Same As It Ever Was
Something that I don’t think is talked about enough is the role of “admiration” in relationships. Often — if not always — the people we feel the most drawn to, the people who become the closest of friends, the people that we just feel good around … possess qualities that we admire and that we want to (even if just on a small level) try to emulate and replicate. Not in a creepy SWF stalker way, but in a gently magnetic way. A former Sassy staffer (Andrea Linett, if you are familiar with masthead minutiae from back in the day 😎) has a fashion newsletter called “I Want to Be Her!” and while, sure, that sentiment teeters on the outer edge of unhealthy, it nonetheless sums up this idea in an energetically perfunctory manner.
My friend Ashley (someone I admire lots!) recommended Same as It Ever Was by Claire Lombardo to me, and it is now added to my “gobble up” list. (As in, a book you just gobble up, which I coined [to myself] last Thanksgiving…you can see my post on Wellness by Nathan Hill to see my own very specific criteria.)
Things I admired about Same as It Ever Was:
An “older” woman I could relate to vis a vis her music taste (that she won’t abandon)…loved the repeated reference to an old Jesus and Mary Chain t-shirt;
The role of a house and how it can welcome both yourself and others when feeling adrift;
Occasional emotional paralysis and ennui that might accompany motherhood (I might be mistaken, but I don’t think Lombardo is a parent. Not that you need to “be” something to write about it — topic for the ages, I guess — but wow, there’s a lot of nuance she gets impressively right);
The whole “feel like I’m on the outside looking in” feeling which — surprise! — can afflict even the people we admire most.
A satisfying read to bridge two years.
originally published on instagram