zee beginning.

Retrospect:

I can’t help but think of who I was or what I was doing a year ago. I was probably having some blubbering converstation to my best friend on the phone about how hurt I was and thinking that all the things good in the world were coming to an end. Seriously. I’m not embarrassed to admit it. Twenty one years old and I was convinced there was no light at the end of the tunnel. I was foreseeing days of saddness and loneliness. Could I have been any more pathetic? My biggest dilemma involved retribution and even—dare I say it—reunification. At that time I could’ve gone either way at any given moment: he’s a great guy or he’s a horrible guy. (Yes, this about a twenty-something’s tale of a break-up. Duh.) The truth is that he is not a horrible guy and he’s a great guy, he’s just not my great guy. But no one, I repeat no one was going to tell me that a year ago. Thankfully, seriously thank the Lord and Baby Jesus, that I realized the only thing wrong with the entire situation was ME. He could’ve been anyone: Jim, Bob, Joe, or even Ira Glass and the relationship would not have made it. Or if it did, I would not have been a good relationship. Maybe I truly believe that or maybe I’m just trying to make myself feel better… No, seriously. It’s totally true. I’ve been cultivating unhealthy relationships for years—-way back to my teen mom years—-and there is no man on the planet who would cure that disease. I, myself am the only one who can do that.

As the crazy person I am, I am thankful for my last relationship experience in that it taught me a lot of dark things about myself. I was already getting hints from other past relationships, but my sobbing over this let the heavy hammer really hit the nail on the head. Being single for over a year now, I’ve learned a lot—because trust me the first couple months were totally devoted to hashing everything out and then finally I said to myself, “Seriously, Jamie? Seriously?”

When I was asked (just days ago—because being single is the last thing anyone should be, you know?) what my “things” are, you know, what makes a person attractive, I said, “He has to make me laugh. Being able to make me laugh is the best trait any ex of mine has ever had.” Sometimes when I remember certain things I can hear myself laughing and I think, “I want that laugh.” Not that person—the laugh. So here’s to hoping the longer I’m single, the more I learn and here’s to you who read this! And here’s to any girl out there crying her heart out: I’m not going to dare say stop crying. Cry it out. Hash it out. Do what you need to do. Then, one day you’ll get up and realize, great guy or not, he just didn’t fit (“That’s what she said…”).

The excerpt that made me cry:

My husband and I met when we were in law school. I still remember the first time I saw him walk into the library – a shock ran through me, and I could practically feel my pupils dilate. He was wearing jeans and a rose-colored Patagonia pull-over (which I still keep in my closet). I walked over to a friend and whispered casually, “Who is that guy?”

Our law school is small, and our social circles magically started to overlap, so I met him, and my crush deepened. One important night, we sat next to each other at a dinner party. There was that afternoon when we ran into each other on the law-school staircase in front of the stained-glass windows.

But he had a girlfriend, and I had a boyfriend. Then he broke up with his girlfriend. A week later, on May 1 (I just looked up the exact date in my calendar), I broke up with my boyfriend. It happened in the morning, and I went out into the courtyard and made a general announcement of the break-up to a bunch of friends — to see what his reaction would be.

No reaction. “Hmmmm,” I thought. “Maybe I misread this situation.” Had I imagined what I thought was between us? After all, the two of us had never talked about anything of importance, certainly not about “us”; we’d never spent any time alone, only in chaperoned groups (except that once he’d asked me to breakfast at the Copper Kitchen before our Corporations class, an occasion so thrilling to me in prospect that I slept only a few hours the night before); and neither of us had ever made even the smallest romantic overture toward each other.

But that same afternoon after my break-up, he told me he was going to walk to Wawa’s (the New Haven version of QuikTrip) to get a Coke, and did I want to come? I did. We walked to Wawa’s, then back to the law school, and sat on a bench beneath some blooming magnolia trees. He said something completely incoherent, then took my hand; this was the first time we ever touched. At that moment, if he’d asked me to marry him, I wouldn’t have been at all surprised, and I might well have said “Yes.” (We did get engaged several months later.)

Now, so many years later, is it the same? Yes and no. Yes, because I still love him passionately, and more deeply, because I know him so much better. No, because he’s passed through my heart and into my soul, and he pervades my entire life, so now sometimes it’s hard to see him. Married people are so intertwined, so interdependent, so symbiotic, that it’s hard to maintain that sense of wonder and excitement.

If I’ve learned one thing from my happiness project, it’s that if I want my life to be a certain way, I must be that way myself. If I want my marriage to be tender and romantic, I must be tender and romantic.

Am I tender and romantic? Am I appreciative, thoughtful, forbearing, fun-loving? Or do I march around the apartment snapping out reminders and orders? Am I quick to feel annoyed or aggrieved? When we first met, I honestly wondered whether it would ever be possible for me to read when we were sitting in a room together; I found it so hard to concentrate that I couldn’t make sense of anything more complicated than the newspaper. Now, I find it hard to tear myself away from my work and my email to hold up my end of a marital conversation.

by Gretchen Rubin

Read full article here.

The Backyard Hymns

You might not always like me, the things I do or the way I do them. But these are my things, this is the way I do them and I am me.

via I Wrote This For You

I had a dream the other night that I was shopping and Ira Glass was sitting in the bookstore reading a magazine. Oh, Ira.

Last paper. For a bit of time. There's no sadness here.

GET OVER IT.