#CBR4 Review #18: The Lover’s Dictionary by David Levithan

#CBR4 Review #18: The Lover's Dictionary by David Levithan.

Dear Self: We Only Have One Life to Live

Dear Self:

This entry is overdue, mostly because I started it a million times and couldn’t find anything poignant to say in order to close it.

Our year has come to an end. We did not postaweek2011 as we had planned. We did not find ourselves as we had hoped. We did not convince Not BF he was madly and secretly in love with us. We did not cure The Syndrome, or fix him into something perfect (the perfect kisses are still there… we just aren’t anymore). We didn’t decide on a master plan. And we didn’t tie up any loose ends. All that happened was the end.

On January 13, 2012, the same thing happened with my life-long soap opera, One Life to Live. Yeah, as I’ve mentioned in previous blogs, instead of nap time, my mom let me have “resting time” which really was just me laying on a pillow watching soap operas and being quiet. My imaginary friends were all characters from All My Children. I was pretty convinced I was going to grow up to be Erica Kane. Then, One Life to Live happened.

I met Viki Lord (lots of married names follow). Here was a determined, indulged, broken, strong, passionate, dedicated woman who had an alternate personality do all her evil scheming. (I kinda became convinced I needed multiple personalities so I could be bad on occasion. I also decided any time my mom was mean or grumpy that she might be suffering from multiple personalities.) I enjoyed the comedy of the Dorian/Viki feud. I relished the dedication of the Cramer women to get what they wanted at any stake and the fierce loyalty of the Buchanans to each other, despite marrying each other’s spouses frequently. I was entranced by watching Todd be evil and tender in the same episode (pretty sure this is where my addiction to project-style men began). I loved, more than anything else, that in my childlike, and then teenaged, and then adult mind – One Life to Live wasn’t so much about melodrama as it was about redemption. Okay, fine – melodramatic redemption.

There was comfort in knowing that no matter what happened in life, One Life to Live would always be there and the story was usually pretty easy to pick up on. People had babies that aged 12 years in three months, but hey, kids grow up so fast! Couples “made love” and then broke up. Weddings were spectacular. Tears were welcome. Despite change and redemption, One Life to Live was consistent. It was dependable.

Of course, Self, things are not so easy or predictable in real life. And in real life, the fictional lives in Llanview were unpredictably cut short, due to a lack of funding, foresight, and support by an internet television company, and a lack of profit on network television (SHAME ON YOU ABC – so much for the most dependable job on television). Unfortunately, not all of the story lines were sweetly wrapped in a bow for perpetuity. Some things were left dangling interminably because the show’s writers thought it was going to continue on, at least in some form. So, like life itself, on January 13th, 2012, One Life to Live just ended. Abruptly and without too much melodrama (for a soap opera).

For me, the ending said: Nothing is permanent; it’s time to find your own melodramatic redemption.

So, Self, instead of writing these letters to ourself, we’re going out into the world to see if we can: fix a project-style man, or in the alternative, one of his many brothers; develop a feud with a worthy female adversary; remain fiercely loyal to the family and friends who have not betrayed us or disowned us during this clusterfuck of a year/half-decade; become a determined, indulged, broken, strong, passionate, dedicated woman. Maybe, if we’re really lucky, we can develop an alter ego to do all of our evil bidding…Somewhere between heaven and hell…we only have one life to live.

Love,

Me

Dear Self: Forgiveness is the Best Gift

Dear Self:

This year, I received the best and most unexpected Christmas gift ever: forgiveness. I’m not sure I deserve it, or that I earned it, but I want this person to know: It is precious.

There are mistakes we all make that we know are mistakes the minute the act is complete. I knew the millisecond after the words escaped my mouth, and yet, there is no recapturing all the contents of Pandora’s box. See here. I wounded a person I loved while simultaneously breaking my own heart. After that day, we never spoke again and his voice became vapor.

But now, almost four years to the day since I last saw this man, I heard his voice and he said, “Don’t think on it, I don’t.” Maybe he meant it nonchalantly, but I know he means it genuinely. He says he doesn’t harbor any bad feelings. And the most important lesson I’ve learned in the past few years is that when someone tells you their truth, you should believe him. So, I believe him; I must not anchor myself to the past, including my past mistakes.

A few years ago, I fell in love. And while the relationship may not have become lifelong, I continue to love the things I learned from the relationship, the passion I felt for this person, and the memories I will always share with this man.

For Christmas, I got forgiveness. I hope it’s a gift I can learn to give more freely on my own.

