A friend asked me recently, “So have you heard from Irish guy?”
I greeted this with a blank stare. Not only was my expression blank but my entire BRAIN was a blank. Irish guy?
I said, “Uhm … and what Irish guy would that be?”
She gave me a blank look herself, like I had gone insane. “You know … Irish guy!”
I sat there, the epitome of oblivion, racking my brains. Racking my brains. Then – in a flash it came to me. The Irish guy she was referring to. The Irish guy I had met my last time in Ireland. The Irish guy I wept over for FOUR DAYS when I returned to America. And when I say “I wept for four days”, I MEAN that I wept for four straight days. I was Diane Keaton in Something’s Gotta Give. I would cry myself to sleep. Then pass out. I would then wake up, stare out into my room for a millisecond, and it all would come flooding back, and I would BURST into tears again. I was that weeping girl that you see on the subway. It’s funny now, but then? It was wrenching. I filled up half a composition notebook with stories about Irish guy. The Irish guy I met in Glendalough. The Irish guy I went NUTS for.
And now? My response to the question, “Have you heard from the Irish guy?” is to go completely blank and have no idea what she is talking about.
Startling. And kind of embarrassing too. We howled with laughter about it, because I had, of course, bombarded her with the stories about “Irish guy” when I returned from Ireland. She was there for me when I sobbed into the phone about it. (He hadn’t emailed me for four days and I literally became a weeping dybbuk of truly shocking proportions. I thrashed about in bed, moaning up into the darkness. hahahaha I mean, it’s ABSURD, looking back on it … but while I was in it? I could. Not. Stop. Crying. COULD. NOT. Like I wrote in the post about this whole thing – Love is merely a madness… I went a little bit mad for a week. Irish Guy, by the way, handled the whole Sheila meltdown trans-Atlanticallly, with humor and grace. But before that? I went INSANE.) Maybe love is like a fever. And when the fever passes, and health returns – you can’t remember ever being that sick. You look back on the time of the fever with wonderment. You block it out.
If you had told me, while I was tossing and turning through the wee smas, sobbing up into the night with great wrenching sobs that came up out of my feckin’ SOLAR PLEXUS, if you had told me: “Uhm … Sheila … 10 months from now, when someone asks you if you’ve heard from the Irish guy … you will not know who she is talking about …” I flat out would not have believed you.
I bet, too, that by next year I won’t remember his name.
This has nothing to do with his worth as a human being. He was GREAT and my time with him – at Glendalough – is something I will never ever forget. EVER.
It’s just that …
The fogs of time are already obliterating him …
Weird.
It’s kind of embarrassing. But dammit, I can’t hold onto EVERY thing. I’ve already got the triumvirate to deal with … I guess there isn’t room for one more?
Sorry, Irish guy. You were really awesome.
I was that weeping girl that you see on the subway.
Ok, maybe this is my chance to get some clarity on the whole weepy girl thing. If I see a weepy girl in public, say a sobby girl in line behind me in the convenience store, do I ask her if she is ok or will that make things worse? Do weeping girls want anyone to talk to them or do they just want to weep in peace?
(This isn’t too far off topic, is it?)
10 months? Has it almost been a year?? Oh, man.
patrick – Once when I was a weeping girl on the subway and trying to hold it together – a gentleman next to me solemnly and quietly handed me a tissue. it was so so so nice. he didn’t get in my face or try to fix it – he didn’t say A WORD – he just kindly handed me a tissue. it was SO nice.
keep in mind that the crying girl is probably MORTIFIED that she has lost it in public … so maybe she doesn’t want anyone to call attention to it even FURTHER.
But the quiet handing over of the tissue was a real class act. It made the world seem kind.
carrie – hahaha I know!!
so weird – I remember setting up my next date with him via email, sitting in your house in feckin’ BELFAST, sipping a Bloody Mary, and crying over Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.
hahahahahaha So hilarious!!
I just saw your photo and had to comment. Funny the image one has in one’s mind as to what a blogger may look like as one reads that person’s blog when there’s no pic. I figured you had red hair…that bit was pretty obvious…but I had a different image entirely. I guess reading a blog is like reading a novel or memoir and developing a mind’s eye image of the character really.
I used to have that picture on my front page but took it down.
My hair’s short now.
What to do when you see the crying girl on the subway
From Sheila’s comments section, after she talks about being …that weeping girl that you see on the subway:Ok, maybe this is my chance to get some clarity on the whole weepy girl thing. If I see a weepy girl in
“Sorry, Irish guy. You were really awesome.”
Maybe even, dare I say it…WICKED awesome? ;-)
Good Lord. How do women survive? We men usually have no idea that we are dealing with primal forces–torrents of hail, fire, and emotional destruction. Yet, the best of us can eventually be dismissed with a “Who?” I remember reading once that women feel relationships and their aftermaths more deeply, but men hold on to them much, much longer. I don’t know if that’s true, but I know I remember minute details about every single woman with whom I had any kind of serious relationship, and I still feel a connection to them even thirty years later. It would bother me if I knew they would answer “Who?” if someone asked them about me. It might be healthier to live(and burn)brightly, but be able to let go when the flame flickers out. For me, I’m a looonnnggg, sloooow smolder.
I just re-read what I wrote above, and it sounds a little like I am criticizing. That’s not how I meant it. I am just amazed that you could feel as strongly as you did 10 months ago, and be able to let go of it so easily. Apparently, I prefer to torture myself for decades. I was able to say goodbye to these women, but they had become like family members who it was unthinkable, or impossible, to erase from my life. I didn’t mean to imply that was a better way to deal with things–just different.
Well, I did call my oblivion “embarrassing”. It shocks even me.
I am like you – a long smoulderer – with other men I’ve loved. One of my ex-boyfriends said to me once, “Sheila, you have a book of men in your heart.” This is true. Sometimes I have WISHED I could forget them, goldurnit!
But for whatever reason – the passion for Irish guy was an enormous raging fire for about … a week … and then it burned out.
So strange!!! I feel a little bit bad about it because I really did act like a crazy person with him in the aftermath, firing off insane emails at him across the Atlantic, etc. etc. And now? “Irish guy who?”
awful!!!
Weeping dybbuk?
I hope not to be taken for flippant, but that’s the line of the day.
hahaha “dybbuk” is one of my favorite words. I use it whenever possible!!