trash juice, breakfast nachos

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/youre-worst-breakfast-nachos-trash-819006

call a random swede

http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2016/08/alicia-vikander-cover-story

http://www.lifebuzz.com/runners/

"When someone asks me what happened in Rio in 20 years time, that is my story. She is my story," says Hamlin. The two women made Olympic history without needing to win a medal.

https://vimeo.com/155827723 https://vimeo.com/18441243

http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/amy-schumers-new-obligations

Comedy and feminism have a frequently uneasy relationship. A main purpose of comedy is to cross and confuse moral boundaries; a main purpose of feminism is to establish that certain lines of respect and equity simply should not be crossed. “Inside Amy Schumer” has rightly been celebrated as a show that manages to bring these pursuits together: it is a feminist comedy, and neither half of that description is sacrificed for the other.

https://medium.com/@boobsradley/on-going-away-50e083d4a2cc#.svf20i6mx

That said, I am 33, and unmarried. I go back and forth on whether I want to be. To the sustained dismay of my therapist I have generally eschewed all kinds of dating because it combines my least favorite parts of social interaction: strangers and being willfully sexually interesting. I have complained lustily of digital convenience that allows you to be extremely comfortable while totally lonely. She has told me time and again that meeting new people and sharing little chunks of food off of a piece of marble with them is supposed to be fun. And I look at her like she just grew six heads.

The expected thing, then, is that love will pop out at us, like a dolphin breaching in a polluted urban estuary. While its not terribly sympathetic to wait for happiness to come to you in your roomy pants, there is the appealing idea that it’s something that simply hasn’t happened yet, like the onset of a genetic disease. This is by far the most palatable and appealing narrative for the sort-of self-selected emotional margin-dweller. I was walking down the street and there she was!

http://www.mtv.com/news/2740007/how-to-be-single-is-a-good-lesson-in-how-not-to-be-a-smart-subversive-rom-com/

We've seen too many female characters like Lucy and Robin, electrons who must pair off or explode,

http://www.cooksscience.com/articles/feature/ice-cream/

https://cac.org/paradox-weekly-summary-2016-08-27/

First, identify a hurt or an offense in your life. Remember the feelings you first experienced with this hurt and feel them the way you first felt them. Notice how this shows up in your body. Paying attention to your body’s sensations keeps you from jumping into the mind and its dualistic games of good-guy/bad-guy, win/lose, either/or. After you can identify the hurt and feel it in your body, welcome it. Stop fighting it. Stop splitting and blaming. Welcome the grief. Welcome the anger. It’s hard to do, but for some reason, when we name it, feel it, and welcome it, transformation can begin. Don’t lose presence to the moment. Any kind of analysis will lead you back into attachment to your ego self. The reason a bird sitting on a hot wire is not electrocuted is quite simply because it does not touch the ground to give the electricity a pathway. Hold the creative tension, but don’t ground it by thinking about it, critiquing it, or analyzing it. When you’re able to welcome your own pain, you will in some way feel the pain of the whole world. This is what it means to be human—and also what it means to be divine.

okara donuts

https://nplusonemag.com/online-only/help-desk/bamboozled/

https://eatfeastly.com/browse/?market=la https://vimeo.com/user305581 https://hbovisionaries.com/ http://www.road-dog-productions.com/weblog/ http://www.mtv.com/news/2771008/david-lowery-interview-aint-them-bodies-saints/

