Dear Jenn,
I’m with Tree. If it weren’t for me, nudging you in critical directions in your life, you’d be toast by now. You know I speak the truth. You’d still be in Philly—wearing the same hairstyle—and the ozone problem would be forty times worse, thanks to your sick aerosol hairspray habit. You’d be 500 lbs. of uneducated, bedridden blubber, eating nothing but Tastycakes and home-delivered soft pretzels and Lee’s ham-and-provolone hoagies. If it weren’t for me, your mom would still be back in the old house and you’d be sleeping on a squashed futon on the red shag carpeting in her basement.
But no. I nudged you. I pushed you. I cheered you on. I shoved you, when necessary, and I got your ass out the door and off to a terrific college that 1) shocked the nuns of St. Basil Academy (which, as I recall, delighted you) and 2) set you on a path that changed your life. For the better. The Big Better.
You need me. You just don’t see it right now because the Hantavirus is starting to screw with your brain. I told you not to feed that mouse.
Sincerely,
Wanting
***
Dear Wanting,
No offense, but I think that’s pretty presumptuous of you. It might have just been intuition that got me where I needed to be. Case in point: I gave up the red Sally Jesse Raphael glasses on my own, without wanting anything else in particular. Just plain good intuition. Nothing to do with you at all. I’m just saying.
I think you’re getting a little big for your britches, frankly.
Peace out,
Jenn
***
Dear Jenn,
Are you breaking up with me? Is that what this is?
Wanting
***
Dear Wanting,
Maybe I just need a little space right now. I don’t know.
Jenn
***
Jenn,
Is there someone else? Tell me the truth or I swear to God I’ll get you back in that Philly basement eating hoagies with red shag bits of carpet sprinkled on top.
Wanting
***
Wanting:
See? This is exactly what I’m talking about. You’ve got an anger problem. Nothing is ever enough for you. Everything is black and white with you, when in fact, I am trying to live a life well-lived. I am trying to embrace the gray. Clearly, you will never understand me.
I think parting ways is definitely for the best.
Jenn
***
Jenn: Who is it? Is it intuition? Is he hot? Because I heard INTUITION SUCKS SCHWETTY BALLS. Like you. You’ll never find anyone who loves you like I do. You just wait. Bad move, Jenn.
Wanting
***
Dear Wanting,
There’s nobody else. I just want to sit still. I just want to stop the carousel. I just want to chill by the fireplace I don’t have, stroking the nice purring low expectations in my lap. I am tired of trying to write the perfect screenplay, the perfect book, the perfect blog. I am tired of trying to be the perfect mother, the perfect wife, the perfect daughter.
I want to take my children to cemeteries because I like cemeteries. I want to tell them about puberty way too early. I want to screw up colorfully and have it be A-OK. Do you get that? Can you get that?
I want to sit inside my losses and paste pretty postcards on their walls. I want to learn to live with loss without asking the universe every five minutes what it means and why everything I love was taken/can be taken/might be taken/will be taken. I want to be here. I don’t even need to be happy. I just want to hear myself breathe.
You’re too fast for me now. Maybe you always were. You make my brain spin and pop out of my ears like a double-sided cuckoo clock.
Not-yours,
Jenn
***
Dear Jenn,
That was a crappy simile. FYI.
Wanting
P.S. You sound really annoying now. I’m glad I broke up with you because you’ve changed. And I’m not just talking about your breasts.
***
Dear Wanting,
I know. I’m leaving it alone, the part about the cuckoo clock. Imperfect. So what?
If you want perfect breasts, go to Hollywood.
Jenn
P.S. Stop leaving notes on my car.
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This is so much how I feel lately. I want to break up with my “wanting”. I think I will make it my New Year’s resolution.
p.s.
I love your writing
“I want to take my children to cemeteries because I like cemeteries. I want to tell them about puberty way too early. I want to screw up colorfully and have it be A-OK. Do you get that? Can you get that?”
perfect.
Having experienced them, well, second-hand, I can say that mommy boobies are the best boobies.
Screw Hollywood.
Good heavens, you are beautiful.
I loved this! There’s a Woody Allen book with a segment about Death coming to the door. Or something like that. It’s been a long time since I’ve read it. Allen’s Death is pretty damn funny. So is your Wanting. Tell Wanting to go hang out with Death and leave you alone.
This is perfect. I’m thinking this will be my bedtime story for the next little while. Wanting’s been treating me like a $2 hooker for a while now.
Personally, I’m fond of the double sided cuckoo clock simile, imperfect or not.