Love,

Me

Quote of the Day

“Although every man believes that his decisions and resolutions involve the most multifarious factors, in reality they are mere oscillation between flight and longing.” ~Hermann Broch

Dear Self: A Birthday Blog

Dear Self:

Usually, I write my Birthday Blog to reflect all the ways that I have changed, attempted change, or have seen fleeting glimpses of self-evolution. This year, I simply can’t do that. I cannot, because I did not change. In a year that brought so much innocent despair, I did not change. I did the opposite: I did everything I could to grasp to things that are the same as always… The Desert, The Boy, The Constant Cycle of Changing Things…. When I stopped myself from changing, it became easier to see, not how everything else had changed, but how my perspective had bolted me to a prior version. The Desert wasn’t frozen as I had hoped… only stagnant. The Constant Cycle wasn’t one of change, but a reprise; recycled stories and recycled feelings and recycled loss. And The Boy… had long ago become a hollow man, one incapable of passion. It’s taken some time, but the dust is beginning to leave my eyes…

Here’s what I know is always the same about me:

I’m never wholly comfortable. I never truly relax. I am constantly urged by this little nagging thing that says there is more, always more; more of what I cannot fathom.

When I am intrigued by a person, the need to understand everything about them becomes a personal addiction I cannot surrender. I catch The Syndrome, not often, but intensely. The Syndrome, whereby I will blindly be addicted to someone who asserts his adoration yet utterly demoralizes me at the same time. I accept that this happens because somewhere and by someone, I was trained to not expect to be adored. I often need reminding that while I don’t need to be beautiful, it is okay for me to want to be…and it is possible for someone else to believe it. However, once I’ve come to know everything I can know about my addiction, I never surrender – I simply escape.

I am a hopeless romantic. When I love something, I love it all the way, not partially, or somewhat. My love is fierce and unforgiving. Sometimes, my own love breaks me.

I always believe I might be wrong when it comes to human nature. Bad things usually happen when I ignore my intuition to do something: easier, more convenient, more practical, more sensical. I should always trust my initial instincts about people. It’s the later opinions filled with facts and probabilities that ruins things.

I believe people can change: themselves, their feelings, and their treatment of others. I forgive other people when I can understand why they do the things they do. My forgiveness does not expire, but it can evaporate if taken for granted too long. I endure the abuse of others when I feel I have wronged them. I endure the abuse of others when I feel they have wronged me and I want to give them the opportunity to prove I am wrong about them.

I procrastinate because I hate to wait. I also hate: overly long, descriptive books; the smell of wet dogs; not remembering specific words; pretentious people; fakers; the necessity of Facebook/IM/Twitter/Email/SmartPhones in my life to communicate with others.

I chatter nonstop to disguise that I am thinking about something else with which I am too afraid to burden others. I never need advice, but need to learn to stop seeking it. This year, someone’s unsolicited advice saved me more than once from complete despair, not because the advice was pristine, but because the pure good intentions of the giver reminded me that other people are invested in my future.

And finally, what always is the same about me is that I continue to be a square peg, wandering with lustful hope for a perfect edge on which to lean. I never feel like I belong somewhere for too long, including in someone else’s arms. I am still a passion junkie, following a heartstring, an idea, a spark… except now, I am also searching for the edge of the Universe. Maybe that’s where I’ll finally belong…

So, maybe nothing changes. Maybe I never truly change, just change my perspective about how I see myself…and how I see myself in the world.

Love,

Me

Dear Self: Here’s Where the Story Ends…Hopefully.

“It’s that little souvenir of a colorful year
Which makes me smile inside
So I cynically, cynically say the world is that way
Surprise, surprise, surprise.”
~The Sundays

Dear Self:

On a regular basis, I write about the Constant Cycle of Ending Things with a person with whom I cannot seem to escape. Or rather, try desperately NOT to escape. As far as I run, as great as my desire to leave may be, I never seem to cut the tethered cord which shackles me to a relationship which is not real.

Actually, it is real. It’s really bad. I’ve mistaken kindness for care, courtesy as concern, and longevity as love.  I’ve learned to censor my passion, swallow my sadness, and every year, I learn to accept a little less than I earned the year before. The truth is painful; the truth is that I am wholly irrelevant to this person.  My competitive spirit and bold stubborn pride refuse to allow me to end any interaction without making my imprint… but I cannot. It is impossible to impact a person who is entirely indifferent to your existence.

