The word block suggests that you are constipated or stuck, when the truth is that you’re empty. — Anne Lamott
**
No sign of Dan for well over two months. I’m still stuck, struggling not to sink into the sticky, sucking mud of melancholic inertia. My enthusiasm and vitality have ebbed away; I feel the way I might if our blazing western sun had been blotted out behind drizzly, slate-colored clouds for weeks. Not only have I not been writing (I’ve been reading about writing, but not writing, which makes me a poseur, and possibly a fraud), I lack the energy to meet the demands made upon me by others which, while already out of my control due to an unconscionable lack of boundaries, I could at least handle before. But I no longer have the blood to donate. Right now I just need to halt the slow drain.
Further depleting my powers are the daily mea culpas and second-guessing about where I went wrong with these folks. How did I let it come to this?
**
But first, in other news: Stoner Rick is back at the call center.
Oh, I am not going to go there again, trust me, but it’s fearsome strange having him around again after everything that’s occurred. I’d be lying if I claimed he didn’t still attract me, in his odd, arrested, overgrown-slacker-teenager way, still wearing the backward baseball cap at thirty-one, looking like Silent Bob after Jenny Craig. Only now it’s the history, it’s my embarrassment about things said and done three years ago that make me nervous, that infuse a tension into our limited interactions. He relieves the tension somewhat by rolling his eyes and making goofy faces. Rick was always a funny guy. I can see that it was a combination of his humor and his friendly earthiness that made him so attractive to me before. Things he projects when he’s not all red-eyed and checked out, as he still is, and often.
But the history…I know he remembers it too, you can’t erase that stuff no matter how much you smoke. Sometimes I feel like my predilection to get vulnerable and make a fool of myself with men is a huge liability. Did I really say all those things to Rick? Yes, I sure did. Damn. I totally put myself out there. Now I’m embarrassed. Embarrassed for telling him that I was dying to have sex with him. Embarrassed for leaving him a voice mail that I’d fallen in love with him “a little bit.” I don’t even know if he got the message. He was in jail at the time. That last statement is the most embarrassing thing of all. What the hell did I think I was doing?
Then again, anyone could say that about Sam. What the hell did I think I was I doing, starting something with a kid half my age? What the hell did I think I was doing, sleeping with my supervisor? What the hell did I think I was doing, getting mixed up in his illicit nocturnal activities?
I guess the big difference is that Sam was an extraordinary kid, who requited me, and gave me a so-called “corrective experience” amid all the madness. It was crazy and inappropriate and memoir-worthy, and I’d do it all again in a heartbeat.
I once read the autobiography of a woman who married her gay, AIDS-infected best friend. They had a difficult marriage, complicated by drug addiction, sexual incompatibility, and disease, but they also had two healthy and much-loved kids. People make all kinds of choices, some of which make no sense to others (who may be quick to judge, citing damning emotional issues), but this woman had no regrets.
Unfortunately, I kind of regret the whole Rick episode.
**
That kind of regret is characteristic of us perfectionists. We hate and abuse ourselves when our risks don’t work out. (So of course we take fewer and fewer.) We want to do just the right thing and say just the right thing at just the right time, not too soon and not too late. We want to sail through life authentic and triumphant, like fully competent, fully realized and enlightened beings who manage never to do any harm while never allowing others to harm us.
Yeah, I know. Good luck with that.
As I mentioned, lately I have been kicking myself, berating myself for being a less than decent human being, about my inability to lay down crisp, clear boundaries right out of the gate with people who take my goodwill further than I ever really intended. Witness the fiftysomething alcoholic at work, the one with the Ralph Kramden physique, who was coming to my cube multiple times a day to pet me, and who finally let slip that my “stubbornness” would one day relent — that I’d eventually “come around.”(!) I began to distance myself and to actively avoid him after that revelation.
But what the hell kind of strategy is that? And how did I let it come to this?
I could ask, what’s the alternative now? To say, “Stan, there’s not a snowball’s chance in hell?!” That’s to say nothing of the 300-lb. giant who reeks of inadequate hygiene and was until recently coming to me for hugs. He also came around asking me for allergy medicine because “all the plants and trees are having sex.” That was awkward.
