Tag: Nostalgia

Christmas Eve will find me

Where the love light gleams. I’m home for Christmas, that part is true. But it does feel a bit like a dream. I’m not completely here but I’d really like to be. After all, time is precious. I want to soak up the time I have left with my parents. All of it.

I sat in Christmas Eve church with my parents this evening. I believe in g/God about as much as I believe in elves at this point in my life but I went because it’s tradition and, although technically unspoken, very evident that my mother’s Christmas wish includes going to Christmas Eve church with whichever of her children may be home. All of four people in a congregation of about 150-200 were wearing masks, and two below their noses. This is a redneck (and red), steel mill and farming town. The virus is wholly and completely political here. It’s maddening but it is what it is. I was prepared for this earlier when I pasted on a smile, put down my book, curled my hair, and agreed to get in the car to go along.

My brother is also home this year, which is always welcome, but was doing husband duties with one of the three houses required in his in-law-visits any time they are home. Marrying a gal from our hometown when he lives 10hrs away should/could have been great but, a gal from a split home, with a grown brother who is also a single dad … there’s a lot going on. And those obligations always seem to get priority. We are an accommodating family by nature. So we take my brother when we can get him. It’s been eleven years. We are used to taking the leftovers and being authentically grateful.

Christmas church (like Christmas songs and movies) makes me nostalgic rather than joyful. And I always tear up during the service more than once, regardless of heartache (past or present). The poinsettias on the altar are always “in memory of” my grandparents and my uncle. I have no memories of my grandfather, who died the year I was born, but my grandma and my uncle were a daily part of my life until I left for college. We all lived on the same farm land. I saw them every day. And in 2002/3, I lost both of them, on that farm, within six months of each other. I have no shortage of childhood emotional trauma. But I was in my early 20s then and those losses felt different than the things that had come before. Insurmountable, really. I also lost both of them mere months before my first heartbreak. 2003 was an awful, awful year. And I cannot help but reflect on it every time I’m sitting on the hard, wooden church pew on Christmas Eve, looking at the flowers in honor of my family, staring up at the rafters of a beautiful narthex that served as backdrop for so much of my formative spiritual and social development, and listening to hymns that I can still almost viscerally hear my grandmother singing next to me. Though I haven’t actually heard her voice or felt her arms in nearly 20 years.

I also look around at all the familiar faces, but with more wrinkles and inches and shades of grey. The couples I remember as a child — often now permanently missing one part of what I always assumed would be an eternal pair. And “kids” who were toddlers when I was in youth group, are now balding, with beer bellies, mirror images of their dads & moms, with adolescent and even teenage children of their own. It’s always a little bizarre. As if I’m in some Scrooge-like vision of the future, only, I’m no longer a teenager or even a college kid. And yet, I’ve been experiencing this same future version of actual reality since I was in college. As if I’ve been watching life go by as reflected in everyone but myself, one Christmas Eve service at a time.

Sure, I notice that I am older. Obviously I see that I am 42 when I look in the mirror. And it is never lost on me that I am still “the single kid” tagging along with my parents to Christmas church, to family functions, to everywhere. I hate it. I’ve always hated it. I’ve always felt like an other. The years have passed but that feeling hasn’t.

It was so hard seeing the family of distant cousins in front of us, the parents about 15 years younger than mine, their three children, who farm the hillside across from ours, all married within the past five years, all with small children of their own. And tonight, the two boys, both with new baby boys of their own, only a couple months apart. We watched them coo and gurgle and smile from a few pews away. It makes me feel guilty not to be able to give that to my parents; they would be the world’s greatest grandparents! I think they were born for those roles. And yet, my brother and his wife seem content with just their dog. And me? I’m not content right now but I am trying to be. I try to play up my career and the fulfillment it gives me and downplay the singleness in any given year, but especially this year. This most recent bout of unbelievable betrayal is kind of too hard for me to fake.

I am grateful to be home, surrounded by people I love. But I am struggling a bit. I’m struggling to keep the melancholy at the periphery, to stay present, to stay gracious and patient. At this, the “happiest” time of the year.