But this is not another post about how I have willed myself to commit to a man who does not love me.  No, this post is about acknowledging that I am super bad, like infamously bad, at endings. So, while I have been waiting for a dramatic exit, or a climactic last scene, or something poetic and memorable to mark the END of whatever the hell THIS is, the REAL end is just an ending like all others: simple, boring, forgettable.

To a man who never has had any curiosity about me (or curiosity about anything of substance): Please forget me. Do not call, do not write. Do not remember that I am real, or whole, or wanting you. Lack curiosity forever. Let go, so that I can let go. I hope every day that this is where our story ends.

Love,

Me

Dear Self: Not Everyone Changes…

Dear Self:

Not everyone changes.  Some people, whether blessed or cursed, stay exactly the same. Their knowledge may increase, or circumstances may alter, or their life adjusts, but at the very core of their being, some people just do not change. They are the same.  It is that simple.

Somehow, this tiny hugely significant fact has been lost on me for about the entire duration of my life. I’m a girl constantly trying to reinvent myself in some way, always trying to push myself to some level of understanding about some random thing. The constant cycle of movement that frenzies my friends and family, it isn’t so I can avoid my feelings, or distract myself from what’s missing – it’s what keeps me feeling like I am trying to evolve, learn, grow… CHANGE. I guess I must of assumed because I seek change in big and little ways that every person on some level LIKES change.

Yeah, definitely not. Some people don’t change. So, while I have been out trying to be different for the sake of my own process of learning and developing, other people have been perfecting the things that make them feel secure and comfortable and happy. I may have THOUGHT they were changing internally or something, but they were really just content on their own trajectory of life.

And I was judgey about it. I think I really believed that the swirly-whirly busy version of change-focused evolution is somehow BETTER than the “perfect what I already am” version of evolution. So, when it occurred to me suddenly and solidly that the reason I’ve been mad at particular people is because they haven’t changed, I realized, it isn’t their fault for staying the same. I can’t be injured by another person’s ability/choice/natural inclination to STAY THE SAME, just as I can’t really control my internal need to constantly seek something new/different/change-worthy.  In fact, these people in my life who don’t change are perfect touchstones for me to determine if the changes I make in my swirly-whirly world are real change, or just a repackage of the same old thing (yeah, lately I’ve been worried I just keep repackaging – but alas, that is a topic of another blog).

So, Self, not everyone changes. But I do change. I guess the challenge of building relationships, of maintaining relationships, is accepting that not everyone will change the same way or the same time or at all, and be vigilant about assessing whether whomever I’ve become through my constant need to change is congruent with whomever the other person has always been (See: Not BF). Even harder, though, is deciding what to do… when those two people are no longer in a copasetic situation for both parties. I can’t keep being hurt because other people stay exactly as they have always been… or be surprised that those same people expected me not to change.

Ah, the constant cycle of ending things…changing things. Someday, we’ll have it all figured out. It just won’t be today.

Love,

Me

Tarot of the Day…

The Lovers

Although it has taken on a strictly romantic revision of meaning in some modern decks, traditionally the Lovers card of Tarot reflected the challenges of choosing a partner. At a crossroads, one cannot take both paths. The images on this card in different decks have varied more than most, because we have had so many ways of looking at sex and relationships across cultures and centuries.

Classically, the energy of this card reminded us of the real challenges posed by romantic relationships, with the protagonist often shown in the act of making an either-or choice. To partake of a higher ideal often requires sacrificing the lesser option. The path of pleasure eventually leads to distraction from spiritual growth. The gratification of the personality eventually gives way to a call from spirit as the soul matures.

Modern decks tend to portray the feeling of romantic love with this card, showing Adam and Eve at the gates of Eden when everything was still perfect. This interpretation portrays humanity before the Fall, and can be thought to imply a different sort of choice — the choice of evolution over perfection, or the choice of personal growth through relationship — instead of a fantasy where everything falls into place perfectly and is taken care of without effort.

Dear Self: We Are Obligation-Free…

The past few months (see: years), people (see: Not BF) have been very generous in their exclamations that I live a life without obligations. Usually, this statement is followed by a list illustrating my lack of commitments, e.g. boyfriend/husband, child(ren), home, career, job, property, dependents, pets. I don’t even own any plants. Accompanying this statement and list is usually a look that tells me I’m sort of pathetic and that it’s far past time for me to grow up and become obligated. Sometimes, the really mean people also say something like: “I love my life! I can’t believe how lucky I am! I could never be like you, without any cares!”

