"Deep Thoughts": September 2009 Archives

Bear with me a moment; I've had this whole essay going in my head while I was getting ready for bed, and at last it became clear that I was going to have to write it down or face listening to it whirl while I tried to sleep.

The trouble is, I've the urge to start with where I ended up, rather than begin at the beginning.

It began with a conversation I had over IM this afternoon. It wasn't all that different from hundreds or thousands of conversations taking place all over the world, I imagine. Two women were talking about feeling self-conscious about aspects of their bodies.

In this case, it happened to be two rather strong-minded, unsuperficial, relatively confident, self-assured, fully adult women who on the whole like themselves quite well.

But we'd both been having moments lately where we look in the mirror and are not pleased. In my own case, I think it stems from external circumstances that have caused me to feel a bit like I did when I was a very unself-confident teen. The kinds of things one likes to think one has grown out of at the ripe old age of my ripe old age.

Anyway, I find myself missing being told nice things about my physical self. Boywich used to tell me I was beautiful - or at least I think he did. In any case, he managed to make me feel that he felt I was.

I know in some sense that it came from him loving me. That when he looked at me, he wasn't just seeing my packaging but also the person in there, whom he found beautiful and worthy of love. So it was easy for him to say it. Or to bring me lots of roses. Or both.

You can't have that with someone who doesn't know you, and doesn't really want to know you any better than they do. I guess it's the latter part that does more than simply not make me feel beautiful - it makes me feel unbeautiful. Not wanting to know me, not wanting, in point of fact, to admit to being involved with me, made me feel quite ugly. (Not to mention angry)

And no matter how much I tell myself it doesn't matter, and that I can consider myself beautiful anyway, I've lost a little bit of my shine. Just for a little while, I think. But it's definitely there, the dull spot.

That scar on my stomach looks more noticeable than it used to. I feel like I look pregnant about half of the month. My face looks heavy and old. I bet no one sees this but me. I bet most of it isn't true (I do in fact bloat to an amazing degree of late, and there's no getting around that. The clingy dresses are taking some time off).

It's a curse that someone else's opinion should matter more than my own. It's a curse I've fought extremely hard against, and will probably have to keep fighting forever.

It's Boywich's and my anniversary today. Not the kind you think.

We were together that day, but only after several hours of panicked inability to reach one another. During those hours I learned a few things, about him, and about me.

I learned why people stand on a street corner in a crisis, just bawling without any apparent awareness of being observed.

I learned that my first priority in a disaster is to get myself and my loved ones somewhere safe. If there is anywhere safe.

I learned that I am offended by people who run towards danger with a videocamera.

I learned that I don't understand people who run to the nearest bar.

I learned that New Yorkers are very, very friendly and down-to-earth and kind to one another when they are under threat from some outside force.

I learned that people view firefighters as guardian angels, and perhaps rightly so.

I learned that war has a smell.

I learned that Boywich is not stronger than me.

I learned that I make rapid calculations during a crisis. Kind of similar to how my brain operates when I am in traffic, actually. It's a very, very swift and logical and clear-thinking engine, operating in a surrounding stream of fear and dread. That is a strange combination, and unfortunately, a familiar one. I grew up using that tool, and I've had to use it a lot in my adult life.

I learned that no matter how young and strong we are, we have very little control over when and where we will die, and that that is a hard part about being human.

I learned never to be without a bike, and never to wear shoes that you can't run for your life in.

I learned that words are important, that ideas are important, and that people need words and ideas when they are frightened and don't know what to do.

I learned that a story can be the size of a Xeroxed sheet of paper with a single photograph and a few heart-breaking captions on it.

I learned that peanut butter is an important thing to have on hand.

I learned to carry a toothbrush.

I love you Boywich, hang in there. This post is for you, as it always is.

I do not like endings. Maybe it's because I'm a natural-born storyteller, and maybe it's because, all my life, when I was reading a good book, I never, ever wanted it to end. Whatever it is, I don't like saying goodbye. I don't like changing seasons, and I don't like crossing borders. I want everyone and everything to keep spinning on its pleasant, familiar little axis. And unfortunately, that sometimes extends to keeping things spinning on their unpleasant familiar little axes, too.

I find, since I began dating again after a long absence, that I get more emotional than I expect to about the breakups of even small relationships - even the ones where you've really only seen the person a few times. Or the longer ones that are casual in name, but feel like they went a little deeper than the other person (and sometimes me) wants to admit.

I had a good day yesterday, and a mostly good day today. And despite that, or just next to it, I am a little sad tonight, on the couch with the knitting and the little pieces of memory from last week.

My head swims with this or that image, and I am unsure what to do with it. Chase it away, or watch it flutter by like falling leaves?

It was cold today, the kind of cold that tells me winter really is coming back, even though it felt all summer like it had only just left. I wanted my legwarmers. I knitted a hat last night, and I am starting another.

I miss him. He hurt my feelings on a number of occasions, and for various reasons I decided I needed Out, but I think about tangling up with him, all awkward limbs on the couch, and I'm sad again. I wish for him and I don't wish for him. I had a really nice series of kisses with the other boy to keep me company yesterday, to leave me feeling like sunshine on my face (he always reminds me of the sun, that one. It's his smile). And those thoughts came to me tonight on the couch, too, and I mechanically swatted them away before I realized he's no longer the one who's vaguely off-limits in my thoughts. It's the other one, the boy I spent all summer with.

Every week, we rode somewhere together - errands or the beach or the ice cream parlor. Someplace that could have been romantic and was never quite allowed to be, because we weren't doing that.

That part was a bit of a lie. At least for me. Despite myself, I knew I was getting a little attached. I tried to explain it not once but a number of times, tried to explain about sex and all its tendrils that tangle you together in ways and places you're half unaware of.

He didn't get it. I think because he's young - younger even than his age. When I mentioned that to Boywich, I could hear him nodding on the phone. Of course, he said. Sex is different. It's different than fooling around. It just IS. It changes things. It changes things and it's hard to come back from and resume where you left off. I don't think it'll ever be the same with this boy. Paradoxically, I think it'll be worse precisely because he doesn't know or won't admit that it made things different.

If he understood, if he were experiencing the same thing, we might, after a time, return to just being friends.

I don't know why I think that's less likely to succeed with someone I un-dated for four months than it was with someone I was in love with for nearly a decade.

I love and adore Boywich and always will, but I was able to become his friend, and not to want anything different. We had this conversation not too long ago, in which I remember telling him that he's my person. He's my guy. He's the one I would call in what Tolkien referred to as the utmost hour of need. And he knew that, already.

I am rambling, I suppose, and I want to watch Harold and Maude again. There's a commercial on lately that uses the Cat Stevens song that fits Harold and Maude so well, and it's completely out of place in the ad, but it keeps prodding me to re-watch the movie.

The movie is like a compass for me; it resets my direction when I start to feel lost. I can't even tell you why. Maybe it's the scene with the daisies. You know, where she asks him what kind of flower he'd like to be, and he points to the daisies, and says because they're all alike. And she says, no, they're not. Look closer, and you'll see that each one is unique (I am paraphrasing). And then she says something like, "I think a lot of the pain in this world comes from people who are this (holding up an individual daisy) but who allow themselves to be treated like that (sweeping her arm across the same-seeming field of daisies)."

My next tattoo will be of flowers, you know.