Recomposition

I've been in a dark, dark, dark place since Saturday. I've analyzed it obsessively in my paper journal, so I'm not sure how much needs to come out here. Suffice it to say that in some ways (many ways, perhaps) I look much more whole, healed, and strong than I actually am. Which is a dangerous place to be at any time, but probably more so when dealing with a person who I like but who doesn't know me particularly well. I'm well aware that at least 85% of this is my shit, in my own head, or it's stuff that no one is really responsible for. The problem is, of course, that I still spent the better part of the last four days feeling incredibly wretched and not doing things like working on my prospectus. (Although I think I might have written some decent prospectus-related paragraphs at like 2:00 on Monday morning during this bizarre and ultimately weird and frustrating text message exchange I had with J....)

I think the main problem of the last several days was simply finding out how far I still have to go in terms of healing. It's frustrating that I crumbled like this, and it's worse because I've come far enough that I also spent a lot of time over the past four days knowing that all of this was completely ridiculous and dangerous but not being able to use that knowledge to hold back the way I responded to everything. Then there's the cycle where I wonder if all of my talk about getting better and meditating and calming down a bit was just a really complex lie. I don't think it is, if only because I'm not sure that zazen admits that kind of distinction, but it still gave me pause. This is a very familiar cycle, of course, going back all the way to childhood and the whole born-again-until-my-little-brother-comes-into-the-room thing that I went through over and over again. (Hm. On the plus side, thanks to the latest bout of wretchedness, I'm no longer obsessing over my brother's wedding.) I'm still sitting, though. And I've been talking to The Poet a lot this week. And I miss him. A lot. Mostly because he is kind. And I can't really explain it more than that.

One of the upshots of this is that I don't know anything about anything with J. and I feel like an enormous idiot for caring. I haven't seen him since the 11th, we haven't had a conversation that wasn't on text message, and now he's in Montreal until Monday. A lot of this started because he canceled plans with me twice this past weekend (which itself was supposed to be the rescheduling of the previous weekend's failed plans), which is the kind of thing that can really fuck up my work schedule, whether or not I'm actually mad about it. I think it's the text message thing that bothers me most. And I like him. And he likes me. None of this was ever about that. But still. I'm really good at first dates and one night stands. I'm actually a pretty decent girlfriend. But all of that middle space...yeah, not so much.

On Sunday when we weren't hanging out, J. told me that he had a dream where he was watching me have sex with another guy and it was really hot, etc. I don't have a problem with knowing that per se. I do think it's obnoxious to start throwing around ideas for threesomes with someone you've only seen naked twice and are in danger of never seeing naked again if you don't get your schedule together. Also, it would have been nice to have known that he was okay with me being with other guys on, say, Thursday. Nevertheless. I'm trying to be good. Like, potentially monogamous with someone who is not married to other people good. And, yeah, okay. Good to know that if things happen with other people, that's okay. I mean, fine. My life works like that a lot of the time. But. It would maybe be nice to have a guy who was more turned on by the thought of having sex with me than by the thought of me having sex with other people.

Thus. My life is still stupid and exhausting. Maybe it will get better. The fact that I am writing any of this means that I'm slowly crawling out of the dark place, as it were. Now I need to write my prospectus for a few hours.

Nuancing my internal dialogue (or ranting so I can get back to my prospectus)

...it's not that I'm mad. Not really, not at you. It's just that every time you change plans on me, it ends up disrupting my day. And I have to be very protective of my time right now. But I like you. And I don't want to have to get mad about this. I'm not taking it personally, it doesn't make me think that you don't like me or something. And it doesn't really make me judge you one way or the other. But in order to keep this equilibrium, I have to be able to protect my time, even if it means that I'm quite serious when I say that, if you can't make it work tonight, then we can't really make plans for awhile--you just have to call me half an hour or an hour before and take your chances or, better yet, come find me in West Village Coffeeshop or whatever. (I once told The Poet the same thing, namely, don't tell me you're coming over unless you're getting off the PATH train already. Because while I've gotten a lot better about this, I still can't ride out these kinds of changes as well as I'd like. This is how I manage.)

