Sunday, February 17, 2008

The Tentative Return

Well, wow. Almost a month. It has been too long and yet not nearly long enough.

I am embarking on an unplugging project. I don't really know exactly where I want to go, which almost always means I will meander for a while before I figure out the destination, but it means less time online.

I am unhappy. Plain and simple. Unhappy with a lot of things and I have done next to nothing to improve my situation. I have been standing still for over three years, trying to maintain some semblance of balance while events in my life completely upended. I thought I was being wise and cautious and measured, but in truth, I have just avoided any responsibility and culpability. It was easy to write about it, but far more difficult to actually do something about it. I have reacted, not acted, and I have become a person I barely recognize.

Usually, grand plans accompany these moments of quasi-epiphany. Make lists, resolutions, changes - all of which have the lasting power of a yo-yo diet. Hasn't worked out that well for me, despite having an inordinate amount of luck where many things are concerned. But today, something in me snapped. Or maybe just creaked. I reached a point of thorough disgust with myself, but perhaps most encouraging, hitting some kind of wall that makes me change course. I so fucking need this momentum to get to where I really want to be. A great best friend. A treasured sister/daughter/aunt/cousin. A cherished partner/lover/girlfriend. I am so far from that at the moment, and while normally that makes me want to check the fuck out, right now, that just makes me WANT to get up in the morning and do better.

I have always had a safety net, particularly with B, but also with family and friends who could forgive me any of my many transgressions. I think this particular tumble down the rabbit hole was occasioned by the realization that I no longer have the emotional safety net I always thought I had. This is not a failure of anyone in my life. This is my failure to nurture the relationships that matter most.

Tomorrow is my 37th birthday and I am in a terrible mood. Mad at myself for not being where I want to be and angry at how far I have to go to get there. How did I do this to myself? Why the fuck did I do this to myself?

And I am irrationally angry. Not a single family member or friend tried to arrange a get-together. I know I will get a dozen phone calls and emails tomorrow, wishing me a happy birthday, but it says something about me that no one in my immediate surroundings wanted to spend some time with me. I know that part of it is because I just haven't been a good friend/sister/niece/cousin in the recent past and have set new standards for being a recluse. And still. I am angry that the only person who asked me to have dinner with them tomorrow was my ex-husband.

As I am trying not to date him any longer -- and really, what would be more ironic than dating my ex-husband on the sly from his girlfriend -- I have scheduled a date with myself. Walk the lake with Darby, hit the gym (oh, and I re-sprained my ankle worse than last year and it still hurts, three weeks after the Superbowl Sunday injury), hit a couple of movies, and have dinner by myself at a restaurant I have been wanting to try. I am going to spend it alone, and that both hurts and comforts me. I am at least familiar with how I have let myself down.