Right. Well, as far as being comfortable with releasing the movie and not being obsessive and having to change things, I feel like it's similar to a relationship, and how you might not be able to get over someone until you fall in love with someone else. Once you start your next project, the voices in your head nagging you about the minutia of “Ain’t Them Bodies” might get muted. It's true, and you know, right now, there are alarm bells going off in my head all the time because the movie is about to be out of my hands. And I haven't been able to edit it for months now, which is good. I'm glad I'm able to let go. But nonetheless, I'm constantly just like, "Why didn't I do this?" I'll read a review, and think like, "That review was right, why didn't I do this?" And it's the kind of thing that will keep you up at night for a couple of hours, and then you'll wake up the next morning, and realize, you know, "I've got this other script I need to write." Then I go running, get it out of my system, and I look forward to about a year from now, going back and watching "Ain't Them Bodies Saints" – flaws and all, whatever it is – I'll be able to love it, because it is a very personal thing. It's part of me, and right now, it's going through massive growing pains, going out into the world on its own, and I can watch it and hate it. I can watch it and love it. It's always a very volatile relationship, but much like, you know, you're friends with an ex a couple of years down the road, once all the feelings have settled. I look forward to being able to give this movie a hug.

http://www.mccoveychronicles.com/2016/8/25/12655768/matt-moore-no-hitter-sf-giants-dodgers#391066997

if you didn't see a complete baseball game here assisted by everyone on the field, I don't know what to tell you Posted by skyblue17 on August 26, 2016 | 6:10 AM

https://medium.com/@kristicoulter/going-long-8a61aa83a155#.t02rzavwr

http://www.datpiff.com/mixtapes-search?criteria=chance%20the%20rapper&

“Real listening is a willingness to let the other person change you.” ― Alan Alda, Never Have Your Dog Stuffed: And Other Things I've Learned

http://regressing.deadspin.com/map-which-states-actually-show-up-to-their-minor-leagu-1614086643 http://deadspin.com/gm-gets-prostate-exam-in-stadium-sings-take-me-out-to-1610657985 http://deadspin.com/jeff-francoeurs-teammates-prank-him-again-1609642620 http://deadspin.com/5561129/ever-wondered-what-managers-are-saying-when-they-go-apeshit-on-the-ump http://deadspin.com/5447762/lovelorn-baseball-player-turns-to-dear-abby http://deadspin.com/5192482/minor-league-team-invites-you-to-watch-a-game-from-a-van-down-by-the-river http://www.brewsterwhitecaps.com/become-a-host-family.html

http://deadspin.com/i-know-a-great-story-not-mine-to-tell-about-a-current-1785607047

Mauer? Hardly Knew Her nov15-22 8/22/16 3:28pm I know a great story (not mine to tell) about a current big leaguer who languished in the minors and independent ball for nearly a decade, and was about to retire until he hit a badbeat jackpot for $80K+ in a local poker room. That money literally allowed him to play a few more years, where he got noticed, got signed by a pro affiliate, and made it to the show 2 years later. Still up there too.

http://deadspin.com/grad-students-and-minor-leaguers-are-basically-the-same-1785601466

Stromance Hannah Keyser 8/22/16 1:55pm Grad students and minor leaguers are basically the same people. They’ve both spent an incredibly long time specializing in something that very few people get well-compensated for, they’re both a criminally underpaid labour force for heartless employers, they’re both very good at figuring out ways to get free food, they both have a one in a thousand chances of actually making it to the show/getting a tenure-track job, and all of their loved ones are probably wondering when they’re finally going to give up on this shit.

your shorthand only reveals what you've normalized

https://web.ovationtix.com/trs/pe.c/10106200 https://web.ovationtix.com/trs/pe.c/10106194

i don't have time to maintain these regrets when i think about

respectful, trust me, check in. :)

http://www.bakadesuyo.com/2012/08/here-are-the-things-that-are-proven-to-make-y/

https://theringer.com/tyler-gage-vs-will-hunting-who-was-the-more-exceptional-janitor-979e1805a36c#.ngpky0jz7