The only thing I'm specifically annoyed about is this: when you text me on Tuesday to suggest going out on Saturday night (rescheduling from the previous Sunday), I shouldn't have to text you at 5:30 on Saturday afternoon in order to find out that you can't make it. But I feel like this is an issue easily enough called out and solved. As I plan to do. If I ever see you again. Which I would like to. Because I like you.

I got very used to these kinds of last minute changes and just general uncertainty when I was dating married guys. It was one of the things that was really, really, really exhausting about dating married guys. Though it did lower my general expectations in terms of hanging out with dudes. Nevertheless. I had sort of a lot riding on the idea that I was finally getting to go out with a guy I liked on an actual Saturday. Because even with E, I never got him on a weekend. Hell, I hardly ever got my Ex on a weekend. And I know that's why I crashed a bit yesterday. Some of this probably needs to be expressed, too.

Seriously, though, isn't the whole point of dating dudes not married to anyone else that they can actually, you know, make plans and keep them? Argh.

I'm trying to not let this get all triggering-like. And part of it is a reminder to work as hard as I possibly can at every moment so that I can maintain some kind of flexibility. Nevertheless.

I do feel slightly better now that I've ranted, though. The big news of the week was seeing K and renewing our passionate love-hate relationship. We didn't act on anything. I'm trying to be good after all. It would be nice, however, to have some help in this.

On the other hand, I'm at Cafe Naico right now and just saw some dude spill his salad on the floor. Which puts my day somewhat in perspective. Now to get back to the prospectus, I guess.

ETA: It doesn't help that it is almost painfully loud in here right now. The kind of loud that I would be willing to put up with if I knew I had something to look forward; the kind of loud that causes a certain physical doubling-over when I don't. It leaves me feeling stranded, incapable of making effective decisions, overwhelmed by the sensation of backsliding and knowing that two and a half months of sitting zazen is no match for 28 years of just sheer angst and frustration. I want to see him tonight. I want him to get back to me first before I text him again. I want to not feel desperate. I want the prospectus to be written. Or to have more time for it. I want this to be easy. I want him to be easy. It started out easy. I need someone easy. I know that I only want to cry right now because it's so loud and I can't handle it, but I don't like being this way.

I do rather wish that prep didn't take so damn long. It's my own fault for lingering over their homework assignments, but still. Hopefully this will be the last time for a fall or two that I have to reinvent all my handouts. And all of this is another testament to why it was good to do some prospectus work in the morning.

Tomorrow: Laundry (has to be done) and finishing prep for the week. Maybe I'll take my computer to West Village Coffeeshop. I'm trying to be better about using the resources at my two institutions for things related to that institution, but it's tempting to print a lot of stuff at school because it's more familiar than Not-NYU (which is going to be the pseudonym for the location of my new teaching gig). But, really, I should be rocking out with the photocopying at Not-NYU.

Speaking of which, one of the perks of Not-NYU is access to the NYU library system. Which is going to make prospectusing so much easier because I will actually be able to look at the books I need. And check them out for more than the three (!!!) weeks at a time that I get at School. These are things I did not appreciate when I was an undergraduate at NYU. So I suppose that I can't really grumble too much about the time I need to invest in Not-NYU.

Holding things lightly (more to come)

Did what I had to do on Wednesday. We ended on affectionate terms and with few regrets. And that was the point of it all, of course. So that we can still stand by each other as essentially good people, still reflect on the time we had together as something that was, on balance, a good thing for the both of us. I don't think I could have healed the way I did in the past couple of months without him.

And so. Spent the day and night with J. on Thursday. Liking him a lot. For something that started as a shot in the dark on his part, we've turned out to have a lot in common. His ability to read me is occasionally unnerving, but it's not the same kind of connection I had with, say, The Professor, that kind of has its destructive potential built in. So that's good. And his eyes--! (That was my 14-year-old moment, for those of you keeping score.)