I hope wanting doesn’t start leaving drunk messages on your answering machine, looking for a booty call, because honestly, wanting seems like the type.
Love the post, love the sentiment.
Breaking up is hard to do.
But must you give me nightmares with replays of the red shag rug in the basement? I think I can write a blog from this blog!
Just don’t take up with Guilt if I reminisce about our Philly past :>)
Love, Mom
Clearly
Our favorite family outing is walking through the 478-acre cemetery that is a ten minute walk from our place: over 600,000 buried there. The real Wizard of Oz is buried there (Frank Morgan). My children run from stone to stone and we talk about the dead. It’s rather Victorian, and beats Sponge Bob Squarepants any day. So go to the cemetery with your girls and enjoy – its one of the best family field trips ever.
P.S. Tell Wanting to come to Brooklyn and I will kick his ass.
I agree with your mom – stay away from guilt. Breaking up with wanting is bad but breaking up with guilt is impossible. You always end up feeling, well, guilty. Trust me…I had guilt over for dinner last night.
Acceptance just called in tears to say that Wanting may be all sexy and easy, but why are you still writing all these notes to Wanting with “I want, I want, I want” in them when Acceptance has a bunch of stuff on the bathroom counter already and is in the kitchen fixing you a sandwich and putting together a little peanut butter and crackers for the mouse. Acceptance was all “she doesn’t even know I’m alive” and then resolved to be more patient and hung up. And I was like “why the hell are you calling me, I’m just a lurking non-commentor.”
Loved this post. It brought tears to my eyes.
i’ve had ‘breaking up is hard to do’ stuck in my head all morning. i sang it in the shower, i sang it while making breakfast, and then here was your post! synchronicity, i tell you.
Dear Jenn,
You’ll be back. Stoicism deadens the spirit. You think you’ve found something special with Acceptance, but what you don’t know is that Acceptance brings a lot of baggage to the relationship. You go to bed with Acceptance, and 15 minutes later Apathy comes sneaking in under the covers for a three-way. You let Acceptance move in, and pretty soon his loser cousin, Sloth, is sleeping on your couch.
No, your spirit is too young to die, even if Disappointment and his thugs: Despair, Hopelessness and Discouragement are beating it in a dark alley with baseball bats.
Without me, who is going to make you try new things? Acceptance? No way. That poseur is all about same-old same-old and lowered expectations.
I think I know what this is really about. Envy’s been talking to you again hasn’t he? He may be my cousin, and I’m sorry I invite him over for dinner every now and then, but he’s always been the black sheep in my family. No good ever came from him, and you just say the word and I’ll tell him to stay home.
-Want
My goodness emotions….Can’t we all get along??
Yen and yang people. Or as my dad the doctor says about good health “to hell with all the fads! Everything in moderation, that’s the key!” Same with your emotions. We need want…it’s what get’s us out of bed in the morning. It’s what gives us goals and helps us achieve. It goes along with hopes and dreams which can’t be a bad thing. Well, unless you hope to become some world dominating super evil dude….that would be bad…but I digress. Anyway, along with those you also need acceptance. You need to realize which goals are achievable or worthy and which are too not.
So give all of your emotions the “Let’s just be friends” speech and invite them ALL over for drinks once an a while.
“I want to sit inside my losses and paste pretty postcards on their walls.”
I just love that line, even if I can’t put my finger on exactly why. It just seems to say so much in so few words.
Love the post! Happy New Year!
Don’t worry–Want (or your spurning of him) isn’t going to get you back to that shag-carpeted Philly basement. (Not that there was anything wrong wtih that basement, Mater!) Regression would do that, and he’s MY boyfriend right now. He tagged along with the family over the Christmas holidays and convinced me and my youngest sister that we’ll have to celebrate her 33rd birthday next year at Palace Roller Skating on the Boulevard.
(Loved the post, BTW!)
I’ve been mulling over your new years post for a few days now. Trying to decide if I should comment and what to say. It seems all of your commenters are amazing writers, like you. I wish I could write so eloquently as you all do.
I recently cut back my hours at work, because my husband is working more and I’d rather not put my kids in daycare.
It’s easier to justify buying ‘want’ things when it’s your own hard earned $ you are spending. I’ve never had to ask for $ before, ever. I’ve always had a source, either from working or parents who just kind of gave it to me whenever. We weren’t rich or even well off, I guess it was sort of an allowance or the fact that I did more than my share of housework when my mom was always sick in bed and my brothers did F%^# All around the house. I guess I’m just saying that I know how it feels to need to/want to stop wanting and just get used to the fact that it will be different for a while. Budget sounds like a 4 letter word to me sometimes, but that’s life right now. So I am trying to make it into a positive. One. Day. At. A. Time.
