Full Of Sh*t

As much as I complain about my disastrous romantic endeavors, I’ve been quite grateful for the hands love has dealt me, and how they’ve touched me (Dirty? You decide.). As the old saying goes: “Nothing bad ever happens to a writer.” To those who care about me, this seems to be a cop-out, a reason to be emotionally reckless, to maintain damaging relationships and continue caring about those who do not adequately return the sentiments.

To them, my answer has always been this metaphor:

If every day of your life, someone delivered you a turd in a box, that would seem like a bad thing. But if you learned to make beautiful sculptures out of them, eventually, you’d start to welcome the shit, you may even start ordering bigger and better turds! (Not that I’m calling the women I’ve dated “turds”—that would be rude…) But the point remains, that I have put my bad experiences to good use.

This weekend, I met an older woman. She was intelligent, intuitive, beautiful—with much more life experience and wisdom than I. We’ll call her “McBrilliant.” I offered her this explanation when the topic of a certain someone came up. We were talking about the movie “The Last Mistress” and I said I went to see it alone, after said someone stood me up last weekend. I was inspired by the horrible circumstances in which the leading lady experiences love and grateful that my own situation had not been quite so shitty…

The heroine has it far worse than I do, and I was comforted by the comparison of my own problems to hers. McBrilliant gave me a stern look and bopped me on the head. “You realize,” she said, “that even if your house is filled with these ‘beautiful sculptures,’ it still smells like shit. There are plenty of other materials you could sculpt with. You don’t have to accept the shit-box delivery.”

“I guess,” I replied, “But I’ve come to rely on this shit. I guess I’m just worried that without this, I’ll be empty?”

As a cancer survivor and a much more settled spirit, McB chided me for my childish insecurities. “Life is too short. Why would you waste your time thinking about someone who doesn’t want to be with you?”

Damn. No one ever put it in such clear terms before. I’ve been sitting with the sculptures so long, so focused on the intricacies & details, the shapes & colors, that I forgot what they’re made of—I guess I got used to the smell. This stinks.

Loving someone without any expectation or concern for reciprocity is not noble, it’s stupid. And ultimately, it feels like shit.