well, part 2

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So it's about a month, now, since I more or less stopped talking to my ex-bf. And I'm surprised by how much more pleasant things are -- I don't expect my days will include awkward conversations where nothing I say is right, and the person I'm talking to is perennially bitter and miserable, and I can't even tell why, exactly, he's on the line with me in the first place, since he sure doesn't seem happy about it. I guess I'd just gotten used to it and the tension surrounding approaching him. I still feel a bit guilty about it, but I'm not inclined to talk to him again. Which is terrible, because I don't dislike him -- in fact I like him very much. But it's perennial, this angry bitterness and "I have no future" and the rest. And he's already fighting with me in his head (so he says) and calling my emails coercive. Best to stay away.

I was watching 56Up the other night -- it's that Michael Apted series where he interviews the same set of Brits every seven years; started when they were seven years old, and they're 56 in the most recent movie -- and there's a man in the film uncannily like my ex, in his way of moving, talking, interests, living arrangements, everything. Neil, his name is. At 56 he's employed, shakily, as a roaming small-town Lib-Dem politician, which by itself is awfully odd -- the minority party bit isn't odd, but smalltown politics are usually run by locals. And he does stick out sore-thumb in the meetings. It's hard to watch.

Ummm...I know LibDems - that in itself is indeed odd.

I like Neil. He came from really far down. He was almost a bum when he was 28, and wandering around the Scottish isles. He's been a politician since he was at least 42. He seems rather Aspie to me.

Good news that you are somewhat liberated from that situation, Tarantella. It sounds like the current situation is better for both of you.

It's funny to read about the 56up series here. I haven't seen the most recent set of films, but I saw all the earlier ones. That was when I was still ignorant about autism. I did identify with Neil though--I thought, "there is something I understand in him, something that seems familiar" but I did not understand why. There were parts that I found difficult to watch because of that.

congrats on your decision

thanks. I admit, there's a certain loneliness that goes with it, but increasingly I see that much of it's to do with being in the wrong place, geographically. My trip back to NYC was a serious eye-opener. I mean no, I won't be living in NYC -- it's strictly for rajahs and old ladies whose husbands bought apartments when you needed only to be rich to buy a place...my grandma's little twin in Queens went for nearly a million recently, ffs. (They sold many years ago, was having a google tour of the neighborhood. It's scruffier than I remember, but not bad.) But I was home. And home in Philly, too, and the ex-bf is a slice of home. I think the reality is I just need to go home.

Where I'm going to find a quiet place I can afford, I don't know. That's the great thing about the midwest, quiet's dead cheap. But around here there's nobody like me except a couple other Jewish women from the same area-ish. I gave up on dating for a bunch of reasons, but a big one's that the cultural gap's just too, too big. I made the mistake of believing, for a long time, that if people aren't all up in your face with God, they're pretty secular. Turns out I'm quite wrong, around here, anyway. A sort of fervently spiritual progressive-Protestant way of existing is the dominant mode. People build their lives around it and are not...how shall I say...cosmopolitan about the existence of other ways of living in the world, except they know some people are frothing evangelicals and are pretty dismissive of that. It's sort of like if Laura Ingalls Wilder's family was all around you, only the population density was modern-suburb. They're very nice, and all. But a great deal is unbridgeable and I don't want to date their menfolk, who -- in my age bracket -- are mostly too old to find exoticism appealing anyway. They want, you know, casseroles made with cream cheese or something. I did move back east once, for a few years...not quite home, southern New England. But I was surprised to find how much I'd missed the sense of humor.

Some of it, too, is attitudinal...it was so wonderful, flying over that sprawling night-sky-destroying orange glow of the megalopolis. Scale is important. To grow up in a dirty, romantic place where ambitions are very large, and it's within the power of men to make...oh, empires, and art palaces for citizens, and scientific revolutions, and novels that matter, and of course money, and it's expected that if you're a talented young person you'll throw yourself at art because why would you waste such a talent...it turns out this is important. I live now in a place where people are suspicious of ambition, afraid of it. It turns out to matter.

Anyway. Yeah, eventually I'll move back again and will more easily find companionship. There'll be other problems. The gender issues hit a lot heavier, there's the weight of rich and poor, everyday life is more difficult. But...well this is already long. I just need to go home.

Where I live, as a young person I'm fully expected to throw myself headfirst into the engineering realm - seems we really aren't as different as we probably believed.

_________________
"Standing on a well-chilled cinder, we see the fading of the suns, and try to recall the vanished brilliance of the origin of the worlds."
-Georges Lemaitre
"I fly through hyperspace, in my green computer interface"
-Gem Tos

I absolutely feel your sense of isolation, tarantella. I'm experiencing a lot of that myself these days. I'm looking at a plethora of different places as retirement options in a few years. For living, I like the countryside, but for socializing, I think I need to be within easy driving distance of a big city. Where I live now is a small enclave of liberalism, in an environmentally-active, super-fitness-oriented way, in the middle of hundreds of miles of farmers and ranchers, and the ultra-conservative mindset that goes along with that.

I'm a liberal, but unfortunately I'm not a fitness junkie. Around here, if you don't participate in half a dozen different extreme sports, you don't fit in. I'm a "keep busy to keep fit" kind of person, and I have no interest in risking life and limb for the sake of entertainment. Also, the population here is very strongly skewed to the under 30 end of the scale - the area's a little too remote and wilderness-y to be highly popular with retirees.

Some of the more positive attributes of this part of the country, however, are things like very minimal overt racism and sexism (not to mention the natural beauty). So there are definite trade-offs, but, as you say, finding companionship (even in the form of close female friends) in a "closed" place, is difficult for the average person, almost impossible for someone with an innate aversion to social activities.

Too bad you're not closer to me, or vice versa. I think it'd be fun to hang out with you.

Oh, definitely! And I completely understand the "geared to a younger crowd" thing.

I heard a few days ago from the ex-bf -- he's gotten a decent yearlong government job, which is great. Very good news. But it was amazing how urgently I just wanted to get off the line with him, both because it was clear he wasn't going to have any kind of interesting conversation with me and because I found I was just enraged. Here he was, suddenly pleased to talk, feeling okay to talk to me, because he felt he was worth something again and could measure up to me. And I finally hung up feeling like -- what the bloody hell. Treat me like crap for a year because why? Because some stranger hasn't seen fit to employ you, give you a title and what you think of as responsibility. So what happens in nine months, then, when there's no permanent job on offer -- you turn into a jerk again? Because everything is a contest and you don't feel you measure up to me unless someone else gives you a badge that says "worthwhile human being"?

I wish it hadn't taken me so long to recognize that this is the usual thing when a guy's deeply insecure, and that it really can't be overlooked. And that I need to not bring people into my life when they don't really know who they are, don't like themselves, avoid adult responsibilities and commitments. I totally get why it's taken this long -- neither of my parents managed to model that sort of commitment, and now it looks as though my brother's abandoned his young son, moved far away, which shocks and deeply disturbs me. But oh, what a waste of time.