I’ve been offered a new job. There is so much baggage in that simple statement that I hardly know where to begin. I’ve set down two rules: that I work with a certain manager, and that I get to choose my schedule. I’m reasonably sure that both demands will be honored, and if they are, I’ve pretty much said I’d do it.

I would be working in a bar in the East Village that is set to open in three weeks. I would work, most likely, Wednesday and Friday night, and possibly one other day shift. During that time I would make at least half again as much as I am making right now on six shifts at my restaurant. However, the hours are ugly: 8 PM to 4 AM, both nights, never getting done earlier than 4. The day shift would be 11 AM to 8 PM. I would have to write off half of the next day after working till 4, not getting home till 5. But it would mean Saturdays and Sundays off, and at least four days off a week. It would also allow me to pay for a wine course, or an acting class, or my credit card debt… I mean, it could be a whole new financial world.

However, I would have to leave my job, my job where I slave to make a few bones a week, but where I have good friends and easy success, and the clout of one of the best restaurants in New York. Now, I’ll say where I work, and people won’t recognize it, won’t recognize the skill I have to have to work there.

So really, we’re talking about pride here. Pride in a job that is not at all what I want to do. But I am proud of my restaurant, proud of how well suited I am to work there, proud of the work I do and proud that the staff and customers love me. At the same time, I would find pride in scrubbing toilets or working the guacamole gun at Taco Bell. I guess I can take my pride wherever I go, but it just won’t be the same. Not at all.

I probably won’t find out if my two weighty requests, for management and schedule, have been granted until early next week, so I have the weekend to sit on it. In the end it’s change, and change is good, if it means more cash in the bank and more time to write, sing, EMT, act, and play. On the other hand, I cut my hair off and am considering a new restaurant job, something that even a few months ago I would have never done. I’d hate to make these huge choices and then regret them, chalking them to simply looking for diversions. Well. What’s a girl to do.

I couldn’t go to the doctor today. I woke with a dream still fresh, not in content but in feeling. My mother warned me that my good feelings were bound to be colored by relapses into sadness; she was right. I called the gyn, rescheduled for Friday, and crept back into bed until after noon. I was supposed to go to yoga and then sign up for an audition, but it wasn’t until 2 PM that I was ready to walk out the door. I went straight for Bergen Bagel, grabbed a veggie burger and then got on the train headed for Central Park.

By 3 PM I was on line (god, I really wrote “on” line as opposed to “in” line… I must be a real New Yorker now) for the Ben Folds/Aimee Mann show at SummerStage. I was by myself, waiting for the venerable James Amler to join me, and so I met the ten people near me and we watched out for each other until we parted late that night. I was in the first bunch of folks let in, so I hurried to the stage and settled, staggered between the first and second row. James got there by my second beer, and minutes before Ben Folds took the stage. I have to confess I’ve never heard his music before. I know my bretheren might see that as sacriledge but I certainly got to hear it tonight. The only problem was I surrounded by a hundred barely-out-of-their-teens girls, who screamed along so loudly that usually I couldn’t hear Ben sing. What a show. Just him and a piano, in the full sun, and he lit up the stage. He said a lot of funny things that went over the young women’s heads, but they laughed along anyway, and I saw how easily Ben and my brother must have become friends. I was sold. He writes great tunes and he wallomps the piano like no one I’ve seen.

And then Aimee Mann took the stage. I’ve been a fan since she stood up during the opera and screamed, “Hush, hush, keep it down now, voices carry” to the chagrin of her video boyfriend. I’d never seen her live. It was one of those experiences that you wish you could relive a few times so you don’t miss anything. I knew 70% of the music she played, and when she started a tune I didn’t know, my mind started to wander in the directions her music pointed me. It didn’t help that I started the day off in less-than-perfect form, but it allowed me to try to think some of this stuff out. Or at least, manuver my mind to a place where it’s okay again.

James once again saved the day; at the wedding, he danced with me all night and made it so incredibly fun I almost forgot my woes. The Rombauer Cabernet Sauvignon helped as well, but James made all the difference. He didn’t know it, but all through Aimee Mann’s set, he was exhaiing on my sweaty back, cooling me and letting me know he was there.

