Your meager heart
Will never know
The beauty it denied
I gave you mine
Its love overflowing
You glibly tossed it aside
Junked
Relationships
A Girl’s Best Friend
“And that, I dare say, is that,” she said to no one in particular as she gave the diamond in her newly acquired engagement ring one last look.
Its size and sparkle were inarguable, and it would be absolutely impossible for Bitsy Simons to ignore at tonight’s soiree.
And with that, she went to join her fiancé – a rather dull-witted man who offered social standing and excessive wealth if nothing else – and to finally get payback for Bitsy’s disinviting her from her coming out party the year before.
Easy Go
Before I’d even had a serious love affair, there were things I seemed to understand about them anyway.
There were songs about breakups that for whatever reason captured my imagination and moved my emotions. My heart knew what they were about.
One that really resonated with me then, and still today, is a little known song “Tell Me on a Sunday” from the musical “Song and Dance,” with lyrics by Don Black and music by Andrew Lloyd Webber.
The musical is not great, and it’s not a great song musically (sorry, Mr. Webber,) but what the song says is lovely, and it always comes to me when I think about how difficult it is to end something that was once beautiful.
Tell Me on a Sunday
Don’t write a letter when you want to leave
Don’t call me at 3 a.m. from a friend’s apartment
I’d like to choose how I hear the news
Take me to a park that’s covered with trees
Tell me on a Sunday please
Let me down easy
No big song and dance
No long faces, no long looks
No deep conversation
I know the way we should spend that day
Take me to a zoo that’s got chimpanzees
Tell me on a Sunday please
Don’t want to know who’s to blame
It won’t help knowing
Don’t want to fight day and night
Bad enough you’re going
Don’t leave in silence with no word at all
Don’t get drunk and slam the door
That’s no way to end this
I know how I want you to say goodbye
Find a circus ring with a flying trapeze
Tell me on a Sunday please
Don’t want to fight day and night
Bad enough you’re going
Don’t leave in silence with no word at all
Don’t get drunk and slam the door
That’s no way to end this
I know how I want you to say goodbye
Don’t run off in the pouring rain
Don’t call me as they call your plane
Take the hurt out of all the pain
Take me to a park that’s covered with trees
Tell me on a Sunday please
Here’s a nicely acted version by Marti Webb:
Gratitood
I practice gratitude every day, so when Thanksgiving comes around, it is just like brushing my teeth to take time to acknowledge all in my life that I am appreciative of.
You see, I am a member of a tribe of gratitude list makers. I post what I am grateful for (and why) daily.
The “Grat List” that I am a part of was the brainchild of the wonderful fitness expert and life coach Erin Stutland. I joined it in 2011, when I regularly took a live Shrink Session class she was teaching at the time, and it has been a blessing ever since. (More about Erin’s class and how it changed my life here.)
The Grat List is a place to share gratitude, as often as you wish.
Some, like me, post pretty much daily.
Others pop in as they want or need to. “Need to grat!” “Feeling down…time to do a grat list!”
It is so much more than a space for expressing gratitude. There’s no one way to share, but somehow the format has evolved into writing a list of ten gratitudes, ten things to be excited about, and some brags thrown in for good measure.
What’s beautiful is how the list has become a virtual safe space, a place where we share wishes, heartbreak, fears, dreams, successes, prayers and, above all, love and support.
We ask “the list” for good thoughts or prayers, advice and help. We hold each other’s dreams and hold each other up.
I am ever grateful today, and every day, for the Grat List and its magic and power, and all of the souls- past, present and future – who make it the beautiful safe space it is. (Super extra gratitude for Erin, who is about to give birth to a real living child soon!”)
Here’s my list today:
I am so grateful:
To be alive, for my health, for my returning vibrance so that I may do the things that give me joy, for the wisdom of my body because she has healed so many times, for my huge heart because it keeps me loving this life, for my husband, who is so loving and wise, for Miracle, our cat, for her furry love and unconditional love, for the ever-flowing abundance within and without me, in every area of my life, for our warm, live-filled home, for fresh, healthy food and clean water, for the privilege of being able to do what I love for a living, for music, and how it connects me to my soul
I am excited:
To be flexible and of service today, to pick up the Irish family members at the airport, to see my sisters-in-law, nieces and nephews, to enjoy a beautiful home, to share a loving afternoon and evening of laughter, to get there and back safe and sound, to make cole slaw late tonight, for Julia and her exciting audition Monday, to help her prepare, to get off book for the web series shoot, to work on the audition sides with joy and ease, for JC going to Hawaii, for Shayna’s song to win the contest!!
I brag that:
I love Life and Life loves me
I am enough just as I am
I am connected through words and this blog to amazing people like you!
Happy Thanksgiving to all!
Calling All Introverts!
