Undrunk in love

Still have not had a drink, I am proud to say. It's been almost three months. I haven't been happier. Not in a jolly, plastic, superficial, FB-selfie-as-proof way, but feeling stable and even, not low. I certainly feel all of my feelings, though. I feel sad sometimes, especially now, during winter, when all is grey and white outside. But the sadness is pure. I can name all of my feelings. I notice when I feel anxious, as I wait for the man I have a crush on to arrive. I recognize my sadness and I am there for my tears. I know when I am frightened and it is always fear of things that exist only in my mind. I also feel the fleeting ebullience of joy. Joy is light and sweet, like whipped cream.

So many times in the past, my angst regarding my (non-existent) love life has felt so horrible because I was drunk--either coming on or coming off. Either numb or excruciating pain of skinless flesh--that's what being heartbroken while hung over feels like. Now, as I contemplate yet another confusing crush on yet another specimen of the mysterious male sex, I do feel bad, but I don't feel like hell.

What I do feel: I want to just get away, go away, disappear. I want this confusion, yet again, to stop. I wonder how I always get crushes on men who act so ambivalently about their feelings. OK, yes, I guess I am ambivalent about relationships, too. But why does it have to be so difficult?

I like someone, or at least I harbor tender, passionate, wild feelings about an individual. We come from different worlds. We are opposites in every arena. I am too old. I feel not beautiful enough. Men like young beautiful women, and I am not necessarily a "hot chick." I am an attractive academic of a certain age. He flirts with hot chicks who are 25 years old. He's a bit of a clown, and yet I have these feelings...why? Why am I not attracted to appropriate objects?

Anecdote: a few weeks ago, I dated an appropriate object: a professor at a nearby university. We commiserated over our careers--grad school, department politics, the writing life. We shared stylish meals. We went hiking. I saw his well-appointed apartment. He dressed tastefully from the JCrew catalog and everything. We watched a DVD together and laughed knowingly and snarked knowingly, smart people that we are. We made out, but alas, I felt very indifferent about going any further. First, he had really bad halitosis, which made me gag as well as made me feel a bit guilty about judging him. But also, I just didn't lust for him. He looked fine, rather cute in exactly the kind of nerdy way that I would want were I to date a fellow professor. But no desire beyond the superficial. My desire for him was mechanical, not organic. So we parted ways.

The one I actually love is a clown. He is also, of course, a musician. We have barely a thing in common except dancing. We belong to the same dance community. You meet all sorts of people there, fortunately or unfortunately. Sometimes when we dance, there is a palpable energy that emits. I felt it the first time we danced and have felt it frequently since. He doesn't ask me out. Coming from a different culture, he is not a "date" person, I don't think. Or maybe he is and is just not asking me. But I know he feels things for me, too. We dance. When he dances with someone else, we lock eyes across the dance floor. There is awkwardness and we have nothing to talk about--is this nervousness or the fact that we really have nothing to talk about? Is it just a sexual thing created by dancing? It's like we can't communicate with words, so we communicate wordlessly when we dance. The energy I feel when we dance is something I have never felt with other men. It's warm; it is life energy itself. Does he have this with other women he dances with? It's sexual chemistry, for sure. But it's weird--is it all in my mind? It's driving me nuts because I can't just ask him--I feel awkward. It's not like asking about factual things. How do you talk about such a deeply subjective experience with someone? And ask if it is shared? Ask why does it happen? How would he know? And yet, knowledge is all there is. Knowledge without explanation. I believe this is what Lacan is saying about "the real"

Ultimately, I go back and forth between wanting something to happen between us to thinking it is the worst idea in the world, it would never work out. I enjoy dancing with him so much. When these instances happen--the energy exchange, let's say, it's a kind of addictive feeling. I want to touch him again and more. Although we are just acquaintances, it's like my body knows his body much more intimately and looks forward to being near it as soon as possible. It's the strangest thing. I have to simply experience the pain of dealing with it. The pain of being around him and dancing with him without any hope of anything happening. It's too awkward and he won't make a move. I just want to get out of here. Luckily, I go home for Christmas--3000 miles away. I wonder if this crush will dissipate? I both want and don't want this.