? If I looked like Matt Damon, I’d just fucking smolder all day. That’d be my whole workday. I’d wake up at 7 a.m., start smoldering, then I wouldn’t stop until, like, 5 p.m. or whenever I left the office. I’d smolder clean through my lunch break. I’m talking 10 solid hours of smoldering. “How was work today, honey?” my wife would ask when I got home. “Tough day,” I’d say, as I plopped down on the couch. “Yeah?” she’d ask, as she sat down next to me, but she’d say it in that way that transforms “yeah” from a tiny word into a back rub in that way that only very empathetic people can. “Yeah,” I’d say. “Lot of smoldering?” she’d ask, genuinely. “So much,” I’d respond, a little frustrated. “How much?” she’d ask. I’d lean back and close my eyes and put my hands on my head. “Look, it’s been a long day. I don’t really wanna talk about it,” I’d say. “I’m just trying to connect,” she’d say. “Just leave it,” I’d say, but I’d say it a little too curtly. She wouldn’t say anything back. She’d get up walk into the kitchen. I’d huff. Then I’d get up and walk over. I’d put my hand on her waist. I wouldn’t be able to see her face, but I’d be able to tell she was crying. “Look, it’s just …” and I’d struggle to find the words. “I don’t know. This smoldering … it’s really getting to me.” She’d turn around but she’d still be looking at the ground. “I’m sorry,” I’d say. “You said you were gonna try to be better,” she’d say. “I know,” I’d say, and I’d apologize again. I’d ask if she forgave me. She’d say she didn’t know. “Come on,” I’d say, and I’d bend down a little so I could get under her eyes and catch her stare. I’d smile. “OK,” she’d say. Then she’d look up at me. And I’d hit her with the best fucking smolder you ever saw.

http://www.vividseats.com/mlb-baseball/los-angeles-dodgers-tickets/dodgers-vs-sf-giants-8-24-1891000.html

https://frieze.com/article/data-roaming

Weist’s idea of creating videos of people using the internet is a way of sharing what it could be if it were widely available. When you log in for the first time in 2016, when there’s very little time to connect, what does the internet look like? The Facebook homepage. When I was in Cuba, I used the internet sparingly: we would find a connection, pull out our internet cards, and in 20 minutes I would check my emails (but not reply to anything), text my friends and family, refresh my Guardian and New York Times apps so I could read them offline, Facebook for a minute, and then I was done. When there’s so little time online, there’s no sense of wandering, no sense of wonder: the curiosity and excitement of following links to discover new things; the time spent reading Wikipedia or a foreign magazine you never heard of until then; discovering new music by suggested YouTube links. Weist’s screencast videos may also reflect on something pertinent to us regular internet users: the idea of surfing the web. It’s something we should all be thinking about: the world wide web used to seem like a network of links, but with the rise of social networks the feed has taken over. You are fed a series of tweets in a chronological order. You scroll down past posts on Facebook. Your news is brought to you in a ‘live’ blogroll with endless, real-time updates. This is how we consume now: the content is regulated, fed to you, never unexpected. To show what the internet means to you and talk about how you experience it could be a way to reflect on these changing attitudes, to take a step back and think about what we lost with the rise of the social web. That said, there’s something almost heartening to Facebook; something to the fact that whenever I glanced at people’s screens in Havana, they seemed to be on Facebook; something to the fact that, when offered access to an almost endless source of information, all people want to do is connect with one another.

https://theringer.com/the-2016-adult-film-awards-1d02baae7dc2#.9w76d4xiw

Well-intentioned bad movies (or bad-intentioned movies in High-Rise’s case … because it really has the worst intentions), the ones that walk the wire and fall through the net, are a lost art. In this film attention economy, there isn’t enough loose change or spare time to spend on a movie that can’t be reacted to briskly (even before we see it), processed, and then filed for future reference. High-Rise does the opposite: It bugs me, months after watching. How can it feel so timely and anachronistic at the same time? How can a movie that hates all its characters be this charming? Why did this movie get made? And can we have more like it? It’s OK for films to repulse and titillate, and fill you up and leave you feeling totally empty. I don’t mind failure. What I mind is failure with no risk involved.

