Monthly Archives: September 2002

This is my dilemma: I knitted E.S. a sock before I broke up with him.

Two weeks ago he moved to Boston, where I used to live, so I know how cold it is. I decided to knit him a pair of socks to keep his feet warm (because, after all, even though he is not my true love, I feel warmly towards him). However, knitting a pair of socks turned out to take a lot longer than I expected it to, and I was only able to finish one before he left. So I gave him a sock and an IOU.

My plan was to finish the companion sock, send it to him, and then break up with him. He pressed the issue, however, forcing me to break up with him before I finished the sock.

I figure these are my options:

1) finish the sock and send it to him—he is, after all, the intended recipient, and the fact that I broke up with him doesn’t change that;
2) finish the sock, get the yarn to make another, matching sock, and keep the pair for myself, since, after all, it’s a pretty groovy pattern; or
3) finish the sock and get the yarn to make another, matching pair for my soul mate, whoever he is.

The problem, of course, is sizing. E.S. wears a size 11 shoe. I wear a size 7.5. I have no idea what size my soul mate wears. If I finish the sock now, it’ll fit me; if I keep going, it’ll fit E.S.

If I leave it unfinished, perhaps it will act as a beacon to my soul mate, calling him to me as surely as a siren on the shore.

Of course, it’s entirely possible that by the time he reaches me I will have lost the pattern or forgotten how to knit entirely.

Yesterday I saw a truck with signage on the side indicating it was making deliveries for “Hansel ‘n Gretel’s Fresh Cold Cuts Factory.”

Given that the central threat in Hansel and Gretel is that the witch will cook Hansel and eat him, this unnerved me.

Perhaps I’ll stick to peanut butter and jelly for a while.

I just took T.H. off my buddy list for IMing. Not that we were IMing each other. But renouncing that sick, painful thrill I got every time I saw him online just seemed so healthy I couldn’t quite bring myself to do it.

Hope springs eternal in the human breast, but maybe if I dam it up I can laugh bitterly while it evaporates into nothingness.

It helps to remember that, in the breakup e-mail he sent me, he misspelled “consistent” and “reunited.”

In honor of autumn, I have dumped one man (E.S.) and been dumped by another (T.H.).

I feel horrible.

I always knew that my life would one day turn into a Dorothy Parker poem (in this case “A Very Short Song”):

Once, when I was young and true,
Someone left me sad—
Broke my brittle heart in two;
And that is very bad.

Love is for unlucky folk,
Love is but a curse.
Once there was a heart I broke;
And that, I think, is worse.