Epiphanies Friday afternoon while e-mailing with Vanessa, why the DL although it's doing some good is also fucking me up: (1) because its precept, I love you so much I need to get away from you and stay away for a while, has gotten into my head like a virus, I think, so that I have been avoiding the people I should have been keeping close to, people who are not only willing but wanting to help me through the DL � people I love � because the DL has been the biggest thing and most immovable object in my life and part of me has taken for granted, in an almost physiological sense, that the first part of the precept necessarily implies the second. That is to say, I have made myself unlovable, and in the service of � what? (2) Part of what's supposed to happen with the DL is that outside of the hothouse I'm supposed to get my self-esteem together and remember what a hot tomato I am even compared to Amazon gods and goddesses, blah blah blah, but how am I supposed to do that when it was all the good things about me that added up to anathema?

Epiphany Friday night courtesy of Rebecca, who sat on the sofa with me and kept pouring me wine and listening to me snuffle after I'd decided that my hair-trigger tear ducts were exactly what Nicole's party did not need: I must quit fretting about the things over which I have no control and concentrate on doing as much as I can about what I can control. It's so basic but so genius and its clear articulation � I think it also matters that it was articulated by someone else � felt like real actual directions for making my way around this corner I keep yapping about. At first we were talking about the DL and Rich weighing in, which has been preying on me more than I'd admit to most people and perhaps more than I would have admitted to her except that I was obliged to account for my party 180 and verge-of-tears voice, my general shakiness and my horning on on the evening she'd planned to hang out and bond with the dog. (Why would I have kept it a secret, when I know that sort of thing only makes me feel worse? I don't know.) Rebecca is a DL skeptic though acknowledges that I'm a grown-up lady and am responsible for my own decisions, and she was asking me whether something that has made me so miserable is really worth it. She asked: Would you be more content declaring an end to the not-this-and-not-that of the DL and telling Todd to call you if and when he wanted to, so that at least you would have a sense of something definitive? And I said Oh no no, because first of all I would be the total opposite of content not even getting to see him a little and because I'm the one who set the DL deadline so I'd be a real bitch to move the goalposts at this late date, and secondly because it's pretty damn hard to be content in general due to the no-job situation and all its attendant tsuris. And that is when she said, carefully with respect to the NJS � maybe because she knew that way rather than the other one was how to get me to listen � that the only things I should be worrying about and allowing to jack me out of contentedness are the things I can control. For example: I gots no job and that is out of my control. But am I looking for one, am I doing all I can to find one and all within reason to make some money in the meantime? That's the part that's within my control, and as long as I'm doing that, I shouldn't be fretting. The rest of it will fall into some kind of place eventually, or else it won't, and I will deal with it as and when I have to. And, OK, maybe I am retarded, never having been able to get that through my head on my own (remember though that self-forgiveness is not my forte), but I couldn't help thinking, and meaning it in an unironic way, Oh my goodness, Rebecca is so wise; I felt like I was some guest star playing a hapless Academy intern and she was Guinan. Seriously. While I was crying and miserable anyway, I guess I decided to kill two birds with one stone, and we also talked about some of the crap in brackets. All this time after it's over, I don't really do that with anyone except Rebecca. I don't know why that is.

Clarifications pertaining to the DL (the two preceding paragraphs were written on Saturday morning, but now it is Sunday night): to be completely accurate, precept is I love you so much I need to go do other stuff that builds up my self-esteem particularly with respect to you (meaning me). OK, then, fair enough, call me the Intimidator. And I am not going to say much more in this department becuause to do so might begin to violate someone else's privacy, and I might get carried away and accidentally start telling my version of what is someone else's story. Also, one thing that I am explicit-like tasked with doing while the DL is in effect, I hadn't realized this, is doing some deep thinking about "what kinds of people [I] want to be spending time with" � that is to say, going on dates with, I suppose, grad-student types. Dates! With the Spoon! How often is it that I meet someone I'm even remotely interested in? How long had it been between boyfriends when I met Todd? (Answer: Well over a year.) Dating: the idea is so monstrously horrific to me that it goes all the way around and crosses back into hilarious � even to think that I need this is not only missing the point but failing to grasp the concept of plane geometry; if I'd known that a Dump Night kiss goodnight could take on such mythic significance, I would have made the pre-emptive strike of cutting off my own lips. But whatever. I can't get upset about this because these are circumstances outside my control � hey hey get me, taking the learning curve like a pro here � and I can't make Todd understand how superfluous Other Dudes are to all the things I'm attempting to cope with and resolve, how much with respect to them my mind is made up and my lips are not an issue. And you know what else? I am weary. I am just fucking weary of wearing myself out the way I've been doing. I told Rebecca on Friday night, when she was lesson-impartingly making me count up the months during which that's been my m.o., that the tabulation couldn't possibly be correct when I feel like it's made me older in terms of years rather than months, six at least.

(Do you want to make some inferences based on the information I have provided? Go ahead, if you want to. You're not dumb. Interestingly, however, I find that my initial squeamishness dissipated with kind rapidity, and I am not bothered. (a) It's not a secret, (b) it's outside my control, (c) I am not a parakeet, (d) what I said to Julian on the night of Rebecca's housewarming party, and (e) everyone's got to deal with shit in their own way, and who am I to judge or to call foul. In a way I'm weirdly relieved, as if some kind of responsibility � narrative? emotional? � has been removed from me. Documentative responsibility, maybe, now that I know how much of the larger landscape of the DL is opaque to me? I don't know. Two more comments and then I'm done with this subject. One, I spent some time yesterday and today with Todd and even though there was crying involved, I think the net result was positive for me (note: for *me*, which alone is a positive development); and two, I'm going to try not to get hung up on the DL, thinking about and writing about, for a little while.)

Oh, and one more thing. To have friends who can be moved to anger on one's behalf, even when one believes the anger to be unwarranted, is a blessing never to be underestimated. These are the people who will always have your back. Myself, I would never reject behalfness, and where it is concerned there is no such thing as a tainted source. Although in the past I have often cut myself off from people for fear of seeming vulnerable or pathetic, I have been thinking about behalfness for the past few days especially since talking to Rebecca, and I've decided that in the new regime, that's what's on my flag. So, Vanessa, be careful what you wish for, especially once your cable is hooked up. This is also from the Amis book; it affected me and I want to remember it: Right now I have to assume that she wanted me to cover or middle for her � which I guess I would have gone ahead and done... Probably I'd cover for any woman on earth, in principle...

I listened to some Christmas music today. Drop me a line if you want a copy of the cd when it's ready. Now I'm going to post this, watch some TV, then go to bed with Rick Bragg and hope that unlike last night (dear god) the bad dreams leave me alone so that I can get a good's night sleep, then wake up early enough to get super cute for the first day of the temp gig. Cross your fingers that I get internet access and the leisure to do something with it.