Friday 5 February 2010

A Sobering Weekend

It all started out so well.

I had a big birthday party Friday night (with people who are militant alcohol-pushers), a wedding Saturday afternoon, and a scary media dinner party Saturday night. My plan was not to drink any alcohol at either the birthday party or the wedding (check, and check), not to eat anything at the wedding besides maybe a slice of cake, since the reception was 2 to 5 pm and I'd eaten lunch already (check – I had three mini Laduree macaroons, as the "cake" was actually wheels of cheese).

I left the wedding feeling smugly healthy and pleased with myself. (Did I mention I'd also gotten up early and gone to Pilates?) Then I had to walk nearly 2 miles in my stilettos, raced into my flat to do a quick-change for the dinner party, and dashed out the door, feeling slightly exhausted and wishing I could have a nap.
Met up with the Almost-Perfect-on-Paper Cambridge Jew that I cannot fancy any less. (Sorry, Grandma.) Then walked into the editor's house and was promptly handed a huge caipirinha that seemed to contain an entire bottle of rum.

Oh dear.

9 pm came – as did a wee-slip-of-a-fashion-journalist and her media-reporter boyfriend – and still no food. Yours truly, true to form, drank fast. I do remember a few glasses of water in there.

There was food eventually – delicious, but in very dainty portions. Not good. (Actually, I vaguely remember the media reporter making a crack about how he could have eaten about double the pudding, so maybe it wasn't just me.)
And then suddenly it's 1 am and I think I may have been the one who ate all the digestive biscuits and possibly nearly all the cheese. Eeek.

I think there was a bit of fear and loathing going on there. Fear because just because I have been hurt badly does not give me carte blanche to do it to someone else. Loathing because I'm slightly using the NCJ (Nice Cambridge-educated Jew). One minute it was all a bit of fun the way it always has been – we've known each other for more than two years now -- and then I looked over at him at one point during dinner and saw a look I remember from BN2 very very early in our relationship. He was looking at me like he couldn't believe he had gotten that lucky. (Either that, or he couldn't believe how much cheese I was eating.)

Gulp.

I remember the hostess asking us both together if we were together – this at about 1 am. Um, what to say? (I think we both sort of shrugged, and then drank more of whatever it is we were drinking at that point.) On Sunday morning – yes, I crashed at his but (luckily) it was fairly innocent, as I pled too drunk and promptly went to sleep – we sat around watching BBC's Politics Show and talking. After two years of BN2, it was novel to realize I could talk about anything and NCJ happily would have listened without critical (well, critical of me) comment.

It was all very sweet – until suddenly it was just incredibly terrifying, like being handed a superpower that could do great evil or great good. I watched him nod at something incredibly stupid I had just said, thought briefly about how nice it was not to watch every last word (so careful was I about what I said to BN2 that the long pauses in the conversation also irritated him) and then thought: I could really do a lot of damage here. I need to leave now. I didn't feel great that somebody seemed to think I was great – I just felt crummy because I didn't (and don't) feel the same way about him.

He wanted to go out for breakfast or lunch or whatever meal it is one eats at 2:30 pm, having not yet consumed anything since eleventeen tons of cheese and digestive biscuits about 12 hours before. I wanted to escape. Part of it was fear of -- having extracted myself from one very, very messy situation – finding myself embroiled in another. Part of it, I confess, was post-binge controlling behavior. I knew I was going out to dinner Sunday night (with a friend I haven't seen for a year, and didn't want to cancel on), and I didn't want two meals out in a post-binge day. (Frankly, I don't love it on a regular day.) Plus the gym shuts at 6 pm, and I knew I needed to go.

I begged off, saying I wasn't sure what I'd be able to eat (true) and wandered into the grocery store. He followed me. I walked over to the organic shop, and he came along as I looked around and again left empty-handed. I could hardly look at him, and I felt terrible.

I bought a bottle of water and got on the Tube, where I spied a woman reading Elizabeth Gilbert's Committed, her follow-up to Eat, Pray, Love.

I asked her what she thought of it (I'd read an excerpt in O magazine over Christmas and wasn't hooked), and she said she couldn't put it down. "I'm in my mid-3os and I don't know if I want to get married," she said.

Well, I'm in my mid-30s and I know I do, I thought. Definitely not to NCJ though, so going to have to sort that one, and pronto. Ugh.

4 comments:

  1. Oh dear, that's a difficult situation. Don't beat yourself up about it though. I know I've been there - using someone's ingenuous, sincere interest as a crutch for my damaged ego, and then realising what I was doing and feeling awful about it. It's not a terrible thing. NCJ will be fine. And I'm sure, you will both meet the people who will make you happy, and will become uncomplicated, friendly memories to each other.

    ReplyDelete
  2. yep, been there. it's that gross feeling when you suddenly sense you're doing something that is contrary to living an authentic life or something.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Yep, been there...went home with a guy I knew was really interested in me because the ex-boyfriend I'd just broken up with was watching me leave with him.

    Went home with him, but "passed out" (ie pretended!) so that nothing happened except sleep. He took me skiing the next weekend, too (not overnight!), and I went, trying to prop up my bruised ego from my recent break-up. I was not interested in the new guy AT ALL.

    Have been on other "mercy dates" too, but it all felt horribly wrong and icky.

    Finally went on my one and only BLIND date almost 17 years ago (!)...we've been together ever since.

    A lot of frogs, one prince!

    ReplyDelete
  4. i'm a little tangled in a similar situation. it is hard. i keep wondering if i can make myself be into him because i like him so much. :(

    ReplyDelete