2001. March 24.

How it feels

It feels like nothing
The spider's web fineness of our connection
Precarious
The occasional sound of your voice
The occasional receipt of a hastily typed sentence
The protected, keyhole-enshrouded glimpse into your world
Never being able to see what lies off in the periphery
Never being able to definitively make out what it is you are up to

And yet, to give it up
To snap the thread
To sever this tenuous lifeline
Could I?
Even now, when hearing from you means so little
When what you have to say reveals nothing
When you reserve your attentions so carefully
Even now
I am reluctant

It is not an abyss or a void that awaits me
It is not a vast future of nothing
It is not an empty tomorrow
But the balance is different
The colors are unfamiliar
The magic is gone
It may return
But even then, it will have changed somehow
And I shiver when I think of it
The tightness returns to my chest
The familiar wince
The sad grimace my heart makes

I don't tell myself I will have you back
I don't tell myself anything anymore
I believe it is over
I believe you are gone
I believe we will never be together again in the same way
I believe it's possible we will never be together again at all
But even the onset of these realities seems removed from me
It all seems part of something happening across the street
I don't know how to participate in this
And yet it is my life
I don't know where to stand or what to do with my hands
And yet the spotlight is on me
Everyone is watching
Waiting
And the critics are unusually picky bastards

It feels like starting over
It feels like beginning from the very dawn of time
Like beginning from the very start of life
When nothing had any meaning yet
And none of us can remember that far back
So it is entirely new
And there are no rules

It feels like walking into a house you've never seen before
And knowing that this is the house you have always lived in
That you have never lived anywhere else
And yet you've never seen this place in your life
And nothing in it means anything to you
You can't place any of it
You don't know where it came from
You don't have fond memories of buying that lamp
Or choosing that painting
Or putting that chair just so
How do you begin?
Each time you open a drawer or turn a corner
A surprise will await you
Whether the drawer is empty or the corner leads you to a wall
You will not have expected it
But the next time you open the drawer or round the corner
You will remember
And that will be the beginning of familiarity
That will be the commencement of your life in this house that has always
been yours

It's funny to think that this is my life
It isn't a book someone is writing
There is no sense to be made of it
It just is
It's just what I do and what I endure
For no good reason at all
I push forward the way we all do
This just happens to be one of those moments when I pause in the journey
And ask, "Where is it that we're going again? I've been walking so long,
I can't seem to remember where I was headed when we started out."

And yet, this is in fact my life
This is all I get

If I venture back a few months, a few weeks
I can still taste the sorrow
I can still feel every nuance of the anguish I endured
So I try not to go back
Whereas once I thrilled to relive every moment with you
I would go to work in the morning, my nose full of your scent
My fingertips alive with the sensation of touching you
My mouth drunk with the taste of you
I would relive each second with you
Again and again and again
Each revisiting as real and as scintillating as the original moment
Or maybe it would be something you said
Something funny
Something wonderful
Maybe it would be a brilliant observation you made
Or a moment when you appreciated something in me that I thought was hidden away
Something
There would always be something for me take with me when I left you
Something to hold me over until I could thrill to the sound of your voice
Something to sustain me until I could feel your arms around me again
A reason to look forward
Something to hold out for

So I was in the habit of living each moment with you over and over
How much more difficult that made things when the moments became murky and dank
How much more tormented our separation
How much more noticeable your absence
To think on the tender moments
To juxtapose them against the less tender ones
And to try to fill in the blanks

This is my life
This is all I get

This day and all the others like it
This day that lacks you
This day that seems like filling time
I will look back from a different hilltop years from now
I will look back to this day and see nothing at all
No mark will have been made
No bridge will have been crossed

It's odd how difficult it is to make memories by yourself
Even the most uneventful day with you
Was part of the great tapestry
I could remember exactly how we didn't fill our time
I could remember what I was wearing when we did nothing at all
I could remember how skittish I felt to sit in front of the television with you
Allowing myself to be entertained, if guiltily
Worrying, always worrying that you weren't having enough fun
Always fearful that we didn't do enough
That we were one of those couples that never went out

