My Romance of a Thousand Pieces
My romance started like most do, with a rush of passion, excitement and not much preparation. When I first saw Mr. Puzzle, I knew we were destined to be together. I loved the look of him; the way he lit up the buildings that cascaded down to the sea, reminding me of youthful indiscretions. I stared at his photo for days before making my first move. Ignoring my ordinary caution about starting new relationships, I rushed in, eager for a new experience. Since I am under house arrest in Italy, I thought I would have all the time in the world to devote to this new relationship. I would get to know him, and foolishly, I thought he would get to know me.
Just to let you know, I haven’t been sitting around at night thinking, oh I want a relationship with a puzzle. Quite frankly this type of distraction has never appealed to me before. For someone who scored “0” on the Meyers Briggs Sensate scale, the opposite end of Intuition, putting puzzles together is not exactly in my wheelhouse. It was all my cousin’s idea. She was worried about my living in Italy during the C0-VID19 pandemic. It will be fun she said, it will take your mind off of other things, she said. She was going to send the puzzle to me but that was too complicated given our current situation of isolation, so I made the selection myself and miraculously, he was delivered to my doorstep.
My first disappointment was his total silence about how I should proceed in our new relationship. No directions, no guidance, just a plastic bag with 1,000 pieces. I stared at them in dismay. I called a friend who advised me to remove his pieces from the plastic bag and flip them over face-side up. Once I had done this, I was to scour through all of his parts searching for ones that had straight edges on them. Using the straight edges, I could then fit the pieces together and put a frame around him. I was thrilled when I immediately found the 4 corner pieces. I celebrated by taking a break. Unfortunately, it has now been 2 weeks, and I am still looking for all the pieces with edges on them.
I quite honestly thought he would be more helpful in my attempts to work things out. I knew he could read my mind and he had to sense my frustration level, and yet he lay there on the table, two dimensional, and indifferent to my needs. My friends suggested we needed professional help, so I turned to the purveyor of all wisdom, You Tube.
I Googled, “How to do a 1,000piece puzzle if you are a beginner.” Here are the things that popped up. “A Thousand Piece Puzzle in 3 minutes.” Watching two people zoom around, sorting, sorting, sorting, and snapping pieces together made me nauseous. On the verge of vomiting, I closed the zoomers down and continued my Google search. I finally found a source of professional help on a video that was titled, “How to do a Jigsaw Puzzle Quickly.” I thought this might be appropriate since it had taken me 2 weeks to put together 14 pieces. That left only 986 to go.
The young woman who was our counselor looked like she was 12 years old and wearing her mother’s make up. It gave me pause, but she seemed to have a definite opinion about how to make this realtionship work. However about the 50th time she used the word “actually” in a five minute span, I began to have homicidal thoughts, not just about Mr. Puzzle but also about her. She told me I should set boundaries with Mr. Puzzle and that this should take me 30 minutes. I started tapping my fingers on table, as she continued her cheery tips.
Surprisingly she said I needed to get to know Mr. Puzzle as I turned over his pieces, not just mindlessly flip them over. Could my problem be that I had not been attentive enough to him in the beginning? The problem was he could be so incredibly boring. She didn’t have any suggestions on how to break the self-induced hypnotic trance that comes over me as I stare at the pieces spread over the table.
I was then instructed to use a gentle sliding motion as I made my way through the sorting process. She admonished me not to paw at him, but rather to be gentle and mindful. My mind started to go to dark places. I thought about pounding his pieces into submission, forget just pawing. I started to seriously contemplate my neighbor’s advise of putting him into the blender and then gathering the dust and making of him what I will. I wonder what type of liquid I would need to add to the blender to make a nice paste of him.
I reflected upon our relationship and came up with a huge insight. This is all his fault. What part is he playing in making this work? I was doing all the work, and as far as I could tell he was doing nothing. I was growing impatient with his stubborn intransigence. As if reading my mind the counselor admonished me to have patience and take responsibility for my actions. She is definitely on his side.
She lures me back with the promise that it will be oh so satisfying when the boundaries are finally all set. She doesn’t mention the daily frustration of living with someone who will not set his own boundaries. Delayed gratification is important in this type of relationship, I’m told. Does she have any idea how old I am? How long can I delay?
How much time am I willing to invest in this relationship she wonders? I mutter at the computer that I can only do about 5 minutes at a stint. She then informs me she can sit for 9 hours happily working on her puzzle, taking only breaks for bathroom and snacks because she totally loses track of time. That’s it. What about dinner? What about lunch? She exists on snacks? For 9 hours? This counselor is a nut. It’s not his fault, it’s her fault.
Listening to her drone on about how wonderful Mr. Puzzle is, I had another major insight. I don’t really like Mr. Puzzle. I’m not all that interested in minutely examining each of his unique parts. I find this getting to know him process boring and tedious. I loved Mr. Puzzle best when his 1,000 pieces were still in the bag, and I could look at his outside and dream about how perfect his insides were.
Women’s Home Journal used to have a section called “Can this marriage be saved?” My sister and I would read it together and howl at the marital woes of people who wrote in…This was of course before either of us married. After describing the miseries of the couple, the reader was asked, can this marriage be saved? What think you reader?
I think no. I find him boring, he finds me impulsive and flighty. I am putting all of his pieces back in the box and giving him to my neighbor. Not the one who wants to pulverize him, but a neighbor who says he likes puzzles, but then again he hasn’t met Mr. Puzzle.
Easter is a day of liberation. I am free of him.
BTW she was definitely on his side!