Vipassana and alcohol

So far, I haven't had a drink yet. Since October 1st, when I decided to do "Ocsober," I haven't had a glass of wine, beer, or liquor. Mentally and emotionally, I haven't been happier or more stable. I haven't woken up feeling horribly depressed. I have definitely been tempted here and there, when the thought of a glass of after-work red wine seemed to have been the correct and best solution to the empty space opening up at the end of one thing and the beginning of another. That "another" could have ended up in a dulled stupor, but I did not give into the thoughts. The thoughts are mostly of the type: "drinking wine is the solution." But it never is. That is the gift of wisdom, the wisdom of having followed this faulty logic over and over again for years.

What preceded this sudden desire to stop drinking? Meditation. I casually joined a local Buddhist meditation group, a sangha, earlier this autumn and some realizations dawned on me. One of the keys to being fully present, which is central to meditation, is that you fully experience, without resistance, everything that is going on--the good thoughts, the bad thoughts, the good/bad feelings, the irrational/rational, the irrelevant/irreverent, the profound--everything that happens in the mind. It is actually quite interesting once you begin to observe what is there in the mind. What was beginning to conflict with my meditation study and practice was being under the influence of alcohol, whether being intoxicated or hung over.

Drinking interfered with experiencing and accepting the moment as it is and therefore, impeded my ability to meditate. When I realized this, I stopped. I said, I would stop for a month--October. But I really want to not drink anymore at all. I think it is very interesting that meditation, specifically, vipassana, which is mindfulness meditation, has given me this profound insight. That is, vipassana is not only there to help you relax and be happy, it is there to allow you to understand things like you have never understood them before because you have automatically believed certain thoughts and done the same behaviors repeatedly without reflecting on how they are serving you. Mindfulness is all about observing things as they are and it's strange and amazing what you actually notice! Like, I knew deep down that drinking was not in my best interest because I was using it as a crutch and it was unhealthy. But I didn't *notice* it truly until I started to meditate. Noticing, I realize, is not an intellectual thing. It is spiritual.

Ultimately, this habit that I have supported for half of my life--alcohol--is one tremendous obstacle that has stopped me from accepting, observing, and meditating. And all of these years, I used it to protect me, when in reality, it was shielding me from what I really needed--acceptance, not only of myself, but of everything. Alcohol was shielding me, like an imperfect parent, from what I needed to see to get to the true experience of life. Finally, at the age of 41, I can say good bye to it, my false parent.

I've been drinking, I've been drinking...

I have decided to stop drinking. I stopped, in fact, on October 1st, roughly a month ago. I am 41 years old and I've been drinking alcohol for half my life and I have finally realized that it is doing me in. Not in a melodramatic Days of Wine and Roses type way, or in an Alcoholic Anonymous way, but in a straight up, drinking alcohol doesn't make logical sense and it never really has epiphany type way in which I have questioned all the reasons why I do it and none of them made sense. Why?

I am tired of hangovers and wasting time feeling physically bad and emotionally depressed. But, I never drank more than three glasses of wine, which is actually a lot of alcohol, but an amount that most people wouldn't bat an eye at. And still, alcohol is an addictive drug--how does one "just have one glass," which is the recommended amount for women per day. That's bullshit--who has just one glass? I am tired of depending on wine as a crutch in the same way I did for cigarettes, which I also quit, fifteen years ago. Everybody drinks; wine is water these days. But it causes more problems than it purports to solve. It doesn't really relax you, you just think it does. Also, if you drink regularly, the reason why you feel relaxed when you take a drink is because of withdrawal--having a drink is a mild form of hair of the dog that bit you.

I read a great book, Kick the Drink Easily by Jason Vale and he basically uses cognitive behavioral principles to allow you to see the error in your thinking about drinking. And it is really powerful. I haven't drunk any alcohol in a month and I really want to make it a permanent thing.

I realize that my entire adulthood has been accompanied by drinking--the stories of my drunk, absent father as genetic cautionary tale to bar hopping in college and throughout my twenties, to evenings at home with culturally acceptable bottles and bottles of "antioxident rich" red wine. It's good for you!