Look at us now
In our separate worlds
With our different phone numbers
And our different friends
And our different health insurance providers
We sure do keep busy
Every night, it's something
We scour the free papers for interesting events
For ways to pass our time without letting it simply drain away
We call our friends, whoever we can find
We join up, sign up, look up, ante up
We're so ready to be awakened
So anxious to be entertained
So desperate to be accomplished and praised for it

And couldn't we be doing all of these things hand in hand
Couldn't we be branching out and discovering new things
Together
I ask myself that as often as it occurs to me
Was this really the point of it all?
That I should go to poetry readings
And you should go to acting classes
That I should join a comedy group
And you should volunteer to help with a film festival
That we should work on our web sites and hope to amuse our friends
Was this what was missing?
I think if I asked you that very prickly question
Now or ever
You would -- as anticipated -- prickle
You would say that, yes, this was the point
Having a life of your own was the point
And that's where I disconnect
Not out of malice
But out of confusion
Because I'm the sort that plans ahead
And I don't know what to make of a plan that ends in a giant question mark
And I don't know why having a life of your own meant opening the door to everyone else
but me
And if I were to ask you about this
It would sound combative to you
It would sound as if I was trying to talk you out of it
Or to debate the issue
And I'm not
Of course I wish that I could have made sense of it
But only because I was convinced that sense was in my corner
That if we made sense of things
We would end up together
That's all that ever made sense to me

But that isn't the way of things
And it isn't what I'm holding out for
I'm beginning to be able to chisel my way out of the memory dungeon
I'm beginning to listen to songs I couldn't hear before
Without doubling over in a mixture of appreciation and agony
The words don't mean less
The correlations haven't faded
I'm just a few steps closer to accepting this new place

This really is my life
This is all I get

It isn't so bad
After all, I'm here
And I'm pretty fine company

But those words sound pitiable
The desperate confidence of a single woman
The assurance that I will be admired and loved
The certainty that my horizon holds limitless destinations of grandeur and fulfillment
It needn't be as contrived as all that
I won't say I'm glad to be alone
I won't say I'm cherishing this time
I'm measuring it
I'm examining it and myself
I'm finding things out
I'm learning

But a new perspective doesn't sponge away the sorrow
Nor does time
Much as everyone on earth may insist that it does
Poor impotent time
Time has only placed calendar days between me and a love I once had
It hasn't replaced the love
Nor has it erased the hurt

I don't know that I hurt any less today than I did on that first awful day
But my capacity for hurting
It has been augmented
My threshold of emotional anguish
Has adjusted
It seems a marvel
That you can become accustomed to a persistent ache
Until it seems to blend seamlessly into every other sensation you have

My world is so different now

I used to carry around a box when I was a small child
It said "Mary's Box" on the side
And it was filled with ridiculous things
Paper clips
Banking forms
"Our Daily Bread" devotional booklets
A plastic apple that once housed a pair of pantyhose or underwear
Pencils
Things that meant nothing to anyone
But I loved them
They were valuable to me
Because they were filled with possibility
And they gave me security
Waiting in my box whenever I wanted to take stock of them
Some would say I was an idiot of a child

You once asked me if I thought you lacked tenderness
Some days, I'm convinced there is nothing in the world that you lack
Some days, I believe that you are perfect and complete
Utterly flawless
But this is madness
Not for spite
But for reason
You are not complete, nor are you flawless
And yet I loved you just the same
On different days, at different times, you own and lack many things
And whether your future will lead you to a success I can't touch
Or to a dead end
I can't predict it
I have nothing to do with it
And I have nothing invested in how it takes place
The love habit causes me to want the best for you
The jilting causes me to restrain my well-wishing
I would say something more balanced if I could
Something like, "I hope we will both find happiness and success,
whatever the outcome of all of this."
I do not know if you keep tenderness within you or if you lack it
I know that you lack me
And I know that you don't object to that

