|
|
september 25, 2000.10:30 a.m. Uhh. I feel like I'm gonna cry. I feel terrible, weak in spirit & body, like even if I knew the answers, I couldn't do anything about it. It's a beautiful day outside. Just gorgeous. Sun & sky & invisible pollen. And I feel like I want to crawl into a corner until it's all over. As if I wasn't feeling bad enough, because I don't know how to be the person I'm supposed to be here. As if I didn't feel bad enough, coming off a year that almost strangled every good feeling out of me. As if I didn't feel bad enough, not knowing who to talk to, what to work on, where to get the things I need to make me happy. Today the Boy left, to train for his new job. He's gone on his first long distance run. We woke up at 5:30 or so, restless & tense with the knowledge of the 6 a.m. alarm clock and just kind of melted into each other. For once all the improbable angles of his body flesh didn't register. For the first time in months, I didn't feel anything very complex. I didn't wonder glumly if we'd always be like this or if we'd always need to be like this before a separation, I just lived on zen-time. Being there. Even being miserable is something pure when you don't fuck it up with past & future. When you don't try to outsmart it. I could whisper, "don't go," and mean it, and he could be gentle in his refusal. No agenda. No five year plan. No sick & hidden conviction of inadequacy masquerading as resentment. Just the morning and the impending separation and the fear. The fear that turned, by common alchemy, into misery, that's filled my eyes with violent tears again & again as I write this. I feel smashed open. We were fighting all the time this weekend. Not the good kind of fighting. The bad kind of fighting, where you both say the same things over & over at increasing pitch. My emotions have been out of control and short-circuited lately. So we would fight and I would immediately start crying, hysterical tears that made consensus all the harder to achieve. Every little hurt became the biggest thing in the world, a precursor to the promised Armageddon that would raze our lives to the ground. My tears became debased in their frequency. Is this growing pains? Is this adjusting? Is this forgivable? Is this sustainable? I think those are the wrong questions. I think those are the questions making me miserable in the first place. The only thing I want to keep & treasure out of the whole mess is pain of separation, because that's the only thing simple enough to be right. And even that, I hope, will lessen in time.
So. It's 7:30 now. I feel a lot better. I'm still kind of low, but at least I can function. Going to afternoon class was a bit of a revelation. I got dressed in the cocoon-iest comfort clothes I could find: the Boy's pants and a shirt he wore 2 days ago that still kind of smells like him. Drag for what I thought was going to be a difficult day. It was really cold & windy, but I'd underestimated how cold & windy, so I left the house pretty unprepared. On the walk down the hill, I wondered what I was going to say in class; how much I was going to share. I always wonder that when I'm hurting & I have to go somewhere. I always want to talk to someone & share my pain, but if it's straight to class and there's no time to find a friend, then I wonder if it'll all spill out to a classroom of strangers. (Three days after the Boy & I broke up, I had to go to Renaissance literature class. We were talking about love sonnets, of all things, and I was pretty sure that sooner or later I was going to crack. I had 2 dozen little burn marks on my arm, for heaven's sake, I was already over the edge. But I didn't. I said some inappropriate things about handjobs, but I didn't crack.) I didn't crack today, either. Walking alone to class made me feel light, or rather less burdened with loneliness and apprehension. The class is a small one, full of now-familiar faces, and it feels polite if not exactly warm. Maybe it helped that there was no great contrast between home & school: either way I was alone, left to my own resources. Or maybe I just enjoyed the material: to illustrate a pedagogical point on aural & oral classroom skills, we spent an hour in a speaking circle, passing a large stone from hand to hand. I don't know if you've ever done something like that. It requires a lot of patience, to sit and listen and not interrupt. And it takes a lot of confidence to speak, knowing that the group isn't judging you on presentation. It's a shimmery sort of thing. Intensity builds & dissipates. Some people hold your attention better than others. I found that I was waiting to speak for the first 15 minutes, but eventually I was just listening. When my turn came I just said what was on my mind at the moment, not trying to impress with words or stories. I worry too much about people liking what I write & say, and I don't spend enough time just saying things for the pure, unadulterated hell of it. And - this is important - I'm a really bad listener most of the time. Sometimes I'm listening for my turn to speak. Sometimes I'm not paying proper, respectful attention at all; as the speaker isn't discoursing on my narrow range of interests. Sometimes I'm frantically analysing, trying to figure out what it is about the other person that's making me so unhappy in that moment, and their brief words take on far too much meaning. What I need to learn is appreciation and acceptance. I don't ever want to run a classroom in which people feel sneered at, simply because I'm too closed up to really listen appreciatively. "In certain types of brain damage, the brain that's left will grow to compensate the lost function. Maybe that's why I don't need a sister to borrow clothes." So I had a better afternoon than I thought I would. And I came back, read comics for too long, made dinner for myself & sat down to read some things I'd lost track of in the move. The cat has been unwontedly affectionate in the last little while, so she's here rubbing up against the monitor & miowing for no reason that I can determine. But she's a cat for pete's - I'd like to talk to someone who can answer back. I can't remember the last time I was this alone in a house - I mean, I can objectively remember, that's easy, it was when I lived with Galadrial on Queen Street - but I can't emotionally remember. It reminds me of the first months I spent with the Boy. I was so hung up on him that a day's absence made me miserable. So I'd do the surrogate thing, which I'm trying to do again. I dug up one of the two tapes he made for me then, with his songs on one side and a selection of professionals on the other, and I've got the clock radio cranked in the bedroom to hear it here in the kitchen. It doesn't make the pain go away, but it tamps it down to something manageable. And now I should go. There's a whole lot of homework standing between me and my bed. Dishes, too. And I'd like to talk to someone real. |
|
