Shades of Gray (Not Fifty)

Tags

breakups, friends, hair, live journal, love, memories

Today’s post is going to be another throwback, partly because I have dedicated today to the answering of five neglected emails from friends. I think this is the most important writing I can do today.

On the theme of cultivating friendships, I met up with a friend this evening for sushi and a conversation that unexpectedly brought up lots of buried memories for me. My friend is grappling with an issue that hits close to home for me – closer than either of us expected it would.

I don’t really feel like going into detail about that – not tonight, anyway.

In her efforts to make sense of it all, my friend has been reflecting on the choices of her past (sometimes with a twinge of regret, which I hope she will set aside in time.) She even went so far as to write a blog post in which she essentially offers advice to her younger self. She wrote about the importance of taking care of one’s self on many different levels, including physical appearance – and she acknowledged the inevitable trauma of the first gray hair.

I don’t know why, of all the things we talked about tonight, that was the line that resonated with me. But it jogged a memory of my first gray hair, and what I wrote in response to it.

It’s hard for me to express how this all fits together, and I realize that for most of my readers, I’m being irritatingly vague. But I suspect that one reader will be able to connect the dots – so I’m sharing this old Live Journal entry for her.

Interestingly enough, when I located the file on my hard drive I was surprised to discover that I wrote it exactly four years ago today. Back then I titled it “Nothing Gold Can Stay,” which was a nod to Robert Frost, but the title seems a little too gloomy now.

***

I was washing my hands today at work when I glanced up at the mirror and froze. I stared in disbelief. Perhaps my eyes had played a trick on me?  I, who am frequently mistaken for a high school student and constantly carded in bars, surely must have imagined it. I looked again. I frowned at my reflection, squinted, and turned my head to catch the light. There it was, visible from any angle. One silvery strand, sprouting from the crown of my head and framing my face. Mocking me.

I grasped it between two fingers, about to pull it out, when my more rational side kicked in. I don’t want to be one of those women who plucks her grays.

There are many benefits that come with age, some of which I am just starting to enjoy: the wisdom that only comes with experience. The respect of colleagues who no longer think of me as “the new kid.” The confidence that comes from knowing what makes me truly, blissfully happy – and the courage to pursue it.

The passing years have been quite good to me thus far. Each one has left me a little wiser, a little stronger, and a little happier. I figure this trend is bound to continue.* So while I don’t know exactly where I will be at age 40, 50, 60, I look forward to it. So no, I will not pluck my gray hairs. Nor will I dye them, inject my face with poisons, or fret over my changing appearance. I intend to age with grace, humor, and dignity.

But why did my first gray hair have to show up on the day my husband signed the lease to his new apartment?

***

* Editor’s note: this statement would prove to be generally true in the following years. Except for thirty. Thirty was craptacular.

Ancient History

Tags

breakups, live journal, writing

Today has been one of those days when I don’t much feel like writing.

I spent much of the day getting caught up on things that have been neglected since I took up this writing hobby – housework, reading, and watching my Hulu queue, to name a few. When I finally settled down to write around 10:00, I found myself staring at a blank screen for an hour.

Sometimes when I am plagued by writer’s block I take out old journals in search of inspiration. I always hope to find something that I can revisit and frame up in a fresh way.

It never works. I guess I’m just not all that interested in revision. But it does make for some interesting reading.

Reading my old journals is often like watching a horror movie – the sort where any idiot can tell that the protagonist is walking straight into the lair of the psychotic killer, except the protagonist herself. I shake my head in disbelief as I watch myself fall into and wade out of circumstances that I should have been able to avoid.

Tonight I stumbled upon an old Word file – an archive of my nearly four years on Live Journal. I guess you could call it my first attempt at blogging, although at the time I didn’t know what blogging was. And as was the case for most LJ users, I used it as a diary, which I now know is not necessarily the purpose of a blog. It was also my first foray into social media, as I had not yet joined Facebook, or even MySpace. Twitter hadn’t even been invented yet. But I posted on Live Journal several times a week, and I remember following with great interest my thirty or so LJ friends.

My Live Journal period happened to coincide roughly with my marriage, a period of my life that seems so distant, it sometimes feels like a book I read a long time ago. I began writing as a newlywed, but my journaling really picked up steam when we separated. I wrote every gory detail about his apartment search, my roommate search, our first visits with the lawyer, and telling our parents. I wrote about my fear of financial ruin and of losing Buck.