Is this what he wanted? Is this the end game he hoped for? To shred the confidence and certainty and trust of someone who selflessly gave to him, and then when the illusion is broken, when his façade has been stripped away, he takes comfort in knowing that somewhere, two months later, that other someone is still sitting around wondering how they could have been so blind? Why they are spending yet another Christmas alone? While he’s spending his first Christmas Eve as a married man, to a woman I never knew existed.

If only in my dreams, right? That’s how the song goes so maybe I’ll wake up tomorrow and it will have all been a dream. Maybe, like Scrooge, I’ll get to wake up tomorrow and it will be twenty years ago and I’ll be able to get it right this time.

Music for the Mood: I’ll Be Home for Christmas – Michael Bublé

Friday Night Lights

I’m not sure how many texts like this I will send into the echoless abyss. I do not like it and I am not proud of it.

It’s how I feel.

Some days, I’m happy. So focused on the work I do and the people in my life that I love. Other days, like today, I feel inexplicably sad. So I seek out the places and the spaces that still feel like home.

West Wing. Friday Night Lights. Those are my make-believe homes. I’d live and love there forever if I could.

Granted, Eric Taylor is an unrealistic standard. I’m painfully aware. Texts that you draft in the wee hours of the night and don’t actually intend to send to the person who hurt you are allowed to be ragey and apoplectic and also completely whimsical and nonsensical. And does it really matter if it sent? I’m quite sure that number no longer receives them. Whatever. This has been a weirdly contemplative night. As so many now are.

I had a meeting tonight with the finalists for my scholarship program. I feel energized and encouraged and inspired by them. And all I want to do is gush about them to you. For all four of the previous cohorts, you were there. You were the person I talked to about them. All the funny and happy and inspiring but also the sad and the not always so great things about working with teenagers too.

Then I remember that last year, you were here, literally in my bed, while I virtually interviewed students for the program. When I finished with a standout one afternoon, you laughed at me as I came into my bedroom. You said “You’re so happy. I could tell you loved that kid. Do all interviews last that long??” They don’t. And I did/do love that kid. He was and is incredible and I’m angry only that I met him while you were in my physical presence. I can’t ever not see those two things together. And I hate it. He’s going to Japan this summer, with Stanford, on a scholarship that I helped him get. I think you’d like to know that. Then again, I’m not sure now what you ever really liked. My heart seemed like something you were genuinely attracted to though. There is no end to my love for these kids.

Or you. At least, there wasn’t. I might have loved you forever.

But you fucked everything up. You made everything feel ugly. I don’t even know who you are! How can you be both of those men? I still don’t understand, John. Almost two months into this nightmare.

Mostly, I just want the man I knew to be here – so I have someone to talk to about all these incredible kids this year. I am already in love with them and I’d fight for them, so hard.

You? I would have fought for you too. The you I knew.

Music for the Mood: Friday Night Lights theme song – W.G. Snuffy Walden

Friday, never hesitate

But I did hesitate. I heard this cover last night and I’ve listened to it a bunch of times since. Most people associate The Cure with feeling happiness, lightness, get out and want to dance in the sunshine giddiness. Especially this song, right? But I find Phoebe Bridgers version better matches the feelings The Cure songs evoke in me. Have you ever listened to “Cut Here” — no? Look it up.

Music for the Mood: Friday I’m in Love (cover) – Phoebe Bridgers

The Cure always reminds me of this guy I dated in college. My first boyfriend, I guess. My first kiss (at 21!). He was the captain of the guys’ water polo team, I was captain of the womens’. He was into the Misfits, Ramones, Dead Kennedys, and all the punk bands. And The Cure. He wore black jeans and threadbare band tshirts and a studded belt. And those fat, cushy, skater boy shoes. We went to a formal once and he showed up with his hair dyed jet black and spiked all over his head. I loved it. My own hair was just growing back from having shaved it all off so mine was short and spiky too. We looked like Sid & Nancy dressed up as a polished, normal, country club couple. The picture from that night is still a favorite. I couldn’t find that one but I found this one — walking around in the rain, on a trip to Boston a few months later, when he showed up with bleached hair. I hated that look.

