Mar 2013
"...it is our own wish to be soothed that is the root of the attraction."
I read in the yellow pages, the spine of the paperback cracking and that is underlined
for the second time because I bought my first copy of this book in 1988
and I felt behind the times
Still, I am a "woman who loves too much"
My first copy became so thrashed I put duct tape on it from my grip kit
film school and obsessions with unavailable guys, boys, and all kind of things
I did, drugs and two on one *** to try to make him love me back until a social worker asked me to buy the book and read it
I remember going over to University Village and walking to the back of the store
where the self help books were and there was one copy and I paid 4.95 in a kind
of glazed over way like I'd bought photocopied readers for classes.
Dutifully, sure that this in some way would benefit me although
I wouldn't really know how and then I read it and I was never the same.
"This book says it comes from your family" I remember telling my mother
on my land line with the long cord connected to the answering machine...
and I read that book nearly every day and my life got better and I made a film and got accepted to a New York City graduate film school and I threw it away
when my very serious boyfriend made fun of it
which was a mistake, because if I had kept it I never would have married him, I think.
I still remember it sitting there on a pile of newspapers in a milk crate,duct tape on the spine in the basement garbage room that was so cold with winter's air
and I felt like I was abandoning something alive and now I think that something was me
Anxiety goes up, impulse control goes down and here I am again
I went to a store, some store, I don't even remember which one or where but some
book store this time with desperation to find that book again and there was one copy
and I bought it some years ago and every time some nasty thing happens
there appears in my life some dude
who torments me and who I chase
who I try to extract caring from
Because it is the struggle I know so well
And it's 2013 and yes I am reading it again as if for the first time
And I find, it is my own wish to be soothed.
To have someone tell me, everything will be OK
This, too shall pass
And of course I know this, know this, ingrained and wired in my brain is
it has to come from somewhere else
when really, the only one who can truly soothe me, is me
I read in the yellow pages, the spine of the paperback cracking and that is underlined
for the second time because I bought my first copy of this book in 1988
and I felt behind the times
Still, I am a "woman who loves too much"
My first copy became so thrashed I put duct tape on it from my grip kit
film school and obsessions with unavailable guys, boys, and all kind of things
I did, drugs and two on one *** to try to make him love me back until a social worker asked me to buy the book and read it
I remember going over to University Village and walking to the back of the store
where the self help books were and there was one copy and I paid 4.95 in a kind
of glazed over way like I'd bought photocopied readers for classes.
Dutifully, sure that this in some way would benefit me although
I wouldn't really know how and then I read it and I was never the same.
"This book says it comes from your family" I remember telling my mother
on my land line with the long cord connected to the answering machine...
and I read that book nearly every day and my life got better and I made a film and got accepted to a New York City graduate film school and I threw it away
when my very serious boyfriend made fun of it
which was a mistake, because if I had kept it I never would have married him, I think.
I still remember it sitting there on a pile of newspapers in a milk crate,duct tape on the spine in the basement garbage room that was so cold with winter's air
and I felt like I was abandoning something alive and now I think that something was me
Anxiety goes up, impulse control goes down and here I am again
I went to a store, some store, I don't even remember which one or where but some
book store this time with desperation to find that book again and there was one copy
and I bought it some years ago and every time some nasty thing happens
there appears in my life some dude
who torments me and who I chase
who I try to extract caring from
Because it is the struggle I know so well
And it's 2013 and yes I am reading it again as if for the first time
And I find, it is my own wish to be soothed.
To have someone tell me, everything will be OK
This, too shall pass
And of course I know this, know this, ingrained and wired in my brain is
it has to come from somewhere else
when really, the only one who can truly soothe me, is me
