February 17, 2017 (Friday)

by Yule Heibel on February 16, 2018

Today we’re driving to Portland to pick up E. I’m looking forward to it, obviously, to seeing her, and at the same time I’m strangely aware that she is now always just a visitor. This makes me sad. Happy-sad: happy to have her here for a few days, sad that she’ll be “split” while here, chatting online with [bf] and thinking mostly about being with him again in Vancouver. It would be nicer if she (and he) lived nearby (or vice versa, if we lived nearby), perhaps the way this sort of thing – family – used to be. I really think it’s something that affects me much more than it does W. I feel that at some level, he really doesn’t care. But for me, while the “splitting” (if you will) is real and natural, it’s also just more hurtful because 99% of the time she’s thousands of miles away. Hurtful, because of course who she is is partly also due to me, and I would like to see how she develops, makes her own home, perhaps even starts a family. But unless we were to jump on planes all the time, I will miss most of that. It feels different with A., too. Were he to go back to Berlin and find a gf there with whom he wanted to live (in Berlin, in Europe), I would be … I don’t know… disappointed is really the wrong word because I actually think it would be great if he found his true love. But even if I were disappointed, I would feel differently about it than I do with E. I feel around her that she still wears a lot of attitude, a carapace, if you will, under which a much softer being, a needy being, lurks – one which will emerge like a chrysalis, …and fly off. And I’m afraid I won’t recognize the monarch, the butterfly, if it ever visits me again. I would like to be there for her. God knows my mother wasn’t around for me, and the transformation felt confusing, messier than necessary.

Well, now I’m feeling quite sad indeed, and it’s only 7:20am. Tears. Damn. I slept badly, too. Woke at 4. then at 6. And probably before that at 2. My eyes are uncharacteristically puffy, and my hair is a mess. Probably due to yesterday’s snow-shoveling extravaganza, during which I wore a hat and sweated. I shoveled alone because W. went into Boston for an interview. (He came home unconvinced that the company is a good fit for him.) The snow was really wet and heavy, the street snow plows had blocked up openings (driveway, walkways) with huge, compacted clumps of snow-ice. But the scenery was something to behold – very enchanting, the way you want things to look at Christmas. Not in the middle of February so much. We’re supposed to be in for a snowy March, too. I feel unsure about the wisdom staying in B., frankly. But I’m also house-proud, and will always want a nice place to live. I wouldn’t expect to be able to afford a nice place right in Cambridge or Boston itself – not that I’d even think it would be worth it. Still the same climate, still the same New England culture. But yesterday I was telling W., and also A., who called after dinner, that E.’s visit is again making me acutely aware of how boring and socially impoverished our life here is. What will she see when she’s here? Two increasingly old people putzing around at varying levels of effectiveness during the day and then settling down to an episode of something –  a crime drama – after dinner? Rinse and repeat till dead… I thought I could do better than that.

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