, since I was genuinely feeling emotion, and I wasn't the least bit uncomfortable with her; I was, somehow, detached, though. But not today! No, the waterworks flowed with ease. I went from feeling borderline hysterical, considering rushing over to Andy's today so I could see him, to feeling quite calm and centered, considering.
I like this new girl. She seems to be of similar demeanor to Monica, but Katie is a touch younger, prettier, and she's got a sense of humour. Monica wasn't a wet blanket, but she was also not the sort of gal that I'd ever go out and have a glass of wine with. Which was what I liked about her. She was completely non-judgemental, honest, even blunt with me. Katie's a bit more laid back. She dropped an F-bomb at one point, which I respected. And she laughed at my jokes.
I told her how I'd never cried with Monica, and how Monica had pointed out my detachment. I feel it's Andy that's changed this. I became better with Andy. The best version of myself. I need to get back to that, without Andy. And I think I can. Deciding against Drunk, Slutty Sarah, against casual smooches, against heavy drinking at all, that's a huge step. As is the realisation that I need to begin putting myself in the position to be ready for marriage and a child. I'm two, three years away from that, and that's if I pull it together as of yesterday and make dramatic life changes. Maybe Andy doesn't fit into this plan in the greater sense, but he's certainly been the catalyst for it.
Why do my hands smell like meat?
Could the internal monologue just shut up?
blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah
And then I'm crying, sobbing, in my car with my head against the steering wheel.
What do you do to get over the best thing that's ever happened to you? What do you do when the person who seemed to have read the manual on how to love you, make you laugh, talk to you, be there for you just up and runs? How can you move on from that?
Everything in the opposite sex pales in comparison. I lose myself for a few hours in the Gilmore Girls and swooning over Milo Ventimiglia and then it's all stabby stab in my heart because he's not the face I could or want to wake up to every morning, which is to say nothing of the general populace, who actually make me feel without hope. Andy came into my life and it was a god damn pop song. Halo, by Beyoncé, to be exact. My walls came crumbling down. I let him in without any hesitation.
But no, it didn't last.
And so, when a 23 year old texts me some nasty things after he's been out with me and I've been a bit coquettish and something of a tease and the texts go on about wanting me wrapped around his cock and how someday, he's happily going to listen to me scream, yes, I get turned on, and yes, I imagine him touching me and yes, I rub one out and it's perfectly sexy, but then it just turns terribly sour and I'm feeling ill in the morning (just like when this charming child and I kissed two weeks prior), and the VERY SIMPLE FACT is that the only person I have any interest in is Andy. I can't just fuck someone anymore, no matter how dirty they talk to me. I never was very good at it to begin with, I don't fuck to fuck, I fuck to feel, and what I want to feel when I'm fucking is LOVE.
And my god, Andy loved to fuck me and I loved to fuck him and he made me feel amazing, like the sexiest woman to ever cross his path, and he touched me better than anyone ever has, and he cared, he cared to make me happy, not only in bed but in every way, and now it's been almost two weeks since I've heard a single word from him and it's not okay. I'm not okay.
I found one of his hair ties on my desk last night, and it's been a rapid degradation ever since, I have it wrapped around my fingers, I slept with it last night.
Hence, head against the steering wheel, sobbing about half an hour ago.
And I found a band I love. Liars. Oh, how I've taken to them, like Dirty Projectors a couple of weeks ago, and what do I do? Andy, Andy, Andy, you're the one I want to gleefully present this music to, to talk about it, and maybe you've heard them already and have an opinion to present, and maybe, like we often do with music, we will have completely different ways of appreciating it, philosophising it, and then there'd be laughter and kisses and love making and sleep.
I love you Andy and god damn it, I just don't think that's going to change. In fact, distance, this time, instead of bringing me to a point where I can breathe and pull away from you, is in fact, making the heart grow fonder. I can breathe better now that I'm not in a constant panic spiral, and I'm thankful for the realisations I've had (that I want you, that I'm bored with Drunk, Slutty Sarah), but I want it to be over now. I miss you. I remember the few annoying tics you have with ardor now. I want to kiss every square inch of you and read books and make dinner and go for walks where I complain about how cold it is and you smoke your cigarette, always blowing the smoke straight up, away from me because you're sweet and polite like that, and you make fun of me because I'm cold, and I want to sip whiskey with you, and get into arguments that make me realise I'm being an ass. I want to love you, actively.
I never needed you, I never felt panicked about you. Do you realise how different that is for me? And I know I was different for you, too. I made you feel strong, like a man.
But baby, you let the chaos win, and it scares the hell out of me.
Is a woman I served yesterday. She gained this title even before she started crying at her table, making her son and parents visibly uncomfortable.
Which brings cause to point out that this was not a young woman. She was not some mewling lass in her early thirties with the kid she'd obviously birthed in her late teens. No, this was a woman in her fifties, with a son in his mid-twenties, and her elderly parents.
This title, The Most Miserable Woman In The World, she earned almost immediately. It was the way she awkwardly ordered her glass of sparkling wine, fumbling around at the notion that perhaps her father should buy a whole bottle for the table. His response, with quickly eroding patience? "Order for yourself. I'm having a beer."