His name was also John. His friends called him “Johnny Utah” because he was actually from SLC and dripped all the adventure and confidence of his namesake from Point Break. My friends called him “the damned mess.” I don’t even remember why — but it became a term of endearment. He was delightful. Funny, handsome, athletic, deliciously tall, and wickedly smart. He’s a doctor now. Married, with three boys, to a girl we went to college with. I know it wouldn’t have really worked with us, at least not the me I grew into. I eventually went the opposite way in religion as an adult while he embraced our tiny, uber conservative, Christian bubble of a college and went on to marry a woman who became a pastor. No shit.

But I do wonder. I’m me, after all. Maybe I’d have become a different girl, a different woman, one that fit me and this world better? To this day, he’s still the only guy I’ve ever pursued, but also the only one I’ve ever broken up with. And that kind of haunts me. The what if and sliding doors of it all. Every other one of the handful I’ve dated has always left me, if not immediately because they were cheating (twice now) then soon after, for other women that they marry. I always said I broke up with him (the night before I flew to Cali for nationals in 2001) because he was too good to me, too nice, too into me, and it just freaked me out. Flying away for a week the next morning was a convenient ejection plan. I remember getting back and his friends were all so angry at me; I’d lost my mind doing that to such a nice guy. Frankly, so were my friends. There was just too much pressure to find your soul mate and be engaged by graduation at that place.

But, if I’m being honest, I think I actually thought that my friend was my “soul mate” and was holding on to a weird little nugget of hope but didn’t want to admit it. I think Johnny Utah knew that too. He’d spent enough time with me and my friends. He always knew there was a connection to one guy that he couldn’t replace. That friend ended up breaking my heart after college though. Something from which I’ve never quite fully healed.

I don’t like admitting that but it’s the truth. I’ve written about that relationship here before. The point is that I hesitated with that John. And here I am 20 years later. Still single. Still wondering about what ifs. And a lot about karma as it relates to another John.

On Friday, I wasn’t in love. I hesitated. Again. I told the dude from last week that I wasn’t feeling it and didn’t want to lead him on. Via text. Like an asshole. And then I blocked him so I didn’t have to know what that (probably) nice guy had to say in response. So I wouldn’t have to over-process another thing in my relentless mind. Like a technological ejection handle, minus the California sun.

I want to move on. I’m tired of reminding myself that what happened is real. That the past three years were not real. I want to meet someone that makes me not just forget but understand why it never worked with anyone else. Why “the damned mess” is not destined to be my best, forever. Someone for whom I won’t hesitate.

Who’s the Fool?

I went on another date tonite. I was really looking forward to this one. I bought $700 in jeans just to get a good pair, one that made me feel amazing. I spent all day, too long (per usual), at work but left in enough time to shower, listen to music, and try on said jeans. None made me feel the way I wanted. In fact, three of them looked like mom jeans. The fourth were great but $270 and not different enough than my favorite old pair. So, I wore my favorite old pair. With heels. And an actual attempt at full face makeup. And the good Moroccan hair conditioner. I felt good. I felt a little bit pretty.

And I’m sending all the jeans back.

He was 35 minutes late, y’all. Thirty-five! Sure, he texted. But far too late for me to arrive even half as late. The place he picked, a piano bar, was completely empty, closed 1 hour after I arrived and allegedly 30 min after I closed my tab and left. But when I left (because he said he was only 2min away), they locked up. I walked across the street to look at the Kennedy Center reflecting on the water. Stunner. You’re welcome.

He showed up 5 mins later. No hustle. But … an apology. For being late. I’ve been lacking in the apologies department for transgressions far more severe than being late. Still — I don’t like excuses and I loathe lack of follow through. This is strike two.

He’s just okay. Not as attractive as his photos but, truly, that seems to be the norm if I’m reading guys’ profiles correctly. They experience it all the time with women. I haven’t been on a good date in so long that him being slightly less attractive than his thirst trap pics was fine. Nice lips. Great arms (and abs, from his absurd gym photos). But tiny hands. He holds a pinky out for his drink. He talks with his mouth full and chews with his mouth open. He’s not at all what I dream about. But neither was John.