I want to be kind. I want to show compassion toward the people who need it most. But almost unfailingly that kind of caring, especially with men, or at least the subset of men I don’t want to be giving the wrong idea, is mistaken for another. (Why can’t Eric Bana make that mistake?)
**
Nor do I know what to do when I find myself spending way more time and energy than I can spare trying to deal non-destructively with those who have already taken up more than I intended to spare of my limited time and energy, because I let them. After eight aborted attempts at nonviolent communication that took me a total of twelve hours, I found myself asking again: how the hell did I let it come to this?
Usually with good intentions, if the above is any indication.
Now, of course, the damage is done: I’m trying to bail out the Titanic without alerting the passengers, because they’d be traumatized. I don’t know how to be Maureen. I wish I knew how to be Maureen.
Maureen was one of my closest friends ten years ago, when I was severely depressed and borderline suicidal. We used to go out to lunch about once a week, where I bent her ear at length about my multiple woes while she kept me updated on the status of her divorce. I had introduced her to my therapist of ten years, who had helped her figure out that she needed to leave her husband and that she wanted to go back to school. I just assumed we had a more or less equal give and take going, that she was equally fed by the relationship.
I was mistaken. Sometime after most of Maureen’s temporary trauma and drama had ended — mine continued unabated — she told me gently but firmly over chili rellenos that she needed to take a step back from our friendship. It was “too intense” for her. She didn’t have the energy for our lunches anymore.
As you can probably imagine, I was stunned. Devastated. I felt as if I were being abandoned, without any warning whatsoever. My face burned with the shame of unexpected rejection. But after a moment (in which Maureen looked at me as kindly as ever), I nodded my head and said, “Okay.” I asked her a few questions, some of which she answered, and some of which she didn’t. I didn’t offer my own assessments as to why she might be “running away” from our friendship, nor did I try to argue with her calm resolve. I accepted it at face value, as what Maureen needed right now. She seemed quite clear about what she needed right now. (I did my wailing and gnashing of teeth later, at home.)
To this day, I have to admit she loosed herself from me with as much tact and class as anyone ever has. It was very gentle, but at the same time very firm. I had no doubt she meant business. I also had no doubt she meant no harm.
It had never occurred to me that my own negative-integer energy might be canceling out or depleting the positive integers of my friends, but a year or two later my friend Deb (who counseled refugees — she was no stranger to psychological issues) backed away as well, saying gingerly, “I need to be around people who want to have fun and talk about fun things.” I am quite sure I was no fun.
I had leaned pretty heavily on Deb emotionally (which, needless to say, was part of the problem), so this loss was equally devastating. I never realized that she wasn’t also leaning on me. But I respected Deb then and I respect her now for being able to take care of herself. Our relationship may have been serving me, but it obviously wasn’t serving her.
Of course, both of these women had “let it come to this.” But it had only come to this because they cared. They wanted to help me. They wanted to be a good friend. It had all started out innocuously enough. I also know that if they’d continued to show up day after day out of loyalty to a relationship that took more out of them than they got back, they would have eventually come to resent me and the demands I made on their time and energy. I’m glad they didn’t wait any longer.
In those days particularly, I wasn’t exactly someone you’d invite along on spring break. A high school friend compared me to Eeyore, which was harsh, but not entirely inaccurate. If I had been a Peanuts character, I probably would have been drawn with a little black cloud hovering over my head wherever I went, like Pig-Pen with his aura of dirt. I couldn’t help it. I was doing the best I could. But so were Maureen and Deb.
Maybe today I’m still a self-hating, self-absorbed, narcissistic mess, but I like to think I’m a slightly more lighthearted self-hating, self-absorbed, narcissistic mess…one who wants to enjoy her life a little more than she needs to obsess over stories about the ways she’s sick and broken. From time to time, now, I can actually step outside the familiar mental narrative in which I’m a massive and serious problem — like global warming — that needs an urgent and focused solution. Some days I can even attain total presence in the moment, and experience (gasp!) happiness. Which, ironically, turns out to involve a lot less work.