Then, when it was time to order dinner, each option presented to her was rife with pain. Initially, she wanted a greek salad (which she tried to order when I was taking the drink order). Then, she rambled on about how she'd been thinking about shrimp all day, and did the shrimp skewers come with a vegetable? (All of this said in the most pained, belabored voice one could muster on a Tuesday evening). I informed her that the shrimp skewers were just an appetizer so they did not come with any vegetable, but she could put together shrimp skewers and a vegetable from the build your own section of the menu. So she ordered a salmon filet with spinach. (!?)
As their dinner wound down and her sparkling wine took hold (it really seemed she deteriorated exponentially from a single glass of the stuff), and I passed by the table as she was crying, about something related to her son getting a room but grandma being willing to let him come over or something, I heard him utter, "Mom, you've been crowding me for a long time now..."
I scurried out of the room right quick after that. Christ.
Later, after I'd said something to my boss about this being The Most Miserable Woman In The World with his response being that I had no heart, she walked by him cussing on her way to the bathroom and said loudly to him, "Oh, I'm just mad at my dad, he's breaking every promise he ever made to me."
Which might make you think she's maybe just batshit crazy or something. But I didn't get that impression either. Maybe in the sense of being super pathological, like borderline personality, but no genuine loss of sanity. Just bone-deep insistance on being The Most Miserable Woman In The World. Forever. No matter how embarassing or uncomfortable or energy draining she is to everyone around her. I felt sapped spending less than ten minutes directly interacting with her. A lifetime? Being the child raised by that? This is why I think parents should be able to kill off defective young... (after a lengthy process, of course).
The super amazing final straw, which I missed, but was relayed to me by my coworkers (she had the wherewithal to alienate each of us in turn which was nice) went as follows:
Woman looking at floor, which is a mix of tile and cement, trying to talk to my boss, who is on the phone--"What kind of art is this? I'm an artist! Do you call it post-modern? Modern trash? Modern ghetto?"
OMFG.
Most Miserable Woman In The World, I salute you.
When I am depressed, or freaking out, and I can't sleep, I fantacise about facets of suicide. (Let's not blow a gasket thinking I might be contemplating a move towards worm food--as much as there are some moments when these fantacies seem a solution, those moments pass and I've experienced enough of life to be wholly aware that things get better. And worse. And better again.) I was pondering, the other night, a theoretical machine that could replicate the physical feelings of various methods of suicide without the actual act. For instance, I think it would be quite soothing to go through the process of loosing the blood from my wrists. Or to ingest a million sleeping pills. There would be a problem, though, and that is for it to work fully, the brain would have to believe it were happening; be tricked into the pain, seeing the blood, etc. This could cause some pretty serious psychological trauma, I'm sure. And some Flatliners shit would probably go down. I do not want to have to face any of my demons in that manner, no thank you.
Last night I dreamt (that somebody loved me [titter]), in that lucid almost dreaming phase where you still have full control but you're so on the cusp of sleep it feels like it's actually happening, that Andy was in bed with me. That he died, for no obvious reason, in his sleep. I woke to his cooling, stiffening body, and had the clearest of mind about it. Got up, went to several stores where I purchased otc sleeping pills, came home, took a shower, wrote a blog that doubled as my will (which I think I'm actually going to do cuz it super freaks me out that there's nothing written down that indicates my wishes and I definitely don't want my mother taking the reins on that; she's already stated if I go before her she's gonna put me in a pink frilly dress and curl my hair, and I know for damn sure she isn't interested in who I am as a person or what would be a meaningful funeral/burial/wake for the people closest to me--it would all be ceremony for HER), then took a shit ton of pills and curled up next to Andy. Of course, this would turn into some kind of Sylvia Plath debacle, waking up moaning, covered in spiders in some god forsaken root cellar (are there god forsaken root cellars?), or I'd wake up in the emergency room with a giant fucking tube down my throat.
My idea of the perfect suicide involves months, even years with no sign of remains. A disappearing act. Crawling into a cave in the Arizona desert with a .38. Pills on an uninhabited island, somewhere. Or maybe no suicide at all, just the disappearing act.
I wouldn't want to kill myself because there's not a single person who would understand the motivation. My mother would take it incredibly personally. It would absolutely break my father's heart. I would be called horribly selfish, and that would be true. It's just not viable without upsetting everyone you love who loves you, and even a few who loathe you too (Christ, the people who loathe me, feeling guilty, like they had some hand in my demise [would that happen, or would they just nod and say they always expected it?], that would be disgusting). It's the escape that's tantalising. The freedom. But then there's the nagging, "What if there's an afterlife?" problem. God damn it.
Well, I guess I just won't be offing myself today.
My preferred way of dying involves being 85, in bed with my husband of fifty years and a carbon monoxide leak, btw. No one can get upset about that. Grandkids knew gran and pap pap well, we saw them through college, they've got kids of their own and we even kissed the foreheads of a few of 'em. A full life.
But then, it's times like this I wonder if that will ever be my life. And boy, that's a downer.
