I can't say enough good things about Grant Ginder's So Old, So Young, but I will try next time I post...

She began to think about her own life, about how little she had seen or accomplished, and suddenly felt incredibly young, like she had been thrust into something without being properly prepared for it, even though she had ostensibly received the same preparations as everyone else. She felt as though when she looked around her everyone else’s life was starting up, while she was sitting at her desk, writing about men’s colognes, waiting for something to happen.

This^^^ and so many other passages hit hard:

But whenever Marco looked at her she felt a hot, suffocating embarrassment. She thought about the night of Alison Liu’s birthday, where she had gotten too drunk, too hopeful that her mistakes could so easily be corrected with a single late-night confession. The sides of her face burned and she scrubbed harder. She wanted to disappear. 

Two days after Alison’s party, Marco had called her—she remembered how she was walking home from the subway when she saw his name on her screen. She thought about answering it, but then the call rolled over to voicemail and she immediately deleted his number from her phone, along with the message he had left her. She wanted to pretend that night had never happened—she convinced herself that, if she obliterated all signs of it, she could. 

She listened to songs about being strong and independent, and she stopped smoking so many cigarettes, and she spent time with people she loved, and she bought self-help books with images of inspiring mountains on their covers. She was an infrequent user of social media, but now she began posting pictures of herself having fun, and paired them with thoughtful, cryptic captions. A shot of her on the Brooklyn Bridge, and under it a lyric from the Cranberries. A picture of her smiling in Sheep Meadow, with a line from Rilke. None of it worked—instead she felt as if she was going through the breakup a second time, though in this case it was Marco who was breaking up with her. She saw that her choice hadn’t been deliberate and well-thought-out, but rather a failure of imagination—she had been so focused on keeping her life exactly as it was, without realizing that so much of that life was Marco. 

To that end, she hadn’t really made a choice at all so much as she had stood back and allowed inertia to handle things for her. She stopped buying herself luxury bath bombs and listening to Taylor Swift—she began to think that buying luxury bath bombs and listening to Taylor Swift were signs that you were a sucker who was depressed.

And:

Nina smiled, even though she felt like she was going to cry. She and Carol both knew that there were no friends she could invite over, because if there were, Nina wouldn’t have FaceTimed Carol in the first place. 

She couldn’t understand what made her so repellent. She considered herself to be reasonably smart, she was very good at her job, and now that she had money she always put effort into wearing cute outfits. But when she was around people in social settings, she lost all sight of those things and felt instead a sort of crippling anxiety, this insufferable need to impress and be liked by them that she couldn’t seem to quash. She heard herself say ridiculous things, and immediately afterward would see herself through everyone else’s eyes. She was a try-hard and a loser—the sort of person that people talked about as soon as she left the room, and whose jokes always killed the momentum of a group text. Things weren’t supposed to be this way. She was supposed to be like her mother, someone whose life was overloaded with love and who felt burdened by too many dinner invitations. She was supposed to have someone to confide in, and instead she was thirty-five and alone.

It's been a while since I read a book where so much of it resonates with me, even if there are characters within in that are not always likable. Ironically, Nina seems to be the least liked by her friends, but she is the character I relate to the most, even though she appears it in relatively little compared to the rest of the characters. How she comes across is so completely separate from who she actually is that my heart hurts for with understanding and something I can't completely define.

d…

Maybe, sometimes, you think you are over a thing or a person or an event and then you realize that it's possible that it's more like whatever or whoever was bothering you didn't go away, but, instead, is lying dormant within you.

This occurred to me the other day when a friend told me that someone we both know, but haven't seen in a while, invited a bunch of common acquaintances to an event she is performing at in a few weeks. My friend knows how I used to feel about this person, but perhaps she forgot or just didn't think or figured I'm over her, when she informed me that all of them are going. 

The sting of tears and the hurt I felt at not being included shocked me, even though it's for the best I don't go anyway. Truly, I thought I had put all of my ridiculous, over-the-top feelings behind me. I still think I have. But I can't deny that I also have become very good at pushing emotions down, like so far down they appear and feel non-existent.

For the first time in years I no longer find myself mad at the world (or, more specifically, the people within the world who are turning it into a shitake mushroom show)...I just feel rather numb, with occasional tears, but not many. 

I haven't cried when I shouldn't (i.e. at work) in a long while and that is a good thing. I've been crush-free for three plus years now and I have armored my heart so strongly I doubt I will ever "like like" someone ever again. I feel like that old Pink Floyd song "Comfortably Numb."