I love this article so much, I had to share it today!
(I am emailing it to my husband and close friends, so that they can finally understand some of the things that make me, well, me. )
Pop over now to read “12 THINGS INTROVERTS ABSOLUTELY NEED TO BE HAPPY.”
The author is the founder of IntrovertDear.com and the author of the bestselling book, The Secret Lives of Introverts: Inside Our Hidden World. From her site:
She blogs for Psychology Today, and her writing has been featured on Quiet Revolution, The Huffington Post, The Mighty, The Muse, and elsewhere. Speaking as an expert on introversion, she has appeared on numerous radio programs and podcasts. For most of her life, Jenn felt weird, different, and out of place because of her quiet ways; now, she writes about introversion because she doesn’t want other introverts to feel the way she did
Boy am I glad she writes about this. It is so spot on.
Numbers 6 & 9!!!
I have read many articles on introvert behavior, but this was the first mention of having difficulty putting things into words and needing a room of one’s own or time in a space on our own. We are moving into a new apartment next year, and I am thrilled that I will have one room that will be all my own. I cannot put into words what this means for me!
I thought it was just one of my idiosyncrasies, but it seems I am not alone.
I have already ordered her book to read more.
My fellow introverts, what do you think?
A Tight Squeeze
That’s it.
You’ve gotten all you’re gonna get from me.
Like a tube of toothpaste, you’ve expressed the final remnants of the love I had for you.
Empty, flat and hard, I’m done.
Borrowed Time
I gave you my heart, outright
Had I known you’d be giving it back someday
I would have charged interest
Chances Are
Coincidence? I think not. Happenstance? No.
It was divine guidance. Fate. Destiny. Meant to be.
I would never have been in Central Park otherwise that day. Hadn’t been there for years.
Avoided it, actually, as I did any person, place or thing that connected me to you, or the us that we had been.
But for some reason (it felt so random at the time,) I decided to get on the train and head uptown.
It was a sunny Labor Day. New York City felt generous without most of her locals taking up space.
I had no plans. I was trying to stay active so as not to slip into loneliness.
I came out of the subway at Columbus Circle. No plan. No route in mind. I wandered, following my nose, enjoying just being in the world.
I suddenly realized I was in “our” spot, on the Great Lawn. A fluttery fear made its presence known in my belly.
Without conscious intention, my eyes scanned the horizon, and just as I realized what I was doing, I saw you lying there.
Even face down, I’d know your body anywhere. Long, lanky, tanned. Shirt off, ripped, worn jeans low on your hips.
My heart somersaulted. A rush of heartache and bruised love and attraction rushed through my body.
In a moment of agonizing indecision, I considered turning away, walking past, walking on.
But my feet and heart had other ideas, and they took me to where I was standing over you.
Did you feel my presence, or was it just that I was blocking the sun?
You turned your head and said hello.
Just like that.
It had been three years of no contact. Three years since I came home to an apartment emptied of your things. A total shock.
Three years since I learned you’d been seeing other people for at least the last year of our relationship.
Three years of putting the pieces of my heart and my life back together, mending the gaping holes you left.
And today, of all days, “randomly,” our paths cross.
I say I’m well, and I mean it. I ask how you are, and then I wish you well, and I mean that too.
The truth is, I’ve never been better. The truth is, you don’t look so well.
I see the pack of cigarettes and the empty tallboys in the grass. I see a guy who is nursing last night’s drunk with midday hair of the dog.
You look like you’re in exactly the same place you were before the shit hit the fan. The place where we both drank too much. The lost place. The place where our love did not survive.
I see this, and I wish you well, from my heart, and I walk away.
I smile to myself, a bit astonished at my strength. The capacity of my heart to forgive. My resilience. My spirit. At the Universe knowing the perfect moment, the exact moment I am ready for it, providing me with this chance to see that I have healed. This chance to let it all go.
I move forward, into the sunlight, into the lush green of the park, into the present beauty of my life.
Total Eclipse
I reach for you
Met with cold, darkness
I spin around again, on my own
You turn and reach out then
But I don’t see you
Time goes slowly
We revolve around each other
Like two planets
On opposite sides of a galaxy
Far, far away
Diminishing Returns
Every time you let anger lead
Every time you pull away
Know there is a cost
Something else is drained
Something in me
Is whittled away, bit by bit
They say that real love is
Unconditional
But it is not a bottomless well
Of forgiveness
There is a finite store
There is an invisible line
And one day,
That amount will be used up
Take care, my love
Chose your battles well
And refill the well of goodness
Between us
Create a surplus of love
From which we can draw
When love is strained by conflict
I am rooting for us
But there is a natural law we can’t fight
Just like no one lives forever
No love survives incessant onslaught without damage
Beyond the Skinny Branches 