Filling In The Blanks

“What’s your street address?” the funny voice asked me via trans-Pacific mobile. When I hesitated, it continued, “I’m filling out your entry in my Outlook address book. I don’t like blanks.”

I laughed.

Whether the funny, already beloved voice that I had known only for a few weeks belonged to a potential stalker ax murderer who would somehow find me and see to my demise as I slept, or to, as I thought at the time, The Love Of My Life, this was a rather effective way to obtain my street address.

Because I don’t like blanks, either.

“Two three three three Kapiolani Boulevard,” I said, still chuckling deeply, until my new love had all of his blanks properly filled in.

“Thanks!” he said, satisfied with his accomplishment. “Now,” his voice grew lower, more intimate, “how was your day, Babe?”

As I told him about my day, I couldn’t help but smile at the immensely whole, loved feeling that I felt, simply because I had filled in his blanks for him. Several years would pass before I would realize that I had amassed an impressive collection of my own blanks to fill in.

Because I had lost so much of myself along the way.

“I LOVE YOU MORE THAN __________.”

I thought about this particular ex-boyfriend yesterday morning. Quite happily bobbing my head to Liz Phair’s “Extraordinary,” inhaling sugared black coffee and Marlboro Reds, I rushed through my RSS feeds at the kitchen table, anxious to get to posting my traditional, annual online Valentine’s Day greeting of that dead Cupid that never fails to make me LOL for like days, no matter how many times I see it. Until I stumbled across an entry from Design You Trust that made me pause: “I love you more than __________ is an exploration into the wonderful world of love.”

Really? “Wonderful”? I scoffed, and clicked through to an online experiment at Paperwhite Studio that asks visitors to fill in the blank of that sentence in honor of Valentine’s Day. Before my jaded cynicism kicked in and caused me to exit the site without further exploring it, I began noticing the variety of responses to this particular query. The responses ranged from the eyeroll-inducing (“I love you more than Twitter”); to the silly (“I love you more than Chris Brown (prior to his Ike Turner-like actions)”); to the poignant (“I love you more than I hate you for all you’ve done”). I chuckled, guffawed, and smiled wanly, as appropriate, to each response, until I reached one.

“I love you more than myself.”

I was stunned, initially. But then I actually began playing it out in my head, attempting to fill in the blank myself. Would I, if I were in a relationship, be able to honestly fill in this blank? Would I be able to say unequivocally, “I love you more than my blog”? (My blog? That which represents all of my writing over the past six years? Hell, no.) “I love you more than my first cigarette and cup of coffee in the morning”? (The nearly ritualistic way in which I begin each of my days? Hell, no.) “I love you more than a bowl of warm peas slathered in butter following three days of not eating”? (A dish that reminds me of my bestest BFF in the whole wide world? Hell, no.)

I love you more than…myself?

No. Way.

Perhaps it is, in fact, my jaded cynicism in all things concerning romance. Perhaps I really am still bitter when it comes to love. Or, perhaps, I am simply being realistic when I state that I truly cannot imagine filling in this particular blank in any meaningful, honest way with future lovers.

Perhaps I no longer feel as if I have those types of blanks to fill in.

SLOUCHING TOWARDS SELF-RESPECT

Still contemplating blanks, I rose from the kitchen table to refill my coffee mug and empty my ashtray. I suddenly found myself thinking of another, different ex-lover, and of his one criticism of me during our breakup conversation that still makes me wince to this day: “You’re not confident enough. Where is the self-confidence I fell in love with before I even met you?”

It stung. But I realize in hindsight that he had a valid point, because the persona I used to hide behind online was for a long time far more confident than was the actual man behind it in real life. Because, I’m fairly certain, the actual man was looking to fill in some blanks in his own life with romance, with a relationship for which he was not ready, with love from someone else before love from his own self. It seems odd that it should have taken me so much time to figure myself out, and so odd that I had to read it from Joan Didion, of all people, on Eric Spiegelman’s Tumblr yesterday morning, after returning to the kitchen table and firing up another Marlboro Red.

To have that sense of one’s intrinsic worth which constitutes self-respect is potentially to have everything: the ability to discriminate, to love and to remain indifferent. To lack it is to be locked within oneself, paradoxically incapable of either love or indifference.

If we do not respect ourselves, we are on the one hand forced to despise those who have so few resources as to consort with us, so little perception as to remain blind to our fatal weaknesses. On the other, we are peculiarly in thrall to everyone we see, curiously determined to live out – since our self-image is untenable – their false notion of us.

We flatter ourselves by thinking this compulsion to please others an attractive trait: a gist for imaginative empathy, evidence of our willingness to give. Of course I will play Francesca to your Paolo, Helen Keller to anyone’s Annie Sullivan; no expectation is too misplaced, no role too ludicrous.

At the mercy of those we cannot but hold in contempt, we play roles doomed to failure before they are begun, each defeat generating fresh despair at the urgency of divining and meting the next demand made upon us. It is the phenomenon sometimes called “alienation from self.” In its advanced stages, we no longer answer the telephone, because someone might want something; that we could say no without drowning in self-reproach is an idea alien to this game.

Every encounter demands too much, tears the nerves, drains the will, and the specter of something as small as an unanswered letter arouses such disproportionate guilt that answering it becomes out of the question. To assign unanswered letters their proper weight, to free us from the expectations of others, to give us back to ourselves – there lies the great, the singular power of self-respect.

Without it, one eventually discovers the final turn of the screw: one runs away to find oneself, and finds no one at home.

— Joan Didion, “On Self-Respect,” Slouching Towards Bethlehem

It’s difficult for me to pinpoint precisely when that old self-confidence of mine, that old self-respect, eventually returned. But it’s not so difficult to realize that it is its return that makes me actually not so bitter on this Valentine’s Day as opposed to others. That it is its return that makes me able to revisit past relationships in a more positive way than I’ve ever been able to achieve before today. And that it is its return that made it sublimely easy for me to, quite recently, kiss yet another potential love interest on the sidewalk, before dashing by myself into the middle of 46th Street without a care as to whether or not anything would become of him.

Because, really, all that mattered was that, to conclude with Didion’s metaphor, when I ran away to find myself, I found myself right there, at home.

Where myself had not been in a very, very long time.

HEART-SHAPED BEETS

I stumbled across the recipe I intend to make for myself, this evening, for a dinner of one, at Emily Magazine yesterday afternoon. I love reading Gould because I can go to her, as I needed to yesterday, for unapologetic references of old “Sex And The City” episodes, and never feel guilty for doing so. (Additionally, I pick up some really tasty recipes.) The recipe is for a warm beet salad, flavored with dill and shallot, and in keeping with the red / pink tradition of St. Valentine’s Day I intend to make it with red beets.

When I mentioned my intended menu rather obliquely on Twitter this morning, a friend asked if I was going to cut the steamed beets into heart shapes. Initially, I scoffed at the suggestion. But now I’m thinking I actually might do that. Because I can’t think of a more perfect metaphorical punctuation mark for my Valentine’s Day dinner. Prepared all by myself. Consumed all by myself. With every confidence that it will be perfect, because I alone made it.

And, perhaps most importantly, with no blanks at all left to fill in.

(Of course this doesn’t mean that I’m not still posting that old annual Valentine’s Day greeting anyway. Because, like I said, of the LOLing for like days.)

Filed under: Books, Food, Relationships, Writing , a-list, alucina, defining moments, dick lit, egreetings, home, linkage, love each day, memories, needful reminders