I am debunking this theory and musing out loud about my new life. I want to start writing here as a way to log in about not drinking but also, to understand the past as it relates to my present and future, without alcohol. I don't want to mystify or romanticize alcohol, because I think it is part of the problem, but I do want to sort it all out. I do think there is a post-AA sober revolution happening right now that has a lot to do with other mind/body movements that have become more mainstream in recent years. Hopefully, I can use this space to work it all out fruitfully...

Les Mots d'Amour

So the short story in the New Yorker from a few weeks ago was written by Jeffrey Eugenides. He's a darling of the literary establishment right now. However, I've never read any of his books, though his name is familiar, having been associated with the film The Virgin Suicides and a novel that's on my list, Middlesex. I read the short story, Extreme Solitude and liked it because 1)I fetishize my college years and 2) I fetishize poststructuralist theory, or at least the idea of it.

Extreme Solitude takes place at Brown University in the 1980s. The heroine, Madeleine, is an undergrad English major who decides to take a seminar in semiotics and bumps into the work of Derrida and Roland Barthes' A Lover's Discourse in addition to a strapping young, "unpretentious" philosopher named Leonard. It's about how she falls in love with Leonard despite Barthes' watchful and poetic deconstruction of love, which she is also kind of into. The two contradict each other. Madeleine and Leonard, these are smart and handsome WASPS who are impossibly emotionally sensitive, too. So annoying, but because Eugenides is a good writer, I liked the story.

The story culminates when Madeleine says "I love you" to Leonard. To this, Leonard offers Barthes' problematic definition of love:

je-t'-aime / I-love-you

The figure refers not to the declaration of love, to the avowal, but to the repeated utterance of the love cry.

1. Once the first avowal has been made, "I love you" has no meaning whatever; it merely repeats in an enigmatic mode-so blank does it appear-the old message (which may not have been transmitted in these words). I repeat it exclusive of any pertinence; it comes out of the language, it ... The situations in which I say I-love-you cannot be classified: I-love-you is irrepressible and unforeseeable... I-love-you belongs neither to the realm of linguistics nor in that of semiology...in the proferring of I-love-you, desire is neither repressed (as in what is uttered) nor recognized (where we did not expect it: as in the uttering itself), but simply: released, as an orgasm. Orgasm is not spoken, but it speaks and it says I-love-you… This formula responds to no ritual; the situations in which I say I-love-you cannot be classified.

* * *

One does not need to take a seminar in semiotics to know this is true. The problem is, "love" or whatever feels so intense at the time that it's happening and language is inadequate to capture the bewildering feelings of it and how it passes away, too. Therefore, to Barthes' definition I offer the lyrics to Edith Piaf's Mots d' Amour (translation follows):


C'est fou c' que j' peux t'aimer,
C' que j' peux t'aimer, des fois,
Des fois, j' voudrais crier
Car j' n'ai jamais aimé,
Jamais aimé comme ça.
Ça, je peux te l'jurer.
Si jamais tu partais,
Partais et me quittais,
Me quittais pour toujours,
C'est sûr que j'en mourrais,
Que j'en mourrais d'amour,
Mon amour, mon amour...

C'est fou c' qu'il me disait
Comme jolis mots d'amour
Et comme il les disait
Mais il ne s'est pas tué
Car, malgré mon amour,
C'est lui qui m'a quittée
Sans dire un mot.
Pourtant des mots,
'y en avait tant,
'y en avait trop...

C'est fou c' que j' peux t'aimer,
C' que j' peux t'aimer, des fois,
Des fois, je voudrais crier
Car j' n'ai jamais aimé,
Jamais aimé comme ça.
Ça, je peux te l'jurer.
Si jamais tu partais,
Partais et me quittais,
Me quittais pour toujours,
C'est sûr que j'en mourrais,
Que j'en mourrais d'amour,
Mon amour, mon amour...

Et voilà qu'aujourd'hui,
Ces mêmes mots d'amour,
C'est moi qui les redis,
C'est moi qui les redis
Avec autant d'amour
A un autre que lui.
Je dis des mots
Parce que des mots,
Il y en a tant
Qu'il y en a trop...

Au fond c' n'était pas toi.
Comme ce n'est même pas moi
Qui dit ces mots d'amour
Car chaque jour, ta voix,
Ma voix, ou d'autres voix,
C'est la voix de l'amour
Qui dit des mots,
Encore des mots,
Toujours des mots,
Des mots d'amour...

