thanks

Sometimes I get tired of telling these stories of dysfunction, but apparently someone did a study. Turns out you're better at communicating when you're in a bad mood. But it's Thanksgiving so I should at least tell a Thanksgiving story.

I think this was in 2007. 2007 was a dead year for me. I was seeing this girl and neither of us really--I mean, we got on fine but there was no chemistry there. It was a relationship in the school of "anybody warm," and she was warm, at least, which was probably good because we both lost power on Thanksgiving. Her family was--I don't even remember where, somewhere on the east coast, somewhere far away. I was staying with her because I didn't want her to be all lonely. Nobody should be lonely on Thanksgiving.

Which seemed weird to me at the time. That I thought it was special, I mean. Wasn't that our entire relationship? Nobody should be lonely, so we had each other. It wasn't much but it was much better than the alternative.

And there wasn't any power so we couldn't actually cook anything we'd bought, which was mostly just canned, except the tofurkey. I suggested we find a restaurant at least and she said, "There's nothing so lonely as going out on Thanksgiving." And of course everyone was out of town so we just curled up at home and ate some of the perishables that would otherwise go to waste. It was actually really nice. Nothing else mattered and we had each other, you know?

I don't even remember why we broke up, but it wasn't for anything memorable. I think we just both decided that we could do better than someone whose only qualifications were "being there." Can you blame us?

I hadn't thought about her until just today. I had a lot of hopes for 2007 and none of them came through, but she was there and it made the whole thing a lot more bearable.