I am so bored I find a water splatter pretty.

Eat Pray Love. Not.

There is a section in “Eat Pray Love” where Elizabeth Gilbert talks about being visited by Depression and Loneliness in the beautiful gardens of Villa Borghese in Rome.  Personified as Pinkerton Detectives, they harangue her for the failure of her marriage, the disintegration of her relationship with David (I presume the guy she left her husband for), her inability to hold on to a relationship, and her general failure as a human being.  Which brings me to me.  Now I will be the first to admit that I was not a victim in the breakup of my 15-year relationship with Geoff.  Far from it.  I was perpetrator and oppressor, the bastard that blew up our lives with a thick bunch of stick dynamite and walked away, whistling.  Who then embarked on a one-and-a-half year long-distance relationship with a terrific guy in New York (coincidentally also a David), and then, for a bit of variety, let that die a whimpering death instead of with a loud bang. 

All of which makes it odd that I still experience the same emotions of failure, depression and guilt.  Loneliness is in there too.  I have proven to myself, once and for all, that I don’t do loneliness well.  Two weeks in Milan, Lake Como, and Venice, alone except for the company of a Nikon D80 and an iPad, has convinced me of that.  Note to self: NEVER visit the world’s most romantic towns alone, ever, again. 

But I don’t do relationships well either.  That’s a right pickle, as they say.   I’m a terrible boyfriend, David will be the first to say.  Emotionally unavailable, selfish, moody, inattentive.  I’m a great lover, a terrific romantic who once flew to New York from Hong Kong (that’s a 14-hour flight each way) for a long weekend so I could surprise him by delivering a birthday present to David.  But it was pretty much downhill from there, to my chagrin and eternal shame. There’s no hiding from the fact: I am a bad person, and I do not deserve happiness. 

Since it petered out with David, all I’ve done so far is drift.  I travel excessively for my work, diving into a job that I make bigger by the day with new initiatives and programs that necessitate even more traveling.  On weekends I go out to clubs and bars with a gaggle of friends, some I’m genuinely close to, others what us Chinese might idiomatically call “wine-and-meat” friends. 

Reading EPL was inspiring and depressing at the same time.  Like tens of thousands of breathless Gilbert fans around the world (which I am NOT one of) I have entertained thoughts of taking a year off to find myself.  Bring my yoga mat with me to an ashram in India, or spend a month under a vow of silence in a Shinto monastery near Kyoto, or, better yet, spend four months in Italy, still my favorite country in the world, just eating. What idiotic thoughts.  Like the naysayers on Amazon.com that give EPL one-star ratings, I am aware of how self-centered, selfish, and self-absorbed this whole idea is.  Yet so alluring ... 

Still, if anything, my August 2010 trip to Northern Italy has proven that solitude and I are not mates.  And I am not destined to be a good husband, at least not the current me. 

So I continue to drift.