**
For the past couple of weeks, however, I have been unable to find that kind of presence. I’ve been too busy flogging myself for not knowing how to handle everything and everyone as impeccably as the Dalai Lama. I’m sure he never finds himself in these kinds of situations.
But speaking of situations in which the Dalai Lama never finds himself, the individual who adds the greatest positive charge to my personal batteries seems to have left the building — for good. The staff schedule no longer lists Dan with an ‘LOA’ for ‘leave of absence.’ He’s just gone.
I’ve been putting in applications and sending out resumes again, in order to leave the premises myself. Even without having made my confession to Dan, the place is like a minefield anymore. Between Rick and Ted and my plus-sized wannabe beaux, I can scarcely turn a corner without one of them in my face. But assuming I did eventually have the opportunity to say something…however it went, it might not create the most ideal working conditions. Believe it or not, more than a few of our coworkers have made connections that broke up marriages, and not only did they live to tell about it, some of them are still together. But even anticipating the most favorable scenario, who wants to act all that out in a fishbowl?
I still intend to reach out to him, however, if it becomes clear that our paths won’t be crossing again as a matter of course. Otherwise, not telling him may become a lifelong regret…and not because I’m a perfectionist.
**
In case you’re wondering what ever happened with my Match.com experiment, the answer is: not much. I went on two dates all month. (Even on the crappy free site, the odds were a helluva lot better.) The first was the bug-eyed professor, who had me daydreaming about making dinner; the other was a pleasantly nerdy 31-year-old MBA from Canada named Kip.
Kip was slender and swarthy, with lively, darting black eyes behind an academic’s glasses, afflicted with the early onset of what could informally be called Salman Rushdie pattern baldness. He was highly intelligent, interested in world travel, and we hit it off pretty well — the conversation flowed with ease — except for that point where he informed me that his sense of humor was too subtle for most Americans, and that I wasn’t getting it either. Subtle humor I may miss, subtle condescension I do not. I could still have seen spending more getting-to-know-you-time with him, but he was already jumping the gun by making innuendos. (Those weren’t too subtle for me, either.) By the time I’d finished housesitting my friend Constance’s mini-zoo a week later, and had my evenings free, I didn’t have any real ganas to see him again.
Honestly, if a man’s going to deprive me of the pleasure of my fetish for a thick, wavy head of hair, and be someone who will have to grow on me, it’s best if he not start by implying I’m dumb, and then act like we’re already sleeping together.
Is that unfair? I know it’s not really fair to any guy to have been preceded by exactly what I’m looking for.
I’m still acting like a chooser, when every day I’m inching closer to beggardom.
**
All told, I’m not in the best frame of mind to be heading back east for my parents’ 50th wedding anniversary party. Even if it’s only for a long weekend, I’m going to have to set foot in my old fundamentalist church, and see people I left behind without a backward look 25 years ago. I’ve already made plans to deprogram on the last day with my best friend from college, but the two and a half days preceding that may be a trial. I anticipate a Come to Jesus ambush or two from my mother, if not an outright “intervention” with the entire clan in attendance. Failing that, I can just picture my brother’s innocent homeschooled boys asking their mythical Prodigal aunt wide-eyed questions — at the table, in front of everyone — like “Aunt AB, why don’t you believe in Jesus?”
I’m kind of sorry I committed to it, especially at a time when I’m feeling weak and constantly second-guessing my integrity and self-awareness. Recently someone volunteered the professional opinion that I might be dissociative. I thought: Great! Just when I thought I’d roamed to the outer perimeters of my vast fucked-upitude, and figured out how to go on with life anyway — something new and huge to worry about! I just don’t feel like myself when I don’t feel mentally ill. For all I know, she may be right; my feeling is that I’ve already got enough crazy on my plate to last me through most of the rest of the picnic.
