You are currently browsing the daily archive for January 1st, 2008.
I tried to break up with J last night. In fact, I told him we were over, that my resolution was to have no boyfriend, that I was fantastically unhappy and needed out. Not entirely true.
It was the culmination of several bad months, and while I know I shouldn’t have let it get so out of hand, in a lot of ways I think it was necessary. I won’t get into the specifics, as they require more back knowledge than these pithy writings and entries provide. It was mostly about our differences, and how I’ve been reading them as larger signs of Why We Won’t Work. I’m intuiting flashing neon arrows and warning signs when maybe all I should see is Slow: Curve, or Roads Slippery When Wet. It was about our mentalities: he’s success-driven, and I’m not. Our families: mine’s close-knit and very Christian, and his is hard-nosed and quasi-Jewish. Our careers: I’m happy to have a job that’s stable and constant, and he’s all over the board. Example1. When we met, J was a bigtime attorney in a bigtime firm, with insane hours but a routine. I appreciate routine. He left that job after a year though, which made sense because, um, it was miserable. Even for me. He’s dissatisfied again, however, and is thinking now—and seriously pursuing—wildly varied ideas involving business and the outdoors and global marketing. His training? Not really in any of these disciplines.
On its face, it’s easy for me to pin my fears on this uncertainty, but that isn’t really fair. In truth, I’m scared that we’ve come all this way and he doesn’t even know me. The way we relate is dissimilar, and being abstracted from our home environment makes even the smallest specks seem life-threatening. I feel a lot like he’s stepped into the role of parent, correcting me and challenging me. He’s been challenging me a lot, come to think of it, since we started dating. Challenge is good. But I’m tired of feeling like I have to live up to expectation in order to be loved. I think this may be all in my mind. Still, though, I—like most anyone, I imagine—do not like feeling this way.
He’s sitting next to me now at the kitchen table of my parents’ house, high up in the mountains where our DC life is ages, and hours, away. I am happy. But I’m scared. It’s getting to the point where people are asking me when we’re going to “make it official.” An alarming number of people asked me if I thought a ring would come over new years. Maybe this was just my way of making sure it wouldn’t. Hi, I’m magda, and self-sabotage is my middle name.
I didn’t mean to tell him it was over, and thankfully he wasn’t too keen to let it stick. We spent about an hour in the sauna hashing it out, which—for the record—is not advisable. I’m going to be drinking gatorade for about a week. We revisited it this morning, and again after skiing this afternoon, and I think we’re in a better place now. I have been unhappy, that much is true. It isn’t all his fault, though. And I think we’re going to make it work. I ate my back-eyed peas and pulled a wishbone anyway; keep your fingers crossed for good measure, though, okay?
She smiles when, every afternoon, she laces up her toeshoes. She’ll tell anyone how much she loves it. I think about it all the time, she says; I’d live in the studio if I could!
Her face can lie, but her heart can’t. The mirror is her lover, but her nemesis. It magnifies every flaw. How her bun doesn’t quite lie flat; they way her plie isn’t quite as deep; the arch in her leg that is just this much shy of conformation. She becomes a creature of self-loathing. It’s an addiction, this idea of perfection; there’s a formula, and the longer she stands in critique, the harder it will be for her to accept the reflection.
She’ll spend five years and three Christmas breaks chasing perfection, and hurting herself along the way. Rehearsals early in the morning till late at night while her friends are out skating, out skiing, out shopping. “I have a goal,” she’ll say; “I have a calling. They’ll see.” The friends will eventually tire of watching her as a court dancer, as sugarplum fairy; they won’t understand her exuberation at being second understudy for Clara. The invitations to come over, to hang out, to sleep over will slowly peter out. She won’t notice, not at first.
The love of a few will eventually pull her out, change her views, and put meat back on her skeletal ballerina’s frame.
There are dark chapters in each of our lives. Mine begins like this. Every Christmas, when we go en masse to the Nutcracker, it closes when I realize all that I have, all that I am, and all that I have become. To all the other Clara hopefuls out there, past or present, hang tight.
