(well, actually still have- although we don't speak that often and I somehow lost her phone number when my last cell phone died. Kelly, Call ME!)
We were roommates in three different houses over a period of a couple of years. Not three back to back places. We were room mates and then we'd part and then something would come up and it made sense to be roommates again, and then part and then our last house, a rambly, vine covered shack near the railroad tracks.
(Where my entire room would shimmy with the roar of the trains going by- which I thought that was so cool and romantic).
We never parted ways through a stormy argument. And neither did we go looking for homes together with heady, impossible, doomed-for-heartbreak, woman-friend love.
Kelly was a person who was very easy for me to live with. She remains a person who I find very easy to be around and talk to.
For that reason, likely, I have always taken this friendship for granted.
(Cause see, it doesn't mean that much unless you're suffering and tense and either trying to win over or be won over. Where's the challenge? Where's the testing your metal?)
And, I am now at this moment remembering Kelly and am flooded with memories and details and would like to tell you about her, except I also want to tell you something she said to me on the phone about a month ago.
I was telling her about my new career and how I thought one of the benefits for me (why I thought this might be a particularly good fit), was that in order to do this job, one has to focus on another person and "assess". You look for clues, you hunt for details, you listen to what they say and what they don't say. A person becomes a puzzle and the job is to figure it out and do something about it, and then look again to see how that's working.
And, I concluded- what's cool and kind of energizing for me - is in this process, you kind of "lose your self" (not in an icky co-dependant way I assured her, I mean, yeah one has to be on the look-out) but in a "freedom from bondage of self" way. Like a "transcendence", thing.
One's "you" is still present, in the chewing things over (intellect, experience, imagination, creativity), but it's not "you, thinking about you"- which is kind of a relief.
I paused, waiting to hear her congratulations (Kelly took tons of comparative religion courses in college, plus she's got a Masters in Counseling, and most of all she knows me.)
She responded with "uh, Anne, I think 'losing' yourself, is the last thing you need to do."
She said this very matter-of-factly. Which made me pause.
I pointed out the years of "wallowing in self" I had already done- the waste, exhaustion, depression, destruction (some of the worst, she had personally witnessed).
She pointed out other things very specific to me.
I considered the fact that as a professional counselor she'd be fairly screwed (out of a job with an obsolete Master's Degree) if self-analysis were proven a sham, a misguided distraction.
My way (or that way) allows me to just punch the clock, while making use of the bits and pieces of religion/spirituality I've collected over the years -without asking me to take on Feng Shui, or regular meditation, or join a church.
It makes peace with my mother's prompts ("lord, Anne! You are SO serious. Why don't you clean your room? Take a walk?")
It allows me to "pass", in such a way I am now a pleasure to include in one's dinner party (although I prefer the word "connect"), without total capitulation.
Which, I'm not entirely sure I could do even if I tried. But maybe.
Another phone conversation with a different friend recently went:
"See, I'm like you. I'm just never going to 'fit-in'."
To which I responded, indignantly- "Wait a minute. You haven't seen me in a long, long time. I can totally fake it, now."
AND THEN- yesterday I went to the library looking for more Erich Fromme, because out of nowhere he floated to me (If you missed yesturday's post he's this post WWII humanist, psychiatrist, economist, sociology guy).
And I'm reading and getting kind of excited. Feeling that feeling of "YES!- here it is! How to live in the world with other people, inside your skin AND connected AND true to yourself while also hooked in to all that is noble and right and NOT-Tragic about the human condition."
Except then as I read, I realize he'd call "making peace with my mother"- "narcissism"- a neurotic, juvenile, cowardly attempt to reenter the womb.
Where I see "connecting" he sees "herd mentality of the mercantile class, desperate to avoid their own mortality."
And Finally- where I see "transcendence" he's seeing it "escape for the poorly developed character".
He's using words like "sadist" and "masochist" and suggesting its people like myself who make society ripe for totalitarianism.
But see, I'd vote "no" for totalitarianism. Really!
I haven't finished this book. But I'll tell you, even as Fromme has explained, PERFECTLY the rise and success of George W. Bush (something I'll elaborate on at our next dinner party, maybe? Just Kidding) . . . my enthusiasm has begun to wane.
If you made it down here, I'd like to say, I'm also disappointed about Dave Chappell's canceled third season.
