Ah...life in the virtual world. There's a name for the inadequacy, angst and ennui one feels when reading about other peoples' perfect lives. A seemingly innocuous comment like "I didn't know which of my three homes to stay in this weekend" can sometimes set the wheels in motion for a round of self-loathing...self doubt...or unbridled envy.
"How can that mook possibly have three homes?," one might think, "while I'm here playing Farmville and wondering if I should refinance this termite-riddled abode as my inert, drooling spousal unit is planted in front of the television set watching 'Anne of Green Gables' and eating spray cheese?"
I'm a strong advocate of social networking - but know all too well that it's a slippery slope. In "real life" -during the course of any normal friendship-slash-interaction - there are ups and downs - but it's somehow different in the virtual world. Status updates hang in mid-air waiting without the benefit of facial expressions or intonation so that everything does - as Paul Simon wrote - look worse in black and white.
So, when a high school friend posted status updates about his family vacation, at first I couldn't help wondering why he would possibly think it was interesting to anyone that his wife bought him a blueberry muffin. Then - I thought it was a hokey beyond measure when he put it out there to the world (or at least his merry band of followers) that he was going to make eggs for her for breakfast just because she made the sacrifice of buying his pastry of choice instead of the one she really wanted.
Then I couldn't get the story out of my mind - I tried to get out - and it pulled me back in....I found myself getting progressively more agitated. Not because of his "so sweet I got a cavity" homage to the apparently wonderful woman who has high maintenance breakfast requirements which he - after three decades of connubial bliss - has managed to memorized - but because if I died tomorrow I knew that no one would know how I liked my eggs.
Was it my fault - was I too much a free spirit? Was I raising the bar too high? Did I askew intimacy because I was too damn independent and afraid to let my guard down?
"You had three men marry you," my friend said in response to my rant about not being memorable enough, "and you left them all. It's not them - it's you - you are commitment phobic."
I hotly debated this point, "You're wrong! I believe in true and everlasting love! I believe in passion that lasts a lifetime! I believe in soul mates and twin stars...and people completing each other...I'd rather spend eternity alone than be trapped in a loveless marriage...another bored, neutralized woman ravaged by the compromise of time..."
"Now I get it," she said, "You need a booty call."
Clearly she didn't understand. No one understood. Who could? Who would? Oh the pain! It wasn't male attention I was craving...it wasn't even poached eggs (on a burned dry English muffin with orange marmalade, burned bacon and hot sauce). It was to be part of something...to be enduring...not an echo that the wind left unreconciled...
Just as I was walking towards "the ledge" - this time for real - as I was writing my suicide note - suddenly the phone rang. It was Peggy.
"We're ordering food from the diner," she said, "Come on over..."
In the background, I heard her son doing his interpretation of me at my most dramatic "Get hot sauce and extra napkins," he said.
"Was that Austin?," I asked, "is he making fun of me?"
"Yes," she said, "he's saying if you eat with us - we need extra hot sauce and napkins."
I knew then that I could continue on my path as invisible as it was to me...even if the birds ate the crumbs from the muffins I had left to guide me home... one mistake at a time - interspersed with miracles, laughter, fireworks, highs and lows...and hot sauce.
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