Personal

So my friend Katie sent me this exceptional article about the emergence of comedy pod-casting.

And by the last sentence I was in tears.

As an outsider, it felt wrong to watch, yet compelling, in the exact way that the best podcasts can feel as they explore that wonderfully wrong airspace between the hard joke and the hard cry.

I guess, in that I keep writing a blog I am a bit retrograde, but that's okay. I prefer being able to edit.

Anyways that sentence about a person observing a memorial for Mitch Hedberg started me crying, but not about Mitch Hedberg. I was crying about the end of this latest relationship. About the fact that I have this new mental rule that states unequivocally that I can never date a comedian again, that the rule somehow refers back to the idea that all comedians are at base damaged people, who have taken their damage and turned it into material, and that if I am also a (granted very amateur) comedian I must somehow be damaged too.

I was reading a post on how to write like a funny woman and realized a couple of rules used in improv comedy work really well when applied to relationships.

1. Be in a scene (a place, a time, an action).

So in terms of improv or writing this means, don't describe or overly dramatize what is happening. Just be in it.

That's probably okay right? Now that I have this empty time to fill.

I went to the gym again yesterday. This time it was really hard, and I ran much more slowly, and I stared at all the other people working out and I felt like a goof. A lonely goof who wanted someone to talk to.

So I talked to an older lady while we picked through a pile of drastically reduced cardigans at Zellars.

Then I went to my friends house to cook her dinner. Her mom just died suddenly in a car accident and I was invited over as an expert.

Only every person's experience is different. So I just made her soup and we talked, and I tried to make her laugh at least once every half hour.

Our ability to bear the weight of the people we hope to be and forgive the people we are.

To believe everything entirely, while also calling bullshit for what it is.

~ Sugar

I'm sitting waiting to skype with my friend who lives in Amsterdam, reading posts on getting through break-ups, how to make a coconut curry soup, and how to replace bathroom tiles.

I want to write about this break-up the way I am feeling it. It feels like:

I'm just gonna make this soup, fix those tiles. Oh I'm going to cry a bit now, but it's fine. It's fine.

I'm sad, but if I compare today's feelings to Monday, the day I realized that I had pinned my hopes on a relationship that was more or less broken, the end feels better then being part of something broken.

So it fine now. It's shitty and sorrowful, and lonely, but honestly, it's fine.