Re: Sorrow

I remember her face. I believe that if I close my eyes, I can see with perfect clarity the shape of her face as it appears in any one of a number of photographs that we had hanging in the old apartment where we lived, or decorating my cube at work.

In the lulls and chaotic times alike, I would dote upon those pictures I had around my desk. Whenever I was feeling down and wanted to (at best) print off a resignation letter and thank everybody for being great coworkers or (at worst) crawl back into my mother's womb so she could take the pain away, I would steal a few moments here and there (Scandalously left undocumented in the company timesheet!) to look at her picture and remember the reason I was there and the purpose behind why I was grinding away at making a living for the both of us. She probably never knew this, but the pictures of her I was so happy to take into work were, figuratively speaking, my own personal Do It For Her sign.

I'm not trying to be maudlin. I'm trying to explain just how much time I spent looking at my girlfriend. It wasn't just pictures, obviously. I still can recollect a hundred memories of sitting across from her in restaurants, or next to her on the couch, or holding her closely and focusing on being there in the moment with her just before there was time left to boil some water for tea, steep it, and add milk and sugar if you get my drift.

At least, I thought I did. The book I'm reading suggests crying therapy to, among other benefits, express manganese from the body and relieve stress. It calls this tactic a way to get over "mourning sickness". What could be easier? Play a sad song, start stuttering your breath, and think about something upsetting. I have plenty of things from which to choose.

Despite its lyrics, I find Puccini's Un bel di aria from Madama Butterfly to be exceptionally good at kicking me in the balls re: sorrow. It was three in the morning when I tried this, so I opted for something a bit quieter. I started reading through some old e-mail and poking at pictures of The Slut I hadn't seen in ages.

Sure, I squeezed out some tears. But what's really interesting is that I could recognize the person in the photos, but she was not familiar. There was this strange discontinuity, a sort of off-putting "you're not what I remember" sort of vibe. It must be like meeting a celebrity in the grocery store: "Hey, I know who you are, but in person you just don't quite look the same."

Of course now that the pictures are gone, the memory is there uncontested and still firmly asserting that it is perfect and unwavering. The good news is, memories lie. I see this development as a positive thing, and I put it in its place next to something off-hand that Toni said to me this past weekend. And I feel better. I keep saying that I'm trying to put one foot in front of the other, but it still surprises me when I look up and see that I'm a lot further out than I thought I was.

I think about what I had, or what I thought I had, and part of me misses it. Reviewing the facts I can see that she was really quite unhappy in the relationship, and certainly unhappy enough to go out into the world and bitch about me to other people. These other people would then proceed to put (at best) their tongues in her mouth, but for the time being that is not relevant to the story. The relationship had apparently been over long ago but no one had the decency to actually start digging a grave for it yet.

I look at the possibilities, and from time to time I stare in awe at both how long it took me to catch on and how improbable the circumstances were that lead to that first great coffin nail. And the really, truly amazing thing is that I am completely certain that had I remained ignorant, had she remained unhappy, had things gone exactly as I was planning them and I really had popped the question in calendar 2007, if I had asked her to marry me, she would have said yes.

What. The. Fuck.

You know that incredulous look that Animal from The Muppet Show would get sometimes? The look he'd get on his face when someone told him something unbelievable, like how a telephone works or how Gonzo took his drumsticks and set them on fire in order to light the fuse on some contrived Human Cannonball cannon. Mouth open, big bushy eyebrows dropped low and forming a straight line over his otherwise now-wide eyes. Yeah, that's the face I make when I think about that.

Words escape me. I am left unable to discuss my feelings on this conjecture and must resort to explaining minutiae from old puppet shows I used to watch on TV as a child in order to convey just how stupendously flabbergasted I am.

We would have gotten married and gone through all the requisite hoops therein. Nothing would have changed and something would have eventually exploded just as it did before, only there would have been the added complication of divorce papers, or a child, or something that would have made an even grander mess of things.

Yes, all that could have been mine. Am I happy about wasting eight years? Not at all. I remain grateful that in the end, things were so easily separated. New living arrangements were a snap, getting out of the lease was easy, and the hardest part was figuring out who's VHS tapes were whom's. Staying single saved us a loooooot of trouble.

What was I waiting for? I don't know. It was a combination of things, really. My upbringing taught me that marriage is the last frontier before the cosmos gives you the impatient go-ahead to start making babies, and I didn't feel that I could satisfactorily save for junior's college fund while I was working at a non-profit and barely making ends meet. Switching jobs opened up a lot of the blocks that kept me from feeling comfortable with going forward in my life.

It wasn't, prior to a couple of months ago, ever a question of "Do I want to get married or not?" I did.

It wasn't even a question of finding the right person. Yeah, yeah, I know.

I had finally found peace with myself, and had given myself permission to start reaching for that "house with the picket fence and 2.4 children in the back yard" ideal. I knew that if I didn't set a deadline, it would start slipping further and further into the future and never get done in a timely manner, so I drew a line in the sand at "calendar year, 2007" to do it. Then I started telling people, in order to make sure I stuck to it.

It's funny, almost, how these things happen. Almost.

I think about what I had, or what I thought I had, and part of me misses it. Mostly I find that I miss that planned out feeling, that sense of direction in life, and the comfort of a trusty old relationship that goes beyond the need for words. Well, the relationship was shit, and that kind of erodes away the other two things I want deep down inside. To alleviate this, I could swan dive into another relationship and start obliviously rebuilding that utopian future of mine.

But I think I probably shouldn't.

Another option is to throw in the towel and see what else I can do with my life. That's where I am right now. I don't know what the future holds. I may still get that house someday, but that plan will have to evolve from something else, possibly with someone else, and in a completely unrelated way from the last plan. That last plan is toxic and needs to be taken out back and shot to put it out of its misery, and then we can hand out cake and ice cream to all the survivors.

Despite impulse trips to Portland, things are starting to seem pretty stable again. I have my routines, all of my immediate needs are sustainably cared for for the foreseeable future, and I'm moving on with my life, slowly but surely. I hope no one thinks less of me for stopping every now and then to assess the situation, get weepy, or buy ammo.