First, FUCK YOU, to all Frenemies. Just because I don’t have the “cares” that burden your life doesn’t mean that I’m actually care-free. My cares are just different than yours. Second, for a girl without any “real” obligations, why am I living such an obligated life?

Yeah, seriously, WHY AM I???

I haven’t been a person who cares what other people think for a long time, but somewhere in my 20s, I got really concerned about the perfection of my life on paper… I am tremendously diligent about balancing my checkbook. I never let myself take a vacation I haven’t budgeted for at least a few weeks in advance. I don’t splurge on expensive: shoes, clothes, cars, food. I am not careless or reckless with other people’s feelings, possessions, time, or interests. I have chosen respectable, good-natured, helping professions in which to invest myself. I don’t even unreasonably apply for extraordinary jobs. I critically evaluate the job and experience requirements and construct a solid cover letter to demonstrate my applicable skills. Right up until the point where I got fired from a job I hated by a boss I thought was a worthless human being, I had a very rational, reasonable, respectable, obligated wonderful paper life.

Except, it isn’t wonderful. It has taken me the past year of floating above the bottom of the barrel to realize how I have obligated myself to someone else’s ideal, to someone else’s goals, to a societal proclamation of what it is I am supposed to desire. Meanwhile, I have spent so much time and energy and mental ambition on striving towards goals I didn’t create, that I have no idea: what I’m good at, what I love, what I’m capable of.

So, Frenemies, you are right: I don’t have any obligations. Instead of hearing the twinge of disapproval in your voices, and the judgment that tetherless is somehow bad/wrong, I am making a conscious decision to hear what it means to be obligation-free. It means I am obligated only to myself. I have spent the last year learning to relinquish my fears, from small fears like riding that stupid fire truck, to huge fears, like not playing to convention; like telling Not BF I was in love with him; like moving home with my parents; like refusing to continue in a profession I loathe, have always loathed.

And I have no idea what comes next.

I don’t need to.

Love,

Me

The Cracks Remain…

Dear Him:

I continue to be amazed that the same person can break my heart in the same way. Despite knowing this will factually occur, I continue to expose myself to the thing that hurts me. Am I a masochist? Or am I just a romantic idealist, hoping when hope is lost, that somehow the patchwork repair job I’ve completed to mend my own wounds will somehow not show the cracks caused by an earthquake?

Or maybe the cracks are scars, scars which do not heal, but instead show the roadmap of small and gigantic wounds from which I’ve suffered, repaired, recovered, and healed, but which never disappear? Tiny travesties are nothing but a faint whisper of a trail, and larger emotional disasters are interstate freeways leading right to the permanent bleed in my soul. I must learn to recognize a wound from a scar, a bruise from scab, a mark from hole. I must learn to see as you do, plainly, simply, and with blurred vision – I do not belong to you. I am free.

I will always love the ideal of you, the perfection of you in my mind. The incidental hero who would someday care to memorize me in every tiny facet of my being. The version of you who will never tell me no.

There are no heroes in real life. My fairy tale has ended, in my reality, in my heart. I’m just waiting for my head to catch up… I am free. Free and fractured…

Love,

Me

Quote of the Day

“Well, I have lost you; and I lost you fairly;
In my own way, and with my full consent.
Say what you will, kings in a tumbrel rarely
Went to their deaths more proud than this one went.

Some nights of apprehension and hot weeping
I will confess; but that’s permitted me;
Day dried my eyes; I was not one for keeping
Rubbed in a cage a wing that would be free.

If I had loved you less or played you slyly
I might have held you for a summer more,
But at the cost of words I value highly,
And no such summer as the one before.

Should I outlive this anguish, and men do,
I shall have only good to say of you.”
― Edna St. Vincent Millay

Quote of the Day

“You build your world around someone, and then what happens when he disappears? Where do you go- into pieces, into atoms, into the arms of another man? You go shopping, you cook dinner, you work odd hours, you make love to someone else on June nights. But you’re not really there, you’re someplace else where there is blue sky and a road you don’t recognize. If you squint your eyes, you think you see him, in the shadows, beyond the trees. You always imagine that you see him, but he’s never there. It’s only his spirit; that’s what’s there beneath the bed when you kiss your husband, there when you send your daughter off to school. It’s in your coffee cup, your bathwater, your tears.

Unfinished business always comes back to haunt you, and a man who swears he’ll love you forever isn’t finished with you until he’s done.”

