flickering flame

 I have entered the dark night. Somethings I had not noticed before. I dissociate in meetings when I have to talk. Depression carries such shame with it. So it has to be private. That privacy is relentlessly isolating. There's shame. You overcompensate. Your sense of how you seem to others is both bloated and emaciated. You hate yourself for it the unsteady image you hold, it's disproportions both constant and in flux. The world doesn't stop spinning. Time cannot afford you relief. I size people up too much. Trying to sense what they can detect of me. This creates some kind of unintentional connection. Intimacy by accident. It's too tender there. Skinned knee. And all this is a loop. Wooden rollercoaster clattering stuttering havoc. 

Have you thought about it? Have you considered it? Have you made a plan? Have you begun implementing a plan? Have you made an attempt? Stepping stones to the river. You are here. X marks the spot. 

Today I was standing in the kitchen making lunch and I heard my own voice say with some sense of certainty, "I don't think so." I hadn't been talking or really thinking about anything. Just making lunch. It was surprising and not as surreal as you'd expect. Which was also surprising. 

This depression arrives with what I think is anxiety. I'm not great at naming emotions or states of mind but I told S I have been low-key angry and I don't know why and she asked more about it and said my description sounded like what she experiences as anxiety. If it is, I rather dislike how it combines with depression. I've mostly come to a place of peace with depression. But this robs me of that peace. 

Everything is a jumble and I crave peace. 

I hoped writing this here would discharge it and let me asleep in peace. 

gin and tonic

 

I just woke from a dream C was in. Trying not to lose it before I write it down.  It was a beach / cabana bar or restaurant. Vacationy. C was there and we saw each other. It was awkward and nice to see her.  We talked a few minutes and then I had to go check in with Hoyt who apparently owned the place.  We were in the back, and I asked if there was a bar and what they served. He didn't seem to understand, and I realized he just got the place and didn't know anything. I got a gin and tonic and faced the hubbub toward the front. It was a pretty day, and you could see the water through the crowd and the angle of the sun off a windshield added to the summertime effect. I could see C from back there. She seemed to be waiting for someone. She seemed to be as conscious of my presence as I was of hers though I couldn't be sure of that. I wanted to spend more time with her, but I knew it would not happen. Not in a disappointed way but in that familiar way, when you know someone well. Or maybe not them but their ways. That leaving that she does. And replayed the refrain where she tells me this is about my mother and I don't tell her that she's the only one I've felt this way about and I'd wager good money others have felt this from her before, too. 

I came back to the front, and she rose saying she was heading home. She said a little more, but there was background noise and I couldn't hear her, so I smiled and nodded and said, "Ok."

 It's fading now but as I try to see it, I find there are remnants that don't match in the shatter of memory. It gives me the impression there are other, unremembered dreams. 

fear in three parts

 I awoke from a dream and was dismayed to find it was only 12:30am. But I didn't want to go back to sleep in case the dream resumed.  So, I got up and made coffee and started working. Now it's a couple of hours later and I went back to bed, but I still can't fall asleep.  So, I came here. 

In the dream I had met a neighbor who was also a single parent. We'd heard about a house in our neighborhood that was haunted, and the owners rented it out to people who wanted to spend a night in a haunted house. We decided to take the kids on a sleepover there. We lay in bed whispering, wondering if everything was a noise, the kids were giddy (they were all young in the dream.) I believed that the owners haunted the house themselves as a gimmick.  Mostly it was not scary but was that feeling that we associate with fear which is actually extreme anticipation.  I began to really like her as the night passed. A louder noise happened, and she pulled herself near me.  And I realized in that moment I liked that.  It felt kind of amazing. Then I realized we were probably supposed to be moving about to get the most out of this experience so we started creeping about and ended up what could best be described as a backstage. There were workers moving stuff and we found this old train that ran the perimeter of the property and asked if we could get on it. It turned out even the backstage was part of the story. So, we got on it and went through this whole side quest. And then it was getting to be time to take the kids to school, so we got in my pickup and took them. We had to walk them in, and her kid went to a different floor, so I offered that we could meet out front and I'd drop her at home. She seemed to bristle slightly and said she'd be fine. I said it's no trouble and she said something to the effect of she could take care of herself, which of course I never doubted and was confused as to why this offer seemed to have turned adversarial. So, I dropped off the kids and left. On the way out I saw her kids coat hook and there were carrots hanging on it, their ends tied together. I stopped and looked at them, curious but withdrawn now. It suggested someone playful, creative, healthy. I felt a little sad but wanted to get out before we crossed paths again.

