The Lost Art of Finding Our Way

Crap. Crappety crap. I'm so bad at this stuff!

I've had the week that went from plain sailing, hard work, great results, some great new clients, a perfect, blissful, sunsetted horizon to a huge bloody clusterfuck of hideousness.

Apparently I should have stayed married to the one man who could tolerate me until I was old and arthritic and tied to my bath chair by ropes, with drool running down my chin, because he seems to be the only one who can manage me on any level. (And it still very good at birthday presents). The other one, the brilliant, kind, slightly eccentric Englishman has gone, again, and not so much his choice as mine, because I seem to suck at keeping quiet.

There is a triumverate of women I know going through a divorce. Let's call them A, B & C. A is tall and statuesque, a raven-haired beauty, a studio exec who decided one day that marriage wasn't for her. B is, well, me. And C is a gorgeous blonde, who runs her own event-producing business. She just grew out of her husband one day and three children later when she realized that she was doing all the work. When we go out to dinner we're an amusing bunch in our dresses and our heels. Only three nights ago at a new restaurant in DTLA we sat around a table nibbling on carnitas pizza and English peas with burrata, the ABC triple threat, and all I got was "You look AMAZING. You are glowing" as I brushed my hair off my shoulders in feigned smugness. This is what you get when you're in love, I think to myself. You see, he's not even here and I'm glowing. And if it was a movie I would've looked into the middle distance and there would have been a little blurry sample of choice scenes: us swimming in the Oslofjord, us walking through a Norwegian wood and collecting blueberries, us striding through London and laughing, us sitting at his kitchen table on our matching MacBook Airs, occasionally stopping to look at each meaningfully, or bring the other a cup of tea or a fleeting kiss. I mean this is the moment in the movie when you'd be vomiting at the sweetness of it all.

And the ABCs are so on point. They know stuff. They have been there. A is a grandmother today. For the first time (a miraculously young grandmother it must be said, to a beautiful girl who looks EXACTLY like her). And C tells me I have to walk away and not give a damn and play cool.
Well I'm not cool. I'm not cool or urbane or slick. I am pathetically bourgeois. I want a nice boyfriend, a partner, someone I can do fun things with, someone who wants to bring me tea in the morning and plant lavender with me (sob).
And I messed it up. Royally. Lorde-like in my Royalty. I am a big fat ninny who doesn't know when to step back and couldn't play a game if the lacrosse stick hit me in the nose. I suck. I do. I suck.

The ABCs are not proud to call me one of their own. They have their lives worked out. They go on holiday to places like Paris and Rome where they meet tragic young writers who wear their grandfather's brogues and quote Hemingway.
And what do I do? I stay home with insomnia and weep. And I write bios at 4 am. And I speak to my girlfriends in London and give them the bad news. And I eat ryvita with ham and egg and down with mouthfuls of green juice, because I've heard it's good for me.

But, I did pick up a rather intriguing book:
The Lost Art of Finding Our Way by John Edward Huth

It's about finding our way pre-gps and pre-maps.
But it's also what I'm trying to do, now, constantly. Find my way.

I'm sure none of this makes sense. I felt the need to write it down, in a blathering, messy, I've-only-had-two-hours-of-sleep kinda way. I'm sorry. I feel I have failed, again. And you, dear readers, have only ever been there for me, full of love and support.

I wish I could post my pictures from Norway, of the lovely man swimming in the fjord, or jumping off a rock, or eating pie, or picking berries. I wish I could show you what an idiot I've been and I wish you could shake your heads wisely, and stroke your beards and agree with me. I wish you could see what it was like, for three or five days, to live in bliss, as things should be, sweetly and kindly, without friction or ferocity. I wish you could see why I thought that everything was going to turn out just fine.

Our demons are too rambunctious.
"As flies to wanton boys are we the Gods;
they kill us for their sport."

This is not meant to be.

I glimpsed it. I imagined it. And then it got swiped away, like an erstwhile Tinder lothario.

Please send chocolate.

PS I have a headache and am delirious from no sleep, and I have 22 people coming for supper. Do you think I might be a masochist?