I’m prone to ridiculous schoolgirl crushes on completely inappropriate people.  This tendency might have kept me from marrying the love of my life because I kept it a secret.  Once I bared all, he was quite befuddled that I’d gotten so worked up about crushes.  “Is that all?” 

So we settled into a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy with the escape clause that if the crush was becoming a problem, we’d talk about it.  For the first year or so of marriage, I was completely avoidant of any activity that might put me in the path of a potential crush.  They were scary to me!  I might get out of control!  Then, last summer, I found my perfect, bulletproof crush.  He’s married, has a kid, he’s not quite good looking enough to be “my type,” but his kind, strong personality makes up for that.  And if he ever made a move on me, everything I like about him would be disproved and my crush would dissolve.  It’s perfect.  Bulletproof.

Now, when I see my crush, I get that heady, high school hallway rush.  Once, he gave me a piece of dark chocolate and I was high on life for the next 24 hours.  I think there are just some neurotransmitters that don’t get released in a stable, healthy relationship and I’ve figured out the key to getting my fix:  crushes that are not acted upon are superior to crushes acted upon in cases where both parties are in good relationships.  My crush gets to be perfect.  Reality is never perfect.  So I’m no longer afraid of getting out of control and acting on a crush.  Acting on it would destroy it, and why ruin my harmless fun?

Fucking social networking sites are ruinous.  RUINOUS!  Hours of my life I will never get back, wasted on mundane tidbits such as finding out where the guy who almost asked me to Junior prom is hanging out these days.  (DC, in a hospital pretending he’s George Clooney, if you must know.)

Last month, I came across Aidan’s profile.  You know, Aidan from the girl stalker series.  Seeing his goofy profile pic wasn’t a punch in the gut, more of a quick shock.  I noticed he listed himself as single.  So he didn’t stay married to the woman who inspired the postcard I received in 2003 announcing his nuptials on the front.  On the back, he carefully wrote ”sorry ladies, I’m taken.”  To this day, I wonder if he just sent out a stack of identically lettered postcards to the women from his past.  If so, that would be awesome. 

But back to social networking, though it pains me.  I glanced down through Aidan’s handful of friends and his comments.  I should have anticipated that a sucker-punch to the gut was in my future.  Anyone who spends more than a passing moment poking around in the past is bound to get sucker-punched in the gut.  I’d completely forgotten Aidan’s on again off again long distance girlfriend.  Whiny, demanding, dramatic Hannah.  I never even met her, but I had seen pictures and heard plenty about her and worked way too hard to get Aidan to cheat on her with me. 

So while Aidan’s profile bored me, I was dying to learn more about Hannah.  Her profile was private, sadly.  But her username left an easy trail to a series of blogs about her journey as a recovering alcoholic.  I was absolutely ready to judge the crap out of her for using recovery as a new way to carry on her drama filled attention whoring.  A series of blogs?  How TACKY!  Having never met the woman, I am OF COURSE an expert on her personality defects and shortcomings.  And I know firsthand how tacky blogs are, after all.

Reading through her archives, I was struck by how similar we are.  We’ve got a number of the same character flaws, defense mechanisms, and weaknesses.  We probably would have HATED each other had we gone to college together and I can’t really articulate why.  Well, there is that whole me throwing myself at her boyfriend thing, for starters.  But regardless of how we might have hypothetically interacted as late adolescents, dropping into her life undetected, 11 years after the last time I ever laid eyes on Aidan was weird.  It’s weird that I’m curious about her.  It’s weird that I know intimate details of her life and she probably never knew that I existed.  I remember leaving Aidan’s apartment one morning, long after he and Hannah broke up but long before they settled into a friendship.  Just as I was saying goodbye to the last of his roommates, the phone rang.  “AIDAN!  IT’S HANNAH!” another roommate yelled.  I perceived (or perhaps I willed myself to perceive) a touch of sheepishness from Aidan’s roommate as I left, but I wasn’t embarassed.  I didn’t care about this woman who lived 6 hours away and chose her college based on their ability to board her horse.  She and I would never meet.  As far as I was concerned, she might as well not exist.

Today I went back to Hannah’s blog.  She’s written about a book on spirituality that I recently came across and loved.  In fact, she typed up a quotation from that book which I posted above my desk this morning.  Weird.  Scrolling back through her recent archives, I came across an entry about a friend who had visited her last month.  A friend who came in from England and who was going through a divorce.  A friend who spent his entire visit with her drunk and sad.  “This could be Aidan, it totally sounds like Aidan,” was all I could think as I read the entry.

So I can’t unring this bell.  I’m worried about Aidan, but I can’t exactly e-mail Hannah and say “Hey, you don’t know me, but I fucked your high school/college boyfriend senior year.  Is he the one who was visiting from England all drunk and shit?  Just curious.  Oh, by the way, we have SOO much in common.  TOODLES!”  I’m such a gross cyberstalker. 