The hardest entries to read are the ones just after he moved out. Time has blurred my memory of those days, but my writing reminded me of just how devastated I was. I wrote one day about how walking the dog and brushing my teeth were all I could handle.

Paralyzed as I was by the circumstances, I can also see that these journal entries comprised some of the best writing I had done in years. Although I was too mired in grief to see it, I was just beginning to discover who I was.

I wish that I had been more consistent with journaling throughout my life, for there are large patches of my history that are fuzzy recollections at best. But for the periods that I did document, it is fascinating to look back on my own accounts. Sometimes I don’t even recognize my own voice.

Somebody That I Used to Know

Tags

breakups, gotye, music, teaching

My friend Eileen picked me up on the way to dinner tonight and immediately asked me if I have heard “Somebody That I Used To Know” by Gotye. I enthusiastically exclaimed that I have, and that I love the song. What made this moment so remarkable is that I had been humming the song on my way down the stairs and out to her car, and that I had just watched the video three times on YouTube.

For a music teacher – in particular, for a music teacher whose career is so heavily focused on contemporary a cappella – I am woefully out of touch with the popular music scene. I have not listened recreationally to a trendy song since I was my students’ age. My music collection is mostly made up of obscure singer songwriters and forties jazz musicians. So it is unusual for me to ride the popular music wave as I am doing now, with a song that is peaking ten months after its release.

In fact, it was my students who introduced me to this uniquely compelling song. I heard it for the first time last week when one of my a cappella groups began rehearsing it. Five students had collaborated on an arrangement and came back from vacation ready to teach it to the rest of their group. For the first time in my career, I sat at my desk while my group learned a new song entirely on their own – a moment that I would have found moving regardless of the song choice.

Their arrangement is nothing like the original, but it made me hold my breath the first time I heard it put together. It is marked by grinding dissonance, a brooding bass line, and soaring three-part harmony in the chorus. It struck me as unusual that the group moved so quickly from the learning of notes to a discussion about expression. Even in their first rehearsal, they transitioned seamlessly from drawn-out dissonant harmonies (reminiscent of paralyzing depression) to a wailing, melodramatic chorus that perfectly suits teenage voices. It is unusual for them to connect so viscerally with a song – at least, not before extensive rehearsal and lyrical analysis.

Two days later, a student in my online American Popular Music class wrote a beautifully-crafted essay about Gotye’s music video, prompting me to look it up on YouTube.  I found the video, with its stop motion animation and highly expressive facial close-ups, to be the perfect compliment to a song that already thumped in my chest. I’ve watched the video every day since then, contributing to its more than 190 million views.

That my students introduced me to the song in the same week that I suffered a painful falling out with a close friend has no doubt intensified its magnetic appeal for me. I had forgotten about the unique devastation of a polite nod from a former loved one.

Now that the song is on my radar, I notice it all over Facebook (along with a number of covers and parodies.) Clearly my students and I are not the only people moved by Gotye’s song, which gives voice to feelings that are hard to talk about.

Still Searching

Tags

blog, breakups, Buck, dog, search, travel, writing

Today someone stumbled upon my blog when they did a google search on “how to be creative with small talk.” What they found, no doubt, was my post from several weeks ago about how small talk makes me feel incredibly uncomfortable.

Sorry, reader. I don’t think you got any creative tips from me. But at least now you know you’re not the only person who has no clue what to say in response to “what’s new with you?”

Search terms are funny. Every day a few of them get logged in my blog stats – WordPress tells me what terms people have searched in order to end up on my blog.  Many of them make sense – it comes as no surprise when people search “amandaroederwrites” or “creative exfoliation.” Certain topics of mine have also generated lots of search engine activity – there have been twenty two search terms involving the name “beth delforge,” and there were also a number of “james macrostie power and class” hits a few weeks ago. “creative peanut butter brownies” has also brought quite a bit of traffic to my blog. (You’re welcome.)

But sometimes a search term surprises me because I know that my blog is not what the reader was seeking. Consider, for example, the person who was looking for tour dates for the “talk to animals band” but landed on this blog post about my dog’s efforts to learn Spanish.

