Now what?

A few rough spots between my boyfriend and I came to a head a couple of weeks ago, and we "took a break," by which I mean I am temporarily staying someplace that isn't home. It has been a terrible two weeks. Sad, and lonesome, and filled with hurt.

Then, a couple of days ago, I had a revelation. All the things that I've been railing against, fussing about, and obsessing over, are stupid, little, unimportant things. Life is so short. What really matters at the end of the day is that you come home to the person that you love.

I have always had this idea that, as the workday ends, and you approach home, your steps should lighten, and your heart should beat a little faster, in anticipation of reaching your significant other, and that sense of home. I want, when I kiss my man, the world to melt away and the clock to stop.

I found the man who causes those things to happen. He is a perfect fit.

And then life got in the way. Finances, family, stress, anxiety, all led us to this situation. Now I am losing the life that I want with the man that I love. I won't have that moment at the end of the day, when it feels like it was all worthwhile, for that welcome home moment.

At the same time I determined to stick by him through thick and thin, and stop fretting over the details, he decided we needed to call it quits. Not because we don't love each other. But because the pressures of everyday life are overwhelming, and he doesn't want to cheat me out of the potential for a happy life.

And all I really want is to continue my life with him.

I guess Auden was right. "I thought that love would last forever; I was wrong."

For Better and For Worse

Most people, upon marrying, dwell heavily on the portion of the ceremony which goes a little something like this: For better or for worse, in sickness and in health, blah blah blah, until death us do part. The specific area of focus is the death part, usually.

My current obsession (much thanks to my best friend who got me thinking about it) is "for better or for worse."

What does it mean? I mean, what does it REALLY mean? To me? What IS the "for worse" part, and how worse does it have to get before it gets better? Does this mean if I am unhappy in my marriage for some fundamental reason, I am to stick with it and grit my teeth and be happy with my lot in life? How much of the "for worse" do I endure before I am okay to call it quits and move on with my life? What is worth surviving, and what is the payout?

Torn

I have always understood that there is a certain amount of give and take in life; nothing comes for free, and there are sacrifices to be made. At the same time, my intentions have always been to just find happiness in life. Not wealth, not fame, not immortality, and certainly not more than my share of anything. I just want to be happy.

A wise friend of mine from the Middle East told me recently that Americans have it all wrong; they expect every single day in life to be wonderful. He said if you're lucky, you have one good day in a year. That is the Middle Eastern view on happiness. He's right. I don't think I have been looking for the cartoon bluebird on my shoulder kind of happiness, however.

I want to be mostly content, with a few flashes of deliriously happy mixed in to keep me guessing.

And that is why I left my husband in January. More accurately, after I told him what was in my head, he left first. It was the most terrible thing I have ever done to another person. He was devastated, and it was all my doing.

What followed was a lot of heartache, misery, bitterness, crying, confusion, and, in my case, hunger and poverty.

Here we are on the other side of it. I live with my boyfriend. My husband lives across town. I don't know what the hell to do about any of it.

I love my husband. He is a good man, kind and considerate, smart and funny, generous and compassionate. I also love my boyfriend, with whom, quite frankly, I have incredible chemistry. The kind you read about in those books you try to hide from your significant others. You know what I'm talking about.

It is possible to love two men at the same time. I love them differently, and value them for different things.

Like I said, I don't know what the hell to do.

Regardless my decision, I will suffer a loss. I will sacrifice something. (Yes, someone else's heart will be broken, but it's my damned blog, so it's all about me. Piss off.)

What remains is to determine what to sacrifice. I am almost 40. I have roughly 40 decent years of living remaining. How do I want to spend it? And with whom, if anyone? Where will I go, what will I do?

Can I live the rest of my life without the companionship I so value in my husband? What about abandoning the powerful physical connection I have with my boyfriend?

I can't be two people, living two lives. I have to choose. And I have no idea what the hell to do.

Bitter.

It's been a day of nasty discoveries.

I'm not the sort who floats through life on a hope and a dream. I know how it is. I get it. I learned early on that shit does, in fact, happen, and there's a lot of stuff that sucks in this world. Yeah, yeah, you're all rolling your eyes at my melodrama. But really. I'm well aware of the grittier aspects of the human experience.

Anyway.

As it turns out, my twentieth high school reunion was last weekend. No, I did not go. I didn't even know it was happening until after the fact. I would not have gone had I known. I don't remember all those people. I really don't. I have no idea who they are. None. Hmm. Must have been my hard living after school, but I have very little recollection of my teen years. Oh, yes. I did spend the majority of my high school time hanging out in bars. Suppose that might have contributed to the fuzzy recollections.

Anyway.

There are some specific events I do remember from high school. Oddly, the costars for two of my favorite moments are now dead. How terribly, awfully sad.

Here is one:

It was a snow day, and a beautiful one. No school. A boy named Paul phoned me. his dad and mine worked together, don't remember exactly how that was, but not important here. I didn't know Paul well. I saw him at school, and at dad-work-related functions. He was shy, quiet, very polite. A Nice Boy. I, on the other hand, was a Troubled Youth. Sullen, unhappy, disagreeable. So it was odd, to say the least, that Paul called me that day. He invited me over to play in the snow.

So I did. We did all the appropriate snow day activities: made snowballs, built a snowman, rolled down snowy hills. I laughed more that day than I think I ever had before. It was FUN. An unusual concept for me. Paul was nice, we had a great time. We discovered we had much in common. I went home happy and exhausted. I wondered if maybe he and I were beginning a friendship. Or something.

