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Riding in the car on the way out to Tarrytown. For the most part the day was a success. I made two batches of onion gravy (meant to make three, but dropped the electric skillet on the ground and shattered one of its legs), two kinds of cranberry sauce (raw and cooked), honey herb biscuits, creamy pumpkin bars, and did a bunch of prep for dishes to be made tomorrow. I also made the shell for a tart I intended to make tomorrow, but left it in the kitchen to cool, where Funnyface promptly knocked it off the counter onto the ground, where it shattered and I then tried, sitcom-style, to simultaneously fend her and the dog away from the wreckage while they did their level best to consume as much of the tasty buttery disaster on the floor.
And then we packed everything we own into all the reusable canvas bags we could, piled it all in the car, and set out. Moppet’s off with the dogsitter, the cats have been divided into two camps and segregated on different levels of the house (team a: funnyface. Team b: everyone else), I’ve got cross stitch and tacky books and catalogs.
Something someone said recently made me start to poke at my ideas of friendship again. I’ve always glossed myself as the unreasonable one, wanting impossible things from other people and I’ve tried to figure out how to make myself happy with whatever anyone is willing to give me, because I don’t think the world contains enough people who are going to think well of me that I can afford to ignore scraps of attention. It’s not the choice between someone who will want to talk to me as often as I want to be talked to and someone who won’t, it’s the choice between some of what I want and none of what I want.
And I think of this wanting of more, wanting of reassurance as another way I’m broken, a thing to develop workarounds for (so far, most of the workarounds seem to be about self-mockery and whining), a thing to accept but not necessarily be able to change (like being an alcoholic, or having migraines). But, maybe I need to switch up the labels, and think about wanting romantic friendships, asexual relationships, family, to be on a handful of people’s shortlist.
I know I need to learn some new tricks about where I put my attention. (I have no idea why I’m so taken with the idea of learning where to put my hands). I need to learn to disengage from the things that don’t sustain me, learn to appreciate social media as a tool where I can be in on the jokes, the conversation rather than just another way to make me feel like I’m outside looking in, like some Dickensian orphan at Christmas.
My therapist and I talk a lot about memories, and how stressful situations can mean that things don’t get into long-term memory, an d sometimes it makes me feel better about how little I remember about the day-to-day details of ways I’ve lived. But there are still these handfuls of moments that I remember, and many of them I’ve turned into stories until they’re more touchstone than actual thing that happened. And some of them I can point to, and say this, this is a thing that made me part of who I am now, and most of the time, they’re not particularly pretty moments, rejections and disappointments, all the places I skinned my knees, emotionally or physically.
We’re playing Violent Femmes in the car, singing along, and I remember riding a bus in the early 90s, and a boy named P trying to lead some subset of the bus in a rousing chorus of a TMBG song with a spider in it, and I knew the lyrics but didn’t (for whatever reason I’ve lost to the mists of time) sing a long, and he declared to the whole bus that was why I was so cool, because I knew the lyrics but didn’t feel compelled to prove that I did. And I think that I still strive for that a lot of the time, not above situations so much as a step to the side of them.
And I want other people to take away an illusion of invulnerability, that they can treat me however they’d like, because I’m buffered, I’m undisappointable and so they can give whatever they want and I’ll figure out how to make it enough, how to run the cost benefit analysis in such a way where I’ll just be pleased to have them in my life, I’ll be the quirky one, damaged in ways unfixable enough that no one has to try, smirking like I’ve got an absolutely hysterical inner dialogue going on all the time. And yet I also want to commit to all the moments, be fully presentable, woundable, engaged and willing to risk things to learn other things.
One of the many, many angry poems I’ve written began “If you ever really touched me/I’d burn your fucking hand off.” Sometimes I still chew on that like gravel-flavored gum.
And then we packed everything we own into all the reusable canvas bags we could, piled it all in the car, and set out. Moppet’s off with the dogsitter, the cats have been divided into two camps and segregated on different levels of the house (team a: funnyface. Team b: everyone else), I’ve got cross stitch and tacky books and catalogs.
Something someone said recently made me start to poke at my ideas of friendship again. I’ve always glossed myself as the unreasonable one, wanting impossible things from other people and I’ve tried to figure out how to make myself happy with whatever anyone is willing to give me, because I don’t think the world contains enough people who are going to think well of me that I can afford to ignore scraps of attention. It’s not the choice between someone who will want to talk to me as often as I want to be talked to and someone who won’t, it’s the choice between some of what I want and none of what I want.
And I think of this wanting of more, wanting of reassurance as another way I’m broken, a thing to develop workarounds for (so far, most of the workarounds seem to be about self-mockery and whining), a thing to accept but not necessarily be able to change (like being an alcoholic, or having migraines). But, maybe I need to switch up the labels, and think about wanting romantic friendships, asexual relationships, family, to be on a handful of people’s shortlist.
I know I need to learn some new tricks about where I put my attention. (I have no idea why I’m so taken with the idea of learning where to put my hands). I need to learn to disengage from the things that don’t sustain me, learn to appreciate social media as a tool where I can be in on the jokes, the conversation rather than just another way to make me feel like I’m outside looking in, like some Dickensian orphan at Christmas.
My therapist and I talk a lot about memories, and how stressful situations can mean that things don’t get into long-term memory, an d sometimes it makes me feel better about how little I remember about the day-to-day details of ways I’ve lived. But there are still these handfuls of moments that I remember, and many of them I’ve turned into stories until they’re more touchstone than actual thing that happened. And some of them I can point to, and say this, this is a thing that made me part of who I am now, and most of the time, they’re not particularly pretty moments, rejections and disappointments, all the places I skinned my knees, emotionally or physically.
We’re playing Violent Femmes in the car, singing along, and I remember riding a bus in the early 90s, and a boy named P trying to lead some subset of the bus in a rousing chorus of a TMBG song with a spider in it, and I knew the lyrics but didn’t (for whatever reason I’ve lost to the mists of time) sing a long, and he declared to the whole bus that was why I was so cool, because I knew the lyrics but didn’t feel compelled to prove that I did. And I think that I still strive for that a lot of the time, not above situations so much as a step to the side of them.
And I want other people to take away an illusion of invulnerability, that they can treat me however they’d like, because I’m buffered, I’m undisappointable and so they can give whatever they want and I’ll figure out how to make it enough, how to run the cost benefit analysis in such a way where I’ll just be pleased to have them in my life, I’ll be the quirky one, damaged in ways unfixable enough that no one has to try, smirking like I’ve got an absolutely hysterical inner dialogue going on all the time. And yet I also want to commit to all the moments, be fully presentable, woundable, engaged and willing to risk things to learn other things.
One of the many, many angry poems I’ve written began “If you ever really touched me/I’d burn your fucking hand off.” Sometimes I still chew on that like gravel-flavored gum.
