The Seaweed Is Always Greener/ In Somebody Else's Lake

When I kept diaries and then journals growing up, they usually stopped when life got really interesting. Read: Complicated and difficult. Often I found the pain of living through certain things once – and then picking them over endlessly in mind – to be more than enough.

Wednesday morning Bachelor No. 2 picked me up from Heathrow at 7 a.m. Two hours later, back at his flat, I spied a pair of silver earrings sitting on the bedside table – earrings that very definitely were not mine.

It is one thing to know that someone you’re dating might be sleeping with someone else. It is another thing to know it for sure. And it is still another to realize that in fact you have met this woman. In the pub. One one of your first dates. With BN2.

Even then, before this woman had any significance in my life (let alone any sinister significance), she reminded me of nothing so much as Ursula from A Little Mermaid – both in general size and that of her huge, garishly colored lips.

I find it somehow ironic that The Other Woman – or, judging from conversations BN2 and I have had over the past couple of days, One of The Other Women – is significantly larger than I ever was. One of the things I remember best about my brief meeting with her is that she behaved in a way I recognized as (Classic?) Fat Girl With a Successful Career – mostly because I behave (behaved? Used to behave?) this way myself. Which is to think that nobody will pay attention to you for your looks, and that instead you must be funnier or more intelligent than everyone else. I was exhausted by my brief conversation with her. (She actually is enormously successful.) I remember walking up Upper Street wondering if I still behaved that way, and wondering – insert collective ha ha in retrospect – if Bachelor No. 2 would be dating me if I looked (and behaved) the way I used to.

* * *

Things are not over with BN2 – not yet, but I think it’s inevitable. I just can’t seem to rip the plaster off quickly.

He says I am the most important woman in his life apart from his daughter. I don’t think it’s just a line, but I don’t think I can live this way. I want to be with someone with whom I am a better version of myself, and I don’t like how I’ve been this week. I don’t like how much time suddenly I spend wondering who he’s with and doing what, and where every sentence he utters seems to end in an ellipsis (denoting words he’s deleted because he can’t tell me them). Where every text at a strange hour is another woman, and every lapse in response time is because he’s with someone else. Where leaving him feels like my shift is ending.

I went to a party Friday night feeling defiant – and wearing an outfit I know BN2 likes. I got appallingly drunk on champagne and proceeded to kiss at least one man. I say at least one because the next day I found a business card in my purse for someone I don’t even remember meeting.

For the record, I don’t think I kissed the owner of the business card. But it was that kind of evening.

I didn’t feel better.

(Especially not since I was on weekend duty and had to wake up and deal with reading and analyzing nine newspapers.)

* * *

So… Passover? Passover in Miami actually was okay.

At the first seder I had a little of everything and a double helping of kugel, a Jewish casserole that in this case was a deliciously sweet version.

At the second seder – cooked by the same person, and with the same food except brisket instead of chicken – I skipped the gefilte fish and the matzo ball soup. Although this gefilte fish was relatively low in calories (I saw the jar it was from – 65 calories a serving), it still wasn’t worth even that. The matzo ball soup – usually a favorite of mine – wasn’t worth much either.

Both nights, I managed to keep in mind that Passover baked goods usually look a whole lot better than they taste – they’re somewhat akin to lowfat versions in that there are a lot of substituted ingredients. So I had a couple of (small) pieces of chocolate and some fruit.

I then proceeded to break Passover (not that I’ve observed the “no bread for eight days” rule for years) Monday by treating myself to a dessert I love. I don’t remember particularly fearing that it would lead to a binge and in fact, it didn’t.

As for my grandmother, she was in significantly worse shape than the last time I’d seen her. I spent a lot of the four days I spent with her thinking about how much her life these days is a study in motion efficiency – she doesn’t (can’t?) move even a tiny bit extra – and how much mine has become the opposite.

One morning – feeling a bit like a caged animal – I walked the 17 flights of stairs up to her apartment, grateful that I could.