finis coronat opus

I decided to get this down because I may one day wonder what happened. 

Since we quit working together, I have slowly let go.  Not all the way but some.  And she comes back.  As a slow blur separating itself from the background.  As if she comes into focus.  And I get to have that.  A sort of shimmering connection at once near and far. 

We emailed some brief updates and it was so lovely.  Fun.  Light.  Then she said she was going to be in town and asked about seeing each other.  When I replied yes, she pushed against the offer.  This pattern is the third time.  Ease and fun, notion of seeing each other, push and formality.  And I bristle at the change in tone.  It raises uncomfortable questions.  We devolve into semantics around what we want and see as a healthy way to stay in touch. 

Last time I acquiesced, thinking we just needed time to chill into a new way of being.  Now, closing in on a year and a half and us repeating this. 

I feel held down.  Splayed.  Forced into a vulnerability that feels wrong.  Out of proportion.  Inappropriate.  But she keeps saying she doesn't want anything to change.  Needs our relationship to stay the same.  But things did change.  And I need to change with them. 

And when I wrote it all out, explaining it as best I could, she seemed to think I wrote it hot or mad.  Like the time I called her beautiful, it just comes across so different than how I heard it in my mind's voice.  Usually I'm good at conveying my inner tone but as we lose this thing, maybe we losing that, too.  Or maybe it was her heat or anger she heard me through.  I don't know.  Something was way off.

We each left the ball in the others' court, I think.  I have so many feelings.  But, I'm all out of words.

in with the old

I have made progress with turning things around.  I didn't get up swinging, but I did get up.  A stuttering switching of places with the silent witness.  The world other-worldly then.  There is a place inside, a round cushion, the light down low.  The eyes are a window.  A head count and we are all here.  Who is that breathing?  Is the body, too, an Other?  As time is the fourth dimension in space-time, so then is the body a separate sameness?  There is much I don't understand. 

I am profoundly sad and also anxious.  I learned -unexpectedly- that head trauma causes tinnitus.  When people find out I have it, they tend to ask me about or chastise me for loud music.  I listen to folk and jazz/big band music primarily.  Some pop & oldies in the car.  More often nothing at all.  And I avoid headphones as they impart a sense that something is happening that I cannot hear coming.  So I doubt music had a part in it.  When I heard this in a tangent on a science show that's about other types of stuff, I stopped cold. 

Other stuff too.  A death in the family.  I sprained my wrist.  Work is changing.  Summer's arrival is changing my schedule in several way.    My ex forgot one of my kids for hours for the fifth or sixth time.  My son got hit by a car.  The list goes on and on.  And I know that really things are ok - not great not terrible and it will get both better and worse in all kinds of ways.  I know. 

My nervous system is shot and I need a moment (like a few days) of nothing going on.  But then again, once I wouldn't have even known that.  I'd have been swept out to sea using some old pattern as a wake board back to shore.  Or, on second thought, maybe I am doing that with writing.  Somehow it still helps.