The next day, it was as if nothing had ever happened. Paul was shy and quiet again. I was too tortured by my own insecurities to say anything to him. We were polite, yet distant, at future events.

Then I moved. So did he. I never heard what happened to him.

Until this morning.

Paul drowned about 15 years ago. Possibly suicide.

He deserved so much more from life. Yes, I am bitter, for the very nice boy I knew and liked so well. Another example of shit that sucks.

I'm sorry, Paul. If you see my Dad, he can catch you up on what's been going on with me. And, hey, say hi to Bill for me, would you?

As for Bill...he'll get his own post. Later.

Returning

I have been gone.

I have been gone for some time, and the place where I was is not a good place. It was my place of grief, and fear, and sorrow, and loneliness, and self-destruction. It was the only place I could be for all this time.

The other day my husband said to me, as I recuperated from a wild laughing fit of no apparent origin, that he had missed me. And he was glad I was back. And in his face was more sadness than I have ever seen in him. And more hope than I have seen in him in a long time. It was the first time I considered what my anguish had cost the two of us.

I will grieve for my father forever. There is a big, empty hole inside of me that will not go away. Nor do I want it to; missing him is important to me.

Back to my point: I have been gone. I spent three years on my island, isolated in the wind and the cold, doing the hard work that is grieving. I was buried in it. It consumed me. It ate me alive.

Somehow, I survived. There were so many, many days I thought I would not. I did not want to. But I did.

And here I am. I have returned. I am not the same person at all, but I am back. There are deeper shadows around my edges, and wispy, swirling, dark things behind my eyes. We've all agreed to work together, at least for now. And there are moments now and again in which I feel almost...alive.

Never whole, but alive.

I set forth cautiously, as my kind and patient husband hopes for the first time since the year we married, which was, unfortunate timing be damned, the year my world exploded and I vanished into the dark.

I set forth with bated breath, and I am truly astonished to be here. Alive. Returning.

Waiting

Something our modern society is no longer capable of is waiting. Food is fast, marts are quickie, all the preferred services are instant, immediate, in a flash. Many things happen "while you wait." But that's just a saying, as you don't truly have to wait for very long. The unfortunate result of this world of instantaneous fulfilment is that we have become impatient. Multitasking has become an art form, as nobody wants to take the time to do one thing properly, then begin the next. Do it all half-arsed, all at once! Hurry hurry! Woe unto the clerk in whose queue one is expected to stand. The people on line mutter in discontent, mutinous and angry at being asked to wait their turn. On the highways of America, frenetic drivers are speeding faster than the already absurdly high speed limits, texting and eating their fast food while road raging at slowpokes following the letter of the law.

I am not immune to this need to have it all, right this second. I tap my foot. I roll my eyes and exhale upward to ruffle my hair, anxious to GET ON WITH IT.

Right now I am forced to wait. I am waiting for an entire month to have a new home in a new town. I am waiting to find a new job, new friends, new places to shop and play. I am waiting for my husband to come back from deployment. And there is nothing I can do but wait. It has been difficult to unclench my jaw, relax my tense muscles, and just...wait.

I thought, when planning for this interlude in my life, that I would do so many things "while I wait." It was my intent to multitask the month away, so I brought projects and supplies for dozens of things to while away my time. And yet, I have done very little of them.

I know that when the month is over, I will be on the mouse wheel again, rushing and hurrying to do it all, right this minute. For now, though, there is nowhere to rush off to,nothing urgent I need to do. I have plenty of time. I can relax and enjoy this slow-paced existence, a little one month vacation...while I wait.

Fathers

Fathers Day is coming around again, and I am sadly now without a father. More to the point, I am without MY father. It hurts.

One night this week I spent with my sister-in-law watching movies. We selected three seemingly unrelated films to watch. All three of them, it turned out, were about fathers. In the first one, two children with no father found a surrogate male role model in their wacky uncle. The second one involved a young woman trying to determine which of several men was her father before her wedding. She ended up with three wonderful fathers. The last film was about another young lady who went to live with her father, who was a bit cranky and set in his ways, but he loved her desperately.

All of this cinematic fatherness got me to thinking. My husband is in the peculiar circumstance of having two fathers, both great guys and wonderful dads. I have none. In fact, I haven't anyone even remotely resembling a father figure in my life now.

See, my dad was a huge presence, the hugest, really, in my life. There was no room for any other fatherlike entities, and I wouldn't have wanted one getting in the way. I never had a grandparent or aunt or uncle, or any of those other auxiliary relatives. I had a dad, a mom and a brother. And now I have no dad. Like I said, it hurts.

My dad was smart, kind, compassionate, fair, tough, funny, and he loved me more than anyone has ever or will ever love me. (My husband disputes this, but I know the truth. My father's love can't be outdone. Even by my dog.)

I miss him with every ounce of my being. Constantly.

But here I am, facing fathers day, wondering what to do with myself. My dad was a great one for bringing home strays--folks with no local family, someone needing a meal, whomever. He adopted people into our family life for a few days, or years, or forever. It was the kind of person he was.

Maybe I need to find a faux-father to adopt me, for a little while. Maybe it will dull the pounding, aching emptiness, at least for awhile. Maybe not. But it would be awfully nice to have someone kind of like my dad (but not precisely) around to do all the dad things with. I miss that.