As soon as the show was over, we headed to Blue Smoke where my terrific friend Hayley works. We spent a couple of hours there with her brother, boyfriend, and two friends from Missouri. She came swinging around the bar to sit next to me and demanded the short version of what happened at the wedding.

Listening to great music relieves you of yourself. I sorely missed my brothers, but it was wonderful, and it’s also exactly the kind of thing that I usually bail out of at the last second. I made a promise to myself after the wedding, however, that I would continue to spend time with these people who make me happy.

I stopped by my doctor’s office today in hopes of rescheduling my colposcopy, and it turns out that my doctor is going on vacation. And even if she wasn’t going on vacation, her next appointment is September 26th. Yeesh! What’s a girl gotta do to find out if she’s got baby cancer cells on her cervix! So I called my former doctor’s office, and it turns out that my gyn there is on maternity leave! What, is it not all about my cervix? So I’m seeing some stranger tomorrow for yet another lovely pelvic exam, starting from the beginning because our health care system sucks and I have to get completely re-tested before even getting a colposcopy. My current gyn, who I briefly got on the phone, said I should just do it over because “maybe this time it will come out normal and you won’t have to get a colposcopy”. What? What exactly do you mean? This thing I’ve been sweating over could be a computer glitch or something?

Doubtful. But I’m getting ANOTHER (my third in a month) pelvic exam by yet another (my third) doctor in the morning. Exactly how I want to spend my day off. But I hope to be under the stars tomorrow night listening to Aimee Mann and Ben Folds in Central Park, so really, I can’t complain.

Je suis tres decouragee a mon travail. Je ne suis pas content. En outre, j’attends toujours un appel téléphonique ou un email d’une certaine personne. Quel dommage. Je vais assez bien, mais je m’ennuie toujours de lui.

Translation: I don’t like my job. Where’s my man?

Sometimes when I’m on my bike, riding in the city, I can’t breathe. I stand up, clipped into my pedals, and I start to run, leaning forward, but I’m running with my bike. I’m pulling and pulling and pushing and pushing the pedals and sometimes I have to stop because I feel that I’ll come unclipped and leave my bike and fly straight up into the sky, my gloved hands stretched out like Superman. Instead, I sit back into my saddle, and try to catch up with my speed. There is a corny new-agey adage that says you should do something scary every day; I take care of that simply by being on my bike in this city. But, God, I love it. I love it.

When I’m on my bike, I’m strong, graceful, and stubborn. I stand up for myself, I admonish cars and pedestrians and other cyclists when they are being unsafe. I am larger than myself, I am hyper-alert, I’m a Goddess with wheels, I fly. In traffic, I pass the cars, my heart pumping, as they idle in freon and exhaust. I am more of me when I’m on my bike.

And then I’m off my bike, no longer a Goddess, but a lowly human who spends two hours cleaning her apartment. There is something very Zen and calming about cleaning, but I also did it in order to procrastinate. I can’t seem to get excited about my French homework.

Another form of procrastination was to wander on my brother Steve’s website to look at all of his pictures of the wedding. Probably not the best idea right now, but the thing that struck me most was the undeniable, effusive beauty of Tessa, my brother’s new bride. Looking at pictures of the two of them, and seeing all the other people in the backround smiling as they watched the newlyweds, reminded me of what it was like to be there. So much joy, happiness and love. I’m still sad it’s over. I’m hoping Ian and Tess will have yet another gathering over Labor Day weekend, or at least in the near future, though they may be gatheringed-out.

Yeesh. Blogging is procrastination as well. It’s just hard to get excited about something specific when you don’t know even in general terms what you are going to do. With your life, I mean. Ah well. I best make some tea and get on with it.

