I Want a New Splinter in my Finger

Call me crazy, but don't try to convince me it's a good sign.

By all accounts (don't ask me whose), when a charmingly witty, surprisingly insightful chicklit romance (The Fortune Quilt, Lani Diane Rich) ends in happily-ever-after...and brings me to sniffling tears, don't tell me that's a good sign.

Whoever said it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all is delusional. Voltaire is totally right--optimism is madness. No matter how sweet, such madness can only last so long before breaking, before I need a break.

Because I got a glimpse of it. Because someone managed to come closer than anyone else before. Because I know what it feels like, I seem to miss it all the more.

Um, better to have lost than not at all? Yeeah, crazy.

Remember to slap me upside the head next time.

The single life before my present state of single-after-being-pseudo-not-single is a lot more appealing. Knowledge is power, ignorance is bliss. But why can't there be a cliché that goes something like, I don't know, knowledge is bliss?! You know, do a little harmless substitution to the equation and ba-da-boom...problem solved!

Yeah, yeah. I know that while my self-esteem was shaken after our non-relationship psuedo break-up, I emerged with more confidence in and love for myself (bear with the Unbearable Narcissist in me for it's always gloriously short-lived). That's a good thing, for sure. But jeez, it still really, really sucks.

I'm not an eloquent writer (those days are rare) so am hard put to find a better way to express these feelings of...utter suckiness. The closest analogy seems to be like randomly finding a tiny splinter under the skin of your finger. The irritating prick is hard to get out. You know it's there, see it...feel it. You alternate between trying to coax it out and forcibly squeezing it out. Playing the professional, you take tweezers to try to pull it out, but the splinter is settled too securely in your skin and just out of reach from the surface.

Almost as if taunting you.

Finally, you curse it to hell and try to forget about it. What's the point when it refuses to leave? So, you continue with daily life because no one will know that you've got a splinter plaguing your finger unless you tell them.

Then one day, you wake up and realize, "Hey! That irksome splinter is gone! Whee!"

The finger is all happily healed...

Well, for the time being until you come across another splinter.