man/dude/dawg

Autumn

When my brother Brian was five years old, we lived in Coloraddo.  One night before bed, he went out on the deck to pet the dog, who just happened to be having her evening meal.  The dog was mean and crazy, but really cute and fluffy.  And big.  And so my brother, being the one who will never be able to see past the tip of his index finger, thought it was a good idea to bend over and show the dog a piece of food that had fallen out of her bowl.

Only the dog didn't so much appreciate it, and she attacked his head, and I remember being upstairs in my room listening to some Paulaa Abdool, and hearing the dog growl, and then him scream, and I remember how in the middle of all of that noise, I could make out the low, frightened whimper of my mother.  I remember thinking that that was the worst sound of all.

And I ran down the stairs to the first landing, and just jumped from the sixth stair, and he was standing right in front of the sliding glass door, his hand cupped over his eye, and I remember the blood, pouring out from between his fingers.

My mom laid him down on the dining room rug, and peeked just for a second, for just as long as it took to pull back his hand and replace it with a towel from the kitchen.  I called the neighbor, and she came over, and off we went to the emergency room.  The whole way across town, my mom kept apologizing, and saying that she loved him, and demanding that we not take the towel off of his eye.  The two of us sat in the back seat, more fearful of her catching a glimpse of the damage than we were of the damage itself.

Yesterday I sat at work, willing myself to believe that what i was doing was for someone else.  I filled in all of the appropriate forms, and at the very most last possible moment, filled in the address, and then Matt and I's names.  And then I printed.

And then, because I was alone and safe in my office, I went online to download our forms.  And I couldn't even bring myself to read the links before clicking on them.  I just clicked, and printed, and watched one by one as they were spit out of my printer, focusing only on the hum and racket of the various printing mechanisms.  I watched as the printing cue grew smaller, and smaller, and as the last page fell onto the pile, I grabbed a folder, and threw the whole lot into it.

I shoved them into my bag  I've refused to look since.  I've refused to accidentally drop a pen, or my keys, or my phone, anywhere near that pocket.

This morning, I thought of my brother, and that dog that ate his eyebrow, and i accepted that for now, I'm still en route to the ER.

thechurchroad

I bought my first car before I even had a license, and so it sat in the garage for three months while I waited out my learner's permit.  I used to go and sit inside of it, playing the stereo, wishing I could just take the damn thing out on the road without my step-dad grading every stop and left hand turn I made.

The first day i was able to drive to school, the urge to drive right past and keep going proved stronger than I could suppress, and so I wizzed down the street to the coffee store, purchased something, and continued heading out of town.  I made it about a mile down the road, and randomly turned right, and then right again, circling all around until I was back at school, albeit fifteen minutes late.

It quickly became a morning ritual, if I was giving friends a ride in the morning, I would drop them off first and off I would go to fly over and around a small, winding, rural strip of pitted concrete known as the church road.  I'd play tapes so loud that I couldn't even think over them, and drink my coffee so fast that it burned my tongue, and smoke so much that I thought I would never be able to breathe again.  I quickly began to rely on those twenty minutes of nothing.

And maybe it all started because for my whole life, I have never been able to NOT think.  I have never been able to just have a simple conversation with someone about a new pair of shoes, and not have the periphery of my mind running like wildfire.

Catching air out there, doing seventy over those little mounds of pavement, it was all I could do to concentrate while the music rattled the seats and coffee threatened to spill on my bag of books.  It quieted the internal dialogue.  It had me hooked.

While I got older and my life grew more involved, so did my dependence on the church road.  At times I would find myself out there three and four times a day, just lapping the outskirts of town, changing the music to fit whatever it was I was trying to not process.

Everytime, when I made it back in to the stoplight, I felt like I could handle things again.  I felt like whatever it was that was coming, I could make it work for me.  And if it didn't, I'd just do the whole thing all over again.  And again.  Until I was clear.

When I went back to work full time, I immediately fell back into my old habit, even the part where I am late every day, only I have shaved that down to seven minutes, now.

Yesterday morning was no different.  I dropped the girls at school, and headed out to my right turn, and then my other right turn, and the car could not go fast enough, or high enough, and the music could not be loud enough, and as if all of that frustration wasn't enough, I learned that they have closed off the last length of road in my circle.  They had stolen five minutes of my journey until sometime next April, to repair a bridge.

It was pain, and panic, and indecipherable, but maybe all of those things were just being projected onto the road.  Maybe, just maybe, the road didn't do anything wrong.