My return to work was not nearly as difficult as I thought it might be. At one point in the night, I went to the Micros station and held out my hand, palm up, to my fellow servers. “What’s that?” asked one. “What my customers are eating out of,” I replied. When the people at the tables wax rhapsodic about my restaurant, and exclaim our greatness, I always butt in and say, “Right? Aren’t we great?” And when they tell me how good I am, I say, “Right? I know! Aren’t I great?” And then they laugh, and I laugh, and then I usually make some stock restaurant joke, and then I realize I’ve been thinking about something else entirely during the whole conversation. I am capable of saying things with such conviction and enthusiasm when all I’m really doing is daydreaming. I don’t really think about other stuff when I’m at work. Mostly I’m singing a song in my head or just letting my mind wander while explaining in detail exactly how the tuna is marinated. It is the rare guest who takes me out of myself for a real conversation. I have stock answers to the usual questions: Where are you from? How long have you worked here? You’re an actress, right? (My favorite white lie response: no, I’m an EMT.) But I would say only once a month does one of the several hundred people I meet actually affect me. Last night I was filling water in my partner’s station, and these two incredibly high-maintenace older folks exclaimed, “HELLO! Hello, hi, how are you?” Turns out I waited on them last month. They said I was the best “waiter” they’d ever had. Not for one million dollars could I have recalled one moment of their previous dining experience. I guess there is something to be said about being an expert on something that doesn’t thrill you.

A quiet, lovely day home alone, cleaning house both literally and metaphorically. Thankful for the blessings of air conditioning and family. Went back to bed two or three times after getting up. Trying to make peace. It’s foolish of me to make arbitrary decisions, like the ones of yesterday, and also foolish to try not to feel something. We do not have control over our feelings- all we can do is control how we deal with them. So I’m going to go on with love for the man I can’t be with, and start to return to my full, rich life. No decisions, no hopes, just life. And see where it takes me.

I have to go back to work tonight. I’ve worked one shift since last Monday, since the 4th of August. I always thought that if I didn’t work full time, I’d have too much time on my hands, but it’s not true. I’ve done more writing in the last week than I’ve done in the last three months. I can’t even think about what it would be like if I didn’t have to work at a subsistence job, if I could spend my time writing, studying wine, singing… ugh. What a life that would be. Alas.

Off to work. Hope to keep my cool while I’m there.

No colposcopy today. Union Square got power at 7 PM tonight, which means my restaurant was shut down from Thursday evening until Saturday night. Four shifts lost, at least $40,000 down the drain for the house itself, and four shifts of rent money for me and mine. It’s a big deal. I don’t know how soon I can reschedule my colposcopy appointment, considering I had to wait almost a month for this one, and I fear that my Peace Corps application is losing time faster than I can crawl my way back to wanting it to happen.

I’d like to mark that right now, today, Saturday at the wee hour of 12:45 AM, I give up. I officially give up hope. I know I’ve been sketchy in the details all along in the matter of love, but after a full day of breaking down and then the simplest conversation with Sean and Jordi, I’ve realized that saying that all of this happened for a reason is the understatement of the century. The entire world conspired to bring myself and said man together, at the right time in both of our lives, in the perfect place to get to know each other amidst loved ones and friends, the perfect occasion to let loose, and he looked the gift horse in the mouth, turned, and walked away.

I wrote a few days ago about the few chances for happiness, and I found myself finally ready to grab for the golden ring. I grabbed and held on and only tonight, on the way home from a day of movies and family, did I realize I have to let go. Everything was laid out before us, the farmhouse brimming and then spilling over with possibility. It was the perfect time, a golden opportunity, a chance, and let’s be honest, for ALL parties involved to find a new level of happiness. Everyone who cares about this man would have been better off in the end, everyone would have found something better for themselves, could have found love in all of its many forms. But I’m not in charge. So although it will be a long time, and maybe never, before I stop caring deeply about this person, before I have a day without losing it, it’s bound to get better. Like I told him, it’s not the worst I’ve been through, and though it’s terrible, I’m going to make it.

I’m not saying that I can turn off my feelings. I’m saying that I’ve realized that hope and possibility were presented, and then denied, and that it’s already time for me to see the meaning in that. If it was going to happen, it would have. I was lamenting tonight, knowing I was being childish, asking what I had done to deserve this. I tend to punish myself when I feel like I’ve misbehaved or been unkind, and I could see no justification, no reason in my love-torn life that I should have to feel this way, particularly after mere days of goodness. And then I realized that I need to let these weeks go, need to see them as fun as opposed to tragic.