Butt… Aside from zombie tv shows and a few other questionable likes, he has good taste in movies and music. He prefers musical scores — they make him feel while he runs or works out or just does his daily whatever. We have some similar feelings about certain movies, actors, genres. He’s not very into sports. He has horrible decorating taste — blue Christmas lights strung around the perimeter of the room? What, is this the Smurfs’ college experience?? He also hasn’t yet gotten a Christmas tree, after three days of saying he was. I don’t buy a real tree and think it’s an irresponsible waste of trees but this is yet another matter of follow-through.

He doesn’t have a car. Lives within the property community he manages; just over a mile and on the same road as John and his “wife,” because of course he does. He doesn’t seem to aspire to more than assistant property manager or whatever the title is. Which is fine, but he also doesn’t seem to really like it. Graduated from Howard in 2008 after several stints in community college. This is also fine but he doesn’t seem very smart and I need that. I’m not trying to be rude but he’s an odd communicator. Great via text but texting does not a relationship make. Conversation in person is just a bit odd. He isn’t someone I’m very interested in having more conversations with. And he had to use a calculator for 20% of $30.

What is wrong with me? He’s fine. He’s moderately funny, moderately attractive, attentive enough, and seems to like me a lot. Wants to see me again. Thinks I’m pretty. Says I’m sexy. Tells me nice things and good morning every single day. And we have a plan for Saturday.

His texts make me roll my eyes though. Hard. From learned cynicism or from actual disinterest, I’m not sure yet.

So. Do we settle? Or keep hoping that someone I get along with as well as John but want to fuck as badly as Josh Duhamel or Michael B Jordan or Dave Grohl or a Watt brother, comes along tomorrow? Yes. My tastes are disparate. I like what I like.

Fuck.

Fuck you, John. Fuck you for fucking everything up.

I hate this.

Music for the Mood: Baby I’m a Fool – Melody Gadot

Tangled knots

“Every heart is a package tangled up in knots someone else tied.” But ain’t that the truth? A friend told me this tonight. Lyrics from one of their favorite singer songwriters, Josh Ritter.

In the Uber home, it made me think about mix tapes and mix cd’s and my favorite movie, “High Fidelity.”

In the opening credits, John Cusack says:

“What came first, the music or the misery? People worry about kids playing with guns, or watching violent videos, that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands, literally thousands of songs about heartbreak, rejection, pain, misery and loss. Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?”

I spent most of my early adult life reveling in sad songs; songs about heartbreak and loneliness and longing. There’s obviously a pathological and deeply intrinsic reason why John Prine, Ani DiFranco, Chamberlain, Chris Stapleton, David Gray, Jason Isbell, Ryan Adams, Bon Iver, Band of Horses, The Shins and the like are my go-to, play on repeat, “top five” kind of must haves on a mix tape. Sure there are one hit wonders like Flick’s “Maybe, Someday” and Drive By Truckers’ “God Damned Lonely Love” and Damien Rice’s “Cannonball” too but, mostly, I go to all those artists and songs when I need to feel. When I need to bleed emotion. And when I don’t, I avoid them like the fucking plague. Like tapping into them, even for a moment, will invoke the spirits of melancholia. All of those songs and bands were discovered through mix cds that someone made for me, by the way. Very High Fidelity. And, yes, I could definitely arrange all of my albums autobiographically and blow Dick’s mind too.

So I listen to podcasts now most of the time instead … to occupy my brain and allow it to gnaw on something else, anything else.

For most of college and beyond, my best friends were this group of four guys, all of them in bands. I loved who I was in that circle. We became friends because one of them was borderline obsessed with me sophomore year, and I was too inexperienced to feel anything but creeped out. But we all just magnetized each other after the initial weirdness and that was that. I didn’t really fit, they were way too cool and too popular. The vicarious popularity fit me like an oversized wool sweater — scratchy but I could hide inside it. It felt like I was living someone else’s life and it was way too big for me. I never really “fit” anywhere but, for whatever reason or circumstance, we were an inseparable package deal.

