When Happy Movies Happen To Sad People

I just finished watching "Under The Tuscan Sun". I'm still teared up. Why? Well, let me tell you. It isn't because I am not Diane Lane (way, way, not Diane Lane). It is because I've lost the opportunity to experience true love. Really. It's a lost cause.

There were times when I might have had a chance. Decisions made. Choices made. And in the end I lost out. I decided to be an actress and singer and my circle of friends became gay men and dysfunctional folk. Of course, when it comes to dysfunctional I am, alas, the poster child. Looking for love in all the wrong places? That would be me.

But all I wanted was love. Missed the boat on that one, though.

Watching Tuscan Sun I wondered what it would have been like for me had I made different decisions. I once had my cards read (so many years ago - even before I actually believed in the efficacy of Tarot..) and my reader said I would - within a year - meet a Frenchman, marry him, have two young sons and live at his vineyard.

Lord, wouldn't that have been amazing?

In fact, anything that smacked of a romance - a lover, a companion - would have been amazing.

Instead I am alone. A tough spot for a true romantic. Because sure, I have handled "aloneness" for nearly 30 years. Since I was 22. Hell, that makes it 31 years.

Of course, I didn't ever really have that companion. That soul mate. That supportive man who stuck by me through thick and thin. I have those brief, Shakespearean type romances. Brief lightening flashes of sex and lust and love that were gone as soon as they came, leaving only a lingering aroma of sadness and bitterness and, sometimes, yearning.

It is a cold night, tonight. March is an odd month. A cruel month. There is a mama kitty outside who had a litter of kittens. I have fed her copiously in the hopes that she will be able to keep them (and herself) alive. I look forward to the chance to feed the little buggers (along with Mama's first litter, Eenie, Meanie, and Mighty Moe that showed up last Spring). They are joyous and wonderful to play with.

The weekend is here. I tried my best this week to hold up the gauntlet. But failed, in some regards.

There's been a relationship that I have watched founder. Communications slow, fates intervene. I cannot bring myself to whine, complain or make mention of the decline. I can only sit silent as it does so. Because it wasn't ever the "real thing". It was a momentary flash of brilliant lightening in an otherwise stagnant and celibate world.

My world.

The Greatest Romantic Songs of the 1970's

I saw the ad. Wrote down the 1-800 number. I want them so bad I can taste them (well except for that piece of crap number, "My Eyes Adored You."

It's a grey, gloomy, day out with a drizzle that's neither a rain-storm nor a mist.

And I feel lonely, grey, sad and wondering how my life turned out this way.

Someone I know only via email and phone sent me pictures of his grandchildren. It's been a long time since my biological clock sounded the alarm. But that old familiar pang sounded once again as I looked at the little boys - all fresh-faced and innocent and wondered, what would it have been like to have held my own child?

Would that I were the pragmatist. Fortunate I am a loner. Because otherwise, this might just be unbearable.

To be all alone.