A friend asked me recently, “So have you heard from Irish guy?”<\/p>\n
I greeted this with a blank stare. Not only was my expression blank but my entire BRAIN was a blank. Irish guy?<\/p>\n
I said, “Uhm … and what Irish guy would that be?”<\/p>\n
She gave me a blank look herself, like I had gone insane. “You know … Irish guy!”<\/p>\n
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>. 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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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<\/a>… 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n I bet, too, that by next year I won’t remember his name.<\/p>\n This has nothing to do with his worth as a human being. He was GREAT and my time with him – at Glendalough <\/a> – is something I will never ever forget. EVER.<\/p>\n It’s just that …<\/p>\n The fogs of time are already obliterating him …<\/p>\n Weird.<\/p>\n It’s kind of embarrassing. But dammit, I can’t hold onto EVERY thing. I’ve already got the triumvirate <\/a> to deal with … I guess there isn’t room for one more?<\/p>\n Sorry, Irish guy. You were really awesome.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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 … Continue reading