Found a nice wifi place in a secret area of Santa Monica. No tourists. Next time I come it will be to my own apartment, or Shutters, The Georgian, The Marriot or The Loews. Have stayed in the later two. The Georgian is some peoples dream. I can do tea there but am more the Shutters type. The Georgian reminds me of The Ritz Plaza, non-60′s version, in Miami Beach, though they look nothing alike.

Am plugging Shayna‘s my musical highway project every chance that I get. As bloggers we can be inspirational. Shayna is. Read Cooper’s comment. Cracked me up.

Reminder to self: Go to Radio Shack and buy a two gb back up thingie.

Wrote this post for me. Was walking and couldn’t get it out of my head.

Possible self-centered, depression alert though with a happy ending, and never shallow
It stings. Can’t help that. Seeing it everywhere with some names in the acknowledgments brings it all back. That year when I was far from at my best. Oh yes, that girl, no not that one. Another recent dead mother one. She had it more together than I did. Diamonds on leather; love that look. Always think that I can’t afford it.

She had inspirational last words from her mother. I had “going to the movies with the girls, ma, see you tomorrow.”
“Bye sweetie, speak to you in the morning.”

Did we say that we loved each other? Probably, I like to make my family say that. Though I know words of endearment can be the most hollow. We did so love each other. She was my best friend. Really

It will be five years in October. So weird, I always forget the exact day. Just that it was 33 days after..have made my peace with both events. Though wish that if they had to make another movie about it, even one by Oliver Stone, it would come out on 9/11. Let me be even more real. I’m sick of the families. Know what a horrible self-indulgent thing that is to say. Sometimes it feels like every time that they go to the bathroom they let the press know.

Yes, I feel their pain, and feel their pain, and feel their pain. I know as well or better than most that there is no time limit on grief. I feel their grief every time I look downtown. And I feel my own, though it has receded to a dull ache that becomes acute very very occasionally.

I don’t need constant updates on their pain. I don’t need need constant reminders of that day. I have said this all before, and maybe I have said it better. But today is a day for new beginnings, and putting the past into perspective.

I won’t see the film. Why be reminded of something that I live with? I am as usual digressing. Scared to come to the point. No it’s all tied together. My mother’s slow decline. My inability to deal with it despite being a gerontologist, really. The day that wasn’t just a younger generations biggest event, but all of ours. Yes JFK’s assassination was horrible. Yes the world changed afterward. It would have anyway. And Katrina was the most horrible force of nature in the history of the USA. But that day….I remember every second from the moment I woke up to the radio announcer saying: “put on the TV.” Didn’t even think it strange. Just did it. And knew immediately. Lucia will tell you. We fought. She refused to believe me. Then we were cut off. She believed me.

I wasn’t myself that year. Hadn’t been since 95, and wasn’t going to begin making my grand comeback until I began to blog. I was nasty, bitchy, obese and so not me. The weight gain happened so quickly, and slowly it is coming off. Wearing sizes that I had never known existed, was temporary, but made me so sad and angry and bitter. I’m not a naturally happy delightful person yet still I am one who can laugh quickly until it hurts. I had never been a crier. Crying doesn’t become me and gives me migraines. Maybe it was perimenopause. The soap star’s wife was convinced that I had to be in perimenopause long before I was. She couldn’t take me being older and still flooding. Nobody knows what perimenopause is anyway. A word invented for boomers so that we won’t feel badly about growing older.

Yet the year of the class almost everybody wanted to be my friend. She of the diamonds with leather would call and call me. Even after we met at Borders on the East Side, and she told me that I was better in emails than in person. Why continue to call?

Didn’t she understand how hurtful that was? Or did she just not think?

I try. I really try to think before I speak. Still I hurt some old great friends. Over semantics, of all silly things. “Senile is a meaningless word. It’s demented.” Why did I say that if the word “senile” made her feel better? And not being available when she needed me. Because I was depressed and the thought of taking public transit for two and a half to three hours, to get to Queens was just too much. I should have taken a car service. Didn’t even think of it. I am so so sorry, JTW, I will always love you. Though I more than understand why you never returned my calls or acknowledged the self-centered package of materials that I sent you. No, she wasn’t the senile one.