Now I was walking outside and a woman in a sort of full body leather suit said something to me. I thought it was the neighbor woman at first and replied but quickly learned this was not the same person. She seemed to know me, though. She followed me and I tried to outmaneuver her, but she stayed pretty close. I tried to be clearer and more direct with her, saying that I didn't want her to follow me, I was going home now, etc. But she persisted. I began to get scared, and it was creating something close to nausea. I turned toward her and saw that whatever she was wearing partially obscured her vision. I took her by the waist and guided her weight first toward me and then down to the ground. She asked what I was doing, and I said setting her down so I could get away. There was a guy working nearby, sweeping the gravel parking lot we were in. (?) When I got a little distance between us, she asked him which way I was, and he pointed at me. This happened a few times, he kept being near her even though she was gaining on me. 

That's all I remember. I was running away but losing ground when I woke up. 

capstone

 

I talked it over some of my complicated feelings with S.  This was not long afterward, and she had some interesting perspectives that have stayed with me.  I was struggling to put it into words, to describe the walk and talk with C.  As I was talking I think it was clear to her that a lot of this is about me not understanding why C wanted to stay in touch with me and what I mean to her.  What this is.  I was kind of bitching about it and S quietly said, "She loves you."  When it was clear I was irritated, she added, "And you love her."  

She took a breath and prefaced, saying of course what does she know, she's never met C but she knows me and it's clear to her that C and I love each other very much.  She explained to me that some people see a friend a couple of times a year and go for a walk and talk about their plans or life's logistics or highlights of the past year and for most people that's what friendship and love is.  She suggested that might feel performative to me because I tend to be deep all-the-time and I expect people I'm close with to keep pace.  But most people are not like that.  

I didn't find comfort in it in the moment.  In fact, I didn't even believe her.  But I seem to be using it as a touchstone.  I keep coming back to it.  

The thing is, the other reason I'd dismissed it out of hand, I always thought C was like that, too.  And maybe that's where the confusion's been all this time.  I've gone back over different things so many times - we talked about this, kind of.  I expressed something (I don't remember what, exactly) and she said this was what she was like all the time.  Authentic, she said.  And I took it to mean the depth or intensity, but we never actually defined what "this" meant.  

I'm here because I miss thinking I kind of 'got' her.  Like we were cut from the same cloth.  The undulating rhythm, the intensity, the kindness of spirit steeped in a wisdom that is playful, satyr-like.  

What it comes down to is that I miss loving her.  I mean I still love her but I miss the connection I was so sure was there.  A closed loop that could never [really] close.  I miss, too, thinking that it would close.  There is still some grief in me where those things were.  

hedgehog's dilemma

 

Friday night / Saturday v early.  It's been raining and misting for days.  I have come, at last, tired, to the other side of the river.  I don't know how I got here and I so much want to write it all down.  For a future me to come across and find the way back, again.  But it's different every time, isn't it?  I mean it's the same and different.  

I deconstructed, entirely.  The scaffolding came down, too.  But because I'd done so much work before, had done the hard labor of cutting a path through those woods, finding the way back didn't take six years.   And the other good part this time was the ability to watch myself fall apart and, with intense curiosity and radical acceptance, a strong stomach and a lot of faith, watch myself figure out how to come back together.  

There are still things I don't understand.  And I don't know if I can bring myself to a place where I can watch with open eyes (truly knowing) the mechanisms there.  I can watch and accept what is happening, but I can hardly bear thinking why.  I'm pretty straight most of the time (except for a persistent celebrity crush on Clive Owen of Closer & Mike Colter of Luke Cage) but then for a little while I am very, very gay.  This has happened several times now and it's perplexing every time though this time I recognized it as a part of this bigger mechanism that follows certain kinds of events or feelings maybe and then it works its way out of my system.  

