Once upon a time i used to write, if not prolifically, then at least with some frequency. It’s hard to point to when i shifted but i think it was about a decade or ago when i went through my last breakup. My posts have become sporadic at best because my motivation to write just… changed.
Tonight is not the night that i continue this entry but i wanted to put this out there because for anyone reading, i haven’t forgotten nor will i wait until next year to continue, which has been the frequency i’ve had for the last decade.
I’m also putting this here as a challenge to myself to sit down and gather my thoughts and continue this because… well, just because.
There are strands that will be inextricably tied to one another but for me to do so will require sitting down and actually teasing those strands apart, just to find a way to braid them together again. And these evenings, i’m actually painting which requires all of my focus.
Still, this story will continue; hopefully by the end of this week at the latest.
I’m trying to find a way to get back into this entry and it’s difficult. I think the reason i’m writing this entire thing is to help me articulate what’s going on instead of just letting it carom around my noodle, as is usually my wont.
Let me resume with this:
For reasons that i will never understand, she sent me a simple ‘hello’ via facebook last March i think it was. And i was… i was dismayed. I remember sitting there and looking at the name and having a moment of disassociation as my brain refused to acknowledge that this person that i was such a dick to… that she would find any place in her heart to acknowledge, let alone say hello to me.
In the coming days i would explain to her what was happening to me- in particular the manipulations from the afore mentioned coworker. I went on to tell her all that i’ve been through – the time i lived with Michelle and how she would abandon me. I told her about moving to SF, the shooting, Michelle leaving me, me leaving SF, then moving back to and then leaving Texas, moving to Portland and eventually falling for someone who was seemingly decent at first but then eventually revealed herself to be a dumpster fire of white trash… and my stupid fucking foray into the poly and kink community, which are both magnets for broken people.
I explained how i lost a quarter century of my life to obstructive sleep apnea and how i nearly died… and how, by all accounts, i absolutely should have died in my sleep many, many times over. I remember she took, well, i don’t know if she took offense but she certainly took exception to my using the phrase, “… i shouldn’t be alive,” but it’s true. Statistically speaking, i should have died.
Anyhow, i think that email has ended up being the 2nd longest email i’ve ever written. It was honest and i hope unflinching in my admitting and being accountable for my failures as a man and as a human in those days. And please forgive me for using this word, it was cathartic.
But i finished it with a p.s. that was incongruous with the spirit of all that i’d written.
I think i essentially said, “Thank you for your time but i hope you don’t write back.”
And that’s a pretty complex sentence to unpack. The reason why i wrote it was because while i was grateful to have the opportunity to come clean to her, she was a reminder of some pretty shameful behavior on my part. And while i’m not that person anymore, it just seemed smarter at the time to have just made my peace and walk away — to let her know that for all of my shittiness to her at that time, karma had thoroughly and profoundly cut a brutal swath through me that has left me just a shadow of what i could have been.
But i think it was also my way of running away. I didn’t want to risk being castigated and i didn’t want to be reminded of who i was then. So me being me, i was perfectly content to have made my peace and disappear.
Besides- what could i possibly have to offer her? I’m just a loser in a dead end job that doesn’t make much money and has absolutely no prospects for either prosperity or a career. I didn’t know where she was at the time but i’m in the ass end of nowhere and it’s not like we were going to date again. She was married to the best of my knowledge and even if she were single, my tastes in women have certainly changed and i can’t imagine that she’d be in the least bit interested in me like that because i have it on very good authority (that authority being every woman that i’ve ever been involved with, with one exception) that i am absolutely better off not being with anyone – a lesson that after 57 years of life i am finally making peace with.
I do not know why she wrote back but she did. And as i took off my armor and told her everything that happened to me since i lived in Austin and all that happened after- she did the same. And whatever shit i went through was nothing compared to the absolute hell that she endured.
And that she overcame.
It is late. I’ll probably have to go through this entry again and clean it up as i’ve done for the previous one. As i’ve been writing this, James Grant and Jody Wisternoff have been keeping me company. These two DJs always seem to put together really solid sets and bring me some sense of beauty and peace that i appreciate.