I was born for this.

A few months back, someone told me that I was the most dramatic person he knew.

I scoffed, of course. And balked. Me? Dramatic?

You must be joking. I'm totes down-to-earth. I'm the chillest of girls-next-door. I'm the anti-drama.

Yeah, you can stop laughing now. I realize how defensive I'm being.

I *am* dramatic. I was born for drama. I was born to live through a war, a foreign occupation, an apocalypse, the gosh-darn Second Coming. Take your pick. I'll take any of them.

I was born for the long silences. I was born to inhabit a world with more time to think than anyone knows what to do with, and more work to do than can possibly leave time for thought. I was born to gaze at empty horizons and listen to wind whistle, unimpeded by voices. I was born for those moments when time and the spinning of the world stops and you can hear the pulse in someone's throat, the closing of a door down the street, a dog barking in the park.

I was born for the meaningful gazes, for the mindless chatter that covers up those gazes. I was born for Austen's repressed Regency or Chang's occupied Shanghai. I was born for Bombay after the British left, London in the late '30s, Kyoto in the '40s. I was born for Paris during WWII. I was born for Johannesburg when Mandela was coming to power, or Elroy's Los Angeles. I was born for Catherine's court, or for Rabat's Terror.

I was born to play these roles. Elizabeth Bennett, Wang Chia Chi, Nitta Sayuri, Anne Boleyn, Mary Magdalene: I was made for these archetypes. I was born for intrigue. I revel in betrayal. I delight in picking apart the personality and piecing together the puzzle. I was born to stand immobile in the face of unyielding pressure.

I am the most ridiculous of drama queens. And I love it.

Consider this my resignation.

I am resigning from the human race. I'm done being a good person.

Effective immediately.

So, the next time you want me to care about something, you'd better pull out your big guns. A text message isn't going to cut it. A phone call probably won't, either.

No, if you want me to care, you're going to have to show up on my doorstep, in the rain, soaking wet and probably catching pneumonia as you stand there and plead with me. Kneeling in a puddle that is six inches deep will not be going too far.

Visual aids are required. You must produce your crazy friend/injured cat/broken down car/alcoholic family IN PERSON. If they are not present, you can forget about getting anything from me. My heartstrings will not be tugged.

And really, because it's me, I want eloquence. I want simple, powerful prose that tells me whatever story you want to tell effectively. This means that you must choose the correct words, they must make sense, and they must be strung together properly. Any attempts at overblown alliteration/assonance/rhyme will be laughed at and mocked mercilessly. Likewise for grammatical errors, pronunciation errors and any other error I may think of as you beg me for compassion.

I have no mercy, world. I'm done with it. It's useless.

My conscience is in effective stasis. It will not be making any more appearances in this life. I will feel no guilt while I stare at you with steely eyes and joke about your dead babies, your health problems, your broken hearts.

I am a statue. I am stone. Nothing touches me, and nothing ever will, until I'm finally worn down by the nature of the world that kills us all.

Trying asking the rain for understanding. You might have better luck.

Jeux d'enfants

I watched a movie last night that I've been putting off watching. I was concerned about what this particular film would do to my rather delicate emotional equilibrium.

And good lord, was I right.

You know what I'm talking about. Those movies that you watch and think the entire time, "This was me. This could have been me. This could still be me."

It's unsettling, particularly when there's death, dismemberment and/or epic romance involved.

I think that the movie is supposed to be a cautionary tale against the dangers of the adrenaline rush, of the relationship that pushes you to ever-greater heights of outrageousness, that pushes you past caring about anything other than "What next? What now?" I mean, they do end up dead, buried together under a ton of concrete. And while the end of the movie flashes back through all the choices they could have made and shows them happy together, the fact remains they didn't make those choices and spent their adult lives completely miserable.

It's romanticized and beautifully filmed, but still, I think it's supposed to make you realize how unhealthy those kinds of relationships are.

Too fucking bad.

Have you ever played a sustained game of truth or dare with someone? Where you didn't get to pick whether you gave a truth or did a dare, but the other person did? One in which you had to finish the game?

I have.

"Buy a plane ticket, right now." No money, no job. Do it anyway.

"Pick me up in a company car." Could get fired, and who else is going to hire someone with a criminal record a mile long? Do it anyway.

"Lay in Anne Boleyn's bed."

"Fuck me in the choir loft of Temple Church."

"Roll this joint on the train so we can smoke it as soon as we get to the car."

"Let my spastic American ass drive your car through London traffic."

"Would you let me cut your feet off?"

"Would you teach me to fight?"

"Would you wait for me, if I got sent away again?"

And on. And on. And on.

And all the movie made me realize was how much I miss it. No one plays enough anymore. Everyone takes things too seriously, and not the right things. Even me. I've lost it. I've lost that absolute confidence, that unshakeable direction, that true north.

Now I'm ordinary.

Sex Appeal

Everyone has a "type" that they attract. Mine has always been "unavailable men." Usually, this takes the form of married men, but I've had a few "emotionall unavailable" thrown in there for fun, as well as the requisite number of "distance relationships."

