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She had made Marcella Hazan's three ingredient tomato sauce yesterday and was boiling some water for her second cup of Joe today.
When your heart has been crushed, you read a lot about it. Last night, she realized that fucking Andrew - the one so different from everyone she'd ever dated - was avoidant attached as well. Whatever. She was going to tell another story that no one would ever read and it would be a long one. The coffee could always be reheated.
she was born a white child in macon Georgia. her mother was a narscissist and her father was an alcoholic narcissist. They cared about appearances a great deal.
The baby wasn't wanted by the father, but the mother trudged on reluctantly. the brother and sister fought all the time, but the sister wanted a sister. The baby was born. The sister got viscerally betrayed by the father and was unavailable for love. It would be Narcissi's turn later. No one took joy in the baby except perhaps the brother and the father. They were always gone. The baby went to many different day care centers. One the mother picked her up after untying her from an unsupervised high chair. The other one narcissi recalled the door being shut and a poster that said "if you love something set it free. if it comes back to you, it's yours. If it doesn't, it never was." she doesn't remember what happened there, but wonders. The poster had to be read to her by the old man. of course.
She was in four schools by fourth grade. It was glorious to be at the 4.5-8th, and she stood at the 7th grade dance rocking out to "you shook me all night long" on the basketball court wondering if she'd ever be this happy again.
The grandmother loved her but got a stroke and kind of died when she was 9. They used to giggle in bed together telling stories. The mother got jealous, but when Narcissi slept in her bed, it wasn't fun and she got yelled at for tossing and turning. She often got yelled at by the mother for being too exuberant.
On she grew. She couldn't go to the high school her friends were going to because the mother didn't think it was feasible. So, she went to yet another school from a grade of 30 to a 9th grade of 700. It was rather hellish, and Narcissi committed the biggest sin in the family - she grew fat. The pounds somehow came off by junior year - probably the bulimia, and she was deemed pretty by some. She went to college and finally found some people who really clicked with her and she didn't have the nagging bitch constantly telling her what was wrong with her. It rocked. She dumped her first boyfriend by simply going away. It was brutal, and she learned.
She met her first love there and her second love. They were best friends. She rejected her first love by saying "what do you think, we'll meet when we're 18 and be together for the rest of our lives? let's explore". Her first love married his second girlfriend. More than anything, she loved the social life. Classes were bullshit. She was going to be a documentary film maker and a writer and everyone knew you didn't need school for that.
She graduated. She lost her second love when he followed a girl to Wilmington. After that girl dumped him, Narcissi went there too. It was glorious. She felt at home. Of course she had a lot of trauma to go through so she was sometimes on the ledges of her fire escape weeping to the wind - like she had done to the ocean at her father's beach house when she was littler.
She went through some men. She married one. No one really got her until she met Mark. He kills her because she said the "now I know why everything had to happen exactly as it did because otherwise, I would never be here with you." It surprised her greatly when she cheated on him seven years later. It was even more surprising to her that the guy she cheated on him with didn't want her when she had risked everything for him. She went nuts. (She had also lost it in 2000 when Gore didn't win).
Oh well.
She and mark moved to LA broken as broken can be. When she left Wilmington, she knew it was like a fucking rubicon. Therapy would have been nice, but it was stigmatized back then. She tried alcohol and white knuckles. It was OK because her husband did too. They divorced in LA when she couldn't wrap her head around the fact that it could be repaired, and she kissed another man. It was the limit.
She lost her mind a bit in LA and then got friendly with people from home on myspace. She planned to go back on 7/7/07 and relaunch something. The friend she met from her "home of the 'en' Kristen's" on myspace flaked, and she ended up hanging with the cocaine comedians girl who she had always thought was too cool for her. They had fun of course. She dabbled with three men - one is now semi famous, one was a nuclear engineer, and the other one was the man she'd cheated on her husband with. She remembers laying on his shitty no sheet bed and going 'oh my god. this will never work. you're not who I thought you were."
so, she floundered - went nuts - move to Atlanta - got a weird job. hated everything. a former vice president of Columbia pictures was her coworker and told her about this really cool cult. What the fuck, she joined it. She asked the psychic/spiritual leader in purple robes for guidance, and was told to move to Oakland. She did. it kind of sucked, but at least it was something. She was there for forever, had a terrible experience with a man. Married another just because she thought he was so calm, stable, and prominent. he beat her when she went nuts. She did the hardest things she'd ever done alone because her friends had moved away during COVID.
She tucked that tail right between her legs and moved to macon. She was so depressed her aunt insisted she join a dating site "just to play". She dabbled in two men. blah blah. And then she met someone that drew her to Athens - her re-birthplace she called it. She fell in love like she hadn't in decades. It turned out he thought she was some broken cliche and engineered her dumping him. She was lonelier than she'd ever been (oh please, she'd been lonelier - I just mattered more now), but boy did she write...
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