A tie that used to bind about this situation, this life, was the dreaded judgment of “what will people think?” This fear that would so often cause the pre-dawn cringing of adrenaline-fueled fluttering in my chest. And now I just don’t give a shit. But in a good way. It’s hard enough to figure out how I feel about what happened without being consumed by a world full of judges making judgments.
It’s embarrassing how much time I’ve spent having conversations with ghosts, real and imagined, explicating circumstances and pointing out my points of view. Exhausting. And a waste. You’re (the royal you) going to feel what you’re going to feel. Didactic dialogue rarely achieves; it usually just delineates the differences. You and me, here and there, us and other. Do you want to be right or do you want to be happy? Unfortunately, that question–and the insight required to ask it–seems to come too often after the choice has already been made.
Let us go back, then, and reflect upon that choice offered and ignored. The worst-case scenario begins that day, September 11, 2009. Via instant messages, tens of thousands of words burst staccato like rubber bullets fired at each other to hurt, if not to kill. Frustrations piled on impotent tools and tactics. Of course, the levee wouldn’t hold.
This was the day I met your mother for the first time and hugged her in the deafening pit next to the band and I took pictures and watched the CD release show at Beauty Bar full of beauty and tragedy and your family up from so near Vider and our only wedding gift and your ex-boyfriend back in town and supernaturally gracious and we argued eight hours until abruptly re-exchanging vows of love and we hadn’t slept in days and, and, and, and, and…I was out of breath surprised and always ready to duck for cover as the inevitable explosion finally exploded. That was my mistake, of course. We had earlier imploded individually, dying on the inside hidden. And in just three and one half weeks, we, us, you and me, would be dead forever.
9/11
A tie that used to bind about this situation, this life, was the dreaded judgment of “what will people think?” This fear that would so often cause the pre-dawn cringing of adrenaline-fueled fluttering in my chest. And now I just don’t give a shit. But in a good way. It’s hard enough to figure out how I feel about what happened without being consumed by a world full of judges making judgments.
It’s embarrassing how much time I’ve spent having conversations with ghosts, real and imagined, explicating circumstances and pointing out my points of view. Exhausting. And a waste. You’re (the royal you) going to feel what you’re going to feel. Didactic dialogue rarely achieves; it usually just delineates the differences. You and me, here and there, us and other. Do you want to be right or do you want to be happy? Unfortunately, that question–and the insight required to ask it–seems to come too often after the choice has already been made.
Let us go back, then, and reflect upon that choice offered and ignored. The worst-case scenario begins that day, September 11, 2009. Via instant messages, tens of thousands of words burst staccato like rubber bullets fired at each other to hurt, if not to kill. Frustrations piled on impotent tools and tactics. Of course, the levee wouldn’t hold.
This was the day I met your mother for the first time and hugged her in the deafening pit next to the band and I took pictures and watched the CD release show at Beauty Bar full of beauty and tragedy and your family up from so near Vider and our only wedding gift and your ex-boyfriend back in town and supernaturally gracious and we argued eight hours until abruptly re-exchanging vows of love and we hadn’t slept in days and, and, and, and, and…I was out of breath surprised and always ready to duck for cover as the inevitable explosion finally exploded. That was my mistake, of course. We had earlier imploded individually, dying on the inside hidden. And in just three and one half weeks, we, us, you and me, would be dead forever.