The Notebook

In an effort to soften my soul a tad and because my mom just got it, I decided to borrow her copy of The Notebook and have a movie night. I’ve seen the notebook many times before and every time I have cried. I thought maybe this time would be different because of my inability to cry, but after my little mini breakdown the other day, I thought, maybe my hardened heart streak was over and I was getting emotional. So I sat down and got comfy with the spare dog I have had at my house for a week. He’s a big old German Shepherd and he’s a big old lover. He follows me around everywhere and whenever I sit on the couch he just bounds up on it and plops down next to me or on me. So, I sat down to watch it and the dog sat down next to me. I was stone cold sober too. No wine. No ice cream. No vices at all.

I got through almost all of the movie and then, of course, that beautiful end part comes and as I was sitting on the couch sniffling and telling the dog to stop licking the tears from my chin, my kiddo walked out of his room and said, “what the freak, mom?” It’s been a while since he’s seen me cry too. The last time he saw me bawling, I was sitting on the same couch, crying because my dog, Athena, jumped out the window because of the neighborhood fireworks and ran three miles away. It only took 24 hours before someone answered my craigslist ad, but I’m pretty sure I cried for 12 of them. The other 12 I was scouring the neighborhood. That was over a year ago. So for him to see me crying again, he definitely thought something was terribly wrong, but I just told him, “leave me alone, I can cry over a movie if I want to.” He rolled his eyes while stifling his laughter and sat down in the chair on the other side of the living room to observe and maybe take pictures that he will use later at my funeral or something. After that, I watched Letters to Juliet, which is also a love story.

My friend Crystal, aka my new therapist, tried to convince me the other day that all I really want is a relationship. And although she was partly right, I kept weighing the pros and cons of the whole thing in my head. The parts of a relationship that I would like aka the pros: I would like someone to spend quality time with not in the bedroom. I would like someone who listens when I talk and is genuinely interested in the things I am interested in. I would like someone who takes my passions seriously and doesn’t dismiss them just because it’s not their passion. I would like someone handy to help me build a deck around my house and clean the gutters and garden with me and build shit (I know I could hire someone for that, but where’s the fun in that?). I would not mind cooking with someone. I would not mind laying on the couch and feeling someone playing in my hair. Then there are the cons: I don’t want to explain to someone why I want to be alone. I don’t want to have to explain to some guy who just proposed to me that I would love to marry him as long as he keeps his own place and doesn’t want to see me daily. I don’t want to have to ask permission to take off and go to Florida when the mood strikes me. And it will strike me, often. I don’t want to lose myself in someone else and I have a tendency to do so. Maybe my “therapist” is right. Maybe I do want to be in a relationship, but I want it to be on my terms and I don’t think that’s how relationships work. I guess I need to fix that part of myself first. A new month is the perfect time to start.