Day 53: A Mid-Week Haunting

So there you have it: "Purple Pump Power." Here is an example of a casual outfit made chic by these simple but rockin heels. And that ends our saga: formal evening, formal day, and casual day all taken care of. And whether we mixed the shoes with colors or neutrals, it still looks right. Besides, who wants to wear black pumps all the time when you can wear purple ones? By the way, I am convinced everyone should own a pair of skinny black jeans. I'm working on that.

"Miranda, I'm still asleep. How can you have had an emotional mini-drama already?" Carrie

Today's episode deals with the ghosts of relationships past. Miranda gets invited to the opening of Steve's new bar. At about the same time, she starts hearing strange sounds above her apartment and decides it's a ghost. Carrie also gets an invitation to opening, only to find out that Aidan is Steve's partner in the bar venture. When Steve tells her that he invited her, not Aidan, she decides to go anyway and meet Aidan for the first time since their split. When they see each other, Aidan has gotten a hair cut and started smoking, and though he's cordial to her, he keeps things brief. Charlotte, having recently moved back in with Trey, confronts his mother's overbearing influence on their interior decorating choices. And Samantha is learning to talk about her feeling with Maria--a little too much for her liking. When men from Samantha's past keep popping up and Maria can't cope, the two go their separate ways.

Well, I have to post today. It's 9:55 the night before our store opens, and I need to post again tomorrow before work. I have lost track of how many episodes I need to watch before the movie comes out. I'm just writing, hoping that it all magically works out in the end. But I'm just guessing that I would need to write at least every day, and I don't know if it's going to happen. Well, as long as the I watch the movie, I guess I don't have to watch review it until later, right? Right? I can' t hear you.

The most interesting thing about this episode for me is one of Carrie's lines. Talking about Aidan she says, "I'm just afraid that how I treated him will haunt me for the rest of my life." Maybe we all have those people from our past--the one with whom we didn't quite share the best versions of ourselves and with whom we wish we could have experienced things differently. Perhaps it was a relationship that went south because of something we directly did or a friendship that ended because of our actions or words or lack thereof.

For me, that "ghost" is Jorge. I'm not sure why it's him more than any other person. I didn't treat him poorly while we were together, and I don't know why I feel solely responsible for everything. But I part of me thinks I made him waste an entire year of his life and put him through an emotional spin cycle to boot.

After all, it was I who asked him to show me around a city while being on the rebound. For much of our first months together, I still thought about Billy daily, which was unfair to Jorge. It was also because of me that Jorge quit his job in Cusco to move to Lima, so that we didn't have to worry about Billy stalking us. Then, because I wanted to go back to the States to finish my music degree, I asked Jorge to move with me. Even though it meant leaving another job and having to work in a golf club parking cars outside of NYC (which he hated), he came with me.

And I'm not done. Because I thought we should get married in order to get Jorge's visa to stay in the States, he asked me. But later, when I decided I wasn't ready for marriage, I convinced him to end it. By this time, I had introduced him to all of my immediate family and most of my childhood friends, who had all accepted that we were going to get married. He was calling my mother, "Mom," which was extremely touching because he no longer had parents of his own. Finally, though we were fighting a lot and Jorge got a great job offer in Argentina that he wanted to take, it was still I who thought we should break up. He was willing to work things out no matter what. Just to show him I was serious about wanting to end things, I slept with a coworker. Lovely.

It's during times like these that I feel like pulling down a book about Ivan the Terrible and reading a few passages about how he killed people in a giant frying pan. It's the only thing I can think of that would make me feel better about myself. I have hurt other people in my life, but none quite as repeatedly and carelessly as Jorge. I should have been alone during that time, not trying to make us into something we weren't and then throwing him out when I finally realized that it wasn't right. I was selfish and mean.

The worst thing about your "ghosts" is that often they don't hate you. Somehow, though you are certain you treated them worse than anyone ever deserves to be treated, they still think you're the cat's meow, or at least not worthy of public whipping. The two men I have treated the worst in my life--Travis and Jorge--are the ones I was closest to in friendship after we broke up. Go figure. It's like they're further punishing you by forgiving you, so you're left to inflict all the guilt alone. It's so much easier when someone else is against you besides yourself.

Anyway, I don't think I'm a bad person. I don't think I'm a good person. I'm a person. And we all hurt other people. I also know that Jorge made those decisions himself, in full recognition of our situation and my past. It's not like he was a puppet or dog. He was a person, and he did what he did out of love. I was also trying my best at the time. It just so happened that my best sucked.

Well, maybe it's time I forgive myself for how I've treated my ghosts, not because I have a real reason to, and certainly not because I deserve forgiveness, but because I no longer can think of a reason not to. I can't take anything back, and feeling bad about myself probably doesn't help anyone, including me. If the wise saying is true, that we should all be our own best friends, maybe part of that process includes letting go of disappointment with ourselves--giving up the ghosts from our past. Maybe only then are we really ready to move on. But it ain't easy.

I hope you'll be back. I will.