Here They Come Again

Every year on the day before Thanksgiving I begin to feel as though I'm coming undone. And every year I wonder why. Most years it's taken until the second week in January for me to put it together, that it's the holidays and that it's practically hardwired into my person to "BELIEVE" and be let down, but this year I actually woke up and knew right away - shit, here it comes again. While this early realization and awareness may mean I could be getting "better" it doesn't make it feel less real.

I awoke every hour on the hour last night to my new cat sitting on my head, mewing for reassurance, and next to my daughter, who sleeps as though she's a practicing Olympic gymnast, her flying elbow jabbing the insecure kitty in the face. We're all sleeping in my bed these past few days because we still don't have a working furnace, thus we live in two and a half rooms of our house while the freak-to-Seattle-snow swirls about outside. And all I could think was, "jeez, no wonder people drink."

And then, "maybe if I just smoked pot..." After that it was, "If I could just dig my car out and make it to the bus station, I'd head for Tennessee or Kentucky, change my name to Pearl and become a waitress at a truck stop." And finally, knowing that I could never get away with any of it, I come to the big one, "My gravestone will read simply, "'She Endured.'"

My question to myself today is, why can't I just let myself be? Why can't I just clean the house and read a book and knit a scarf like the rest of my neighborhood? I just feel like I've got so much work to do before I can even begin to catch up on being normal - so I don't know where to start to get it together at all.

So this is what I've come up with for this morning - ten things to be grateful for:

Sasha, sobriety, warmth, Diva, coffee, income, friends...come on Nanc...health, my computer...books. Antidepressants, when they work.

That's eleven. I'm going back to bed.

Polly Who?

My Last Date - by Nancy Jordet

I met this guy a while ago, at a party of a friend of mine. We connected in a very big way, talked for a couple of hours straight that night, went out a few times, had deep talks and light conversations, had fun. By last night I was anxiously giddy about what was going to happen next, but willing to take it however it presented itself.

Right.

He comes to pick me up at a meeting, where I am secretarying in front of a group of about 80. He walks in and brushes the back of my neck lightly with his fingertips, a slight blush to his face, sits in the back and smiles my way often through the next hour. It's sweet, and publicly so. So much so that a friend of mine sitting close to me leans over and says, "Nancy, I don't know who the guy in the back is, but he looks like he's really into you." Awwwwww....

After the meeting he comes up and hugs me, strong and close, whispering lightly in my ear how happy he is to see me again - let's get out of here.

We leave, sit in the car catching up on what's happened in our lives since last we spoke, taking our time, deciding to see a late movie at the Crest. The American with George Clooney. Of course the movie opens post-coitally, with a nude woman kissing Geo's ear. My guy, let's call him something...how about Bark? Okay, Bark leans his fabulously large and very male shoulder in toward mine and we rest side-by-side against each other through the movie, both laughing at the same inappropriate times, making fun in all the right spots of this supposedly Euro-noir film. A good one to be sure, but really contrived in parts. During the sex scenes, Bark's leg approaches mine and, looking down, I swear you can actually see the heat waves coming off us as off asphalt in the desert sun...

Okay, not really. Nonetheless.

It's....hot. We stay after the movie, through the credits, after the lights come up, after the theatre's empty, after the last employee comes in and stares us down - just whispering and laughing and having a easy, playful time with each other.

Til it's time to go. Oooooo, I'm thinking. I haven't felt this good with a guy in many, many years. So myself, so real, so female. Wow. I SO deserve this.

We get outside and he checks his phone. He's got a text.

He drops his head and shakes it. It's my roommate, he says. She's not coming home again tonight.

Oh? I say absent-mindedly, half-skipping through the parking lot.

Yeah, I asked her to let me know if she's not coming home from now on because last week we were going to stay home and watch a movie together but she didn't show up and apparently she spent the night with her boyfriend. I was so disappointed.

Oh? I say, paying a bit more attention, slowing down to a walk.

Yeah, he says. We haven't even lived together that long and I want all of her attention. It's crazy. I'm so into her, I've got such a mad crush on her I can barely stand it.

First I say nothing. Then I hear myself say, like in a bit of a squeak, Oh?....and stand still.

Does he catch himself and stop talking? Does he possibly think that perhaps he should be sharing this with another guy friend of his and not with his date? No. He continues on using her name and shares a few other tidbits about her that I don't hear because I feel as though I've been belted in the solar plexus and I am trying as best I can not to lose my so far successfully expressionless face.

We get in the car and for the love of god he won't stop. And what do I do? What codependence has trained me to do - I listen. Then I comment. Poor Bark, I say, it's hard to be lonely, isn't it?

!!??!!

Yes, it is. And this is why he thinks that perhaps the solution for him lies in what she has told him about her own lifestyle - polyamory.

Okay, what? Polly who?

She's polyamorous. She believes the solution to living a life possessed of intimate relationships is in plurality - she has more than one boyfriend and they have more than one girlfriend and they all have more than one boyfriend who have more than one girlfriend....

Polly what? I say. Polymorphous, polycystic, polyurethane? I guess I'm not hip, I have not heard this term yet.

We used to refer to it as free love, yes? Why don't you just drop acid and move into a commune, mofo. But do I say this? No. I still don't know what's just hit me. For I was just a minute ago on the verge of getting what I thought I deserved.

But do I deserve this? No. So after a short schpiel I deliver on the merits of true intimacy, from which I am completely detached as though I am walking through jello and wondering why I am talking at all, I just stop and say - hey, look, I could never do that. I can barely deal with one man at a time - good luck with that. Just don't drink.

We are outside my house at this point and all I want to do is run screaming into the night. But he then hangs his head in apparent angst and says, jeez, he really doesn't know what he wants and something about he doesn't really feel very good about where this is going - when his phone rings.

It's his drunken ex-wife and she's upset.

What planet have I landed on? Has it really only been half an hour since I was so over-the-moon happy?

I've got to go, thanks, it was a good movie, best of luck with your complexities. He leans over to hug me big and it actually looks as though there is possibly a kiss headed my way. Duck!! Done, and I slip out of the embrace and say adios.

Why was I so nice? Why am I always so nice when some guy decides to dis me?

Because my knee-jerk reaction to what I perceive as rejection still lies in wondering what is wrong with me. Unfortunate but true. But the key words are "knee-jerk." Because on reflection, and with a lot of input from loving friends, I can clearly see that it's not something I misread or deserved. It's someone else's mess.

So why am I still so sadly disappointed?