Sometimes, it feels good to give in
It won't later
Later, it will feel like fool idiocy
But right now
While the iron is hot
It feels just fine
Right now, my weakness, my frailty
I treasure them
I pet them and appreciate their honesty
I count them among my gifts
To feel love for you
To want you
To miss you
These are part of my weakness
I put them aside only after much effort has been dispensed
And I do so reluctantly
With great exhalation and strain

I am not determined to be profound
The experience of this has been a curiosity
I document it with the ardor of a scientist
Caught up in a noteworthy and well-funded experiment
I catalog my feelings like specimens
Document my progress with great care
I am happy and often amused to be able to read the thoughts
I spilled onto paper four years ago
Three
Two
After that I stopped writing
Presumably because I got happy
Because I had no more questions lurking
I trusted you
I believed unfailingly in us
I grew secure
Dangerously so
And so, today, I write
Knowing that one day
Perhaps several years from now
I will be able to read these musings and delight in them
I will be able to see the distance I've traveled
I will congratulate myself for having had it in me to go through this
To retain my grace
My wit
My figure
I will dance on the grave of my suffering
And I will be as light as the air
As I am in my dreams

It's nice to know you like me
It's nowhere near enough
But it's nice

I'm alone tonight
Which distinguishes this night from no other for months that precede it
I come home to what must be my home
As temporary as it feels
As haunted
I was itchy to leave this place when you left it
I was anxious to go with you into the undetermined future
I was bitter to be left behind in a home that we made
Left to clean up without any help from you
I am still anxious to leave
But excited
And also reluctant
Knowing that this is the last place we lived together
Four months ago, I wanted to leave it for that very reason
Because I couldn't stand the sight of it
It announced my loss
It heralded a future devoid of you
Of us
Today, I lean towards melancholy when I think of packing up
And leaving this place that has been my home and not my home
Our home and not our home
The last of our memories were made here
Detest it as I may, leaving it will extinguish a final faint flame
I will only look around in my memory after that
And feel the pangs of your absence
I will remember the way our bedroom looked
And how it became my bedroom
And how it never felt like my bedroom after you left
I will remember sitting close on that sofa
The sofa that we both grew to hate and were so anxious to replace
With something altogether more attractive and stylish
I showed you the fabric swatches the day you said goodbye
Funny

We sure had a lot of plans, didn't we
I file them away now
Under the long list of things I would cry out to you,
"But we were going to..."
Yes, we were going to
Fill in the blank
And we will
We will do all of those things we planned
Only we will do them with other people and in other places
We will do them out of sight and earshot of each other
And we will occasionally be reminded of how the plans once included us both

I'm never short on things to say on this subject
How it feels to be here in this moment of my life
While you are there in that moment of yours
My mind is restless on this subject
Hungry to open up and dig and discern and arrive and break through
Sometimes I wonder if this is why I am here

I don't always discover anything new
Each time I think out loud
Share my thoughts with friends
Talk our relationship into the ground
I don't always feel the bulb go on
But sometimes I do
Sometimes I feel the sentences pouring forth and making sense
And sometimes, talking it out connects me with feelings I don't always allow myself
Anger
Bitterness
Jealousy
A desire to have some of my money back
In truth, I don't have much stock of these
I occasionally feel scorn
But I hide it away
It doesn't help me much

I don't want to be one of those women who is always frowning
I see them at the mall and at the gas station
Women who go about in a comfortable scowl
What are they hiding?
Where have they been that the day fills them with such venom?
I don't want to be one of their ranks
I caught myself in a look of deep sadness today
And I realized it did not reflect what was in me at all
I am not in the throes of a deep sadness today
Today, I am standing on two feet with fine posture
Plenty of air in my lungs
And plenty of moxie
I am not as young as I'd like to be
I'm not as old as I think I am
I'm not anywhere close to being finished

For what it's worth, this is my life
This is all I get

It isn't new and pretty and shiny
It's used
With bumped corners
And creases and signs of visible wear
It isn't quaint or collectible
It isn't grand
It isn't so very different from others I've seen while out shopping

But it's mine
And it's all I get