Somehow, Birbiglia makes room for every one of them to go through a particular flavor of heartbreak. Because over the course of its run, Don’t Think Twice reveals itself as a chronicle less of comedy than the bittersweet toll of maturity. Its love for the community of improv and the principles of Del Close is real, but so is its observation of more general phenomena: the shifting power dynamics of friendships, the painful outgrowing of young adulthood and its relationships, the inevitable reckoning of people with enough in common to bring them together, but not enough to keep them there. No movie this year will depress you about adulthood more, and no movie this year will thrill you with its complexity more.

last little kid friendship?

https://www.mitchellandness.com/1987-authentic-bp-jacket-san-francisco-giants-423

http://www.avclub.com/tvclub/mad-men-field-trip-203894

This makes sense, because “Field Trip” is about that very fundamental sense you get when you just want someone to love you the way they’re supposed to, only to realize that they just don’t. Don Draper was used to being the center of life in the office in a way he no longer is, while Betty Francis is supposed to be beloved by her children in a way that she never was. (It’s too late for Sally, and she’s losing Bobby. Gene will be gone to her soon enough.) Megan believes that Don is her husband, not her manager or father, only to find, cruelly, that he’s just in Los Angeles to reprimand her about how she handled an audition. And we rarely feel as lost as we do when we’re supposed to feel love but, instead, get only cold shoulders and confused expressions at our very presence.

good night.

table for two

http://www.grubstreet.com/2014/08/patricia-lockwood-grub-street-diet.html

8:30 p.m.: I make it a habit to eat whatever’s in the books I’m reading. This means chowder for Moby-Dick, mixed grill for The Corrections, mushrooms and sour cream for Speak, Memory, and a hamburger with french fries for Ramona Quimby, Age 8. It means that whenever I read Redwall I go out into the yard and eat flowers. (Be careful with this. There are daturas in my yard, and if I accidentally eat one of these I am told I will experience a "vision quest" in the manner of Ayla from the Clan of the Cave Bear books.) Right now I’m reading the new Murakami, which means I eat pasta while listening to classical music and thinking about cats and wondering what it would be like to live down in a well. I bet I would love it.

https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/3qv9xy/im_cheryl_strayed_the_author_of_wild_tiny/cwioyzd

CherylStrayed[S] 19 points 9 months ago Write about a time you realized you were mistaken. Write about a lesson you learned the hard way. Write about a time you were inappropriately dressed for the occasion. Write about something you lost that you will never get back. Write about a time when you knew you'd done the right thing. Write about something you don't remember. Write about your darkest teacher. Write about a memory of a physical injury. Write about when you knew it was over. Write about a time when you knew you were loved. Write about what you were really thinking. Write about how you found your way back. Write about the kindness of strangers. Write about why you could not do it. Write about why you did.

http://nymag.com/thecut/2016/08/ask-polly-am-i-too-uptight.html

But there’s also kind of a hangover to being aggressive and outspoken. Hell, there can be a hangover to just being who you are and doing what you do, even when it’s totally innocuous and harmless, if it’s not in step with what other people are doing. Sometimes there’s a voice in your head that says, “Don’t you have enough already? Why do you have to wave your freak flag or flaunt your sharp blades, just because you have them and lots of other people don’t? Why can’t you be more gentle and generous? Why do you have to sing your full-throated battle cry when you could just say your piece calmly and then ride off into the sunset with quiet dignity?”