We were supposed to hang out today, but he had to cancel. Which turns out to be fine for me, since yesterday got swallowed up by my first (exhausting) foray into the procurement of a bridesmaid's dress. Which is apparently incredibly belated as the wedding is in six weeks. It would be quicker to get a fucking passport. (Part of the exhaustion is no doubt due to my own ambivalence about my brother, which I want to work out in another post.) So all I did yesterday was that, the Greenmarket, and an epic nap, followed by epic Grey's Anatomy watching. With my plans for the day cancelled, I have been able to stay home, wear clothes that never leave this apartment, be on my period in peace, not wear makeup, and keep the pimple on my cheek to myself. I've also been able to make this the first full day of work that I've had since finishing the Victorian project. Spent just over 4 hours on my prospectus (*finally*) and am about to sit zazen again by way of transitioning into thinking about teaching stuff. I'm definitely glad I decided when I woke up to do the prospectus time first--I have a feeling that prep would have become an all-day project as it does all too often. Something to keep in mind for the coming weeks.

So I've given myself a deadline of 10/1 for articulating a topic and coming up with chapter headings. Would like to have a full draft shortly thereafter. I'll probably be blogging that more specifically on the site where I use my real name. (If you Google me and my main institution you should be able to find it.) I'm glad that we're about to come up on the workshop days in my class--far less prep for me and grading that can be done more or less immediately. This means more time for the prospectus and for staring at the cute boy that I like.

Which is pretty much where I need to be right now, holding lightly, and practicing with the present. And with that being said, I think it's time to sit for a few minutes. Perhaps I'll say more on some of these things later.

Hedgetrimming

And I try to hold on to all of this lightly, but I still feel the visegrip of the second week of September closing in. Yesterday I sat in West Village Coffeeshop and watched it rain and it seemed like the same rain that came down outside Cafe Naico last year at this time, while I was there on the phone with my mother and searching for flights to Chicago at the end of the week for my grandmother's funeral and Rosh Hashanah was like two weeks earlier last year, which was lucky because I don't think I would have been able to teach the day after. I suppose that, regardless of how drunk I am by the time my free minutes kick in tomorrow night, I should call my father.

And I try to hold on to all of this lightly, but it's so easy to get so tired so fast and I haven't been sleeping through the night so well and when I do sleep I don't always feel rested. I ground to a halt yesterday afternoon and stayed up past midnight watching episodes of Studio 60 online and getting drunk for no good reason and wishing K. would call me back, just because at this one moment, this one point, I needed to hear what I already know said back to me by someone else, someone like him, but of course he didn't call and finally I couldn't keep my eyes open. I need a sign, I said to Facebook, and some girl from my program wrote back this incomprehensible and slightly menacing message about someone else in the department. I kept the phone by my bed just like The Poet asked me to but he didn't call so I guess he made it through the night sleeping in the chair in his wife's hospital room. The surgery went well, he told me yesterday. And on the phone acting like everything was going to be fine again, she'd just have to go back on chemo, and he can come to Brooklyn tomorrow night after all and I am thinking I can't have him in Brooklyn anymore I can't wake up with him on the morning of the day I'm supposed to spend walking around New York with someone new and it's hard enough to get up at 6 to teach as it is and I can't be on this roller coaster just last week you came within two inches of breaking up with me out of not-unjustified guilt.

But I can't say this on the phone. I do the verbal equivalent of nodding. Because I really didn't think he was going to be able to spend the night with me under any circumstances and I just am not prepared. I have to break up with him tonight. Only a bit because of J (the guy from the coffeeshop). I mean, that's not completely irrelevant. I do want to give this thing a chance, if only because I don't remember the last time I clicked so much with someone based on a completely random encounter. And maybe I wouldn't be at this point with The Poet otherwise. Okay, it's pretty sure that I wouldn't be. But still. I guess I don't want to make it too much about J in case we end up hating each other tomorrow and then I'll still be broken up with The Poet and all of this was always at some level about hedging my bets because I told The Poet I would never break up with him unless there was someone else. But these transitions are broken up close and there is going to be an abyss. Maybe only a small one, fifteen hours or so, but an abyss nonetheless, big enough at least for the earth to open up and swallow the Twin Towers, long enough to rip my life apart. (As if those things are in any way equivalent.)

