man/dude/dawg

don't say I never gave you anything

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twenty eight

When Matt turned thirty, I remember taking pause to consider the likelihood that when I arrived myself, I would be all set.  That I would just be waiting for thrity five, when I could, in theory, become prezident.  It seemed bleak to me, to be at a point where the surprises and the anxiety would have faded long before.  I thought there would be nothing but more of the same for forever and beyond.

Clearly, I'm not holding out much hope for that being the way it all goes down two years from now.  The thought of not knowing is exciting, if for no other reason than allowing myself to not realize the growing gap between my respective physical and mental ages.

I've learned a lot in the past year.  I've done a lot in the past year.  It is easy to look back to this time last year, and put the checks in the boxes (not those checks in those boxes, nadine), and see that nothing is as it was.  I have successfully re-worked my entire existance, but somehow managed to hang on to the good parts, albeit at times only with the assistance of gravity.

My family is convinced I have lost my mind.  My mother gets wind of a pilot friend, or a weekday when I am not reachable via even my cell, or dinner and a drink with someone whose identity I will not divulge, and she worries that what I am doing now is intentionally breaking my life.  And my marriage.  The life part is absolutely correct, but the marriage?  Come on.  That was *so* last October. 

Test everything. 

That's the flowery way I have chosen to refer to "intentionally breaking my life".  I think more folks should do it.  I think everyone should toss every stupid little piece of their arrived life up in the air, and catch only the parts they are certain that they can not live without.  I have six.

My Matt.  My Girls.  My peace.  My options.  My Devin.  My Slou.

And I've already caught those pieces.  One, namely Matt, I have several times come very close to dropping, and have dropped, even, but his placement on that little list of things I can not live without makes me always catch it after the first bounce.  And it does bounce.  Frequently.  And everytime, we find ourselves eventually back to okay.  Back to the friends that can't live without each other, but also can not live with each other.  It's a dance with honesty, and courage, and a promise to always be there for each other.  Even when one of us chooses to date one of the others' good friends.

This year has taught me the finality of actions, and how poor or in-explainable ones can reverberate uncontrollably longer than is necessary.  It has taught me how stubborn some are in their beliefs, and how I have to be moreso in my own to combat them.  It has taught me how ridiculous one's beliefs can be.  It has taught me how easy it is for people to place more stock in others than in themselves.  It has taught me to, especially when it comes to people, follow my instincts.

Still a quarter burried in carnage, at least it has been buldozed off of the sidewalk.  Bring it on, twenty nine.  I'll fight you, too.  I'll kick your ass.  I'll make you buy me a drink.

switch

The past few days I have been inundated with the number 117.  I think I've touched on that number here before, and don't really desire to again right now.  I see it every day.  But the past few days, it is everywhere I look, each time building on the time before, and I am hard pressed to decipher if this is a golden signal that things are going exactly as they should, or if it is the blinking light saying that something...quick...STOP!...is about to careen everything I know into oblivion.  The hour of the day has great influence over which of the two paths I acknowledge.

Matthew and I broke our relationship tonight.  Not the marriage part....but the other part, where neither of us could be without knowing the other would always be there.  The part where it was best if we renamed our marriage what it actually is.  Best friends.  I guess the road back to two can not be as smooth as we thought.  I guess I should have placed more stock in my gut feelings.  I guess I shouldn't have said yes, all the while my brain was silently screaming no.  I guess it changes when the list of involved parties starts to dance into itself.  I guess, just like I crave on any other platform in my life, everything can always change with this, as well.

I'm lucky that Devin is here right now.  His distraction has been exactly what I need.  His support has been exactly what I need.  On my nights off from the girls, we've taken to getting a drink and laughing hysterically at the chaos that is being a member of our family.  he makes fun of my porter and I make fun of his hard lemonade.  I'm starting to get it now, that family actually is something good.  That they are the people who will always be there.  That he is the person that will always be there.

I called him tonight, to talk me down, which ended up just amounting to him sitting on the couch while Matthew and I talked on the back steps, but I kept thinking that he was there, and that so many times over the past year, he could have moved a nanospace to the left, and he wouldn't be here now.

And so on the porch tonight, it became very, very clear that things between M and I are not as they seem.  it became very, very clear that the arrangement we came to, and the reasons we used to arrive at it, are not the blueprint for the direction M is heading.

And I'm strangely angry.  Maybe it's just now hitting me, or maybe it is hitting me all over again just harder.  maybe I am seeing the past ten years together as a solid chunk now; all of the pieces are falling into place; all of the little, tiny, easily overlooked things have rolled into a massive ball of goo, whose core was revealed tonight, and alarmingly void of regret.

And so tomorrow morning, after I drop the girls at school, and my "shift" with them ends, i will not see my house again until Saturday.  I will not see my girls, what they are wearing, or eating, or saying.  And on Saturday, when I return for my shift, it will be the last time I will do it.  They will bounce back and forth, and the two of us will have our own, 95% unrelated lives.

Our old house will be my house.  Our old car will be my car.  The counter in the kitchen that M refused to help me change, will be changed by me.  Just like it would have been anyways.

Saturday afternoon, the door to the last ten years will close for good.  I want to be sad.  I knw that at some point, I will be sad.  or maybe I won't.  maybe I've already gone there.  Maybe I will jump back to where I was once the anger subsides.

Broken.  Caput.  Maybe at some point, I'll actually miss him as a friend.  I'm near certain it will be quite a while...