i am perplexed at how i'm feeling right now. i'm at a loss to understand, unless i'm forced to accept something i seem determined never to accept.

i have spent most of my life alone. this includes a good chunk of my childhood, from the age of ten or so. i have not had many close friends, i had a wife who didn't really want me in her life, and i have had a couple of other serious relationships, but never the right person or the right time. so for one reason and another, i have been alone and lonely, i have hated being alone, and i have only wanted it to end. i have spent most of my life waiting for that special woman who would make sure i was never alone again.

and i'm still alone, but it's no longer important. if i met that special woman tomorrow, that would be wonderful, of course. but if i don't meet her, if i remain as i am right now, that's ok. for now, and for some time to come. i don't need that right now. i've tried to shape my life so that i'm not desperate in that way, and it's finally happened, and it's so strange. especially given how i am feeling right now.

and how i'm feeling is torn in pieces, sad, lost, in despair. but not from loneliness. whatever else i feel, i'm not lonely. my trusty stand-by, loneliness, has deserted me. i'm alone but not lonely, and that should be good, but things are not good right now, and not having what i'm used to, what's comfortable for me, is turning me upside-down. it's bad enough to feel bad, but i feel like it's happening in a foreign language and no one has bothered to provide english subtitles.

i've not read any Proust, but i know the story of his tea-and-madeleine, how the taste of a single sip of tea, with the crumbs of the cookie touching his lip, opened in his heart and mind a lifetime of locked-away memories. a single sip of cookie-crumb tea, and he begins to recall his entire life. amazing, but i understand entirely. our lives are the most complex and difficult things with which we must deal in our lives. the task is so huge as to be overwhelming. most people refuse the task and hide away from themselves. i've never been able to do that. it's not in me to do that; nothing to my credit, just the person i am. i also have very bad eyesight, and i'm not to blame for that. i try to face up to what my life is, what goes on inside me, and at times i do very well. at other times i do not. that i make the effort is, on most days, the things that most matters. but sometimes i do like to know what the fuck is going on.

but how? i've not suffered horrible abuses, beatings or rapes or murders or deaths, but i was damaged in small ways as a child, as a teenager, even as an adult. sometimes i'm just garden variety screwed-up; sometimes i am truly broken. the circumstances of my life at a particular time determines how well i can live my life — or perhaps i have that backwards. i do know that i've got a lot of healing and growing left to do, even while i know i have already done much. i've been much, much worse in my life. and i can be better.

but how? being screwed-up means not really knowing or seeing what the particulars of a day are. the fogs can be thick and impenetrable, but if i'm in the middle of it, i may well deceive myself that i'm seeing just fine. or i may decide, standing still with my eyes closed is exactly what i need to be right with myself and the world. when i achieve enlightenment, i will probably be able to sort these things out better. for now, i do my best and i hope that's good enough.

and then, in the way Proust took a sip of tea with cookie, something mundane and accidental happens. today, not a cookie or tea, but a tv show. yes, a tv show. and not the kind of show most 49-year-old men would be caught dead watching, but i'm addicted and have been plowing through the series via dvd. i began with season 1 because i had heard, from my brother the tv writer for the big city paper, that it had excellent writing. the last show i heard that about was "Buffy, the Vampire Slayer" and of course that had incredible writing. i pay attention when my brother praises writing; he usually gets that right, and nothing makes a movie or a tv show work for me more than good writing. all the shows i've enjoyed have had good writing. i've never liked stupid tv shows; for the life of me, i have no understanding why people watch shows with such heinous writing. which means almost everything. now and then, i'll deceive myself into watching something and i end up disgusted that i wasted my time. after the Super Bowl, i watched "Grey's Anatomy" for the first time, a special two-part episode, and i just could have kicked myself. the writing was hackneyed and trite; it was nice to see Christina Ricci being all cute, and the slow-motion of the bomb was pretty good, but the writing sucked and there was two hours i knew would be wasted — wasted.

but "Gilmore girls" is different. yes, "Gilmore girls". i know, chick flick, teenagers, lonely women, i'm sure there's a ton of preconceptions about the show, but unless someone has sat down and actually watched the damn thing, they wouldn't know it's one of the best shows ever. the writing is great, Lauren Graham and Alexis Bledel's acting is superior, and the show's story arc is unbelievable. in the best possible way. the essence of the show — the pain of relationships and our need to pursue them relentlessly (yes, in fact, it's pretty much the same theme as "Annie Hall") — never wavers. most shows lose steam by the third or fourth season; GG does not. by the end of the Season 5, which i finished this afternoon, it's every bit as strong as it was in S1. stronger, perhaps, because the characters, the people, are familiar. as is their pain. all their struggles, all they go through trying to make their lives good and right and happy. all they go through seeking love, love to give and receive. if this show had been on a channel other than the WB, it might have gotten the respect it deserves. but maybe being over let the writers keep the story honest for the five years i've watched in the past two months.

the only problem is that, despite the show being ostensibly about a single mother and her brilliant daughter, i can relate very strongly to the characters. i know the feelings of pain Lorelai goes through, the isolation from her parents, the inability to make a relationship work, the desperation to do right by her child, the need to be fulfilled professionally and personally. this is not a soap opera; they try to throw in soap opera elements, beautiful people and romance and heartbreak and dramatics, but they are too honest and too funny. there is too much pain in the stories, too much pain in what the writers ask of the actors. even when the story works out well, when the characters are given the chance to be happy, the pain simply does not blow away in a breeze. scars remain, memories, old habits, broken and battered things scattered around the house and head. in short, real life. yes, with great dialog and quirky neighbors and rich parents, but despite that, real.

too real. when Lorelai is deserted by Rory, when her parents betray one more time, when she sees that she will always be able to count on Luke, when she realizes that with all that is wrong with her life and all that is beyond her control, when she sees and understands and accepts both her pain and her joy; it was just too much. it was a sip of tea and cookie. it was knowing all that was terrible and all that was wonderful in my own life. my life is nothing like Lorelai's — for god sake, it's a goddamn tv show, i know that — but the story is great, and the story triggered things inside me. synapses fired, connections were made, and suddenly i was overwhelmed and crushed and in pain. more than sad. i am still more than sad. but this time it's different. this time, i'm not sad for all the old reasons, the wrong reasons that only made me feel sorry for myself. whatever the nature of my fucked-up-ness, i at least know my problems have nothing to do with lacking a woman in my life. or money. or that god will send me to hell. my problems are the pain of my childhood, and maybe that can never heal. i don't know; i've not lived long enough to find out yet. i'll let you know at the end. my problems are the failures of my adult life, and i am trying to fix that, even as i sit here and type this.

more than anything, what hurts and rips me apart is how i've lived my life: wrong. completely wrong. i've tried to do the right things, especially in regards to my children, but i started on the wrong path long before they came into being. i was going down the wrong path when i was eighteen, joining the Air Force out of high school and setting myself a course i would take over thirty years to even come to accept was wrong. butt i have learned it is the wrong path, and now i think i am at last, at long long last, ready to do what is right. i just can't take this pain anymore, and since i'm not willing to kill myself or drug myself or cable-tv myself into oblivion, my only remaining choice is to start living my life right. i don't have the tools i need — i lack the discipline a writer needs. i will have to substitute passion and desperation. for that matter, i may lack the former as well. perhaps the only tools i do bring to this task are desperation and pain. they will have to suffice. i have no other choice that i can live with.

and one other tool, at least one i believe i possess. talent. i think i can write. therefore, write i shall. after all: writers write. c'est tout. merci, M. Proust.