"Trouble comes in lots of different ways in this life, but usually people are the ones who bring it." ~jd, Wave Man

Trainwreck -- (a nickname a mutual friend gave him after this most recent stunt – “He is a trainwreck, and it would be better for him if he also seemed like an asshole instead of a nice guy, because then maybe he wouldn’t get so much leeway to make such an unredeemable mess of himself”) -- Trainwreck, intentionally and with malice of forethought, made me feel like a bad partner for feeling lonely and rejected when he was rejecting me, made me believe I was paranoid/crazy/hormonal when he was actually sneaking around, made love to me just enough to keep me buying both those lines of bullshit, and then he let me pack his lunch.  He deliberately undid me, made me ever more exhausted by the sleeplessness that his disappearances (“emergency medicine”) and associated lies caused, clouding my mind and making me feel rather than ever tell me what the truth was finally: that I was as dispensable, as valueless as shit to wipe off his shoe.  He snuck it to me like poison, saying I love you when what he meant was You are worthless, and I can prove it.  And he sure did.  

I should be happy about what I know happens next to him, given all that.  I keep trying to talk myself into feeling that way.  But I'm not. Not vindictive.  Not even distraught, either, really. I just feel empty.  As Lorrie Moore puts it, "full of emptinesses". 

"People think there’s a type of logic to life. I’m not so sure. Some days when business is slow and clients are scarce, I sit at the window and gaze out at the water of Port Robertson. Gulls wheel around the tourists at the fry shack on the town pier. Working boats and yachts drift across the offing. The town’s tiny ferry works its slow way across to Shelter Island. It’s a continuing surprise to me that I’ve ended up where I am, doing what I do. You could argue that my past has led me here, but I’m skeptical. When I look back at my life, I don’t see a logical and predictable progression. It’s a track marred by footsteps, sure, but it hasn’t been a parade. It’s more the scuffmarks of someone staggering through life, step by blind step.....we create our personal disasters one step at a time, with the optimism of the ignorant." jd, Wave Man

I remember. When he left his first wife, and he needed to go there to retrieve things, she left used condoms around dripping and recently spent to get under his skin, he told me.

I remember. He was half crazy to have been with her, always always always beset with doubt and anxiety. That she was not who she said she was, that in fact she was carrying on with other lovers or would-be lovers all the time, always needing to be wanted wherever however.  She was, as he put it, malleable – she would be whatever you wanted, what whoever wanted. “Easy.”

I remember.  When we were new, he watched me like a hawk at first, and I laughed at that.  I am unrelentingly exactly what you see. And not easy.  Watch me all you like, ha.

Finally his mind calmed, when he had blown me to pieces and still, well, I was just what I said I was, true to my word.  Then for a little while, he lived as one thing, an integrated person who was also what he said he was.

But then, at some point, I guess, he realized he was more at home with duplicity. Entropy.  

For several months, increasingly every day I would feel certain he was again lying to me somehow.  To honor him, to honor my word to honor him, I put these feelings aside as my problem.  He would act so hurt to be suspected, and I didn’t want to hurt him.  I had sworn never to hurt him intentionally.  So, I imagined he was betraying me then I put that imagining aside as an evil fantasy.  Until I was having to put my own mind aside almost constantly for his sake.  And when I would look around me and see clear evidence that he was “elsewhere” really, though he was still here, his utter disinterest in things he claimed to love, his brewery, his dog, the kids, me – then I chafed finally, but he looked me right in the eye, dead in the eye, held my gaze, and told me no, that we were fine, that he was just tired.  And I blamed myself for doubting him.  And I cried.  And he watched me cry.  And I tried to be better.

Now, I think about those condoms.  Places like that, not homes, people like that, who would do that, who are just one of however many, and mean nothing truly to anyone, just points to leverage. 

home

the smell of fresh paint is better than napalm in the morning

sisters, thank God for them

Me: I’m choosing my own take-away. I am a woman who can inspire a tattoo, a deep one.

Her: I forgot about that tattoo (giggle)..... .....

Here Django, you read it. 

"Forgiveness, I finally decide, is not the death of amnesia, nor is it a form of madness, as Derrida claims. For the one who forgives, it is simply a death, a dying down in the heart, the position of the already dead. It is in the end the living through, the understating that this has happened, is happening, happens. Period. It is a feeling of nothingness that cannot be communicated to another, an absence, a bottomless vacancy held by the living, beyond all that is hated or loved." 

“Healing is a small and ordinary and very burnt thing. And it’s one thing and one thing only: it’s doing what you have to do.” ― Cheryl Strayed, Brave Enough

VIRGO Long ago someone dear to you didn't treat you with the care you needed or the respect you deserved. You can be sure that this person has regrets — not that it brings you any satisfaction.

“And that is how we are. By strength of will we cut off our inner intuitive knowledge from admitted consciousness. This causes a state of dread, or apprehension, which makes the blow ten times worse when it does fall.” ― D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover

“She wanted to feel safe. Untouchable in her home. The ultimate female fantasy.” ― Kathy Reichs, Déjà Dead (yup)