Category: General

My Definition of Hell

You want to know what hell is? Hell is being so attuned to the people around you that you can tell exactly how they’re reacting to you at every moment, but being completely incapable of doing anything to change it. 

I’ve expended so much energy over the years trying to behave in a ways that will make me pleasant to be around, and a good friend. 

For even years at a time I’ll do a pretty good job, and I’ll have friends and I’ll have to keep reminding myself to keep up the friendship. But eventually one of two things will happen: things will slack off to nothing and it will be up to me to get things going again, or I’ll fuck up somehow and the person will decide she no nolger wants my company. Then it will be up to be to make it up. 

There’re all these movels and movies and memes about the power of female friendship. I look at them and I get it, but I also feel like–wow. That is not my life.

But really friendship is only part of the picture. Professional life is a whole other thing. I’ve had jobs where my prevailing feeling, underlying every interaction, is something’s wrong here. This doesn’t feel right. And this is what I think I’m feeling: I think I’m feeling people’s discomfort with me. Whether because of how I look or how I talk or how I smile or don’t smile. Or I’m feeling people simply disliking me. 

Please don’t tell me that I can’t feel people disliking me. Because I’m just going to go ahead and put some trust in my own perceptions over several decades. All this time I’ve been trusting everyone else when they tell me I’m just imagining it, or I’m projecting my own discomfort. Beause you know what? Maybe it’s not actually paranoia when they really are out to get you. 

I’m telling you truly right now: I weird people out. And to not weird people out is simply beyond my ken. And you know what else? Maybe I’m sick of trying.

You Can’t Tell Anyone the Truth

That life is so hard you think you’ll die from how much it hurts to just live through a day and get your kids to school and not be a complete piece of shit all the time–just a partial piece of shit.That you love your kids so fucking much, and you know that you’re failing them every day.

That long weekends are hell because you all have to be together as a family for an extra day. And the Saturday night after Thanksgiving you think: well, only tomorrow left, and you just have to survive that.

That since having kids, your week has flip-flopped and Sunday is the new Friday, and Friday is the new Sunday: full of dread and anticipation. And Saturday is Monday: just the longest slog. And Monday is Saturday: one big sigh of relief.

Do people really live like they do in ads and on Facebook and in casual social encounters? I think maybe they do. I think we must be freaks. If we’re not, and this is how people really live, lots of us…I don’t even know what that means.

Namesake

From the seminal work on the erotics of reading:

“It is the very rhythm of what is read and what is not read that creates the pleasure of the great narratives: has anyone ever read Proust, Balzac, War and Peace, word for word? (Proust’s good fortune: from one reading to the next, we never skip the same passages.)…What I enjoy in a narrative is not directly its content or even its structure, but rather the abrasions I impose upon the fine surface: I read on, I skip, I look up, I dip in again.”

-Roland Barthes, The Pleasure of the Text

The Sewing Dungeon

Here’s something about the new house: it might have a sewing room. If by “sewing room” you mean “basement chamber with a water problem, concrete floor, and cinder block walls.” But a room is a room, you know. And I’ve long felt that the only way I’ll ever, ever begin to use my sewing machine on a regular basis is if it stays open on a dedicated table. And here’s my opportunity. There’s even room in here to make a space for messy work, or maybe even bulky projects like, oh, finishing the inside of my childhood dollhouse!

Which brings up what this basement room of mine reminds me of: my grandfather. Chasie built my dollhouse (along with several other dollhouses, model ships, etc.) in his own basement workshop in Bronxville, NY. He used to take his grandkids down there to build dollhouse furniture or other little things. His specialty was cutting a circle of thin wood in half, then gluing the halves at 90 degrees to made a demi-lune table. He also made a very clever little display stand for the miniature costumed mice I collected like crazy in about 1983.

The last time I was ever down in Chasie’s workshop, it was maybe 15 years after his death, and right before my grandmother moved into nursing care. Most of his things had been cleared away, but amazingly enough, on the metal shelf that still had a few nails and screws on it was a jam jar filled with his cigarette butts. Man, I wish I’d taken that with me, as nutty as it would have seemed. It would have pride of place in my little den.

Moving Sucks

The new house is wonderful, great, better than we thought we’d ever get in Princeton. So nice, in fact, that I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop. But that move, man, God it sucked. I’ve known this about myself forever, but I really hate change. And it was such a piecemeal process, riddled with SNAFUs and bad temper. But we’re in now, and it sure is a more pleasant place to be than the last place.

In other news, I’ll be making more attempts to weave together all the disparate elements of my life and brain. The weaving metaphor sure works well for me, so maybe I’ll start having some luck with making all the strands feel like a piece of fabric instead of a tangle.