Gentle readers, I apologize. I cannot speak to him so my salve is writing to you. I’m hoping to move this despair from the front of my mind, just behind my eyes, to a back burner where it will simmer until it finally goes out. That being said, I’m hoping to have no more nightmares, and to go back to my life.

Sleep has finally left me. It’s been a blessed companion since I got home from the wedding and now it has abandoned me. I was awake when the power came on in the middle of the night, awake when my alarm sounded this morning. I lunched with my good friend Kellie yesterday, and she wisely told me that I had to embrace the pain. She said to try not to bury in in booze or anything else, but to walk in the middle of it and be present in it. Maybe that’s why I didn’t sleep.

What is wrong with me? It took my ex over five wrenching, abusive years to break my heart.

Anyway, on with my day. I’m off for my colposcopy, and I hope to bring news of a pre-cancerous cell free me. I wrote the following entry during the blackout last night…

Thursday, August 14th

The darkness on my block is so complete, so eerie and unreal that I must be out in it. I’m sitting on my front stoop with my Palm Pilot and travel keyboard, a J.W. Dundee’s HoneyBrown lager and my cat Zooey. I don’t know what time it is but it is past dusk, the light in the sky blue-black to my left, blue glow to my right. I have about fifteen candles lighting my apartment, and currently have my headlamp on my head as I write this. I need the light to write, but every minute or so I turn it off just so I can experience the dark- something so little seen in this city,

I walked from Union Square to Park Slope, Brooklyn today. At 4:08, I was just beginning a yoga class taught by my good friend B, and when the power went out, we thought we must have blown a fuse. Ha ha ha. We went on with class, sweat dripping down our backs to make our mats slick, not really thinking there was any trouble.

Just after 5, I left the yoga center, and I walked several blocks up 6th Ave before realizing there was an unusual number of people on the streets. I kept trying to reach my brother Sean on his cell phone and was annoyed to find that nothing was working. And then I got scared. Last time I was walking through New York City with all the people on the streets and no cell service, something was terribly, terribly wrong.

Thankfully I figured out that it was just a blackout. But then the rumors began about how far the blackout spread, and everyone assumed that Canada was an exaggeration. For the first time in months, I hadn’t ridden my bike in to the city, so not only was I in the dark to the true nature of the situation, I was also stranded. I headed to work, where I found three friends waiting to walk to Brooklyn. I’ll admit to partaking of both beer and tequila to take the edge off the walk, and it worked.

I don’t know exactly how many people walked the Manhattan Bridge with me tonight, nor how many strode down the middle of Bowery or stopped traffic on Flatbush. It was a really long walk, and we stopped whenever we found a sprinkler or bottled water. (I braved a trip to the Port-O-Potty at the base of the bridge; a letter to my beloved found a much more useful place in my life as toilet paper.) The only person in my family I was able to reach was my mother on her cell, and I delivered her news to the masses in front and behind me on the bridge. “BLOOMBERG SAYS THERE WILL BE POWER TONIGHT! TURN EVERYTHING OFF WHEN YOU GET HOME!!!!”

I met really nice people on the walk home, and when I finally reached my apartment, I ran up and down the stairs in the fading light to make sure everyone had candles and matches. There was no one home, so I settled on the porch to write. As I finished the above paragraph, my entire house showed up. Some of my neighbors were here to pick stuff up and leave, but about ten of us spent the last two hours on the porch. I made PB and J’s, another neighbor made pasta and we sat and talked and enjoyed what little breeze we found.

So many other things happened today, so many greater feelings and thoughts, but when you walk across the bridge with your entire neighborhood and beyond, and you still don’t have electricity (i.e. no air conditioner, fan, ice, cold water), the larger issues of basic survival become the most important.

I cut off all my hair today.

This is a big deal for me. I’ve always assumed that whatever magic I possess is wrapped up in my ridiculously long mane of hair. I don’t know exactly how many inches fell to the floor in the salon, but it feels as though I cut half the weight of my head. Everyone at work was shocked, but they also informed me that I still have long hair. Doesn’t seem like it to me. So much of it is gone. I mean, I know it’s just hair. But I’ve always felt as though it was somehow key. Which is silly.

