True Lies

It is 11 on a Sunday morning. I need to go to the grocery store, to run other errands.  When my dog was alive I would think, if only I didn't have to take care of you first, I could just throw on some clothes and jet out.  I had this parallel universe narrative worked out in my head of what things would be possible if someone else could handle the chore of her.  With her gone, I am exposed.  She wasn't keeping me from getting to work super early, from jumping out of bed and going to the gym, from coming home from work and going out to dinner, she wasn't keeping me from anything.  We had been together so long, I had forgotten what my life was like before her.  That what she required was so insignificant compared to what she gave just by being her.  I have returned to my life before her.  It isn't great.  It is hollow and selfish, and there is no hand at my back urging me forward.  No one at home who needs me, who forces me to pour some of my energy into something of worth instead of staying at work getting fatter and grayer, liking humankind and myself a little less each and every day.  Seeing her healthy, happy, made me feel good about myself.  That I created conditions in which she was enjoying her existence.  Yes, there was hair everywhere, and water spots from her sloppy water drinking, and walks in terrible conditions, and planning needed to deviate from her schedule, and she liked very few other dogs so our circles were small, but she was a mirror of me.  She did not want or need to be friends with other dogs.  I believe she might have liked 5 dogs in her entire life and only 2 of them were her friends.  That's my girl.

I imagine this is how love can be with anyone.  That having to think of them in everything you do sometimes feels like fence, an obstruction, a chore.  If only I did not have to do this, I would be free to do that.  Maybe I am the only one who lies to myself like this, that has mastered the art of binding myself.  Tightly.  That focuses on external obstructions instead of mustering to overcome them.  That doesn't realize that a life without someone you love to be accountable to very easily becomes a free fall, and not the fun kind.  They were never the reason I didn't do something.  It was something I did not manage to do that I blamed my obligation to them as the reason I couldn't do it.

My last birthday with her, I had really wanted to go away, have a break from everything and everyone.  I could not find anyone to watch her and I was so so disappointed.  It was my 40th birthday, which was 'supposed' to be something milestone-y, right? It was just me sitting on lawn chairs and tv trays with my family in my bombed out house eating take out, with my dog no doubt strategically positioned for maximum obseravation of dropped food or invitations for table scraps.  Every important person in the world to me was in the room.  If that was my last birthday, nothing could have topped it.

Big in Japan

Sitting on an air mattress that I swear they wouldn't let a prisoner in the U.S. sleep on, in a house where my voice echoes because it is practically empty, I still look pretty damn good on paper, which is sad, and kind of an insult to paper.  There is some threshold between a complete lack of gratitude for what one has, and enough dissatisfaction with the same to force change, that I have been teeter-tottering with for as long as I can remember.  From time to time I indulge and look at pictures, read cards, emails, look at the various official (and usually wooden) pro-forma official expressions of gratitude and I think, damn, you're welcome America.  I also think, hey, maybe that's enough, you've done enough.

I haven't been capable to date of achieving any semblance of balance and the older I get, the more demanding the work role has become and the more diminished my life outside of that has become.  I was never a big people fan but until now, that was mostly a social thing.  I am almost never going to show up at an optional group gathering over 5 people.  That has never been my jam and I don't see that changing.  Now however, it isn't social, I sincerely don't like most people anymore.  There are people in my life that I think, 'if we were dating, we would have broken up long before now.  Why do we insist on forcing this?'  I find myself thinking in a way I never thought I would which is to keep contact warm in case I need them for something but otherwise let the distance that is already there just settle without insisting too much.  I find myself realizing how little of my life they were actually a part of.  I see myself as the one plugging into their lives, they did not plug into mine or really know much about it.  I want new friends.  I don't think I will find them but I hope to at least build a better circle.  People with whom I actually have intersecting interests instead of a series of lovely people that I essentially explain myself to constantly, who think I am missing something, and that they know what I am missing (a man, a hobby, a god, a workout...).  I am missing nothing.  I am doing the same thing you are doing, making it up as I go along, feeling self-satisfied and smug when I think I've figured something out, and wrestling with it all while looking like I've got my shit together on paper.  

I'm Good

I really am.  I don't know who to credit for the above but I do know how it resonates with me.  It means don't invite me to the christening of your children or their birthday parties, don't tell me to call you if I need help moving heavy things, don't put yourself on the hook for heroics at all.  Just be the valued aquaintance you are.  If you insist on having a label that doesn't fit our relationship, we won't have any relationship to label because I can't take the strain of having obligations to people that I don't even know that well and who I don't feel get me on any level.  If these relationships were marriages, we would have long parted ways, amicably. I don't hate you or even dislike you but sincerely, we're taking up space in eachother's lives that could be filled with something more meaninful for us both.  We go more than weeks, we go months, and it's fine.  Our lives and interests don't naturally intersect.  So let's go a couple more weeks, a few more months, and see if it isn't just fine not having that obligation to check in; to ask questions like a reporter, to get invested in whatever is the current event so you have something to reference a few months from now when we talk again.  Let's let it slip to Christmas and sometimes birthdays (when we remember).  1-2 times a year; nothing in betewen, staying in a hotel when in the same town, seeing you for dinner, hiting the highlights.  Always so lovely to see you.