Thoughts again continuing, trying to find another way.  Driving.  Coffee.  Finding okay.  Making peace with myself, just to make sure that someone....anyone...can.

sandstorm

The Mighty M spent Columbus Day weekend on a 4 day trip with his uncle, climbing Mt. Katahdin.  He used to do it as a boy, and has talked about it fondly as long as I have known him.  He jumped at the chance to go.

The night before he left, I dropped the girls off at my mom's house, as I also had plans to run away for a few days with some friends.  We all had too much to drink that night, and it was pretty evident by noon on saturday that no one was up for a trip anywhere.  Matt was already gone, and so I left the girls at my mom's anyways, and set out to have a few days of R&R all by myself.  Only I didn't tell anyone that my trip had been cancelled.  I hid inside my house, refusing to answer the house phone or open the door.  It was, quite simply, a hiatus.

I took a long, hot shower, and then wrapped myself in a towel and sat on the couch for what seemed like hours, just looking around at all of the stuff that has magnetized itself to us over the past ten years.  We have always been good about keeping the stuff at bay, we throw stuff away, we give stuff away, we try to keep things neat.  The past year, however, it has built up, and maybe that should have been an indication to me sooner.  Maybe I should have taken THAT as my first red flag.

And so I was sitting on the couch, and became overwhelmed with the idea that every piece of everything in this house is soaked in memories built with my husband.  it was a feeling of drowning, and despair; it was the first time ever I have actually allowed myself to hear what my heart has been saying for so long.  I sat there hours longer, until my hair was nearly dry, unable to move past what I was hearing.  Could I do it?  Was I just hungover and not thinking clearly?  Was the anxiety that plagued me when Griffin was a baby returning?  And then, most importantly, could I ever really forget what I had just realized?  Could I get up off of the couch and go back to the way things were when I went to bed the night before?

I could not.  I could never go back.  I could never erase it. 

I love my husband very much.  I care about my husband very much.  I count him as one of my closest friends.  I think that if we had taken things slower, and that if we had been older, maybe this could have gone on forever.  Maybe I could still be 100% sure that I am where I need to be, and likewise for him.

I've spent almost an entire month allowing myself to think.  I kept thinking that maybe I was in shock, maybe a few days would pass, and I would see some trigger somewhere and it would send me back to him.  What I have had to accept is that there is not going to be a trigger.  There is not going to be a second moment of clarity to wash away the first.  I simply have to let him go.

I'm not hiding it very well anymore.  The twelve pounds I've lost from not being able to eat aren't helping.  The hours of laying in bed unable to sleep, until all I can do is get up and busy myself aren't helping either.

I just don't know how to tell him.  I don't know what kind of person I have to become to walk into a room and turn his world inside out, with no hard evidence or catastrophe with which to back up my request.  I don't know how, years from now, I will explain to my girls why I screwed everything up.  I don't know anything else right now, besides that I have to do it.  But this is the sort of thing I always write about.  Listen to your heart.  Take a deep breath.  Jump.  And now, I wish I could be a hipocrite.

The other day, I was challenged to say in one sentence why I needed a divorce.  I racked my brain trying to come up with something terrible, or important sounding, and after sitting there making six or seven false starts, it left my mouth and made so much sense to me.  All of these years together, I have done nothing but take care of Matt.  I'm a nurturer by nature, I know that, but somewhere in there things have crossed, and our dependence on each other, especially his on me, has grown wildly.

And so as pure as I can make it, I need a divorce because my husband will do whatever I want.

He will follow me forever.  He will never allow himself to see me any way besides perfect.  He will swallow any desire, or dream he has if he believes it will not please me, and I can't be responsible for that.  I can't stand by him for the rest of our lives waiting for the moment he realizes that he could have done so much more.  I need to be his friend.  He needs to be his own person.  As much as he is going to deny it, he can never be that person if he is attached to me.  Every ounce of change he makes will always and forever be because I told him to.

I will never be prepared enough to tell him this.  I don't even know how I can live while he comes to understand this.

I reckognize what an asshole I sound like.  I am wholly aware of how calous, and evil, and self absorbed this all sounds.  I know I am over simplifying this here.  I know that I will not be able to completely explain what has happened to my brain until I am forced, by matt, to be accountable.  I know that even then, this will not make total sense.  But I know what I feel, and doing anything else besides what I am doing would be a dis-service to both of us.

And its this weird combination of numb and raw, like falling off of your bike, after the spray of bactine.  It's a saddness like I have never known.  It's a freedom like I have never known.  I wonder if I can handle any of it.

(I can't find the alternative.)