Release
Sometimes it all seems like too much. Make the money, pay the rent, get to the grocery store, feed yourself, go to work, take brown-bag lunches, exercise, see your friends, look for love, do well on the job, do your projects, keep your dreams alive, think about what’s next. Read books, listen to music, keep up on the news, stay conversational. Look all right in clothes. Phone home.
Last Sunday I went to a barbecue/picnic in Prospect Park. Sitting on the grass, I got into an interesting conversation with two women about a disparaging remark that one of the women’s boyfriends had made about her looks, to another friend of his, early in their relationship. The other woman was trying to understand. Why would he have said something about your looks? You are lovely. At last she hit on an explanation she felt confident with. No, here’s the problem, she said. It is not about your looks. He would not have said this if he hadn’t been comparing you to something already in his mind, a vision or an ideal. It’s like Freud, she said—the difference between mourning and melancholia. Melancholia: incomplete grieving for the lost object. The object that was lost is swallowed, protected; he’s harboring something in there, a memory or a fantasy or an old girlfriend, to which he’s comparing everyone, and therefore this bizarre remark to another man about your looks not being right.
So what does this have to do with me feeling that life is too much? It occurs to me that maybe I, too, am playing a game of unfair comparison. A woman’s boyfriend couldn’t see her loveliness because he was hung up on some kind of ideal girlfriend that probably never existed the way he imagined her to, anyway. Perhaps, when I get to feeling overwhelmed, I’ve become hung up on a life that exists predominantly in my imagination. Maybe the beautiful life in there, the life that’s all things at all times, prevents me from seeing and admiring the real life out here, with its many causes for joy and pride.
Karen Horney wrote somewhere that the essence of neurosis is needing to have it all. She described a neurotic woman as one who simply must be a consummate hostess, an accomplished pianist, learned at languages, a patient listener, exciting and vivacious, an excellent cook, an avid traveler, and the best-read person in the room. Horney pointed out that it is not possible to be all these things. To not be miserable, the neurotic simply must let some of it go. She’s unbelievably loath to—but she must.
It occurs to me that in this sense we’re all more or less neurotic. We’re living in a neurotic age. New York city might be the most neurotic burg of all. Or maybe Los Angeles or Washington has that distinction. At any rate. I dream of balance. Perhaps I need to let some stuff go. But I don’t see what.
I’d like to let go of the job.
But I probably need to let go of the vision of the life that feels good all the time. The life where I already have everything that I want.
Last Sunday I went to a barbecue/picnic in Prospect Park. Sitting on the grass, I got into an interesting conversation with two women about a disparaging remark that one of the women’s boyfriends had made about her looks, to another friend of his, early in their relationship. The other woman was trying to understand. Why would he have said something about your looks? You are lovely. At last she hit on an explanation she felt confident with. No, here’s the problem, she said. It is not about your looks. He would not have said this if he hadn’t been comparing you to something already in his mind, a vision or an ideal. It’s like Freud, she said—the difference between mourning and melancholia. Melancholia: incomplete grieving for the lost object. The object that was lost is swallowed, protected; he’s harboring something in there, a memory or a fantasy or an old girlfriend, to which he’s comparing everyone, and therefore this bizarre remark to another man about your looks not being right.
So what does this have to do with me feeling that life is too much? It occurs to me that maybe I, too, am playing a game of unfair comparison. A woman’s boyfriend couldn’t see her loveliness because he was hung up on some kind of ideal girlfriend that probably never existed the way he imagined her to, anyway. Perhaps, when I get to feeling overwhelmed, I’ve become hung up on a life that exists predominantly in my imagination. Maybe the beautiful life in there, the life that’s all things at all times, prevents me from seeing and admiring the real life out here, with its many causes for joy and pride.
Karen Horney wrote somewhere that the essence of neurosis is needing to have it all. She described a neurotic woman as one who simply must be a consummate hostess, an accomplished pianist, learned at languages, a patient listener, exciting and vivacious, an excellent cook, an avid traveler, and the best-read person in the room. Horney pointed out that it is not possible to be all these things. To not be miserable, the neurotic simply must let some of it go. She’s unbelievably loath to—but she must.
It occurs to me that in this sense we’re all more or less neurotic. We’re living in a neurotic age. New York city might be the most neurotic burg of all. Or maybe Los Angeles or Washington has that distinction. At any rate. I dream of balance. Perhaps I need to let some stuff go. But I don’t see what.
I’d like to let go of the job.
But I probably need to let go of the vision of the life that feels good all the time. The life where I already have everything that I want.
Labels: diaryesque
posted by katherine | 5:04 PM
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