Fast Mover

"You write so fast, I can't keep up with my responses." That was more or less what the Swiss pianist said. I admitted and I am admitting now that that's one of my problems in my interactions with people. I send them a million emails, one for every tiniest thought. I answer right away, as if it were a conversation. This in itself isn't a bad thing, but in my case it reflects a degree of longing for company, longing for attention.

I had dinner with my Italian friend last night. She had just moved to New York last week. We went to a bad Italian restaurant on the Upper East Side. It was bad to me, and imagine what it was to her, an Italian cook herself. We talked a lot. She is the one person who is most aware of what I have been going through with women. She has known about this part of my rocky life for eight years, more or less. And so she was confident to tell me what she thought, although being Italian, she is confident to say just about anything. (In front of the waiter she complained nonstop about how much burned garlic her spaghetti had as she spooned one after another out onto a growing pile in front of the poor man.) I like her unrestrained frankness. We Chinese, and Americans, like beating around the bush a little too much.

She told me that she was worried. Not so much that I would be single forever, as I joked, but worse, that I would suffer forever. And why? She thinks my problem is I only go after pretty girls, girls who put a lot of makeup, shameless in showing skin. I realized she was basing all this on the India girl, and on that one occasion, my birthday party, where she showed quite a bit of skin, but that was because she wanted to look like that for my party. The point is I realized my friends are helpful not only being there for me, which is the only thing I ask for and is the most important thing they do for me, but also they offer perspectives that I don't see because I am not outside. Nevertheless, I have to be aware of what they see from the outside because, even with this friend who knows my fiascos best, they only see a small portion of what I go through.

Having said this, their perspectives help me a lot. The French girl the other day gave me an interesting analysis of my current pattern, which is a desire to reconstruct the pain from the loneliness of my childhood. It's an irony that when we suffer, some of us seek a future free from that suffering, while others, more complicated people, I would say, seek a future to reconstruct that suffering. The two aren't contrasts if you look deeper. The point of reconstructing the suffering isn't just masochism, but rather, there's a secret desire to see if the past can be undone by reconstructing it. You repeat a pattern hoping magically it will stop on its own. The tragedy is that you try so hard to reconstruct it that you will never actually permit it to be the exception you're seeking.

So regardless of whom I meet, I will do my best, unconsciously, to make her do the same things to me, make myself suffer for the same reasons. Maybe that's why I never have this kind of drama with my friends and family; I don't seek to reconstruct this kind of environment.

Last night the Russian pianist wrote to me about her day. And in it she asked me to call her the next day. Then she added that I could call her now if I wasn't too tired. I didn't call her then. I was tired. But also, I didn't want to repeat the pattern of super-availability. Of course, things would be far simpler if I just focus on myself. When I do, I will naturally be less available. There's a part of me that made me want to see her. Then again, I knew that I wasn't feeling the same enthusiasm I did when I was dating.

I told her the day we broke up that I was giving her space, that my door was open when she was ready. That implies I would wait for her. I suppose that's not something wise to say the moment you break up, but it's in my case the expected thing to say. That is why I don't take back the opera concert we are going to see in December. Or the recital this coming Sunday. It may have been a mistake to promise my door was open (for how long?), but it would be much worse to take it back, to break it. There's an expiration, of course. We weren't married and had a lot to build on to justify some eternal promise. But it has only been three weeks, nearly, and I can live a few more with this promise. I don't suffer from the promise. Curiously, I don't ache from her absence. I am happy when I see her. I even wonder if we would get back together. I wonder if I will be happy with her if we were together. But I know that I can't repeat the pattern. I can't be running after her and forget about myself. Or after anyone else. To lose myself and watch the other person leave me, that's the pattern. My sister told me I should have goals and stick to them. If I must have a goal in my love life, I think it should only be this: stop reconstructing the pattern. It doesn't matter how pretty the girl is, how soon I want to sleep with her, if I want marriage or whatever else from the relationship. It will all fall into play, it would all make sense, if I make the effort to stop the pattern. And the simplest way, though so difficult that I haven't in all my adult life succeeded, is to be present with myself. When I do that, I will not be answering emails with lightening speed.