And I have to tell you this: The people I know who’ve made their lives smaller and cleaner and more controlled and more predictable — myself included! — have not always benefited from that. Maybe in some cases I have no idea how much more fucked they’d be if they exerted less control over every single dimension of their lives. But a close relative of mine is going through a health crisis and I’m really seeing the perils of complete, unflagging control close-up right now. I’m seeing how the smallest curveball sets his head spinning. He never defined himself as anxious, and now he’s trying to think his way to a solution and it’s only making things worse, because for the first time in his life, nothing is certain. His complete inability to be led, to let go, to trust other people, to listen to a new plan, is adding panic attacks to an already trying situation. I’m not saying I’d handle any of it any better than he does, mind you. But it’s clear that he doesn’t believe he is worthy unless he is in complete control, and that belief is hurting him right now. So the people around him, because we love him, are now forced to confront him (gently!) and urge him to try some things he never in a million years wanted to try before. I mean, this is a guy who thinks using valet parking is PURE MADNESS BECAUSE SOMEONE ELSE DRIVING YOUR CAR WHAT HOW THAT’S NUTS. You can structure your world however you like. But I would urge you to interrogate the things you do to keep the world OUT. I would urge you to watch when your aggression acts as a salve, a way of grabbing the fucking tiller instead of enjoying the ride. I would urge you to watch when you toggle between total control and wanting to be led by some parental figure like a tiny, helpless baby. I would urge you to envision yourself fucking up all of the things you have always been afraid of fucking up. Picture yourself becoming the so-called worst version of you: You are overweight. You are not successful. You are poor. You are alone. I would encourage you to imagine that chubby lonely poor woman as the most wonderful, loving, magical soul there is. She has a brilliant, worthy heart, and she knows how to breathe in each new day. Maybe she’s even happier than you are now. Challenge some of your assumptions about what happiness is made of, what it looks like, what it sounds like. Don’t live in a sterile bubble where everything is calibrated to keep you safe and perfect. Don’t set out on a hunt for stupid, determined to bring stupid to its fucking knees. Above all, don’t become stupid’s jittery, jumpy beast of burden just because it’s better than living in your own head. Follow your feelings to a new land. You are loved and lovable and you are still evolving. You can make a choice and change your mind and make a different choice. Don’t push yourself to evolve and grow just to please some watchful judge who calls you “good” or “bad” and expects you to be the same person day after day without fail. You will be many different people along the way. Push yourself to evolve because it feels right. Feel your way to what works for you. Notice when you feel calm and confident. Notice when you’re trying too hard to win back approval that’s already been rescinded. Clean and sharpen your blades just in case, but respect how sharp they are. Don’t bring a scalpel to a picnic. Play along when that’s more relaxing. Shut the fuck up when that’s more relaxing. Remember to enjoy yourself. Learn how to do that. Learn how to serve yourself while also being generous to others. Remember that you have nothing to prove. Remember that silence speaks volumes, and sometimes watching stupid walk away can be the most satisfying feeling of all.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/sajaee/some-ting-borrowed https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/may/08/perfect-body-lie-believed-long-time-let-shrink-my-life-lindy-west?CMP=share_btn_tw

We each get just a few years to be perfect. To be young and smooth and decorative and collectible. That’s what I’d been sold.

yeah boo

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/06/happily-ever-after/372573/

Throughout the day, partners would make requests for connection, what Gottman calls “bids.” For example, say that the husband is a bird enthusiast and notices a goldfinch fly across the yard. He might say to his wife, “Look at that beautiful bird outside!” He’s not just commenting on the bird here: he’s requesting a response from his wife—a sign of interest or support—hoping they’ll connect, however momentarily, over the bird. The wife now has a choice. She can respond by either “turning toward” or “turning away” from her husband, as Gottman puts it. Though the bird-bid might seem minor and silly, it can actually reveal a lot about the health of the relationship. The husband thought the bird was important enough to bring it up in conversation and the question is whether his wife recognizes and respects that. People who turned toward their partners in the study responded by engaging the bidder, showing interest and support in the bid. Those who didn’t—those who turned away—would not respond or respond minimally and continue doing whatever they were doing, like watching TV or reading the paper. Sometimes they would respond with overt hostility, saying something like, “Stop interrupting me, I’m reading.” These bidding interactions had profound effects on marital well-being. Couples who had divorced after a six-year follow up had “turn-toward bids” 33 percent of the time. Only three in ten of their bids for emotional connection were met with intimacy. The couples who were still together after six years had “turn-toward bids” 87 percent of the time. Nine times out of ten, they were meeting their partner’s emotional needs.