There's a memory component where everything that leads up the deconstruction becomes hazy and eventually fades away.  I think I'm getting there, now.  Or very soon.  

It's good that life tests your mettle periodically, I reckon.  And when you break, it's an opportunity to watch how the pieces fit that somehow make you whole, again.  To map the terrain, again and again, in case you keep having to pass this way.  

“Forgive everyone for your own sins 

and be sure to tell them you love them 

which you do.” - Jack Kerouac

4/10 @ 4:10, marking 4&10

 
There is so much to say that I don't know where to begin. 

C is leaving in 4 days.  And somehow this has forced me to process letting her go again, before I even knew she was leaving. It seems crazy because we've seen each other once in 4 years.  So why/how can this be loss, anew?  I have some notions but when I try to sit with it, the other thing comes up which brings me to the other thing.  We made plans to go for a walk before she takes off.  Obviously, there's a lot to unpack here.  

These two things ricochet off each other in a chaotic way, splitting on impact to other things.  

In the past when we've almost made plans or made plans to make plans, at first, it feels light and breezy and then there's a text or email that feels formal, stern or admonishing, almost, and I have taken from it that she thinks I was looking at it as a date.  I sometimes thought she was scared I was going to want or do something out of bounds.  But other times I've wondered if she was scared she might.  In those fleeting moments, it was possible to imagine she felt the same ways I did.  It's hard to get to that moment of belief anymore which felt so eureka! and so, so delightful.  It felt like an epiphany but just lasted one second.  Two if I was lucky.  But hold that thought... 

We met up by her old office and walked the hills.  It was familiar, being with her.  And different, obviously.  We took a meandering path around the hills.  I was hardly paying attention to the path we took.  And as we seemed to be circling back she asked which way and I didn't care or really know and something crisp in her voice as she expressed dismay that I wouldn't make the decision surprised me.  It was so exactly like Meg - a pediatric resident I was with for three years whose impossible schedule I needed to conform to if we were to see each other at all, and who decided all the ways our time would be spent when we did see each other and indeed who set the parameters of the relationship - would become suddenly frustrated with me that I wasn't making a decision.  In both cases it feels like the impact on me of all these implications was wholly missed.  No, more than that.  Was deemed less important than any impacts on them of sharing responsibilities in forming these relationships.  As if they want to be dominant or for me to be submissive but are disappointed in me or mad or have complaint when I'm surprised to find a choice.  That I don't even get to choose what I have a choice about.  Weird and maddening. 

Our first year, common era, I  communicated about this fairly relentlessly, beginning before she left until we were both sick of me asking for my needs to be at least a factor for consideration in defining the contours of the new paradigm.  

I was explaining -or trying to- why I was kind of gentle about how I interacted in the build up to going for this walk.  I said something like I didn't want to make her feel scared or worried or whatever had caused the admonishing when we were going to meet, before.  But she didn't respond to my sentiment, rather singling out the wording of it and replied, 'You can't make me feel anything.'  Again this felt insulting in the moment and wholesale false in retrospect.  Microagressions are very real.  Humans can and do make each other feel fearful or devalued or loved or hated, intentionally and far more often unintentionally.  How we respond to these, yes, that is on us.  I believe even the question, "You don't think I can scare you?" can be said in several unsettling ways.  

I was kind of horrified that she has somehow come to believe that but the conversation kept moving on before I could reply to that and we were approaching the spot we'd said we would part ways.  

Things sort of veered off further from there and the big revelation got let loose: C does not/did not feel the ways I hoped/feared she did.  That's it.  That's the headline.  Which I guess means the hot potato was a just metaphor for sex after all, or attraction.  It wasn't the 'potato' we were passing back and forth = a love thing.  It was just the 'hot.'  Which was heartbreaking.  If you were holding that thought as instructed, above, here is where you release it. But watch your step, for it shatters.

