Self-Absorption Post #3,048

I think there's nothing worse than coming home on the subway sad. First, I feel like I'm in some really crappy indie movie, like Closer except far less well-done and with unattractive actors. When you're sad on the subway in New York and coming home later than you usually do, there's always this perverse desire to sneak glances at the faces of your fellow passengers, thinking that maybe -- in a stupid P.T. Anderson moment -- they'll instantly understand you and agree that your significant other was a huge douche for saying that awful thing to you 20 minutes ago, and that they'll totally get how your upbringing was pivotal in stunting who you became.

But it's so dumb and self-aggrandizing. (It's okay; I had to look it up too just to make sure it meant what I thought it meant.) We're so overprivileged in this country, in this city. And I think that all of us still think that if we somehow find our jigsaw-puzzle match, our platonic ideal of a partner, that this whole -- whatever spendy, self-absorbed, career-ish life that we've been half-assing -- will finally make sense and we'll float down into a muted Pottery Barn existence with our towheaded Xeroxed children and we'll finally feel like we've been forgiven for the partial promiscuity, the squandered money, and the half-formed ideas we were too lazy to execute.

But it won't. Because, unfortunately, we are who we are, and those awful post-toothbrushing 2 a.m.-in-the-mirror moments only reveal what the truth is: Our mistakes and everything we do to cover them up.