I’d really like to know what was going through the head of the person who searched “cost benefits analysis in a relationship.” I imagine they had already made up their mind that the relationship was over and were searching the internet for supporting evidence that a breakup was a good idea. I wonder if they were disappointed to find that my blog post was about a dog.

To the person who searched “creative breakups” – what, you wanted to make sure your soon-to-be-ex would never forget the unusual and innovative way that you dumped them? What exactly were you hoping to find? A good “it’s not you” joke? A song and dance routine? Perhaps this is what you were looking for.

“timothy reynolds inheritance scam email” resulted in three hits on my blog. It’s nice to know that some people recognize a scam when they see one. Ahem.

No fewer than six people found my blog by searching “elvia assurance bagnolet,” and I imagine that they probably searched this term for the same reason that I did last winter: I wanted to know who was behind the mysterious charge on my credit card statement. I discovered, thanks to the magic of the internet, that I had inadvertently purchased travel insurance from Elvia Assurance, a French company that offers cancellation protection to customers of the SNCF railway. That is, unless said customers have a mailing address in the United States, which is not an option in the dropdown menu of their contact form. In that case, elles sont vissées. I hope my six readers had better luck than Eileen and me.

(On a related note, two people found this blog by searching the term “americaine stupide.” Yup. Hey there. That’s me.)

Four people found me when they searched “facebook secrets.” I don’t really know why, for I am not exactly BFFs with Mark Zuckerberg. The dude hardly tells me anything.

To a few others who were led astray and ended up here: thanks for stopping by. I may be able to help you:

“food exfoliation” – I recommend oatmeal, coffee grounds, or brown sugar.

“linguistic cartoons” – here’s one.

“email address for aer lingus” – ccu@aerlingus.com, but don’t hold your breath waiting for a response.

And after much puzzling, there still remain a few search terms that I simply can’t figure out. Either they make no sense or I just don’t understand why they led to my blog.

“la scala middleman dog”

“what’s this you slip she gnp”

“willie nelson and friends live and kicking”

“trojans’s effort is half baked”

Thoughts?

Uninvited

Tags

breakups, closure, dreams, fate

Shortly before 7:00 I awoke to the sound of my alarm and drowsily fumbled for the snooze button. Six hours of sleep seemed cruelly insufficient for a weekend, but such is the life of a music teacher during festival season. I would soon stumble out of bed, put on lipstick, and drink my coffee from a ceramic travel mug while racing up 93 north to the junior district music festival. But for the moment I rolled over onto one side and sank into the embrace of my faux down comforter. Hovering on the edge of sleep, I felt a familiar arm drape itself across my shoulder. For a moment I dozed in blissful relaxation in the arms of the one that broke my heart. Then I jerked myself into consciousness and shook off the unsettlingly vivid memory. I glanced around the room to verify that I was, indeed, alone. I breathed a sigh that registered somewhere between resignation and relief.

I haven’t laid eyes on him in nine months, but from time to time he pays me a mental visit. At first he used to settle in for long stretches, getting in my way as I attempted to go about my daily routine. I used to seek out ways to get around him, but the more I tried to evade him the larger he loomed, until he blocked my path entirely. As time passed he visited less and less frequently. Though his appearances were no longer acutely painful, I had come to prefer solitude. I took some careful measures to avoid his unexpected arrival. These included purposeful editing of various social media settings and the careful avoidance of certain neighborhoods.

He only stops by now on the rarest of occasions. It is usually in moments when my guard is down, like this morning as I drifted between sleep and waking. I’ve learned to simply observe his comings and goings. I no longer try to block his entry or follow him when he leaves.

It does bother me a little that I don’t seem to have any say over the timing of his visits. This morning’s unannounced appearance stirred up unusually strong feelings of indignation. “You know, I didn’t ask you to come,” I told him. “I was perfectly happy before you dropped in, uninvited. It took an awfully long time for me to get to that place, and I don’t particularly feel like retracing my steps. Why are you here?”

He said very little. He never does. I used to hope that eventually he would provide a meaningful explanation of what went wrong. I’ve stopped waiting for it. Even in my own head, and after all this time, I still can’t get a satisfactory answer out of him. The only semblance of an explanation that I can find is the whisper of a voice that sounds an awful lot like mine. It tells me that everything – even the emotional inconvenience of this moment – is exactly as it should be.