My dream life is more active and vivid than my real life and if I see people in them I used to be fond of in real life there is a nice detachment to it that there never was when I actively liked them, if that makes sense. I found myself relieved to realize I was not in denial or anything like that, that my dreams were telling me, this is now in the rearview mirror and you are okay...in that area of your life.

As much as I can be very fearful of my dreams (and nightmares) I occasionally have very pleasant ones...last night I had my recurring dream (less and less these days, though) where I see my grandmother and get to hang out with her again.  My recurring mall dream felt less scary and more airy and I even had a dream where I got to play softball with Karen Carpenter (not a sad dream at all).

I  think you give away so much when you give away your heart, but I'm not sure the alternative is a much better option...just one I'm taking right now until I have surer footing in life.

One thing I'm sure of is that I'm not in denial about any past feelings for any past person. And this makes me think of one of many favorite Golden Girls scenes (I can pretty much apply any Golden Girls episode to different aspects of life and immediately feel better).

Dorothy: Rose, I am not in denial.

Rose: Yes, you are. You’re just denying you’re in denial.

Dorothy: Rose, honey, I am not denying I’m in denial.

Rose: If you’re not denying you’re in denial, then you’re in denial.

Dorothy: Look, fluffhead. Why should I deny being in denial? I never said I was in denial, YOU are the one who said I was in denial, and don’t you deny it.

Last night I had a very brief, but still kind of sweet, totally not unpleasant dream, something I rarely have. I wish now I'd written about it in my dream journal, right after waking. But I didn't so all I have left is a fleeting sensation rather than the bittersweet, but wonderful overwhelming-ness of it when I first woke.

I've always thought it looks so gentle and soul-stirring when someone kisses someone else on the top of their forehead or crown of their hair. I think it is very tender and that is how it was in my dream, with the person doing it to me, creating a loveliness I wanted to hold on to forever.

I've recently re-connected with an old friend. X and I first met in 1993 and were good friends for years, then kind of lost regular touch after he got married. 

He and his wife are no longer together, having divorced last year. My parents always had this mentality (and still have it) that married people cannot and should not be friends with the opposite gender. They are so adamant about this that even though I strongly disagree and believe that men and women can be "just friends," I think I let their attitude affect mine.

He and I have been texting and talking on the phone and he sent me a picture from the 90s, when we hung out together and had a lot of fun, going to the movies, amusement parks and day trips. After he sent it to me, he told me that he got it from a photo album his mom kept of the two of us. "My mom always liked you," he said.

This hit the part of me hard that always wanted to be "normal."  I guess maybe this didn't surprise me too much as his mother was always so nice to me. I still remember having a lovely time sitting at the same table with her at my friend's wedding.

Hearing X say this made me feel good, but also made me think that I think I always longed for the "extended family" part of normal more than the boyfriend/husband part of normal. And even though I couldn't want the normal that I wanted to want or if I had been someone who wanted that, there would still have been the "what's wrong with him that he says he likes me?" aspect.

I think if X and I had gotten married (he told me his mother actually told him she had hoped we would) that I would have gotten along well with his large and friendly family. His father was a little gruff, but still kind and X’s brothers and sisters always had such a welcoming aura. They all made me re-think that not all families are terribly dysfunctional.

A lot of people possibly hesitate to marry someone if that someone's family is "too much" or a stereotypical version of nosy, interfering and critical. Me? I liked X’s family so much I wanted to want to feel deep things for him. Because we were good friends and he loved dancing and cats as much as I do I thought I could will it to happen.

I looked at the picture he sent a lot the other night and I couldn't help but notice I looked happy, possibly even "radiant," a word no one ever could use to describe me now. I have no illusions about my looks, but that picture shows a me that is nowhere near as unattractive as I am now.

If I had a time machine, there are so many things I would want to go back and change or re-live. But then I remember how incredibly hard I tried (like really, really tried!) to conjure up romantic and emotional feelings that would have led to a good relationship and marriage and I know I just didn't have them.

One thing I would change in the 90s, though, is tell X that if I could have liked any man that way, it would have been him. He didn't know about me back then and I was so caught up in fear and trying to play a version of me that was a lie that I forgot about how lying hurt him. 

Years later,when I did come out to him, he said he wished he had known sooner, that it would have explained so many things and that, like me (but in a different way) he wouldn't have wanted things to be a way they just couldn't.