to punish him for leaving….for giving up

May 16: tristful

An intense volley of email messages over the past week reinforces my sense that one of my good friends and I are the tristful duo among the more well-balanced, positive and healthy folks on the planet.

May 17: detoxify

Ironically, my travel to a work meeting today led to the opportunity to detoxify for a while: driving with the windows down, eating my lunch outdoors, and singing along with a CD--until the music brought me back to the melancholy to which I referred, above.

 

    I'm behind in every way possible. SO many email messages in my inbox[es], letters on the table, books on the coffee table. Three boxes that I've been meaning to send to friends for WAY too long. A couple of mix CDs that need only to be labeled before they can be distributed to the appropriate recipients. Plants desperately needing repotting (the jade's about to kick the bucket if it doesn't get some fresh soil soon...) or, in one case, first potting.
     All I really want to do is lie on my back in the dark and look out the open window at the stars. Even if it doesn't help me figure it all out, it seems to make some of it less complicated.

[the title quotation is Jane Sigaloff, in Lost & Found, and reads in its entirety: “She wanted to punish him for leaving .... For giving up. And yet here, now, ...years later, she still wanted him not to have left. It had been far easier to pretend that he didn’t exist.”]