I tried another way for just a couple minutes
I rode my bike home tonight. It’s been a tough week at work. Nothing colossal happened, but I’ve had to remain present and solve some problems and deal with some other problems being outside my ability to solve, and be around my boss when he’s been having a very difficult week and not particularly wanting to hear that I couldn’t solve the things that I cannot solve. Especially because the stuff I can’t fix has left the project I work on without the ability to collect revenue for a little more than a week now.
Building for a while I have been more and more overwhelmed by confronting the details of my last relationship. I’ve done some writing to identify my resentments and my parts in it all. On Sunday after spending an hour or so writing I stopped and went home. On the bus I just felt exhausted and drained and suddenly I wondered:
What is the point of all this? Am I looking to get healed and move on? What is the point of that? So I can jump in and get destroyed all over again? No, of course, it’s more like so I can go in and not make the same mistakes again. Yeah, right. I don’t believe it’s possible. I don’t have that faith that the next time it will be better.
Isn’t it better then just not to have a next time? Isn’t it better for me to be bitter and lonely than to risk going out there to do battle again?
Acting as if. Acting as if it actually will be better for me to heal and move on. That’s what I’ve been told, so that’s what I get to do.
Then I get instructed to go and have fun this weekend. It’s a blow to my ego that I have to be told to have a good time, and I’m a little scared that I’ve let anyone close enough to know that I have no social life. But Sam figured it out. It seems like a burden. Once again, it’s easier for me to just stay here, rent a movie, do my laundry, and go back to work on Monday.
Give me my cocoon back, already!
So the tapes were running full speed on the way home tonight, of course. Where am I going to find a date for Wednesday, never mind make some sort of social plans for tomorrow or tonight? and What about going to the gym and punishing myself all day until I’m too raw to move? Does that count as social?
Then the guy in the minivan made the right hand turn into the gas station directly in front of me. I was close enough that I had to pull in to the gas station myself in order to avoid slamming into the minivan.
I shouted at him. I had the rage in my belly and I let it out at him. What the fuck were you thinking? He got a few choice words thrown at him and I saw his passenger—his girlfriend or wife—looking back at me, afraid. He slowed and I rode around and back out to the street, where there was a red light and I let myself stop.
I was shaking and breathing hard. The adrenaline wave was whipping through me, although I’d stopped. And in an instant, I saw myself as this fierce ball of rage lashing out at this guy who fucked up in traffic. I looked back and the words I read somewhere once came to me: «Putting out of our minds the wrongs others had done, we resolutely looked for our own mistakes.»
I dismounted from the bike and walked it back toward the gas station. I took my helmet and glasses off and went back toward the minivan. The driver was paying, and I stayed far from the vehicle. I could see his wife watching me from the passenger seat. The driver turned from the cashier’s window and saw me. I stayed still and didn’t get close because I didn’t want to alarm him.
I apologized.
I told him that I had no cause to call him names or use the kind of language that I had and that I was sorry. He apologized and said that he hadn’t seen me and didn’t know that I was there until I’d yelled. I thanked him for his apology and he asked if I were all right. I told him that he’d given me quite a scare but that I was unhurt. I told him to have a good evening and I got back on and rode away.
And I didn’t stop sobbing the rest of the way home. Stripped of my rage, I had nothing left but the remnants of my fear, and not even any more shouting to push it out.
I don’t expect anyone else to understand it, in fact, I expect several of you to think I’m a sap for not going back and beating him up or breaking his windshield or something. But I couldn’t let myself get away with it.
And now I’m just tired, and the music is playing:
Building for a while I have been more and more overwhelmed by confronting the details of my last relationship. I’ve done some writing to identify my resentments and my parts in it all. On Sunday after spending an hour or so writing I stopped and went home. On the bus I just felt exhausted and drained and suddenly I wondered:
What is the point of all this? Am I looking to get healed and move on? What is the point of that? So I can jump in and get destroyed all over again? No, of course, it’s more like so I can go in and not make the same mistakes again. Yeah, right. I don’t believe it’s possible. I don’t have that faith that the next time it will be better.
Isn’t it better then just not to have a next time? Isn’t it better for me to be bitter and lonely than to risk going out there to do battle again?
Acting as if. Acting as if it actually will be better for me to heal and move on. That’s what I’ve been told, so that’s what I get to do.
Then I get instructed to go and have fun this weekend. It’s a blow to my ego that I have to be told to have a good time, and I’m a little scared that I’ve let anyone close enough to know that I have no social life. But Sam figured it out. It seems like a burden. Once again, it’s easier for me to just stay here, rent a movie, do my laundry, and go back to work on Monday.
Give me my cocoon back, already!
So the tapes were running full speed on the way home tonight, of course. Where am I going to find a date for Wednesday, never mind make some sort of social plans for tomorrow or tonight? and What about going to the gym and punishing myself all day until I’m too raw to move? Does that count as social?
Then the guy in the minivan made the right hand turn into the gas station directly in front of me. I was close enough that I had to pull in to the gas station myself in order to avoid slamming into the minivan.
I shouted at him. I had the rage in my belly and I let it out at him. What the fuck were you thinking? He got a few choice words thrown at him and I saw his passenger—his girlfriend or wife—looking back at me, afraid. He slowed and I rode around and back out to the street, where there was a red light and I let myself stop.
I was shaking and breathing hard. The adrenaline wave was whipping through me, although I’d stopped. And in an instant, I saw myself as this fierce ball of rage lashing out at this guy who fucked up in traffic. I looked back and the words I read somewhere once came to me: «Putting out of our minds the wrongs others had done, we resolutely looked for our own mistakes.»
I dismounted from the bike and walked it back toward the gas station. I took my helmet and glasses off and went back toward the minivan. The driver was paying, and I stayed far from the vehicle. I could see his wife watching me from the passenger seat. The driver turned from the cashier’s window and saw me. I stayed still and didn’t get close because I didn’t want to alarm him.
I apologized.
I told him that I had no cause to call him names or use the kind of language that I had and that I was sorry. He apologized and said that he hadn’t seen me and didn’t know that I was there until I’d yelled. I thanked him for his apology and he asked if I were all right. I told him that he’d given me quite a scare but that I was unhurt. I told him to have a good evening and I got back on and rode away.
And I didn’t stop sobbing the rest of the way home. Stripped of my rage, I had nothing left but the remnants of my fear, and not even any more shouting to push it out.
I don’t expect anyone else to understand it, in fact, I expect several of you to think I’m a sap for not going back and beating him up or breaking his windshield or something. But I couldn’t let myself get away with it.
And now I’m just tired, and the music is playing:
taking a journey
tracing a memory
as long as the world keeps turning
your secret is safe with me
and I wonder: who will keep my secret safe? Who will take that journey?