C'est fou c' que j' peux t'aimer,
C' que j' peux t'aimer, des fois...
Si jamais tu partais,
C'est sûr que la la la la la la la la...


TRANSLATION:

It's crazy 's that I can love you,
that I can love you, sometimes,
Sometimes, I want to cry
Because I have never loved,
Never loved like that.
That I can swear to you.
If ever you went away,
Went away and left me,
Left me forever
Surely I would die,
I would die of love,
My love, my love ...

It's crazy that he told me
the pretty words of love
And like he said
But he did not die
Because, despite my love,
It was he who left me
Without saying a word.
Yet the words
There were so many,
There were too many...

Well today
These same words of love,
It is I who say them again,
It is I who repeat
With as much love
to another besides him.
I'm saying words
Because of words
There are so many
There are too many ...

Basically it was not you.
As it was not even me
Who said these words of love
For each day, your voice,
My voice or other voices,
It is the voice of love
Who says words,
And more words,
Always words
Words of love ...

Ice Cream For Dinner

I played tennis for two hours on a gorgeous late afternoon into evening. Earlier, I had lunch--mediterranean veggie plate at a restaurant right on the river. The weather was perfect today. And now I am polishing off the last of the mint chip ice cream and it's so good. Sometimes, even though I claim to like only savory foods, a good mint chip ice cream feast will really do the trick. Mint chip is actually kind of salty--it's the kind with the briny chocolate wafers. Sometimes you don't need to eat a real meal for dinner, because I am an adult living in my own apartment with no one to tell me what not to do. And because it's summer. I love summer.

Nomadic Aesthetic

I think often of home. Not my literal home as in my apartment, although that's where I feel mostly comfortable. Mostly comfortable except for the gashes and gaping holes that appear when I wake up in the middle of the night and wonder where I am. These are abscesses that are deep inside me, which act up now again like a bad tooth. I am harboring bacteria in there. The holes that go down and out into nowhere, inside which I float like an unthethered astronaut in stark, elegant white against stark elegant black of the universe. And by home neither do I mean where my mother lives, three time zones away, where I did some of my growing up, both literally in her womb and surrounding environs. Where I got into trouble and got good grades, and from where I was on a singular, burning, mad woman's road to get out of. I visit this home and see it as nostalgia and simplicity, but only from this vantage point. By home, I also don't mean exactly, "where I'm from," which strangers ask constantly, cavalierly, as if this was an obvious question for which there would be an obvious, stupidly clear answer. "Where are you from?" California. "No, but where are you really from? FROM, from?" Being that I don't look like Sally Whitelady, people are always thinking it's alright to ask this question. The answer is, I don't know because where I was born is not at all where I consider I am from. And this isn't simply about political correctness--I really don't know and it's the source of my existential discomfort.

I think of home often because I live alone, have lived alone for my entire adult life partly because the choices I have made, from the miniscule to the majuscule, have made being solitary the best solution for this narrow, winding path. What is home? I find myself searching for it constantly.

Entanglement

I went on an OK Cupid date today with a Physicist. It's strange that you know in an nanosecond, not that I know how long that is exactly, if the other is meant for you or not. I walked into the cafe and met his gaze and I knew. A lovely, quiet, humid afternoon in a sultry, depopulated cafe. The perfect recipe for romance, given the correct ingredients, which are Party 1 (immovable object) and Party 2 (irresistible force). Or insert any of your two combustible, highly flammable compounds: Here. In this way, perhaps online dating will help me to strengthen my instincts, my love instincts. So of course, the physicist is not for me, but he will be a darling for someone else, though we spend the better part of four hours discussing theoretical physics, Robert DeNiro, and comparative cuisines of the Mediterranean. He told me about the concept of entanglement--which means that you cannot measure the position of an electron while also measuring its speed. The electron is entangled. This concept was very helpful in elegantly getting out of the inelegant situation that always happens at the end of the date when one party professes a desire to see the other again--and the other party doesn't. "It's very mysterious," I said. "I'm not sure...can I think about it and get back to you?" I demurred. I suggested that I couldn't possibly measure my feelings while simultaneously making a decision about the probability of two strangers drawing toward each other like magnets. He understood. I said goodbye. Science is forever, love is delicate.