I should probably get to work, including reading next Tuesday's homework assignment so there are no more surprises.

"Whatever we see is changing, losing its balance..."*

And somehow, the writing flickered back and then slipped away again, I kept having to pour myself into projects and planning, and I've been trying to focus on this whole idea of living in the present, of making a conscious effort to live in the world as it is, this world of impermanence, the world as I find it instead of the world I want it to be--and this is not something that comes at all naturally to me--my earliest memories are of wanting to be someone else, somewhere else, some other time, and at a certain point that allowed me a very simplistic misreading of Nietzsche, Derrida, et al., that I'm slowly beginning to address--and in the meantime I am trying to learn how to live in a world that I can't control, to do things as simple as talk to the neighbors and not take every roach in my kitchen personally. And slowly I am beginning to get better at this as I keep sitting zazen and remembering to focus on my breath and to practice with losing balance.

What I have begun to find, what I have found over the past week or two is, in general, an enormous sense of gratitude. In spite of the nadir of exhaustion that came towards the end of August, I am immensely grateful that the school year has started again. Somehow it's less of a psychological effort to be in grad school than it was a week ago. I'm excited and energized about my new teaching gig, about having a class full of women, and even about the chance to remember what Manhattan looks like at 7:30 in the morning when I'm not either up too late or waking up at someone else's home. And somehow this feels very close to a real job--not that working within my own institution wasn't real (and in many ways this new gig is much more rarefied), but more that part-timers have a different place in this culture and I feel like I've left the nest a little bit. I am very, very, very lucky that this almost just fell in my lap, and it's a good reminder for me about the relationship between lemons and lemonade, considering that this all started because Erstwhile Teaching College caused me so much grief back in December.

And then there is the cute boy from the coffeeshop, the one who passed me a note and missed his bus for me and killed the mouse in my bathtub at 5:45 in the morning, the guy who has had me grinning like an idiot all weekend and no doubt disgusting all of my friends with the sudden glowy-ness, and I feel like I've told the story so many times this weekend that if I tell it one more time or write it down I'm going to completely jinx this. But all I know is that it's been a long time since I've felt this way about a guy--there are shades of E (the Lawyer Dude of the old blog, who I actually had a couple of emails with today and who is totally rooting for me), but with a lot more confidence on my part. I feel like I'm 14, but I never actually had this much fun when I was 14.

(And I haven't told The Poet much about this, but I do plan to have some kind of talk about this during the week. I'm hoping that it will be okay because I do care about him, but he's been saying a lot of things over the past week that are making it clear to me that he's beginning to worry about the ethics of our relationship in a way that wasn't necessary even a month ago--or maybe it was, but just less overtly--so I think this might even help him not have to feel bad about stranding me in some way. But there are a couple of things that could go awry this week.)

At one level, all of this makes me incredibly nervous. In the cycle of my year, the second week of September is always somewhat treacherous, especially when I think things are going well. 2001 is the obvious example, but last year was kind of a doozy as well--one night, I'm celebrating the end of my PhD coursework and the start of a year that looks nothing but promising with a hot lawyer at one of my favorite restaurants, and the next morning my grandmother's dead and I'm pregnant and don't know it yet and it's pretty much all downhill from there. So I am trying to hold all of this lightly right now, to take care of the people around me the best I can, to take care of myself, to stay on top of things and to practice with composure. And, of course, to hope the mice don't come back unless the cute boy from the coffeeshop does too.




* From Shunryu Suzuki's Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, which is arguably the most important book I read this summer.

I borrowed one of my student's course packs to see how it had turned out. Everything seemed to be there as I flipped through it. I handed it back to her and glanced at the cover, where the title of the class was listed as Writhing The Essay 1.

...I hope they weren't editorializing.

There are all kinds of other things I could say here, but...

I talked to a cute boy at West Village Coffeeshop this afternoon who appeared to be neither married nor in his 50s. And who had written me a note last week.

I feel like I'm about 12, and that makes it hard to stay focused on the last revision of the Victorian project, or the course prep I have to do before The Poet gets out of class.

Things are pretty good all around, though.