― Here on Earth, Alice Hoffman

Quote of the Day

“Yes, I was infatuated with you: I am still. No one has ever heightened such a keen capacity of physical sensation in me. I cut you out because I couldn’t stand being a passing fancy. Before I give my body, I must give my thoughts, my mind, my dreams. And you weren’t having any of those. ”

― Sylvia Plath

Dear Self: We Can’t Seem to Find Our Inner Dialogue

Dear Self:

I started this blog, so that I would have ongoing conversations with myself, instead of having redundant conversations with others about things we know we should change, but are somehow incapable of changing.

I think it is time to definitively state that this plan has now been placed in the epic fail category.

I’ve never been good at managing relationships with others, mostly because of my, almost pathological, need to over-analyze even the most mundane aspects of myself, others, and decision-making. Somehow, it seems so clear what other people should do, say, be, think, believe, and so much harder to manage the gray area of my own thoughts. I’ve become an expert at wanting two opposites almost simultaneously, and with equal desire; I epitomize the true definition of ambivalence. I start and stop constantly, whether it be the beginning of conversations, or the end of relationships, or the initiation of a clear career path. To summarize: I have no idea what I want.

I’ve always had trouble deciding what I want, instead finding myself positioned cleverly in ways that appear to be progressive. I’ve achieved a strange modicum of conventional success, while flailing about and hoping my fertile gasps looks like deep breaths and that my clamoring limbs look like graceful pirouettes. Meanwhile, my lack of creating a charted course has led me to feel rootless, tetherless, and feral. Like all feral beings, there are times when I desire to be domesticated and secure, and others when I dream of wildly romanticized versions of reality where I am never forced to make any choices at all.

This week, I felt the clinging desperation of a woman who has found the bottom of the barrel. I knew I’d hit rock bottom because 1) I contemplated whether anaphylaxis would be a viable option for suicide, or if I’d just get really itchy and sleepy; 2) I wondered whether the lawyer in IL who got arrested for prostitution was starting a new employment trend; 3) I prepared Henri Le Celica to be my new apartment; 4) I legitimately believed that maybe BB had changed and that we would finally get married and have lots of babies; and 5) I asked Not BF for serious advice on all of the above. This is the bottom and I am alone here…

So, Self, find your fucking inner dialogue. Stop being so ambivalent and lackadaisical. And quit fucking waiting for something impassioned and impressive and grand to happen to give us some kind of plucky heroine moment where we see our future unfold. We are not exceptional, despite the lies our parents have told us. We are ordinary, and like ordinary people, must make ordinary decisions in order to prove to others that we may, in fact, be capable of becoming extraordinary.

I cannot keep waiting for other factors to decide my life, for clients to come, for a career path to emerge, for a man to love, a child to nurture, a friend to understand. I must change my understanding of the cooperative compassion of the world. I am alone, so I must choose: my destiny, my love, my desire, my satisfaction… I must choose all by myself.

I might always be a neurotic, ambivalent, wanting, desperate, passion junkie. That’s part of the choice I, alone, have the privilege of deciding, of selecting, of analyzing…in order to be… somehow… extraordinary.

Love,

Me

A Letter…. Not to Self.

Dear ________,

I feel like I’m in this constant state of apology with you. And I do apologize for any discomfort or confusion I’ve caused you, but I’m not sure I’m sorry I see things differently than you do… Simple might be easier for you… but easy is not always inherently better. I spent a long time trying to force myself into a simple pattern; polishing my rough edges so I could be a round peg in a round hole… but I never fit. Instead, I mourned the loss of my edges, missed the rawness and intrigue of difference, and focused solely on your approval instead of my satisfaction. At the beginning and at the end, I learned: I cannot be simple. Even if I long for it, crave it even. Even if I never find a place to fit, even if I never fit wholly anywhere. Even if… I lose a simple man that I loved enough to want to be simple.

I don’t know how to relinquish you. I think about how many years I felt like I only belonged to you. I think about nights when I am quiet and calm and think what an easy life I could have with a man who doesn’t think deep thoughts. I think about how you sleep silently and smile easily. I think about how your passion erupts in bursts and spurts… and I cannot imagine a day when I will not love you.

I don’t know how to remain beholden to you. I think about the ways that I conformed myself to be a version of myself that might be palatable to you and your life. I think about the 872 miles between here and there and think maybe that distance wasn’t far enough to go for me to forget you. I think that friendship is a hollow consolation prize with a man who won’t be able to heal the love in between. I cannot imagine a day when I will feel passion for you again.

And all I wanted, was a definite path. But all I have… is a fence to ride…

There are no simple answers, even in your simple world.

Love,

Me