It's complicated

I succumbed to joining Facebook last week, and I have to say I'm very pleased with my lack of will power.

The social-networking website is far superior to its competitors when it comes to being in tune with my generation. I could list a plethora of its features as proof of this, but my favorite is under the category of "relationship status" where there is an option to choose "it's complicated."

I don't think there's any word or phrase that could better describe my generation's experience when it comes to navigating all the variables that exist in today's relationships, causing many of us to become paralyzed with indecision.

We can travel faster and stay connected in ways no other generation has experienced. We can study, live, and work in three different places at the same time. We can instantly see captured memories with the click of a digital camera, and just as easily delete the ones we don't want to keep.

The world and all its infinitesimal opportunities continue to whirl around us faster and faster, and in all the chaos we seem to lose our ability, and sometimes common decency, in tending to matters of the heart.

When I started this blog I didn't intend to write anything too deeply personal about my romantic life, fearing that I would undo the stitches I've so delicately sewn my heart back together with over the years.

Then I remembered a monologue from the play Brilliant Traces by Cindy Lou Johnson that I had performed nearly a decade ago at the J. Beckson Studios.

Did you ever think that one time, a long time ago, when you were a little child, you were visited by extraterrestrials? They say that when you are visited by an extraterrestrial - after the visit, the extraterrestrial puts this spell on you so you cannot remember the encounter at all, and you wake up only with this sad kind of longing for something, but you don't know what. And you carry that sad longing with you all the rest of your life. And they say that if, by chance, you get hypnotized, then you reveal the encounter, under hypnosis and when you wake up, you remember it, and then, it is no longer a sad longing, but a real thing, which you know about, and even if people think you're crazy, talking all the time about your extraterrestrial encounter, that's OK, because in your heart you know what it was that had been locked up for so long and you are greatly relieved.

In Johnson's own words from a 1989 New York Times article, the play is about "people who were scarred but were trying to make something of value out of their pain."

So, even if you think I'm crazy, over the next 10 days I'll list the top 10 indelible and complicated "brilliant traces" left on my heart, and what I've learned from each boy who put them there.

No names will be mentioned, only experiences - and perhaps through this process I will finally find my own relief.

brilliant trace #1