Cosmic joke -- On Friday I wrote about self-injury. By Friday night, I had a broken toe, the second piggy on my right foot. It's now in a big walking cast thingy which comes on and off. In a couple of weeks, I will graduate to a more fashionable little shoe. Joy. So please send my piggy good thoughts because he is definitely crying wee wee wee all the way home.
One of my favorite lines in Mary Karr's Lit is a simple summing up of the problems of marriage: "Women get married thinking men are going to change. Men assume their wives won't: both dead wrong." I feel the same in many ways that I did in high school and yet I know that I have changed with my experiences. Once I was a shy, fearful, deeply neurotic girl; remnants of her remain in my personality, but I also have become outspoken, grateful, and more relaxed. My hurt piggy taps into the powerlessness I used to feel all the time -- let's here it for a grim, self-pitying party with myself as the guest of honor! But back to the point, we are paradoxically always the same, always changing. This provides a cauldron for both growth and pain.
I always think first dates are premonitions for relationships. One of my first dates with a long-term beloved started with a closed restaurant. He, being deeply disapointed by this failure of planning, decided we would go to another Chinese restaurant, probably not as good, but okay. The kicker? I'd been there for lunch and had to pretend I hadn't because he didn't want to go to any place I had ever been. I had to pretend that the waiters weren't super-friendly for any other reason than they were trained to be. I spent a lot of that relationship downplaying various bits of knowledge, pretending. It was okay, but as far as themes go, not the best one. What about you guys? Agree with Mary Karr? Any relationship stories of your own?
Michelle's Spell of the Day
"The only man I know who behaves sensibly is my tailor; he takes my measurements anew each time he sees me. The rest go on with their old measurements and expect me to fit them." George Bernard Shaw
Cocktail Hour
Detroit 187 tomorrow -- can't wait to see it.
Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy Monday! And special thanks to Shea on the comment board -- you are the best! Thanks so much for the kind words. Happy anniversary to my dear Angela and Nick!
9 comments:
Wanting to change others comes from not having boundaries respected growing up, and instead of looking inside for happiness we think changing the other person is the answer. It is a way never to look inside but to live in the game of someone else making us happy which is a way to live in what could be or just in the future. The frailty that some of us feel as children doesn’t go away but instead we find ways to deny it existence. As adults we no longer live in a world others control but the frailty inside never connects this and still lives protected inside the little box marked danger.The funny part if we live in someone else needs to change to make us happy isn’t that person now in control of us.
Recently getting back together with my HS flame, I've been told one minute that I've changed a lot, and the next minute I'm told I have not changed at all. Seems that both are true--either that, or the person doing the speaking has no clue as to what she says.
All I know is that people will change and I have very little power as to how that change will be affected. I'm just there for the ride these days, since at any moment it can go from good to bad to horrible. Stability is the one thing that everyone seems to lack.
Hope the piggy heals from good vibes, as well as a steady diet of frozen dinners and choice liquors.
I experienced going back, hoping to capture the essence of whatever that was in decades past which made me hold onto in decades future. What felt like a lifetime apart turned into twenty-four hours together.
Result: I'd catch a glimpse, a scent, a moment taking me back to what brought me there. Other than that he was a stranger of sorts.
Five minutes of a deep knowing in a twenty-four hour period of not.
I'd do it again.
I don't know about hiding parts of me during various relationships because I've had only one relationship with someone and I'm currently married to them.
Still, it was interesting in the way we got together:
Parents set us up on a blind date at a game of Bingo.
Sorry I am not even catching the concept behind much less the gist of the question.
The old lady say Yah and I do dah then go and hang out at the coffee shop. Where I wait for phone messages to be returned not really sure if I left any or not.
Now about that toe... Big toe I could understand, little toe I could see but how does someone break one in between.
Hope the toe gets better soon, Michelle. Hope you didn't break it by kicking someone, unless they deserved it.
When I got married I thought I could change my wife, in time, to be more of the ideal woman. She probably thought the same about me. I think eventually we met somewhere in the middle. Guess it's working out that way.
You should have a concoction or two to mix up and ease the pain of that tootsie, right? Strictly for medicinal purposes, of course.
Ouch. Poor piggie. I hope your toe feels better soon. One on of my first dates with my first wife, I carefully planned a "spontaneous" moment in which we drove through the park and stopped to swiing on the swings. She was suitabley impressed, but maybe that small falsehood was not a good idea considering the ultimate fate of that marriage.
I hope yours is more quiet than this one....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8F_G2zp-opg
Michellabella-I have so few dating stories worth telling. I dated a 'Foxy Frenchman' once, but his beauty and ego was too much competition for me. Ewww... Didn't you injure another piggy awhile ago? Its the heels, darling..
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