Kinder Considerations

Tags

breakups, creative efforts, writing

Someone recently alerted me to an online video posted by an ex of mine. This man is an acclaimed slam poet and recent YouTube sensation. The video features my ex performing a breakup poem that manages to be scathing, triumphant, funny, and heartbreaking all at the same time. It features vivid scenes and trigger words that are uncomfortably familiar.

It also features more than a bit of revisionist history. I suppose that was probably for literary purposes, and as an artist I can’t fault him for that. His job is not to protect my dignity or to be true to our past. His job is to tell the story with the most elegant words possible. And I’ll give him credit for this: the man knows how to tell a good story.

It’s amazing, though, that after all these years and much happier separate lives for both of us, he still knows how to wound me.

These are the risks you take when you get involved with an artist. Even when we were still half-heartedly holding on to our withering relationship, he got a lot of poetic mileage out of our personal affairs. I had never seen him look more like a rock star than when he trotted out our private pain for anyone willing to pay a $3 cover charge. And it felt good to see him looking like a rock star. So I said nothing, although I began attending fewer and fewer of his shows.

I signed away a lot of things when we split, one of which was the right to an opinion about his work. So if my failings – the real ones and the fabricated ones – have brought him acclaim in literary circles, I suppose I’m glad I could at least give him that.

However, it does raise some interesting implications for me as a blogger.

After a recent tapas binge in Barcelona, I sat up all night talking with a new friend in the common area of our hostel.  We became Facebook friends, and he settled in at a computer to read my blog while I labored over the day’s post. (Most of my vacation writing was done in the wee hours of the morning, taking advantage of the six hour time difference to keep my promise of daily posts.) He said he wasn’t sure if he knew how to be as open as this blog requires me to be, and he wondered aloud how much self-censorship I practice.

The truth is, I’m not as open as my writing might suggest. There are certain things that I choose to keep quiet. Included among these are the private moments with those who I have loved and those who I have hurt. Such moments may indeed make for the very best writing, but in my heart I believe they have no place on a stage or in a Google search.

I’ve certainly hinted at plenty. I have cast the occasional veiled aspersion. But I’ve chosen my words with care – hopefully enough care to protect the dignity of those who inspire my writing. I’d hate to think that some day my words might hurt someone who I once loved deeply.

So I will not be issuing a rebuttal on this blog. But if I were to do so, I know exactly what I would say.

Searching

Tags

a cappella, blog, breakups, Facebook, google, search, social media

Hello, reader. Who are you?

Judging by my blog stats, chances are you know who I am. You probably arrived here via a link from Facebook, or from the web page of my local paper. And unless you leave me a comment, chances are I will never know it was you that stopped by. This is our unspoken agreement. I publish the words, and you read them. I’m pretty much okay with our arrangement. I’m getting used to the realization that the person with whom I’m chatting in the lunch line might already know embarrassing details about my oral hygiene or where I’m going for my next vacation. When I launched this blog I weighed the pros and cons of going incognito and ultimately decided against it. It felt somehow dishonest. It also would have allowed for some pretty interesting stories. But as I’ve said before, I don’t have much respect for anonymous online writers without filters.

One interesting feature of my blog stats is that they reveal the search terms that have led readers to my site. I am intrigued by these search terms, which have included “Ingrid Andress Boston,” “Beth Delforge,” “americaine stupide,” and “Whole Foods resignation letter.”

But what to make of the numerous Google searches for Amanda Roeder?

Do you know how many people are performing Google searches on you?

Well. Welcome to my blog, readers and searchers of all sorts. I’m not sure what you’ve been looking for, but you’ve found me.

I’m fascinated by the role of social media in the exchange of information. I’ve watched numerous political debates, controversies, and social gaffes play out in the online forum. It’s interesting how, as information becomes increasingly accessible, we seem to understand each other less and less.  And thus, we resort to the strangest ways of learning about one another.

Lately I’ve been fretting over a suitably sensitive way to deflect the unwanted online advances of one particular gentleman. I have been thus far unsuccessful in communicating my lack of interest in this very persistent person, whose interpretation of written communication is no more nuanced than his interpretation of body language. His advances are getting downright uncomfortable. I’ve considered possible ways to put a stop to it, but the thought has crossed my mind: at least he’s up front about his curiosity. I am not always so forthright.

