Ramble, ramble

I'm up, watching commencement speeches and listening to Andrea Bocelli and Sarah Brightman's version of Time to Say Goodbye. Someone, a deaf client, reminded me today that the ability to hear is precious. After my family, and the laughter of my friends, this is the song I'd want to hear first. It's a little cheesy - like they threw in the one English phrase so that the Americans could sit through the rest of the beautiful Italian phrasing - but their voices are breathtaking. They soar and combine so beautifully, and every time Brightman hits that one high note, my chest contracts.

The two commencement speeches - the one JK Rowling gave to Harvard in 2008, and the one Steve Jobs gave to Stanford a few years ago - are filled with the kind of phrasing and inspired soundbites that I just love. I have this idea forming in my head, like coal before it becomes something better... like maybe I should be doing something more with my life. I mean, I enjoy a lot of what I do most of the time, but I'm not helping anyone, not really. I like the idea of volunteering and helping out, but other peoples' pain... do no want.

I was talking today to ASL about love (what else is new), and I was getting so angry. I'm tired of rehashing the reasons for my anger, so I'll just say that the usual dating wisdom pisses me off, fucks with my chi and my sense of fairness. Talking to her, I was just getting angrier and angrier. I don't want to have to act less smart or less independent or less anything in order for a man to maintain interest. If I am too intimidating with my command of the English language, high-travel job, and ability to get myself into a mortgage for someone to deal with, I'm quite sure that's not someone I'd want in my life anyway. If guys have to be mr. fixits / saviors / etc - why can't someone help a girl out by giving her the one thing she can't give herself? If my taking care of myself makes a man feel he has nothing to offer me, then he's probably right.

It's a this point that I look at my clock. 1:01 am, May 21st. This would have been my 16th anniversary. Fuck, that hurts. Kinda snuck up on me. All of this, all of the anger, all of the looking for things to inspire that I've been doing today, I want to be more. I want to show that I am better off after the divorce, that I am a better person for it. And I mostly am. Mostly.

But this, this one fucking thing is not better. I loved and was loved very deeply, and all of this fucking bullshit that I've been going through doesn't even begin to compare. Men who can't commit to a fucking cup of coffee, men who can't attempt sobriety, or worse, men who would love me, but who don't have a life, or a working sense of smell. I was told that I was loved and beautiful every day for 13 years, and I have not been told that in far too long. Certainly, my friends, my family have expressed their love. But that love, the kind that fills that intimate space between me and the outside world, I have not had that in a long, long time. And my search has made me foolish, a stupid, pitiable thing.

I'll wake up tomorrow, and I'll feel better. I'll remember not to compare what was to what is. I'll clean the slate of N and M, and have a damn good laugh about it. But tonight... tonight is painful.