M: 11/05/02

Work Diary, 11/05/02

Today is my birthday; I'm thirty-four years old. Subsequently, I'm
going to write as much as I can in the first person. After all, it's
all about me, me, me.

In one more year, I'll be eligible to run for president of the United
States. I'm past the point of being drafted into the army, and so far,
no doctor has given me a prostate exam. I do have some gray hair coming
in but, all in all, it's a good age.

For the past several years, I've spent part of each birthday thinking
about my life. Sometimes this process takes minutes; other times,
several hours. I measure my current state of mind against what I call
"The Loneliness Scale": Am I feeling connected to other people? Why do
people like or dislike me? If it came right down to it, would I be
capable of making it on my own?

It became necessary to ask myself those questions when, in my early
twenties, I realized that while I like other people, I could easily
become one of those men who lives in a mountain cabin and only comes
into town once a month for provisions. The appeal of such a thing is so
strong that sometimes I do, in fact, pack up and leave. But I always
come back, and for good reason.

That reason is simple: Just when I discovered my teen angst was
evolving into adult angst, I fell in love. It wasn't the first time, of
course, but it was the most significant. I wasn't suffering so much
from depression as from a feeling of suspension. The more people and
things moved around me, the more I felt the same. My cure, for better
or for worse, was finally to step outside of myself and recognize
others. When I did, it was instantaneous, that head-over-heels,
pit-of-your-stomach realization that I was sitting across from a person
I could spend my life with. Quite the heady feeling, that.

The idea that each person has a soul mate - a predestined partner who
is out there, somewhere, just waiting to be found - has always left me
cold. It's not that I don't like the romantic idea of a soul mate, but
that I have been in love approximately three times, with people who
offered me a lifetime of?what? I can't say "a lifetime of happiness," a
phrase right up there with "I'm counting on the lottery" and "Fool's
paradise." Let's just say they "offered me a lifetime," and leave it at
that. That's what being in love is, right? The chance to share a
life?

The first was a boy named Todd, who was really the first male friend
I'd ever had. Todd's father had died at the same time as my mother, and
a school counselor stuck us together based on that fact. The counselor,
bless his heart, had no idea of the misery his plan would produce.
Todd's friendship would ultimately help make me the person I am today,
but with some nasty side effects. For instance, at the age of sixteen,
I swallowed all of my antidepressant pills (hoping to die young but
ending up in a psychiatric ward listening to the clack of a nurse's
knitting needles). Todd provided the original archetype of the person I
wanted to be with: tall, dark, handsome, goofy, and always - always -
intelligent. But Todd, for all he did and tried to do, wasn't meant to
save me. We were too young and, besides, he needed to save himself
first (something I was no help with at all, much to my chagrin).

My third "love" (which deserves to be listed out of order) was really
just an infatuation, at a time when I still did not know exactly who I
was or where I was going. There is no other way to describe it without
the self-aware psychobabble that goes along with such a thing. I had an
affair, that much is clear. I think of it as a "sexual collision," a la
Frank Herbert's Duncan and Mirabella characters in his "Dune" series. I
believe such collisions form the basis of most affairs, in that the
primary goal is not love but an instinctual attraction that even the
best of us have trouble defying. I couldn't defy it, anyway.

So, who managed to become my savior, my knight in a white VW Golf? The
second love of my life, Chris - my partner of thirteen years,
one-and-a-half months, and a few hours. He is the smartest person I've
ever met (and, dare I say, slept with?which is more exciting than most
people realize). Chris can be belligerent, incredibly sloppy,
self-righteous, vain, smelly?and none of it matters. Chris has taught
me that we are here on this Earth because other people are here, too. I
often ridicule the "ties-that-bind," but some of those ties leave me
happily bound. And Chris, by sheer force of will mixed with more than a
little compassion, has kept me grounded. He's plucked me from the abyss
more times than I can count, and for that I am grateful and almost
willing to believe that I am worth it.

Today I am thirty-four, a member of a generation that has had
unparalleled success in developing its self-esteem - a self-esteem that
is wholly internalized and assumed to be a birthright. Quite frankly, I
don't know how my generation does it. I've had friends, family,
therapists, and lovers tell me I should look to myself for my own sense
of worth, but I can't do it.

How could I abandon that perfect sense of grace that comes with knowing
my place in life is not in solitude or isolation? That despite what I
know and feel about myself, I am still valuable to others?