Bloodbuzz

Evening and the cold cab of my truck, each exhaled breath serving as visible testimony to winter’s arrival.  It feels like change, or a hardening of the mettle. I have moved too quickly, and in doing so, I have lost myself. What she said all those years ago is coming to reside within my soul; how you are taught so dogmatically that the strong reed bends and survives and the immovable reed breaks, but how no one mentions that the very act of bending tears you asunder, how it is a pestilence, insufferable. So the task becomes to resist, and to not be made to feel that it’s against your nature. If it is authentic for you, then it is your nature.

Sun streaming East 24th and Euclid the RTA health line brushes past my toes takes my breath and I think of her, a thousand years ago, how we used to just know, a million words. It takes me back, for some reason, to this moment encased in amber that I revisit from time to time and I think that perhaps finally I understand why. Christmas morning, early twenties and a huge snowfall and we were walking down North Pleasant to mom and dad’s and the entire world was white, frozen, still, silent. No encumbrances and the world was just open and available happy. It didn’t matter that we cared nothing for the accouterments of adult life. The encroaching responsibility. It was just freedom back then, and perhaps every day wasn’t as halcyon as all that, but there was levity and when you needed to be mad you were mad, when you needed to be preposterous you were so. And now everything is so kittied up into everything else that one can’t even be upset without also having to be kind, open, willing, offer explanations, etc, etc. To return to that simplicity, to just be who I am. Not in corners and with headphones on but all the time. And to offer no apology.

Obtuse

The worst part about it -- aside from the gnawing, ever-present desire to be within close physical proximity of him -- is the part of me that has awakened and that won't be cast aside, a canker sore that pulls the tongue like a magnet even though each touch causes a resurgence of pain, anguish. And we even sat down and I told him and the tears and the talk about how it's like we've found ourselves at year thirteen of a marriage already oxidizing from white to yellow. He offers nothing in reply but hope for the weekend and actual time as a couple, dating, and two days later the hope is torn asunder with a text about money and I just want to know something other than sacrifice. I don't think you can ever explain it, to a parent, as a non parent, how hard it is to always be in second place. I do not think it's too much to ask, to not have to ask.

So what do you do about that? Where do you go. There is always the weight room and being alone and focusing the frustration on building muscle and letting Drake weave the story of my feelings. For now, to figure out how to let that be enough. I'm just going to let myself feel what I feel and not attach any guilt to that, to any of it. Just, to find meaning in the parts of my life that are authentically me. To know that the rest can be temporary and that it all hinges upon a decision -- my decision.