Everyone, and I mean everyone at work asked “How was the wedding?” Between the event itself and the bachelor party I only worked a few shifts so it seemed to most, and to me, that I’d been gone for two weeks. It’s a really difficult question to answer. “It was amazing… just amazing… beautiful… softball, rehearsal dinner, hill…” and about then I’d lose it. I ended up spilling the beans to a cluster of women who were concerned about me, which helped in that they pretty much left me to myself for the rest of the night.

I know that you, my faithful readers in cyber-world, might be tiring of me and my busted heart, but it has been but a day, and if you are going to slog through blogs featuring my butt and bike accidents, you might as well come with me on this trip as well.

I keep on having these fantasies, dreams of a reversal of fortune, a phone call, a sudden appearance at my work, and then I realize such fantasies are false and dangerous, and then I’m thrown back to reality, and it sucks all over again. I wonder how long it will take for me to stop jumping when my phone rings, when my computer announces new mail. Anyone who has treasure that I lack ought realize that this is far from over.

On a similar note, I got asked out at work again today, and once again by an investment bankers. What is it about me that attracks investment bankers? And why do investment bankers really think that any server, let alone ME, is going to graciously accept yet another drink-infused embarrassing proposal? They actually tell me how rich they are, the number of waterfront properties they own, as if this had any bearing on the situation. Fortunately, I know how to work these men out of a 30% tip, so at least it’s not wasted time as far as my bank account goes. But yeesh. If any of you know investment bankers, tell them to leave servers alone.

We get only so many chances in life, only so many paths to take towards goodness or kindness or happiness. These chances, I feel, are so rare, so few and far between, that when they come upon us we must really look them in the eye, dive into the center of them, crawl to the side of the map Where There Be Dragons.

This weekend I took a chance I didn’t even know I was taking. I bit an apple that meant only so much to me on the first bite, but by the time I was only halfway to the core it was terrifying in value. I foolishly kept eating, foolish only because the outcome was uncertain. I began by caring only as I’ve cared for things in the past, but by the end, I was lost. I took this chance, and for the first time in ten years ran blindly towards what I thought should be mine.

I chose poorly. Well, that’s not true, I chose brilliantly, but in the end, it seems I’ve lost. There is a person out there, out there in the world, who knocked me off the earth so completely that I was willing to throw everyone and everything else to the wind, and I did. But I’ve lost the chance to even fight for this person, and believe you me, given the chance I’d fight like hell. I would fight for this harder than I’ve ever fought for anything, but right now my fists only punch the wind. I feel as though everyone else has had their chance, and the chance to do it right is now mine. But I don’t get to choose.

I know that sometimes doing the right thing has to prevail over, as they say, following one’s bliss, but I’m having a really hard time right now figuring out what is “right”. If this chance ever comes to me again, I swear to the gods that I will never forget how lucky I was to find myself at that path again. I’m terrified, and quite certain, that I won’t be so lucky, and I sure as hell don’t dare to hope. It’s terrible, it sucks, it’s just no good at all. And I’m helpless.

Any of you die-hard Star Trek TNG fans? There was an episode about this female human form that they kept hidden away during the first part of the flight because they were afraid she would disrupt the ship. She was some form of Empath, as she could make any kind of man in the world suddenly believe that she was the right woman for him. She growled at the Klingons, sneered with the Romulans, and finally found herself spending a great deal of time with Captain Picard. She was a wedding present to some other crazy race, and Picard was teaching her the ceremony. Around Picard she quoted Shakespeare, played the flute, talked poetry. The fear of having her on the ship, outside of all the mens’ hormones, was that she would accidentally bond with someone before the day of her wedding. And that’s exactly what happened- she became forever the woman she was around Picard. She confessed this to him as he walked her down the aisle to her new groom, and then also told him she would be able to, and would have to, fake it for the rest of her life with her husband. She would always be bonded to Picard.

So admittedly I’m a dork. But I feel as though this has happened to me. I found the one I want, which leaves me to either continue alone or eventually pretend that someone else will fit the bill.

This sucks. This is not okay. I told him it was, and I lied. It’s not okay, it’s terrible, and I don’t even get to tell him.