Eat Pray Love - the final analysis

Eat Pray Love would seem a perfect book for me right now, truly. And yet, I found the chipper tone and cutesy jokey manner way too, well, chipper and cutesy -- I am not so sufficiently past the things that ail me, those same things that were ailing the author, to be able to laugh along with her. That said, the book has had echoes I didn't expect.

Author Liz Gilbert embarked on a journey of the heart and soul to try to reclaim herself (or perhaps to actually find herself in the first place) after a difficult divorce and a heartbreak over another seemingly perfect man. I am heartbroken that a seemingly perfect man has decided against Uz, or the Uz we knew anyway, and so the journey Liz took was of special interest. Rarely does a book and the therapy it is supposed to do match so perfectly.

Liz and I would likely not be friends -- her determined optimism gets on my nerves. As well, I cannot imagine wanting to meditate in a place where drinks are decidedly NOT served, and am bored senseless with the idea of chanting and getting spiritual-- the heart of the book and her life. This is more my flaw than hers, I readily admit it. She is both lighter and deeper than I am, and both ends of that spectrum took me out of the book's flow.

However, Liz did offer wisdom and her book has stayed with me in ways I didn't expect. She took months off to meditate in an ashram, a real one, the kind you find in India, and she clearly broke through to the very soul of herself. She found the core of the universe. But she also found one truth that resonated deeply and may resonate with anyone who inexplicably cannot see the forest for the trees with men, and who attaches herself to what they colloquially call "bad boys" or at least men bad for her. Because such a thing as hitching yourself to someone bad for you does not actually make sense, there has to be a neurotic reason for it.

What Liz discovered is that she loved most not the man she was with but who he could be-- she loved her vision of him, in other words. This is perilously close to a narcissist who loves only an image. But if I were to be painfully honest I would have to say that I loved who I knew he could be, who he was on the way to becoming....not so much who he reverted to and who he IS, in fact, right this minute. People don't change, anyone will tell you that, but it isn't actually true. People sometimes don't STAY changed, that's the thing.

That I loved someone who no longer exists is not truly a consolation -- it's a death, really, and I grieve it deeply. It is frustrating that he COULD have existed. But that is a selfish thing for me to wish, of course.

Still, for this small piece of insight and small peace of mind, the book was well worth the experience.

Eat, Pray, Love more

Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of Eat, Pray, Love is doing what I've always wanted to do when my heart was broken, which is the BIG feeling, or when my heart had turned to dust, which is the utter LACK of feeling and the state I associate with depression. She is on a trip of discovery, discovering herself mostly, eating and drinking and exploring her way through, at this point in the book, Italy.

This is the cure I've been told. When you're heartbroken the only way to recover is to fall in love with YOURSELF. Do things for yourself, pamper yourself...I used to imagine that if I needed some soul-nurturing I would sit at the narrow lake-facing bar at Canoe with a glass of something utterly amazing and simply watch the inland freshwater sea. Maybe I will do this next week instead of eating lunch.

I say that but I know I won't do it.

There are two books I'm reading now, to try to get through the morass. The Brain that Changes Itself offers a heartening bit of encouragement, the bottom line being something akin to "Just think about something else". My therapist says the trick is to simply (ha! "simply". Fools! that's like "fall in love with yourSELF" -- it you could do THAT you wouldn't need the help....) rewire the brain, train yourself to do different things, learn new things, break the indelible pattern....the brain, you see, gets accustomed to doing the same things over and over again so love with people who are cruel to you becomes comfortable because, well, that's what's always happened. Think of it as muscle memory of an emotional kind.

This "just think of something else" theory is probably a good idea and I am no doubt oversimplifying the theory of this book to the point of insult but it is so WASP-oriented, so unnatural a response, I find myself slipping off the premise. It is also a theory oddly reminscient of the ex's go-to reaction to absolutely anything emotional. Eg.: "The smell of roses always makes me sad." "Stop smelling them then." We call this "being Yorkshired", Yorkshire being where he says he learned this bit of emotional wisdom.

I am also reading Soul Murder Revisited, which I bought by mistake (who knew there would be TWO books with Soul Murder in the title? happily, both by the same man so....) and this is striking closer to home. Being in a bad relationship with someone devastatingly cruel is masochism, and masochism is akin to having Stockholm Syndrome. Through long experience you come to side with those who hurt you, you come to believe you deserve it. In fact the idea that you don't is not just absurd and laughable but angry-making. A sadist destroys because that is more bearable than feeling vulnerable to love, and frankly anyone who loves him, TRULY loves him, is an idiot anyway because he is unlovable.

Yup, it's all a sickness. Maybe it would be better to eat pastry in Rome. It may not be the cure but it's a better diversion.