Dear Bob,

Can I call you Bob?  First off, I have to tell you that I love, love, LOVE your glasses.  Big fan.  They’re ten shades of awesome.  For the last 28 years, you’ve led the pack in rocking the giant metal frames and I respect that.  I’ll bet there’s not a day that goes by when those shiny golden rims don’t get you a compliment.  Are they real gold?  Wouldn’t that be something?

You’re a smart guy, you know what’s coming.  Obviously, I’m following that formula which dictates that when offering criticism, first give praise.  I would have given you more substantive compliment than acknowledging your superfly glasses, but my research skills are so rotten that I couldn’t find a more worthy thing to compliment on all the internets.  Shame! 

Now, I’m going to cut right to the chase: You’ve got to go.  It doesn’t matter how, just figure out a way.  You’ve spent a third of your life ruling (”ruling?”) Zimbabwe, the better part of the seventies fighting for independence in Rhodesia, and a full decade before that in prison.  Aren’t you tired?  Don’t you want to spend some of that SWEET “compensation package?”  Twenty eight years is a long time, you’re not getting any younger and you can’ take your cut with you.  (Aside–if Grace calls and asks you to pick up Nando’s on your way back to the presidential mansion, do your servants have to carry giant suitcases full of Zim dollars?)

If Ian Smith could figure out a way to step down and remain in Rhodesia even after it became Zimbabwe, surely you can do the same.  You’re a power broker!  Broker the power!

Your beautiful, once thriving homeland is on its knees.  Your people have bent further than any people should have to, further than anyone should ever make them bend.  For what?  What is it you want?  If a genie could grant you 3 wishes, what would you wish for?  Certainly while you were in jail or in the bush in Mozambique, you weren’t dreaming of driving your compatriots to ruin. 

Get in touch with that Mugabe, the one who sincerely wanted to deliver his homeland back to his brethren.  Leave a legacy of true democracy.  Your people are resilient, they’re forgiving, and they are determined to rebuild their once promising country.  If you leave, that can be your legacy. 

Shit, call up Nelson Mandela.  Maybe he can help you turn this mess into a Nobel Prize.  I’m joking, that’s probably not in the cards, but if you have any love left for your country, you’ll step down and let someone else pick up your heavy burden. 

I’m gonna watch Hoosiers and try not to puke before tipoff.  I’ve never wanted a win more than I want a Davidson win today.

I’ve all but abandoned this blog–the last few entries were pieces I started as they were happening but never finished or never got around to hitting publish. 

My new job requires that I do a great deal of reading on substance abuse and addiction.  I love addicts.  I love their approach to life, I love that they face painful situations head on.  I love that they call bullshit when they see it. 

Anyway, I’m working to live my  life as if I were in recovery or as if I had cancer or something like that.  Why wait for a fucking tragedy to live the hell out of life?   

I spent last night waiting in an ER for reasons I don’t care to share.  In an act of brazen denial, I treated the entire affair as a people watching event.  Here are some highlights:

There was an entire family wearing giant, white t-shirts.  The grade school age children’s might have been bigger than their parents’.  I’m talking 2x, maybe 3x.  It was absurd and adorable, and the children played with their mother’s emesis tray and I smiled for the first time since I got the call to come in.

Dancing with the Stars played in the background.  I smiled and thought “I hope Joey Fatone wins.”  I might have even giggled, because in my brain, “Fatone” is pronounced “fat one.”  That’s funny in an ER waiting room.

A woman I’ve met two or three times walked in with her family.  I wasn’t sure if she recognised me, and I mulled over whether or not to say hi.  ERs are awkward.  I wasn’t in a position to disclose why I was there, and there’s really no pleasant reason to be in an ER, so I decided to let it go.  The ER is a great place to meet strangers, but it’s a little awkward to bump into acquaintances. 

A guy once broke up with me over e-mail.  I was confused, incredulous, and hurt, and we weren’t  dating.  Yep, that’s right.  I can’t imagine how crappy it would have felt if we had in fact been dating.  Kevin and I had flirted at a party.  I thought he was gay, so I was running my unstoppable fag hag game on him.  Turns out, that schtick is effective on some straight men, too.  Who knew? 

After the party, he got my e-mail and struck up an e-flirtation.  It was fun and flattering.  Then one day after a long weekend,  opened up my work e-mail account to find the big break up letter.  I forwarded on to friends flung about the globe as a lark, tagging on a self-rightious line or two of sarcastic incredulity. 

“OMG, this guy just broke up with me over email, AND WE WEREN’T EVEN DATING!  Hahahaha!”

