One More Round

Shame is what gives birth to sin. Five weeks in and that thing around his ankle recording every drop once a half hour, so the decision to trade freedom for a drink was an entirely lucid process. I have been a fool to allow myself to believe that I know that life. I wonder if he thought of me that way; the fool who will always be there, no matter how much shrapnel there is to wade through. I wonder if he was still meeting girls on myspace and sleeping with them, up until the end. I wonder if that's why he made that decision about the drink. If it was a girl at the bottom of the bottle.

I don't know what to do now. I tried closing off my heart to that section of it, and it just ended with a breakdown when the floodgates opened. I tried to let him back in so we could work together through the emotions, and now my heart is broken again. So frustrating, so incredibly frustrating. To wade through the process slowly, and alone. I wish I could make sense of any of it.

Veritas, Aequitas.

Just tired. Probably because I had such high expectations for the weekend, and I hit the first brick wall early into the shift on Friday night. He is a good old boy, and he doesn't even know it. We had conversations about how tough it is the fire service, how hard it can be for a woman, and he really never did much but offer his examples of the meat-headedness he's come up against. There are never any words of advice, but it's ok because I really don't listen to the advice from people who I don't think are as smart as me, anyway. I know that is a very acerbic thing to come right out and say, but it's probably true for most people. And it hit me on Friday, at the station, that he is one of the asshole types that I was always afraid of running into in the fire service.

The realization was a hard one to take, because I had always thought him to be such an ally. Isn't it funny how sometimes, without our realization, we gravitate toward that which we fear? That's why unexplored fear is such a dangerous thing; it has a magnetism to it that, unless you're vigilant about, can be pretty hard to escape.

We were going to an open burn today on the grass fire truck. It was just after a call to Kendal, and I had my gear in my personal vehicle so I ran out to the lot to get it. I came back to the truck and was waiting for him, so I grabbed one of the pamphlets we have about open burn laws in the city. Finally he appeared, but without gear, so we pulled next to his truck in the parking lot and had to wait to go until he loaded everything. The house was only a few down from the firehouse, so the senior firefighter who had been waiting for us in the front station driveway just walked down there and was waiting in the homeowner's driveway.

"What the hell took you so long," he said to both of us as we hopped down. As the jerk who I won't name was gearing up (which I had already done at the station!) he says without dropping a beat, "I was waiting on Emily."

I just kind of looked at him. He grabbed the pamphlet that I had brought, and we all walked to the backyard. I put the fire out while he proudly handed the homeowner the pamphlet and made his bullshit smalltalk with anyone in earshot. As we made the short trek back to the station I said to him, "how were you waiting on me when your gear wasn't even in the truck yet?"

He did his good-old-boy laugh and, quite pleased with himself, said "well I had to blame it on someone!"

I don't get that. It was a harmless enough thing and the senior firefighter wasn't even that concerned that it took us a few minutes longer than it should have to go about forty feet down the road, but it's the principle behind it. Sometimes lately when I look at him I think, I hate your guts. That is a terrible thought to have. I am trying to examine the part of me that is so put-off by him, and adjust my reactions. I don't have to like him, or talk to him, or be around him, but I don't really think it's healthy to hate someone's guts. And I have to add the guts part to it because it becomes so visceral. That is really not healthy.

He backed the truck into its spot in the garage and was blathering on about how you can't take stuff that seriously and let it get to you, and it reminded me of the advice that he used to try to give me about dealing with the assholes in the fire service who won't accept women. And I thought, how ironic. And I looked at him and said, "you're a fucking asshole." And I jumped down from the truck, took my gear off, and went home.

I'm only responding for the rest of the day if we have a structure fire. It gets tiring being around guys so much.