As I stared at the ceiling back at home, thinking it through -that she doesn't feel the ways I thought she did- I wasn't crying exactly but tears kept pooling in my ears.  Because it was the same old thing it always was.  Sexual attraction.  As with Meg, Sarah, Gesine, everyone who came before, and most everyone who's come since.  And C, too.  

It's still kind of shocking even if I am only coming to it eight or more years later and nothing is actually any different than before she said that.  Well.  Everything's the same except for me. 

Things unraveled somewhat over the next days.  There's a daily game I play on the NYT app while I drink my morning coffee, after reading the news.  When I got up in the morning and made my coffee, and got to the game, it was 75% completed.  

When a bone breaks there's an unmistakable crack.  When the older trees are split in a storm whether by lightning or by wind, a slow, loud cleaving runs up your back and you listen for the falling crush.  

Back when things were very bad, I used to sometimes wake to pieces of writing and/or scrapes or cuts on the back of my hands without memory of the writing or the scrapes.  And there were no scraps or scrapes this time.  So hopefully it's a fracture and not a full break.  But since then I sleep with the heat on even though I prefer the cold. Cold can send me into depression and I want to make this gesture, though it doesn't feel like a gesture for me.  It feels more like when you leave the porch light on because you're expecting someone.  

The fallout of this non-news has been widespread, and intense.  As evidenced in my morning game.  I'm very embarrassed, even just to myself not necessarily even to C.  I think there's shame, too.  I feel stupid.  I've lost trust in myself.  The list goes on and on.  *sigh* 

Altogether, it's a little too much.  But next week is spring break and I won't have the kids for both weekends and the week in-between, starting tonight.  So I have 10 days alone to work this out of my system.  

the highwayman

I've been trying to put words to this for weeks and I'm torn now between finally doing it and giving up trying.  On the heels of my last visit here, I dreamt us the playful electricity.  It works - the flirting - because we're not serious about the implications.  Or I don't think she takes me seriously and she knows I'll never push.  And so we hold the tension without strain, without risk.  

I'm realizing as I try to write it why it's been so difficult - I'm trying to say it and not say it at the same time.  I'm embarrassed, I guess.  Ashamed.  We were there, together, and I did something.  Faced her.  I opened in some new way.  I dared.  But when I did, she faded just a little.  Receded, almost imperceptibly.  Still talking, laughing, still seeming to draw near to be but yet at the same time drawing ever so slightly away.  

It came as a surprise, somehow.  A moment of painful, embarrassing clarity.  It felt like she somehow wants what we have to continue, but doesn't want me.  And as with some dreams, it lingered and grew murky and I cannot now tell if it was me, or her, or my subconscious.  If it's right on the nose or completely off the wall.  For weeks I've been trying to figure it out.  

In the meantime, I've become taciturn.  I think it's the embarrassment which is of course ridiculous since it was just a dream.  But also I have lost my voice - if we're not the us we've been, I don't quite know how to be, how to frame what to say.  I'm not great with facades.  I get mute when I cannot be authentic.  

For me we will always be that couple dancing, she throws her head back to laugh and puts her forehead on my collarbone with a smile still on her lips.  Or that version of us is always out there, in the universe somewhere, anyway.  Even now, as I come to glean that she maybe would want that with someone - or maybe not - she doesn't want that with me. 

Without that common language and all the understandings and assumptions that came with it, I don't seem to know what to say.  Paradoxically, clarity around what isn't wanted has given rise to shyness around what is wanted, because I cannot fathom what that is.  

“Listen to the silence. It has so much to say.” - Rumi

50, 51

 

C's been on my mind and I don't know why.  I thought about writing but it's so one-sided and I don't have the stomach for that very often.  Tonight, though, I let it wash over me.    

For a while I had the last Friday appointment.  I loved that slot.  I got to be the last person to see her off to her weekend.  This was in the early time, the office that when I dreamt it was always a treehouse.  

And then the fall came and we sometimes did a 1.5 slot.  This meant it might be twilight or even dark when we were done.  Night changes me.  I'm vulnerable, but also impulsive.  Maybe we all have this quality?  The vampires and the werewolves.  It felt risqué.  Daring intoxication.  

