Goldilocks

I was having a serious case of the "Somebody Has Been Sitting At My Desk" feeling this morning.

My papers are all neatly stacked, pens in order, and the settings on my phone have changed from the usual.


Don't they realize that Messy is a part of my process? That the 75-page document was flung open to that exact page and sitting in that exact spot so if somebody asks, I can pretend I was just looking at that exact thing and pretend I was studying it instead of, uh, goofing off with a sudoku puzzle in between online shopping?

Closing it up and setting it neatly in a pile with all of the other pages I'm ignoring was incredibly rude.


Anyway...I am a little creeped out, even though the three bowls of porridge remained untouched. People who read the blog would know...any place in which I spend more than a few minutes of time every week has got to contain a notebook, right? Without something upon which to pour ink when I so desperately need to vent, my brain would explode. And, there it is, in a drawer--yellow, with bent-up spiral, and full of brain-dumping scribbles.

This blog might seem like a mess (it is) but I can assure you, it's OCD orderly, compared to the notebooks. That's OK, because the notebooks are not meant for public consumption. Unless some random stranger sits at your desk over the weekend. ((shudders))

The one saving grace about the work notebook is that, much like this page, it does not name names. I do leave it at work, after all, so, I have prepared for it to be seen by someone other than me. I just figured that someone would be a nosy boss or bored custodian, not someone who would spend enough time sitting here that they would also be inspired to tidy my never-referenced reference materials. What can I say at this point, other than, "I hope it was entertaining"?

Most of it was NOT entertaining, by the way....


I did find a passage that I liked, however--some porridge neither too hot or too cold--and I thought, since that bitch Goldilocks probably already read it, that what's the harm in you reading it, too? And what was I writing about that day? Aaah, love. A many splendored, and usually completely fucked up thing...by the way, the X's that you see here are exactly as I found this in the notebook--I actually didn't name names. ;-)

10/27/09--"I spent a fair chunk of the end of 2008 and all of 2009 thus far knowing only one thing for sure, and that thing was this: Not being with the man I wanted was the saddest thing my heart could imagine. THE saddest thing. And I let myself get sad sometimes, and have a good cry, but for the most part, it was a huge motivating factor in my life, and he, in turn, became very much a muse. A reason to get up and kick ass every day, a reason to always feel hopeful. No matter what stupid shit was going on, there was always "X" to return to for calm, serenity and focus, even if only in my head. It didn't matter if my boss was a dope and didn't appreciate me because in my head, X always did. It was OK if my teenagers were acting like teenagers and completely disregarding me because, in my head, X would never do that.

Time and evidence prove otherwise and I'm alone as I always was, with X never actually materializing, and I'm thinking I should focus my energy on underwater basket-weaving or really anything with a measurable result because love is quite the opposite of that--completely UN-measurable. While one cannot put a number to hopefulness, eventually, if enough time passes without the desired result, you can give it the title of "denial". Not the healthy, "nothings gonna keep me down" denial, but the flat-out unhealthy kind.

And...I knew that it would come to this. I knew that one day I would stop feeling, stop believing in it. In fact, many times, on days in which believing in love and potential was damned painful, I prayed for that belief to end. I wished for reality to be more appealing than my hopeful dream, so I wouldn't want it so much. After all, I was alone, wasn't I? Was that not evident? But I kept acting as if I wasn't, like it was just a matter of time before all of the things that I knew in my heart to be true, those things that I attributed to the random male, suddenly became a reality. I knew that all naysayers were simply wrong, and that glimpse of perfection in my head trumped them all. This is the better thing--this FEELS better, therefore, fuck everything else. I'm not really waking up alone. Not really.

But I woke up this morning, for the first time in over three years without thinking that hopeful dream was true. I didn't think, well, X believes in me and trusts me and loves and appreciates me. I just felt nothing. No love for him, none from him.

And wow, did that ever suck.

In truth, there was never any love from him, as I knew--it was all just a lofty thought. It was all me. As they say, that which we love in others is just a reflection of things we love about ourselves, and that made him so much more than a muse, or someone for whom I wanted my life to be better. Turns out, he was Me. A secret, silenced Me. No one to blame for any of life's craziness, no one for whom I could ever say, "He was such an asshole". That was me. Also? It was Me. Wanting my life to be better, wanting to feel better about myself, look better and expand my horizons--that was all me, too, and what a glorious thing that was!

So what of the nay-sayers, the ones who would deny that I ever stood a chance with X or dismissed the entire notion of that bliss in my head? Are they as quick to poo-poo me as they were to disregard the notion of X? One wonders about their 'friends' sometimes. Because it wasn't the Man, X, that they were dismissing, so much as it was the notion of my potential for happiness. That ideal in my head, fantastic, soul awakening love, was just beyond the reach of their imaginations. A pity, for them. As personal realities go, I do prefer the blissful state, or at least a self-assuredly sane denial."



Exhale.

Kinda heavy. I remember that day, missing my muse so intensely. It was quite devastating. Apparently I was still able to pull a rabbit out of my hat and write about it, though, so, what does that tell you?

I always praise The Crush--that spark of emotion that drags your whole body into a state of happy What If--puts a spring in your step and gives you a destination to skip to. I have written mountains of words under the influence of somebody--Thank God for that, and pretty much always without them being any the wiser. You hear that kind of thing, from time to time--some guy might say, "I saw this girl in a cafe and she looked like ________, which inspired this _________." and the girl was there and gone, never to know that some anonymous, low-life looking guy in a cafe just penned a Top 10 song about her, only, not her. His her. Falling in love is little more than that moment of idealism (His Her) turning out to be pretty damn close to what she's actually like in real life, or, a continued denial of what she's really like in favor of maintaining the illusion in his head. How could you not love that feeling and want to hold onto it as tight as you can? Of course you do. Of course you do. Feeling "in love" far surpasses the alternative, so, when it leaves you suddenly, with nothing to replace it, you definitely miss it. Crossing the expansive River "X" was my focus for such a long time, no wonder I didn't know what to do with myself when I finally found dry land.

I guess I'm glad that Goldilocks re-arranged my paperwork and sent me back into the notebook to make sure I hadn't left any incriminating evidence around. Looking over your shoulder to see where you've been once in a while is helpful, but honestly, next time, I'd rather she just break my chair.