The Backwards 4 Indicates Where I'm Going

Portrait of the Artist at Forty.

Send wrinkle cream and tequila.

For Straddling the Misery/Happiness Fence

I can't decide today, so I'm letting Nina sing the upbeat blues.

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So is Gabriel García Márquez.

"It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love."

I'm clearly involved in some sort of search for literary companionship in heartache. Perhaps J. Alfred and Pip are next on the list.

Fred Exley is reading my mind.

"[I]…have lain afternoons imagining how tonight, this very night, I will find the strength to turn and walk on about my business. But then evening comes, and sleep, and then the dream, and then that shuttering of heavy blackness."

I'd like to find a way to not wake up for a while.

I’ve had the blues, the reds and the pinks…

I’m acting out, a bit. Not necessarily in a destructive way; nor, however, can it be called constructive. Jung called the moment when we start the ongoing process by which we become ourselves individuation. Buddhists call it enlightenment. One of my friends likens it to ‘fessing up, conceding our negative behaviors. I turn forty this week, and I’m starting to panic a bit about who the hell I actually am. So much has changed in the past year or so, and while there are some constants that I feel good about; my ability as a mother, my loyalty as a friend, my (insert something I haven’t thought of here), I’m concerned that my ongoing need to put on my game face is starting to backfire. Sometimes inner fortitude is the last thing I feel.

The new venture is going well. There is an honest, very real happiness that comes from the work of shooting photos, working with clients, having happy results. I am loving it, and am recognizing it as more than just a distraction from my troubles, but a good way to move away from them. But with that new perspective comes a worry that some of this is just false bravado. Is that what I’m showing? I still get pissed/anxious/sad/worried about the same things, despite the distraction. The knots in my stomach are still there. Still tight. Still desperate.

The acting out part comes in to play with certain people in my life. I’ve been trying to do the right thing by Matt, trying to glide through the final stages of this divorce with as few histrionic outbursts as possible. The obvious roadblock to that is that dismantling a 10-year old marriage is layered with emotional complexity. I’m over him as my husband, but not over the experience. My anger over it is yielding to attacks of self-blame and remorse. What does his leaving say about me? Not a new question, but one I find myself asking again and again as the other important relationships in my life evolve, or in some cases, devolve. People I love yell at me. People I respect tell me that I’m slipping, that I need to get my head out of the clouds and back in the game. Vivian Gornick said “it was marriage that taught me that anxiety looks like devotion.” I don’t think it’s marriage, necessarily. I think it might just be love.

I’m tired of being at war with my desires.

Stormy

Not much of a beach day. We didn't lose power, though, and for that I am grateful.

And brave the storm to come, for it surely looks like rain…

I've been working on some thoughts, and had a nice chunky post in the works for today (NaBloPoMo!), but we are in the middle of a fairly significant northeaster here, and the lights have been flickering, so I am shutting down the works and going out to watch the ocean.

The storm suits my mood, anyway.

Much more cooperative than a 4-year-old

Happiness = Reality ÷ Expectation

From Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult:

"Why hadn't he realized this before? Everyone knew that if you divided reality by expectation, you got a happiness quotient. But when you inverted the equation — expectation divided by reality — you didn't get the opposite of happiness. What you got, Lewis realized, was hope.
Pure logic: Assuming reality was constant, expectation had to be greater than reality to create optimism. On the other hand, a pessimist was someone with expectations lower than reality, a fraction of diminishing returns. The human condition meant that this number approached zero without reaching it — you never really gave up hope; it might come flooding back at any provocation."

I seem to have a problem with the flooding back part. Evidently, I need to become a little more pessimistic.

Or maybe not. This may be a bit too much like math for me.