I know that I have hurt some bloggers, it wasn’t by intent.
Maybe it was at times. I’m not blaming that class. I was screwed up. The right and rites of mourning had been taken from me. I understand why now. No longer even resent it.

Want to see women at war? Step back in time to the class. I was vulnerable and in need of new friends. Having seen my city’s underbelly, I was no longer in love with it. And the city, it was everything to me. It was my family in every way possible. It no longer is. This one is. I know that for sure now. People that I like are complicated, but not fraught with anger. Competitive, of course. More open about it, yet sweeter. Oh what am I saying? A third of this city is just like me. Former New Yorker’s in search of the holy grail. See Friends with Money. No film has ever captured my own self-doubts so well. There is a bit of me in every woman in that film. It is our Clare Booth Luce’s The Woman, a highly underrated masterpiece about women in a hair salon. And if there’s one thing that I know, it’s Madison Avenue hair salons

The class made me doubt myself. I was a good reporter. But was I? How could I be one, if I were so disorganized? I left the paper. Didn’t want to inflict my disorganized self on them. How had I made it so far in life if I was so scattered?

That class it could have ruined me. Hadn’t been in such demand as a friend since the 80′s. Yet as quickly as they wanted my friendship they turned on me. I understand that also. I unwittingly and unwillingly set up too many expectations. For I am a nice person who happens to be bright, witty and articulate. But better on paper. Literally, in emails.

So that summer, just under two years ago, I began a blog. I didn’t know it then and wasn’t to know it for sometime, but that blog I named “Courting Destiny” for I was, would save me. Make as much fun as you want about me and BE. It brought me an audience. Then came, I’m just a 20 year old girl with a blog. Give me a break. Cooper’s a paradox. A gift sent by the Dawg I believe. While I delight in embarrassing him, when I met Doug, I understood that chivalry isn’t dead or outdated.

Then came so many more bloggers, good people, of all beliefs, that my head swims just thinking of them. They helped me move on beyond that class though I never mentioned it. It wasn’t an empathetic or warm class. Before I left New York, a week ago, I shredded the last of my submissions. Why I thought I had to save things that told me I had nothing worth saying, or couldn’t write and more, but my characters and stories are excellent, isn’t beyond me.

I used to delight in self-torture. No longer. I can’t help but continue to pay homage to bloggers. You taught me that people are truly kind with good intentions and that I don’t have to always doubt myself, my virtues, my talents and even my ability to be a good friend. I no longer need to lash out, or get out my snarky side in politics.

My sister just called. We were literally from sea to shining sea. As she looked out on the Atlantic on her cell; I looked at the Pacific on mine. I told her that I had made my decision. She so understood. And I will continue to get niece Jacqueline expensive gifts for she is one of the lights and joys of my life. My next post might be on the difference between Jacqueline’s camp and mine. Or it might be another conversation with myself. Or a funny conversation that I overheard.

I have the distance and perspective that I needed. Now comes time for the joy. Yes, I so mean that. New York is my past. I have to thank that class for first letting me see that I no longer belong there. It’s here where people have always come to reinvent themselves that I belong. And I don’t mean reinvent as in change myself. No, I don’t mean that at all. I use the word reinvent as a substitute for being the real me. The witty, bright articulate woman who shed her excess baggage and skin back in New York, and can feel free to be the person I was but better. The class ended two years ago. I wasn’t yet ready to acknowledge my good points. I so am now.

For I finally understand that I owe nothing to anybody but me. I know, I know, people come to New York to reinvent themselves. But I can’t. It’s too filled with people that I know, and memories of people no longer here. I need the newness SoCal offers me.

I am truly blessed, and it is blogging that brought me to this point. And now I have to shed this laptop and go down to the Pacific and tell my new ocean that it belongs to me as much as the Atlantic does. I am a person who knows two oceans well. How lucky can one woman be?

And to prove to myself that stings are just quick jabs that quickly go away, I bought the book. It’s different than the blog. Might just surprise you.

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