Monday, March 24, 2003

I guess I've been aware of this before, but someone, more impassive now, in my own passion for self, it's striking how the intrinsic narcissism of relationships makes me make people who are interested in me more interesting. Needing, desiring someone really incredible to be interested in me, I make that person so, impossibly so. It probably connects on some level to the idea of seeking parental affection, and disavowing the ability of that person to possibly like me, by making them so unattainably wonderful, and to avoid true intimacy and vulnerability by dealing with someone on a paper-cut out level, genes and looks and everything parsed for comparative purposes. I suspect that's why, with all my previous relationships and attempts at relationships, my friends are typically underwhelmed, wondering why I'm involved at all, as I eventualy become, once my own veneer fades. But it does take the fun out of it, somehow, not being so invested in the intrigue. As the ripples of the last one start to fade, more evident even today, finding out, after all her consternation about boys and girls and relationships, that she actually has a boyfriend now, and me, feeling foreign in really, really wanting to be reactive, but not really having the self-questioning and self-doubt energy to do so, I find myself watching that script start to fall apart, with some regret, some sadness, at the same time, wishing it gone, frightened of its return. The one disappointment with the present situation is the predictability here, how I hoped the unfolding, as forseen by myself and friends, would not be such, but that underscores the narcissism, that this person must be different, extraordinary, because she is interested in, and has been touched by me. How impossible is that to begin with. How impossible to sustain. There is comfort in scripted behaviours, even the ones we hope to release ourselves from. Even the ones that are painful. I find myself some days of late feeling the way I feel when I first jump into cold water, that brief locked up, shallow breathing, as the body adjusts, and then breathes, and then begins to swim. 2:27:07 PM