In this instance, however, I wish. I’m going to have to “check out” somehow, just to get through the whole ordeal with my sanity at least partially intact. Maybe I can drink on the sly. In the latter years of high school, after I lost my religion, I did “escape” the religulousness of my devout family by means of vivid fantasies. I was like Brazil’s Sam Lowry in the dental torture chair, leaving behind an intolerable environment by visualizing a daring flight to faraway places. In my case, these fantasies usually featured my brilliant, edgy classmate Damien Moreau, who was the antithesis of everything in our perfectly square, repressed, G-rated household. My mind would drift off into far more compelling and subversive scenarios, like losing my virginity to Damien in a VW bus in France, while my body remained in attendance at our prim dinner table, eating mechanically like a decoy robot. I’d been using fantasy this way since early childhood: when the neighborhood kids decided I was too little (and too lame) to play ball with them, I went off by myself and jumped from the swings, pretending to be Wonder Woman fighting off a host of invisible foes. I was too busy saving the world to bother with their stupid ballgame. When things sucked, my imagination was my escape.
I don’t think that’s the same thing, though.
**
It’s hard to be at sea when you can’t find north.
I’m referring to the phenomenon I talked about at the end of my last post: that non-rational sense that you know what’s real and true, and that even if it seems nuts to everyone else, you’re convinced everything’s going to turn out.
I am missing that sense right now. For a couple of months, there was this feeling of inevitability, of this will be, which I imagined was comparable to that “faith in the unseen” that keeps people like my mother going. I was sure that I was going to succeed, that I could and would make my dreams come true. I was so convinced that Dan and I were destined to be together that I told Russ, “If he and I aren’t together in five years, I owe you fifty bucks.” I was certain of my own moral compass, that even under conditions of extreme fatigue or stress I would still do the right thing. I had faith in myself, and faith in my future. And I got shit done.
Now I have little left but doubt. Doubt about my own goodness and talent and competence to make it in the world. Doubt about the benevolence of the universe. Doubt that I will ever see Europe or publication or a penis again, before I’m pushing a walker or pushing up daisies.
Maybe wanting to be full of confidence and belief all the time is just another kind of perfectionism. But I envy people who don’t seem to ceaselessly question themselves and everything else.
**
“Fifteen years ago today I met my Ishta Devata,” Shasta writes on Facebook, ever the yoga teacher. The words caption a photo of a friendly-looking, stocky young man with shaggy hair and a goatee, wearing a patterned white short-sleeved shirt. He looks like the kind of guy you might expect to hand you a joint at a Phish concert.
An ishta devata, in Hinduism, is one’s personal deity, one’s favorite god-avatar, the source of one’s inspiration. I consider how Shasta, by her own admission, used to be a self-loathing, pill-popping party girl. Now she speaks with an authority and assurance I can’t begin to imagine having. A majority of her posts are about gratitude; her current mission appears to be to spread the proverbial love and light.
Of course, she was able to shit while she still had the pot around.
So many of us, perfectionists or otherwise, seem to be chasing the tail of our own perfectibility, whether it be through therapy or spiritual practices or any variety of self-improvement techniques. We seem to think that once we’ve finally made it through the decontamination chamber, then someone will want to hold us. Taking it even further are those innumerable New Age spiritualities that assert we must become entire of ourselves, completely self-actualized and whole on our own, at which point we’ll realize that we don’t need anyone else. Then, of course, everyone will love us! It’s almost taboo in these circles to suggest that the experience of both loving and being loved could effect any kind of deep emotional healing. You’d think you were suggesting that people not tie their own shoes, or wipe their own butt.
Ishta devata. Divine inspiration. Shasta claims to have been transformed by a big, scary love she almost didn’t have the courage or wherewithal to reach out and grasp. Hell, it was mostly the tequila talking at the time. He was married. She was engaged. Everything about the circumstances was wrong.
I find myself wondering if the faith only comes to you after you make the leap. Maybe the longer you wait to make the leap, the more your existing faith — in your own gifts and abilities and even your basic goodness — drains away. Maybe the point, after all, is just to act. You’re bound to go about things all wrong, no matter what you do, because you don’t know what the hell you’re doing and never did. But if you’re being sincere, and true to your own north, maybe that’s the only way you’re going to find your way. Maybe that’s just how it works.
And maybe, just maybe, one time, your stumbling, fumbling wrongness won’t be wrong to the right person.
It’s a theory.
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