But, married men love me. They flock to me. I have, at any given time, a veritable stable of them paying me sly compliments. I have always thought this is because I am a good flirt: I am playful, but I know where to draw the line, and how forcefully to draw it. This makes me fun, but invariably safe. I am not going to allow anyone to fall in love with me; I am not going to fall in love with anyone. I am not going to push things any farther than simple flirtation, ever.

As a side note, my problem with the "emotionally unavailable" has always stemmed from the fact that I will fall in love with them, and want them to reciprocate, because they should be available, and so I don't follow the strictures I usually place myself under. They, then, of course do not fall in love with me, and all manner of heartache ensues.

I like this explanation. It says that there's nothing inherently wrong with me, that I attract married men like flies. It's even pretty flattering of both my skill with manipulation and my self-control.

And who doesn't like a good ego-stroke, even if it is self-administered?

But I've been faced with the possibility lately that this explanation may be complete horseshit.

Certainly, the fact that I'm "safe" is probably the root of the reason that I seem to have so many married or otherwise involved or unavailable admirers. But my safety may have nothing to do with anything I consciously do or not do.

I may just be sexually unappealing. Period. Full stop.

It fits just as well. I'm good with words, I'm occasionally very witty, and I can be a lot of fun to be with. At the same time, lack of sex appeal would make me undeniably safe.

It also works with some of the more disastrous of my relationships. My ex-husband, for example, never wanted to lay a finger on me amorously. I always attributed this to his hang up, considering the other issues we faced. But maybe it wasn't him. Maybe it was, in fact, me. My very first serious relationship was with a man when I was a senior in high school, and we didn't have sex for the last three months of our time together. I have always thought that that was because I stopped wanting to have sex with him, but maybe it was mutual.

And then there's the nebulous and hazy baby daddy. We had a very intense relationship, but we were very far apart for most of it. Perhaps ultimately he abandoned me because while our correspondence was intense and enlightening and thought-provoking and full of all manner of wonderful discovery and sparkling dialog, there was no corresponding physical spark.

It's an interesting possibility. And I say "interesting" in the most euphemistic way possible. Intellectually, it's interesting. Personally, it's pretty devastating.

Just A Man

Genevieve's father has been on my mind a lot recently. There is more than one reason why this might be. Certainly another failed attempt at a relationship will call him to mind, but I think that it's rather this incident:

Genevieve likes to play in "Mama's room." We go up to the attic, I sit on my bed with a book or a magazine or a newspaper and play music on the BlackBerry, and she runs around, pulling things out of drawers and off of shelves and hangers. Sometimes I don't read like I'm supposed to; sometimes I watch her frenetic activity, driven to fever pitch by the sheer delight of playing around in "Mama's tings."

I keep a picture of Jim in my nightstand. It used to be on the nightstand, but when he disappeared, I moved it into the drawer and there it has stayed. I hadn't actually thought about it in quite some time.

Last week, my little girl found the picture. It was buried amongst the accumulated detritus of a year and a half, but she found it. She is nothing if not tenacious. I was actually reading, this day, so when she held up the picture and announced loudly, "Picture of man!" I had to look up to see what she was talking about.

My breath caught. I literally could not breath in for a full five seconds. She brought the picture back down, so she could study it again. She did so for a good length of time. Then she looked back up at me and said, "Just a man."

And then she tossed the picture to the side.

I burst into tears. I couldn't help it. Genevieve was incredibly startled; she climbed up on the bed, leaned against my back, and stroked my hair and exhorted me "No sad, Mama. No cry."

I'm the mother-of-the-year. Letting my not-yet-two-year-old comfort me.

I did pull myself together pretty quickly (for me, anyway) but he's definitely been on my mind since.

Something I've never really told anyone: I'm not actually sure I know anything about the man. I was deeply, completely, hopelessly, helplessly in love with him, and I realize now that I might not even know his real name. That's the real reason I've not made any serious attempts to find him. I did quite a bit of investigating on my own, a year and a half ago, and what I discovered rocked the foundations of my world.

His house, might not be his house. His name, might not be his name. I may know nothing true about the man whose DNA composes half the genetic material of my child.

I may have been quite thoroughly duped. He may be sitting somewhere, laughing to himself about how easy that dumb American girl was. It is a possibility I can no longer fully ignore. I'd like to think that if he is out there somewhere, he feels some pang of regret for what he did. To that end, I do still email him once a month (or, maybe once every other month) with a few pictures and some choice anecdotes.

This unbroken stream of unreturned communication has turned him into something of a priest, or a god, for me. I confess my sins to him. It's something I always did; he always did know all my secrets. But this is different. I have no expectation of ever hearing from him again. He is a non-entity, but one I still feel immeasurably close to. I tell him everything now without hesitation, without remorse, without anything at all except relief. Knowing that he can never, never pass judgment on me because of what he's done, I feel absolved after each of these missives.

I imagine this is how people feel when they talk to God. Or go to confession. I do neither, these days, but I do email my daughter's father.

A Mini Me.

While I may still be a little apprehensive of this whole motherhood thing, I must confess: I love my baby.