We all had other friends, some tangential, some mutual, some exclusive. But at the core, it was just us. We left college together. Moved to Pittsburgh just blocks from each other; the four of them all together in one house, me in my own space but at their house more often than my own. It was the BEST of times. Later, I lived with two of them, one and then the other after the first got engaged, and our houses were always the spot for the whole crew. I reluctantly fell in love with another one of those boys of mine, the one who started it all with his bizarre interest in me seven years earlier; he broke me. The rest didn’t pick a side, even when he got engaged to her five months later. Eventually, they all paired off and got married and life just … changed.

I moved to DC in 2006 for a job after grad school and things have just never been the same. I went to all of their weddings. Several baby showers. Increasingly infrequent catch ups when I was back in town, though I always had to go to them; they never came to me. I still love them, deeply. But I only know them now through pictures of their kids that their wives post on Instagram and their annual holiday photo cards. It is weird to watch my boys age, one year at a time. And the rest of them still have him, and her, and their two kids. It’s as if I never existed in their circle now or, more accurately, as if it’s a relief for everyone that I exist four hours away. And I have for the past 16 years.

The five of us used to mean everything to each other. Now, if I reach out for a happy birthday message or some other random text, they respond as if it is genuinely so good to hear from me. And it nearly breaks my heart, it feels so good. But neither of us keeps it going and not one of them ever initiates. They never did. Still, if you had asked me 20 years ago, I would have never ever dreamed that we’d grow apart. Never.

I feel as though my life has gone through three phases of my friend circle pairing off, getting married, starting families. With very few exceptions, I am the only single one left, and have been in each group. The boys. The SoMD friends. The DC friends. Three phases across twenty years. Every time, although I am in the same places and spaces, meeting the same pool of potential matches, they pair up. They move on. I remain. I don’t have a circle in this phase. Now it’s a mosaic with bits and pieces that remain from the old circles and new, none of which really fit together and I don’t have the desire or the natural ability to be the glue for everyone anymore. I think that time in my life has passed.

Every person I have ever dated, with exactly two exceptions, got married right after me. Most have children. That was always the holy grail for me; being a mom. At 42, it feels like John stole the last embers of that dream from me. The last three years? Gone. I just can’t help feeling like I got left behind in every phase of my life. And now, unlike all the other times, the thing I wanted most in life has just … evaporated. It doesn’t mean that I don’t still ache for it and, foolishly or not, still hold out hope for it. It feels too heavy and final to let go completely.

I strongly doubt any of my friends, in any circle or phase, would see it that way. They’d say I didn’t settle. Or that they admire my independence. Or that I’ve always been so comfortable on my own. But none of these things are actually true – I haven’t had the opportunity to settle, I’m independent only by default, and I have grown accustomed being alone but I would give my soul to have a companion in this life. I feel like I’ve done all the right things, put myself out there, pushed myself even when it wasn’t comfortable, intentionally sought out places to belong … for what?

I’ve been on the online dating sites for two decades, off and on. Many of the same guys from more than three years ago, before John, are still there — with the same pictures. And it’s still the same story now at 42 as it has been all along, even back when I was younger and objectively more attractive … the guys I’m interested in do not respond or aren’t even active, but the guys I would not talk to in a thousand years in real life will message me. It is demoralizing! I don’t want to make anyone else feel bad — they’re expressing interest in me the same way I’m expressing interest in men who apparently think they deserve better. What a crapshoot.

I’ve been paying $100 an hour to talk to a therapist so I can move past John and “betrayal PTSD” as quickly as possible. It’s going great, as you can tell. I admitted to her that if had I seen John on a dating app three years ago, I’d have swiped left. He wasn’t my type. He’s grown even less so over the past few weeks, for obvious reasons. I grew to love all the things about him that apparently were never real. Except DP and one other, I’ve never been initially attracted to anyone I’ve ever dated. But I also can’t make myself swipe right on someone whose picture does nothing for me.

So what’s the bloody answer? Even when I go on a date with one of these guys I deigned to give a chance, like I did this week, I’m still tangled up in the knots that he tied. That they all tied.

Mood music: Maybe Someday – Flick