I’ll admit it: I use social media to seek answers to the questions I don’t know how to ask in person. That’s a diplomatic way to describe an activity that most people call Facebook stalking. Yes, I do it. If you use social media, chances are you do it too. I read and re-read the tweets from certain individuals. I have a fair number of pseudo-celebrity friends in the a cappella circuit over whom I am more star-struck than I care to admit, and I watch their YouTube videos. A lot. I have scoured the Facebook profile of the one who broke my heart, searching (unsuccessfully) for some crumb of the closure he could not provide. This is what the internet was invented for, right?

So here I am, managing the delicate balance between my public and private lives, and finding the junctions where they intersect with yours. As a result, the question keeps resonating in my brain: when I type a word or name in that search bar, what am I really looking for?

Forbidden Territory

Tags

breakups, closure, love

A friend of mine recently went through a painful and entirely unexpected breakup.  It was her first serious relationship in quite a while and, as far as she could tell, everything seemed to be going quite nicely. Suddenly, he was gone.

The experience brings up some not-quite distant memories for me.

In a cruel twist of fate, a work obligation placed my friend in her ex’s neighborhood, for several days, for several hours at a stretch. My friend is a strong woman, and she bore this responsibility with grace. I’m not entirely sure how she did it.

When I found myself unexpectedly single last summer I was caught off guard by the deluge of memories that lurked around every turn. There were so many things to be avoided for their tendency to cut ever deeper at my wounded heart. What follows is a sampling.

Places: certain areas were to be avoided at all cost. Obviously, his neighborhood and the area where he worked. The train station where I routinely picked him up. The café we frequented. The museum in front of which he kissed me for the first time. The school where he was pursuing his PhD.  Rockport’s Bearskin Neck. The North End where we had our first date. The store we were in when I realized I loved him.  Every room in my house (which proved to be a challenge.)

Reminders of his life path: anything related to science, research, academia, or parasites. Any references to martial arts, travel, or photography. Anything regarding Israel, the country where he grew up, including news reports on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and also the couscous.

Music: Love songs. Breakup songs (Damn you, Adele and your omnipresent hit songs of 2011.) Anything from the 80s, which he loved. Rachmaninoff.  Anything from “Rent,” and especially Mimi’s refrain in “No Day But Today” which he once sang to soften my heart in the middle of a fight and which thereafter became his custom ring tone on my phone.

Facebook: may I pause here for a moment and just say that dating in the age of Facebook is incredibly complicated? There was the changing of the relationship status, which made me wonder why I had ever violated my policy of leaving it perpetually blank. So many times I hovered my cursor over the “unfriend” button, but it seemed too dramatic, too final, too … unfriendly. So I adjusted my settings to keep him off my news feed, and yet, to this day Facebook finds little ways of reminding me that he exists when I would prefer to pretend otherwise.

Food and drink: we shared great enthusiasm for all things culinary. He was highly opinionated about food, and I loved that about him. He held all olive oil to the standard set by the freshly pressed nectar from the trees at his grandfather’s house. Regarding espresso, only one coffee shop in Boston produced an acceptable brew. He was quite adept in the kitchen, and we cooked many meals together that, whether elaborate or simple, were unfailingly satisfying to me. Thus, when he left, the following food items had to be avoided: espresso, pasta in general and gnocchi specifically, truffles, hummus, falafel, anything grilled, wine, bread, olives, and olive oil.

The arms of someone new: this one should be a really big “Duh!” but I had to learn for myself why it was not a good idea.

Shared experiences: Game of Thrones. NPR’s Car Talk (we met one of its hosts on our fifth date.) Various movies. Anything relating to Italy (we both went during our relationship, although not together.) The woods. The ocean. Any word, smell, or sound that would trigger a memory.

It was an incredible stroke of good fortune that I was scheduled to leave for an extended trip to Europe twelve days after we broke up. This and an appetite-crushing stomach ailment made it much easier to avoid all things reminiscent of him.

When I returned home I began the gradual process of finding normalcy in his absence, which was different even from the “normal” I knew before him. I knew that my life was never going to return to the way it once was, but I found a new path and took my first tentative steps. Some days were harder than others.

Lately I don’t think of him much. Some days I don’t think of him at all. Most of the items on the above list are once again a part of my daily routine. Eating olive oil remains a complicated experience for my palate and my heart. There is so much richness but a hint of bitter when I swallow. Maybe that just means I’m buying good quality olive oil. I guess I have him to thank for that.