What the doctor should have meant: dishery.diaryland.com

In the spirit of the Princeton Review, here is an analogy. Me : blank :: blank : blank-blank. So, resolved, that�s OK and I should fret less. I think part of the problem is that it hasn�t been my experience, generally, to break up with people and then slide easily into being pals. In the few instances in which pals-ness can be said to be in effect, the sliding has occurred with wrenching awkwardness over a period of many months, and in some cases I�ve decided that the awkwardness isn�t worth it and I�ve bailed out on the trying-to-be-friends before it got off the ground. I�ve described myself as a bridge-burner but this isn�t wholly accurate, it�s more like (a) a little bit a half-fudge so that I don�t have to put a fucking label on what I am instead and (b) mostly a secret test, because I�m looking for someone to notice that what I say is not congruent with what I do and to call me on it, because that is the person who is paying attention. Of course I have had my share of apocalyptic and/or soap-operatic bustups, but I�ve got the other kind too and I don�t talk about them as much simply because they�re not as good stories. Everyone likes a good story, a good fire, everyone likes a potent metaphor. Also I am a dramatist myself, and I tend to pour a lot of myself into whatever association is ongoing so naturally I am going to be depleted when the association ends. Steve said something a few nights ago about ladies he�s dated where he felt compelled to let them know a few months into it that he wanted to break up with them and would eventually do so. He asked hadn�t I ever done that and I said I had, but how can I put this delicately the dudes onto whom I�ve slapped due dates have never been those I would have said I was dating � I think we were talking about different things. I sign up for the duration, I go all in, it only makes sense that I should sometimes seem the keloid kid.

Also the part about how I still feel, self-diagnostically not self-pityingly, like where I used to hold hopefulness got burned down and salted, so now with respect to the category of things that you might believe I�m hoping for I feel distant, dull, deterministic, passive, absent � yet (dangerously?), strangely transcended by all that and its illicit religious buzz. And if it's not mine, you see � anyway this is what Calculator Brain sees � then it must belong to someone else. So.

I have been busy the past few days kicking my ass on the cardio and weight machines at Steve�s-and-probably-soon-to-be-my gym. It hurts my shoulders to type and I have a few errands to run downtown, so I will be brief. Also I am using this chunk of time, the same one during which some clothes are in the dryer downstairs, to psych myself up for venturing outside; cold and wind and pissing rain have arrived in Seattle right on mid-October schedule and with the suddenness that like a chump I always let myself forget, and since one of the major planks of my new Fight Fat platform involves walking whenever time-and-distance reasonable, I don�t have any excuse to drive. I curse my errands but I know what I must do. The gym, I should clarify, is a YMCA and I believe the ghetto-est Y in all of Seattle. There�s no attitude, no pick-up scene, and no amenities except, weirdly, motion-activated paper-towel dispensers all around the weight room. There is a sign posted above the fountain thanking me for please not spitting in it. Afternoons it�s mostly senior citizens, elderly ladies who are on guard against diabetes chatting as they walk on the treadmills, a few stay-at-home mothers in designer yoga gear trickling up from Madison Park, and a benign gang of frat-boy-stoner types who I imagine are weight-training in advance of grooving shirtlessly at next summer�s Dave Matthews tour dates. The kid at the front desk let me in free one day and then the next day I got a five-visit pass and if I join up in October, I get half off the sign-up fee. The gym is 1.8 miles from the bacon shack, so once I�m acclimated to the cold and wind and rain and they do not seem such a psychic onslaught, I can run there and back. There are yoga and Pilates classes and stuff free to members. There is a pool. Calculator Brain knows that I should not, one should not, take the good old unemployment thing personally � I�m doing all I can, the market sucks, I�ve made myself a promise not to take the first dumb secretarial etc. and therefore should not berate myself for being a chick of my word � and it also knows that I�m not going to starve, that I should be able to divorce myself from that whole category of worrying. But it is hard. I mean, I *want* to work, I am daily having to talk myself out of calling up temp agencies that are a cut below the ones I�m used to working with and seeing if maybe my Thanksgiving plans are not such a big deal to those who would hire manual laborers. (And that�s something I should be talking myself out of, right? Tell me if you think I�m wrong. I am stronger than I look.) So what I am trying to do is make myself think of the self-ass-kicking as a luxury. My shoulders hurt but I did that to myself, nothing hurts my shoulders but me.

This entry suddenly seems to be the work of a very screwed-up person. Hmm. I should go fold some shirts and come back tomorrow.

I don�t even own an umbrella.