This anecdote has always been the evidence I’ve relied upon to argue that technology is partially responsible for the erosion of  personal relationships. 

A friend of mine now has the dubious distinction of a better example:  her husband texted her that he wanted a separation effective ASAP.  This wasn’t out of the blue, but a text?

So last night, my husband took me to a nearby college town to see John Sayles, my favorite film writer and director.  We didn’t have advance tickets, and I was totally set to continue my mopey pattern of post-injury nesting, but not my husband.  He picked me up from work, drove 75 minutes, and we arrived in town just as the box office was set to open. 

Opening night of the film festival was a complete clusterfuck and the volunteers sent us running back and forth between locations in search of tickets.   

With tickets in our hands, we staked out a little noodle shop where my best friend and I had once ordered one of everything on the menu and eaten almost all of it.  I think I have the menu memorized:  dumplings, pork buns, veggie buns, sesame noodles, hot and sweet noodles, and hot and sour soup.  So delicious.  Between the two of us, my husband and I had everything but the buns. 

We cut out to the theater about 15 minutes before the show.  As we approched the theater, I heard a street musician sing the opening verse of “Tangled Up in Blue” and for a split second my life folded in on itself, past meeting present.  The man who introduced me to John Sayles’ work over 7 years ago once transcribed the lyrics to “Tangled Up in Blue” while we were waiting for a bus to take him home from his visit to my village in Zimbabwe.  Dee transcribed while I tried to hit a nearby rock with handful after handful after handful of pebbles.  I was known for my good bus karma (among other things) while living in Zimbabwe, but apparently it’s not contagious because Dee and waited for hours along the side of that dust road until a bus finally came for him and we parted ways.  Even if bus karma were real and contagious, I probably would have kept it to myself in order to lengthen the time I got to spend with Dee.        

Still smiling from that memory, I noticed that John Sayles was standing directly in front of the theater, just 20  yards away.  I pointed him out to my husband who encouraged me to say hello.  After all, Sayles wouldn’t be out front if he didn’t want to interact with fans, right?  I chickened out and proceeded to kick myself until the movie started. 

“Honeydripper” is delightful.  It’s flawed, but I loved the flaws.  Sayles could have cut more, but that’s true of all his films.  If it were pared down perfectly, it wouldn’t be Sayles.   

After the film, my husband and I stepped out into the cold and rain and decided that gelato would be just the thing to take the edge off the chill.  The pistachio was divine, and as we walked back to the car laughing and sharing treats on tiny spoons, I saw John Sayles coming toward us.  This time I said hi and told him I loved his work.  He smiled, shook my hand, and walked briskly into the night.

 My husband drove home and I slept the whole way home.  It was perfect.

I had one pain free mile this morning.  Mile two was great.  Mile one was ok, mile three sucked.  I walked back as my group ran on to finish their 8 mile loop.  All the while, I was telling myself that I’d be fine, I would just ice more and stretch more and take more ibuprofen.  I would show up at the starting line and see what I could do.  It would be fine.

As the other runners caught up with me at their mile 7 and my mile 5, I realized that there wasn’t going to be a marathon for me this year.  Kind runners stopped to make sure I was ok, and I assured them I was.  I flashed each person who stopped the best smile I could muster, but as I made my way up the final hill before the parking lot, I felt the tears well up.  A kind woman around my mother’s age stopped to check on me.  The tears spilled over, and I realized that I had no business lining up at the starting line next weekend.  I can’t run 3 miles without pain, why on earth would I even attempt to run 26.2?

You know what sucks?  My heart hurts worse than my knee.  If it were the other way around, if I didn’t have such a high tolerance for physical pain and a tendency to recoil from emotional pain, maybe not running next weekend would be easier to accept. 

I’m not very in tune with physical pain.  I traveled the midwest for a month with what turned out to be a severe case of falciparum malaria after I returned from Zimbabwe.  It sucked, but I just figured that malaria would suck more. 

 I’ve been called “tough cookie” and “stubborn as a mule.”  I’m both, but these traits really don’t serve me well.  So I’m paying special attention to my injured knee, resting it, icing it, babying it, skipping close to 50 miles worth of training runs and virtually guaranteeing I’ll enter this race undertrained if I enter at all. 

 I’m pretty sure I will, but I really ought to see a doctor.  I suppose my resistance to allopathic medicine is another entry altogether. 

Anyway, I’m treating this all as a mindfulness exercise.  It’s more important that I not limp around for weeks or months than it is for me to finish THIS marathon NEXT month.  I can train again.  I can walk some of it.  It doesn’t really matter if I beat Oprah or not.  I know I’m capable healthy, and I may or may not be healthy at that starting line.  Depending on my level of ill health, I may need to consider not even showing up to the starting line, except as a volunteer.

I think I’ll be fine though.