On Paper, or Themes and Variations

I saw my surgeon yesterday and am apparently healing quite well, at least physically. The x-ray showed an intriguing fork-like contraption screwed with tiny worm-like pins to the distal part of the radius and then with larger screws to the proximal end of the radius for leverage. I expected to get a cast, but he instead put me in a removable splint and gave me free rein to begin to rehabilitate my poor left hand. He told me to resume typing with two hands, which I am doing right now, sans splint per instructions.

I can tell I will tire quickly, but it is lovely to be able to type as rapidly as I think, or nearly so. The wound is not as gory as I had expected at all; it's held together by four steri-strips and it looks like he did a very neat suturing job. Good man. He was so solicitous about the clotting and pain management. I am relieved that I am able to find some of the decent doctors out there!

Over the past few days I have been feeling the waves of depression wash over me and hearing the siren call of the damned again (on this subject, I recommend the unsettling film Submarine). It's strange how several months ago I couldn't imagine how I was ever in this place, or how it felt, and now I am here again. The fragility of my position has its ebbs and flows, I suppose, and right now I feel myself imprisoned by solitude.

I have many great and wonderful people who love me, and I love them back. It's just that they can't help me get over pain, and sometimes I am not sure that I can do it. There have been times and places when I've been with people in which it seemed like the cage could crack, but something always happened and I was left again. Sometimes I might be able to blame myself for driving people away, but other times I know it wasn't my fault. I will obsess over those times and watch the light recede through the cracks again.

I have moved on from Bach to Tchaikovsky and Swan Lake, which made me think of Black Swan, which made me think of Vincent Cassel, which made me think of La Haine, which made me think of one of my exes. I remember watching La Haine with him in our living room, resting my head in his lap while he stroked my hair. We had this funny code for when I was despondent; I would tell him that I was feeling fragile, and he would gather me up and make me feel loved and taken care of (including the tiny little girl in me) in such an amazing way. Then again, he also knew, better than anyone else, how to devastate me. That's what got me to thinking about things being good on paper.

He and I were excellent on paper. Except for being blond, he is definitely my type: very tall, handsome, extremely well educated, witty, a bit wicked. We met through a mutual friend in graduate school, but we could have met two other ways in real life. His sister was the year ahead of me at Haverford, and he was at May Day at Bryn Mawr when I was there. He is half English, and his cousins went to the same school as one of my English exes. It's uncanny. We had the same taste in many, many things; he is a true polymath: brilliant, brilliant, brilliant. He grew up in an 18th century house on a gorgeous farm on the outskirts of Charlottesville, a descendant of Stonewall Jackson. He and I loved to travel and went to odd places together, like Orkney, where we visited prehistoric burials and Viking churches. We spent Christmas in a  small village in Provence one year, going to midnight mass, eating boudin blanc, and making fun of how every French town has a monument to the Heroes and Martyrs of the Resistance, as if they were ALL in it. We drove around in his sister's 2CV, visited the ruins of the Marquis de Sade's castle, drank in Roman and medieval history and tons of wine, took a train to Monte Carlo, and then I cried my eyes out on New Year's because for all of this, when we weren't together, I was an afterthought. I would be in England doing research, and he wouldn't call or send me e-mail. I just wasn't important enough. Basically, he loved me but he would also abandon me. And when I told him it hurt, he would do what A does: change the subject or ignore it.

I loved this man. Really, really loved him. This went on for about three years. I remember being in the middle of Yellowstone, camping with him, when he said that he didn't see a future with me. That was fair enough, but it was horrible. I was 27, I hadn't begun to look for my first family, but I felt a punch to the gut that must have triggered something primal. I lost it. What was it with me and people not loving me enough to make an effort?

We had a miserable drive back to Berkeley. It was LONG. We broke up. We were still living in the same house, which was hard. He went to Laos to juggle (he is also an expert, world renowned juggler) for Thanksgiving, came back, and said that he had decided he wanted to really try. That he loved me. Problem was, I didn't love HIM anymore. The trust was gone, and even after all that, he said he didn't want to commit to anything. What's the point? You either love someone and want to make time for them, or you don't.

Which brings me back to yesterday. I got home, watched Black Swan again, and could really understand how Nina lost her mind. The pressures to find yourself often lead to dark places. Perfection and love have hefty prices.

Ah, you say, but you have your wonderful husband who loves you now. Yes, I do. He is great. But he is handicapped in his own way, a very traumatic way, that leaves me alone in my fortress as well. He will never leave me, that I know. But he will also never love me the way that I need to be healed, that perhaps HE needs to heal himself. It's a big, big mess.

As my dear friend Nalini said to me the day before yesterday, "You can hold and comfort your younger self, but she needed someone to be there for her then.  That's the tragedy you must live with."

I hate feeling like I have to go through the rest of my life just marking the hours from sunrise to sunset, knowing that I look very good on paper but feeling otherwise very much like an erudite, emotionally empty shell.

Unless you piss me off, that is ;-)