I've had to do a little driving recently and found myself in some of the same routes I used to take to her and from her and played the mixed tape in the background.  Sometimes, I laughed out loud, or blushed, even though I was alone in the car.  I remembered the images that so preoccupied me.  Not images, exactly, because I stepped fully in.  

It went pretty far.  Maybe too far.  I could feel - doing 80 on the freeway - my mouth around her clit and pushing her thighs back and open with my forearms in one carnal move.  Those milliseconds string together like those books you can flip through to make an image appear animated.  It's not just sex though. It's vulnerability, presence.  We used to have that.  

Anyway, I drove that tonight and remembered it all, and the twilight goodbyes because it's the season of twilight goodbyes, again.  I think about dropping a note but it will say 'How are you?' 'Great! How are you?'  And then something polite, innocuous, and somewhat effervescent.  And that's a wrap for four to ten weeks or so, when it will happen again.  

We are each of us capable of incredible depth but it doesn't seem like we try to do that.  We do this instead and maybe if I didn't know what we could have I would find this fine, but the contrast is too great.  And I begin to wonder why we try to stay in touch if it's going to be like this.  It's difficult to fathom what she gets or wants from this, either.  

This whole post brings to mind a line by Parker Posey: 

"It's dark. It's glam. It's sad. It's Christmas."

the intimate stranger

It's been a year.  Since the pandemic.  Since the move.  Since schooling the kids from home.  I've been surprisingly even-keeled through most of it.  But the edges are wearing and curling away.    

I felt the breaking apart tonight.  In bed.  Not cleaving, but splintering.  Or waking.  There's a low groan of antsy frustration.  I've known it most my life, off and on.  But it's been integrated for the most part into things I can access, ways of being that we can embody together.  Now, it stirs, pulling away a little.  

Trying to be patient and exercise curiosity about it, I begin with remembering where it's taken me before.  I find myself in a bar.  Kissing a stranger on the mouth.  Perhaps going home together.  It feels like anger but it comes out like sex.  And then somehow -after all that- it collapses and I'm just me again.  

I assume it's returning because my life is so cooped up, comparatively.  Most peoples are.  Perhaps there are other reasons, but I don't know where to look.  Perhaps it doesn't even matter.  

What brought me here is the prospect of a safe place.  We've let much out here before.  And there's no where else to bring it, anyway.  There are no bars open.  No travelers from afar to meet in the hotels.  And the windows for such things anyway are exceedingly narrow.  There's something of a recovery period, a kind of coming home to self, that takes alone time, which I have hardly any of.  

I am more curious than nervous about this for now, and the nervousness is just about whether it might build since there's no means of outlet on the horizon.  

the Revelers

The world is coming to her end and I cannot find the words to write.  Such a momentous occasion and me with the nerve to finally make a toast.  With nothing left to hide, not even fear.  But, alas!  Where are the words?!

Sometimes lately it feels like I was waiting for her to get to where I've always been.  Yearning, like me.  Ready, like me.  Walking by the lake, but on the yellow line.  Like me, talking to the moon.  There's no one here but us.  It's utterly revelatory.  And I am madly in love.  

Last month I sold the house.  I'd moved out months ago and there was a sting in it, but the stress and the worry stood like misplaced furniture and boxes filled with personal treasure but blocking access to what I most needed- grief.  And then it came.  I returned alone to drop off the other set of keys, my set.  

Until that house, I've moved nearly every year.  I had two three year stretches but mostly I move.  So I've never grown attached to a place.  Or a structure.  But this was different.  I was safe and did the hard work in that house.  In every way I wouldn't trade it for anything.  And yet I did.  

I wrote to C while I waited for the realtor.  Exceptions abound, in moments of profound angst or loss, wherein we can speak straight from the heart.  Rare treat and I imbibed.  And there was in the end an anointing quality - whether of selling the place, the moving on, the rather blunt expression of emotion - to walking through the fires.  

I find I don't care much for the posturing any more.  What is the point of any of it if you have to keep tucked in and buttoned up?  

The world is coming to her end, and I hold out my arm.  She laces hers through mine and says 'I wasn't sure you'd still be here.'