She's not really a baby anymore, which might account for the outpouring of affection I feel for her at this particular juncture. She's a toddler now, a tiny little person, with enough personality for something 10 or 15 times her size. And it's a personality I like.



My baby is brash and assertive and fearless. She runs, she jumps, she climbs, she recites at the top of her lungs without the least hint of timidity or caution.



My father is the one that spends the most time with her, and he took her to the playground last week. The weather is finally getting warm enough for that to be a pleasant experience again. Thank god. This child needs about the same amount of space a wild horse needs to be truly happy.

Anyway, they're at the park, and she's on the swings, swingingswingingswinging and giggling with delight. When, all of a sudden, her giggles give way to spontaneous recitation. At the top of her lungs, while her grandpa continues to push her in rhythm, my not-yet-two-year-old (apparently) recited her alphabet (only missing three or four letters) and the first two verses of "Rock-a-bye Baby In A Treetop" (without missing a word).

What. The. Hell.

According to my father, other parents within earshot stood agape. I don't blame them; I would have, too. (I have since had the pleasure of hearing her recite "Rock-a-bye Baby In A Treetop." It is a thing to be hold, I'll have you know.)


And I believe the alphabet bit of the story, too, after this weekend. We get home from grocery shopping, we're putting the groceries away. My mom is having a medical test done this week and she's going to be on a broth-and-jello diet for few days, so we bought lots of Jell-o. Lots. We never have Jell-o in the house.

Genevieve has never seen a box of jello before. But she picked one up and announced to me (again, at the top of her lungs- we're still working on the "inside voice" concept) that is was "jelly."

I think my jaw actually dropped.

Yeah, she got it wrong, but she was damn close. SHE'S NOT TWO YET.

What. The. Hell.

My baby is brash and fearless. My baby takes no prisoners, asks for what she wants (ok, she demands it, but we're working on needs first, manners second), likes to be read to, dances, and has begun to try to sing along with me when I sing nursery rhymes at her. This is a child that I can get into.

And she's sweet. Despite the brashness and the boldness and the demanding, she's so incredibly loving. We've been dog-sitting for a friend's black lab; her and the dog have become fast friends. She has spent the last 24 hours announcing that "Moonpie needs a hug" and then proceeding to walk up the dog, wrap her arms around whatever part she can get to, and lay her had on Moonpie's back. She does it with particular alacrity whenever Moonpie cries, which is frequently, since she's been dumped in this strange house for the weekend.

Her empathy takes my breath away.

She knows when I need a hug, too. And she usually brings tears to my eyes when she wraps both her little arms and her little legs around me and squeezes and tells me "Don't be sad, Mama."

Indeed. What on earth do I have to be sad about? I have the best little girl in the world.

Work-in-Progress

I am a work-in-progress. There's nothing at all complete or finished or polished about me. I say the wrong things at the wrong times, I stay out too late, I don't get enough sleep, I can be unbelievably crass and at other times inexcusably thoughtless. I let go too easily, or else I hang on too long.

Most notably, I make the same mistakes, over and over and over again. Each time, it feels like a new mistake. But it's not. It's the same one, dressed up in new packaging so my poor pathetic and remarkably insecure head can fool itself into thinking that it's not about to do a real number on my long-suffering heart, who always seems to bear the brunt of these mistakes I make.

(If my body parts were relationship archetypes, my head would be the wife beater and my heart the battered wife. Right down to my head always telling my heart, "This is your fault. You deserve this." No joke. Ha.)

But I do. I make the same mistake, time and time again. I think that if I care enough, someone will care about me. I think that if I can just give enough, I'll get something back. In a far less positive light, you might say that I have a tendency to attach to anyone that shows me the least affection. God knows why, but I seem to be starved for attention. I just want someone to notice me, care, and continue to do so in perpetuity.

Isn't that what love is?

But this is not about love. I don't want to talk about love. Talking about love is like dancing about architecture.

This is about my eager-puppy syndrome, the one that keeps coming back after it's been kicked. This is about my attention-whorish bids for attention when I'm feeling down. This is about the fact that I seem to have no boundaries. I will give anyone whatever they ask of me, if they just hint that they might, at some point, maybe, in the future, reciprocate.

That's just bad business sense, right there. Can you believe I work in accounting? I can't. It's a good thing I don't set policy, just balance accounts. We'd be bankrupt.

I am bankrupt. I've given away so much for nothing but IOU's that turned out to be not worth the ink they were written with. I've given away huge chunks of my heart, of my self-respect, of my energy. And I don't really have enough left any more to cover my responsibilities. I am emotionally bankrupt. Also exhausted.

But how does one unlearn the behavior patterns of a lifetime? I don't even know where they come from; I got plenty of love and affection and attention as a child. I was not an abused youth.

How do I unlearn this impulse to give and give and give and hope that someday it'll come back to me? How do I forget everything I believe about karma and do unto others? And do I really want to?

No.

Why don't the rest of you join my world. Because, while I may be occasionally needy and while I may be occasionally childish and while I may occasionally display a level of immaturity that shocks the senses, we would all be much better off if we all gave instead of taking, if we all sometimes or even often did things without having a firm expectation of reciprocation in mind.

A little naivete goes a long way towards making the world better.