Contempt, they have found, is the number one factor that tears couples apart. People who are focused on criticizing their partners miss a whopping 50 percent of positive things their partners are doing and they see negativity when it’s not there. People who give their partner the cold shoulder—deliberately ignoring the partner or responding minimally—damage the relationship by making their partner feel worthless and invisible, as if they’re not there, not valued. And people who treat their partners with contempt and criticize them not only kill the love in the relationship, but they also kill their partner's ability to fight off viruses and cancers. Being mean is the death knell of relationships. Kindness, on the other hand, glues couples together. Research independent from theirs has shown that kindness (along with emotional stability) is the most important predictor of satisfaction and stability in a marriage. Kindness makes each partner feel cared for, understood, and validated—feel loved. “My bounty is as boundless as the sea,” says Shakespeare’s Juliet. “My love as deep; the more I give to thee, / The more I have, for both are infinite.” That’s how kindness works too: there’s a great deal of evidence showing the more someone receives or witnesses kindness, the more they will be kind themselves, which leads to upward spirals of love and generosity in a relationship.

One way to practice kindness is by being generous about your partner’s intentions. Another powerful kindness strategy revolves around shared joy. One of the telltale signs of the disaster couples Gottman studied was their inability to connect over each other’s good news. When one person in the relationship shared the good news of, say, a promotion at work with excitement, the other would respond with wooden disinterest by checking his watch or shutting the conversation down with a comment like, “That’s nice.” We’ve all heard that partners should be there for each other when the going gets rough. But research shows that being there for each other when things go right is actually more important for relationship quality. How someone responds to a partner’s good news can have dramatic consequences for the relationship.

http://www.mtv.com/news/2914947/inside-jessi-klein/

That's because for Klein, being a woman — being a human, really — is something of a team effort, or at least something to be complained about in chorus and with copious glasses of wine. This is the concept that underscores her entire book: the idea that women need not be women in a vacuum. "I do think that one of the purposes of art, as an audience member and a creator, is to feel less alone," says Klein. "The things I love have, in some way, made me feel less alone."

i think it's gonna be a long, long time

dad.

http://nymag.com/thecut/2016/04/ask-polly-why-should-i-keep-going.html

So here's my concrete advice for you: You're very depressed, so I want you to exercise every morning for one hour. Every other thing you do as an unemployed, depressed person is predicated on this step, and skipping it is tantamount to announcing to the world, I PREFER MISERY TO JOY. After you exercise, take a shower, make yourself some strong coffee, and look for a job for one hour. Research. Fix your résumé. Write cover letters. Email people for leads. Follow up. Get people on the phone. Do whatever you can, but you need a job soon. I also want you to work on something physical for one hour every day — clean your fridge, wash your floors and rewash them, paint the walls of your apartment a new color, refinish your coffee table, whatever. Don't tell me you don't do that kind of thing. Do it and trust. And yes, you must find a therapist. Commit. Borrow the money if you have to. You need this. You require it. You are not doing well, and it could get worse. Someone needs to be watching you closely, and you need to dig into your feelings. I suspect that this is one thing that you don't want to do, because you're terrified of your own feelings. And that's why you must do it. So you need to do a bunch of very hard things. But if you lean into your hard work right now, you're going to learn just what a crisis can do for you, how it can blow out the bad patterns of thinking and feeling, how it can change you from a person who clings and cowers and hides and pities herself to a person who faces the truth without fear and builds a gorgeous life out of the wreckage of the half-broken life that came before. You write, "I'm exhausted from trying so hard for so long (not just these past months, but all the years before them when I cycle through ambition and optimism and hard work only to end up lost and scared and alone), and I'm sick of trying." I know that feeling. But honestly, if you really think you've ended up back where you started, that tells me that what you really wanted from all of that hard work was a magical, external reward that never came. You expected to be released from the purgatory of work at some point, to cross some finish line and be magically rendered all-caps HAPPY. You wanted to become someone else. If you can't feel any of the gains you've made in the past, if you're sure that it's all a cycle in which zero is gained each time, if you don't recognize the slightest bit of progress, then I'd suggest to you that you're having trouble feeling your feelings, and you're treating love and success as external rewards that BRING happiness, when in fact love and success are SIDE EFFECTS of happiness. And happiness is all about loving the feeling of working hard. Happiness is all about loving whatever you have, wherever you are, even when you fall on your face, even when you have nothing, even when your muscles are aching and you feel caved in and sad. People who say that they're lost and scared — like you do — are often anxious and hiding. People who say they're exhausted all the time are often exhausted because they’re busy distracting themselves from their own feelings around the clock. And when a big wave of emotion comes and knocks them down, they experience it as a tsunami that just wiped away all meaning and all gains.

