The Sure Thing

I love Lena Dunham.  I love her book 'Not That Kind of Girl'.  She's not only far wiser than I was at her age, but she is wiser than I am now (and I'm half a decade older than her).  I've already read it twice, and it's the sort of book I expect to dip in and out of for years still to come.  She strikes me as a very kind person, as well as (obviously) very clever and talented.

It feels odd.  Some passages in her book take me back to a time (not that long ago) when I was a lot surer about things.  I know I've alluded quite a lot lately to some Big Changes in my life.  Well, one of those (among many, actually) is that my boyfriend who I lived with for 11 years and I decided to separate.

When Lena (yep, I feel I can call her Lena, as if we are friends) talks about her boyfriend Jack, it is exactly how I used to talk about my now-ex-boyfriend.  I was so sure.  I thought I'd cracked it.  I thought I was sensible.  I thought I was right.

As Lena says in her book, like touching wood: 'I know life is long and people change'.  That is exactly the sort of thing I used to say, maybe in those exact words, but only as a superstition.  I didn't really mean them.  I should have.

It makes me feel a little bit sad.  Not for her, for me.  Not for her because she doesn't need it - much as I like to think otherwise, we are not the same.  She doesn't need me.  Maybe she is right.  I wasn't.  Actually I kind of was.  And that's the thing.  It's OK.

If we can't believe in the triumph of hope over experience, then what have we left?