Oprah said,” Never expect anything, and you will never be disappointed.” That is so true, but why do we still feel the need to live up to everyone elses expectations. My mom, my grandma, my mother-in-law, my husband, my kids, people on the street. Who are these people and why the hell do they care what I do anyway!!
And yes, take your girls to cemetaries. I find them to be very calming. I’have had to get over my fear of them as we live right across the street from one. When I first moved in, I would look out the bathroom window at night and imagine ghostlike figures emerging from the shadows across the street. And now with children, how do I convince them that monsters & bad ghosts don’t exist when I myself am truly afraid of the dark, because of the monsters. How irrational am I??!! Sorry for the rant. And I’m not sure if I even said what I meant to say, but I need to go make lunch for my kids. Not because it’s expected of me,but because they will fall over dead if I skip it too many days in a row!
That was like the girly version of Fight Club.
Visit the cemetaries but PLEASE remember some of the stones are so old and dangerously falling over. Kinda like me today, ha ha
You make me smile, dear.
I admire you so…
I’ll tell you what. You tell me how it goes, and if it’s good, I’ll consider breaking up with wanting myself. Want is like my pusher, you know?
Haha.
xox
I just finished blogging about how strange it is to feel totally crappy right now when my husband who has been away for 4 months will finally be home in a week. And I think “wanting” hits the nail on the head. Wanting just needs to go away. He is the way to aggressive date. I am going to go elope with contentment so I can get through this next week sane.
p.s. I’m new to your blog and I love it. I am a wimpy writer myself, but at least I know a good one when I read one.
Jenn, it’s official. I love you.
Awesome entry…substance and hilarity all rolled into one. I love it!
will there be any post-relationship-coital action, though? because that’s truly the best way to wrest that bastard outta your heart for good (as well as away from your couch and your refrigerator). empty sex always kills the leftover pangs of longing pretty dead, I remember finding (back in the dear, dim old days of pre-marital heartbreak — so very different from the marital kind).
p.s. sigh.
I’ve just enjoyed myself so much during this first visit to your blog. I read many things here especially loved your wean article for brainchild, I almost wept, it touched me where I live.
Giving up want, the heart of Buddhist wisdom. Best wishes on this, and all journeys in 2007 :0)
Ah, but Want can be pretty cool. It’s what you do with Want that’s important. And everyone gets to sit in the backseat now and again. It’s Want’s turn to ride bitch for awhile.
Faerie Rebecca…where have YOU been all my life. Wow. “It’s wants turn to ride bitch for a while…” I’m on my way to your blog now to see what else might be there for me to embrace.
Jenn…love love love your post today and am really diggin on the food for thought from this interesting post and comment list.
Want can be okay. I agree. It’s what you do with it. It’s being consumed by it that will squeeze every ounce of joy from your soul and take you to a place where you really don’t like to be.
Everything in moderation my sweet friend.
Jenn, a couple of days ago I read Vanished from Brain Child. I bawled. I had heard about vanishing twins before, and I believe that this happened to me as well. Well, not really vanished, but I do think that my first child was a twin. After a stressful incident at work, I came home and bled into the toilet. I was sure there was something besides blood there. I almost kept it to show my doctor, but decided I didn’t really want to know. Anyway, I just thought I’d share this.
I love the idea that the other baby/fetus absorbed into Sophie’s arm as a lesion!
Aw shucks you guys :::blush blush:::
I sat on that hump in the backseat sooo many times–and sometimes I feel like that’s the metaphor for my life! It’s hugely uncomfortable, but when you think about it, it can be a command position, there in the back. You’re not really in the back, not really in the front, but you have easy access to both. Only the person riding bitch can really hear what’s going on in the front seat and pass it to the folks in the back. She can slide up and give her input and advice to those up front, or just hang with the backseat folks. Yeah, you never know where to put your feet, or if your butt is squeezing the people beside you, so it’s not exactly comfortable. But it’s a place we all sit in sometimes–and a place we all *should* sit every now and then.
Found your site today and love this post. It describes exactly my new years resoltion that I haven’t been able to put a name too. Thank you. Your writing is wonderful. Screw wanting. Nothing is ever good enough!
This is an amazing bit of writing here I want to say but then being amazing is the kind of thing that makes it hard to break up with wanting.
I want to break up with wanting. But I want wanting to love me anyway. I’m at that stage. Love me always after I dump you even though I will move on.
So we stay together. I keep waiting for that moment when I’ve had enough and it lasts.
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