why did it happen so quickly? it didn't. there was stuff i didn't see

practice resurrection: 12:02 here's a quote by rollheiser? the biblical tradition, jesus in particular, prays faith or curiosity even more than love. why? maybe because curiosity is that patience with mystery that allows you to negotiate the stages. as gerald may points out in "dark night of the soul," it allows God to lead you through darkness where God knows and i don't. this is the only way to come to love. love is the true goal, but maybe curiosity is the process of getting there. hope is the willingness to live without resolution or closure." (12:45)

http://nymag.com/thecut/2016/08/ask-polly-why-cant-i-get-over-my-awful-ex.html

And you know what our culture and our friends and our family hate a lot? They hate it when we sound stuck. They want to skip over the “I feel” part and go straight to the JUST SHUT UP ABOUT IT AND MOVE ON part. And honestly, even then, some stubborn part of me still wants to own the emotion, wants to drag it out and make everyone look at it, before I can put it away for good. That’s why I do this for a living. I do this because I want to make it totally fucking OK for a legion of former so-called psycho chicks and so-called oversensitive, pussy-ass men to drag their shit out on the lawn and say DUDE, THIS IS REAL AND IT DOESN’T MEAN I’M CRAZY. JUST LOOK WITH ME AT IT AND LET ME FEEL IT, WITH YOU. So stop being ashamed of what you feel. Say to yourself and anyone else who’ll listen: “This feeling is real. I am mourning something real. You can see him as an asshole, and I don’t blame you for that. But this is still a big part of my life that died, and it hurts. I still want something that is bad for me, in spite of my best intentions.” And yes, after you state the full truth and out yourself as someone with a giant, sensitive heart, you should try to expunge him from your daily thoughts and your imprecise narrative, and stop using him as a means of confronting your emotional challenges. But don’t do that without recognizing that your compassion for him reflects well on you. You’re a very generous person, so you’re drawn to people who need you, openly, and don’t mind saying it. But you also prefer that these needy types cover up that need by ignoring you and treating you badly most of the time. It’s time to love someone who sees you clearly without looking away. It’s time to make room for someone who isn’t promising you an escape from real life. Stop looking outside of yourself for a verdict on whether you’re good or worthless. That obsession mirrors the mechanics of your relationship with a narcissist, and it’s a fix that’s essentially designed to hide your true, fragile self from the world. Instead, be where you are, a broken, sad human being in the broken present. This is what the narcissist never learns to do. Forgive your ghost, and let him go haunt someone else. It’s not that fun being a ghost. Forgive him. Cry some tears for him, but let him go once and for all. And from now on, remember that real love doesn’t feel like a fantasy. Real love feels like real life, but a real life that you can finally experience with all of your senses. Real love is a divine series of clumsy maneuvers, unnerving mistakes, flashes of joy and lust and self-doubt and fear and anger and also peace. When you’re in love and you’re seen clearly by another person whose only intention is to love you, here, in the flawed, real world. This person is not some fantasy “soul mate” with magical qualities that radiate around him and make you nervous forever and ever. And there is not only one person alive who can fulfill this place in your life. Ordinary, lovable people who can see you clearly and who understand that flaws are human and not a deal breaker are everywhere, once you start to see yourself and your own flaws the same way. And when you are finally embraced by someone who accepts your good and your bad with patience and grace, it feels strange and amazing and frightening. It is not an escape. It is not always “romantic” in the “music swelling, cameras circling” sense. You don’t get to be the gorgeous heroine. You get to be a human being, with needs, with problems, with emotions. That is enough.

http://www.lennyletter.com/life/a443/casey-wilson-is-angry/