It’s 3:35 AM as I start writing this entry. I am normally asleep at this time, but my schedule has been thrown into disarray that not even a sleeping pill could override. I wasn’t altogether ready to come home from Texas, because my dad was sick and his birthday was 9 Oct. However, I think my family was ready to get back into the swing of things, and that meant me getting back to where I belong. I’d been in Texas since 22 Sept, when my stepmother lost the ability to swallow and if I was going to get to say goodbye, I better come now.
We had a good conversation and farewell.
The funeral was beautiful and ethereal because it was so grounded. All of my stepmother’s doctors and nurses wore their scrubs.
But because of my time blindness, it did not feel like I was gone that long. In fact, the events were so packed together that I wish I’d slowed down a little.
The only real time I had to myself in Texas was driving back and forth between Bastrop and Houston. Now, I’m faced with as much alone time as I want, up to and including total isolation. My cognitive behavioral therapy group wouldn’t let that happen for long, though.
My point is that if I want my life to be different, I have to be different. The last 12 years have been built on isolation, and I know I do not want that anymore. I need to plug in somewhere and be of service, and I think that it’s time to find a church.
It’s the only way I know how to make friends as an adult. I generally join the choir because the language of music makes easy kinship. How much I get involved in church past that really depends on how much I like being there.
But I will always choose the church with the more strenuous music program because that’s the main reason I go. I can pray in isolation, but I cannot be the whole choir by myself.
It would be good to get back into music education because it’s a reminder that there’s something bigger than myself out there… a connection to the divine through the cunning use of math and physics. I’ve missed it, both singing and playing my horn. Playing my horn is unlikely to happen unless I get my mouth overhauled. My teeth cannot take the vibrations.
I like the idea of getting back into working those muscles. I’m a strong singer because I started in band, and singers who read music (especially sight reading) are rare. I don’t have that problem, but I’m also not the best singer out there. I work hard, and that’s enough for me.
I’m trying to get back into the rhythm of reaching out instead of reaching inward, because I do believe that there is a time and place for self-reliance. I also believe that the pendulum can swing too far and you get in danger of needing a life preserver without being able to ask for it.
I decided that I could be embarrassed by my entries, or I could heal myself with them instead. That’s the kind of self-reliance I need, because when everyone else goes away I still have this space to connect with the still, small voice inside me. The fact that strangers listen to this voice and comment when I’m finished will never not be strange, but it is strange in an uplifting way. A stranger cares.
Some of you are not even strangers as I look at my stats and think, “I know who lives there.” It’s interesting to see that people who’ve walked out of my life for any reason at all are still drawn here. It makes me feel weird that while I’m not fit for friendship, I have entertainment value.
Or perhaps I’m just being watched to make sure I’m not crazier than advertised, and that’s okay, too. I’m sure I’ve caused a lot of unrest over the 48 years I’ve been alive, and readers are readers……
I am not crazier than advertised. I have no problem talking about my struggles with mental health issues and have no qualms about saying “these are the things I struggle to manage.”
One of the biggest things I’m struggling to manage is how to convert the feeling I got when I wanted to write to Aada into the feeling I need to write a blog entry…. that there’s no information that needs to go specifically to her anymore and that energy needs to be directed. I have a feeling she’s reading every word, anyway, just based on a good hunch from my stats.
Sometimes I wonder if she’s struggling with not being the place I write before I write here. I know I struggle not having that sandbox, but every piece of information that I wish I could write to her will appear here eventually. There’s just a time and place for everything, and a lot of what I went through the past two weeks needs air.
Or needs Aada, I don’t know which.
What I do know is that she would have heard the notes of sadness in my voice and wrapped her digital arm around my shoulder.
When I think of her that way, the relationship doesn’t feel so over. I don’t get freaked out that she’s still a fan. If she’s still a fan, it means that she still wants some sort of connection to me to make sure I’m doing all right without her. It makes me wish she was a blogger so I could do the same- make sure she’s all right without interfering. But that’s just wishful thinking because even though she’s a great writer, blogging’s not her jam.
It doesn’t feel fair that she gets to lurk in my life and I don’t get to lurk in hers, but life’s not fair. I chose to be a public figure, she didn’t. She gets to keep her privacy, I don’t.
That’s why it is fair, it just doesn’t feel like it. I chose this life where my feelings are on display. Aada didn’t like it, especially when the people around her put two and two together and figured out who she was here. Believe me I do not want to know how any of Aada’s work colleagues know who I am, nor do I give two shits that people in her personal life figured it out because I was tasked with being so careful. I told Aada that I could never be careful enough, that we’d run into problems if we didn’t work together.
She didn’t listen to me for 12 years that I thought I could hurt her on my blog and she continued to say that there’s nothing I could write that would hurt her until it did.
She liked reading The War Daniel’s takedowns of me, but didn’t think it was fair that I posted her flame on Medium, as if she was more different, more special than anyone else in my life and deserved more protection than any of them. Whether that is true or not I do not know and didn’t take care to learn.
She didn’t protect me from consequences, so I didn’t protect her.
I should have, anyway. I should have let her get away with lying to me because I should have been the bigger person.
I’m wondering if Aada is thinking of me right now, because I got a hit on her Finnish baby post yesterday. It could just be a fluke, but it’s a nice thought nonetheless. Comforting, if not based in reality.
I do get a lot of hits from her location.
People do come back and find the entries they like after a long time when they want to feel close to me, but don’t actually want to reach out. It’s like they’re mourning me while I’m alive, and I get to watch from above. I’m definitely not sure that’s healthy, and why I want to promote myself with some ads- try and get my stats high enough that people can afford to be anonymous to me.
It’s really the next step on the ladder of success. I just need to research what kinds of ads will do the most good. It’s also about finding the right entries to promote, so I’ll start with the ones that have gotten the most praise already.
I’d also like to write more articles that have an academic focus for Medium, and I’ll be getting together topics for them. I’m capable of more than a scratch journal, and I intend to prove it.
My mind keeps going back to the thought that Aada is thinking of me even though she doesn’t want to reach out. I find it both comforting and sad…. bittersweet and melancholy in all the right ways…. but it could be that my mind is making all this up.
But what does one do other than comfort themselves in the middle of the night? In the middle of the night, all things are possible.
I miss her, too, and wish I could go back over her e-mails to me, but I deleted them all. Well, not all. I have the most recent ones. But the bulk of them is gone. There are no longer millions of words between us and that is positive. I would spend forever trying to prove to myself that moving on isn’t real.
Moving on is very real, but I hope she knows that this is her choice and not mine. That I am cognizant of the fact that she’s doing what’s best for her, but my feelings of regret are genuine and my door will never be closed. I don’t want to close myself off from proving that trust can be rebuilt on both sides, starting at zero. I do not pray for much these days, but I do pray for that.
I don’t think that either one of us gave the other the grace that love requires. I would like to prove that I’m capable of it. But I don’t want the same relationship with Aada that I’ve always had, either, because I don’t think that amount of isolation did me any favors.
What would it be like to introduce Aada to Bryn, Evan, Aaron, even my sister and my dad?
It would give us a basis in reality, everything we lost being a secretive bubble unto ourselves. Isolating did us no favors, because there was no one to referee the match.
It would have been a different relationship altogether if her husband and I had gotten to look at each other with knowing, amused looks and said, “it takes a village.”
It felt like living in the closet, because I’m so close to this person but I’m not allowed to say anything about them?
It would have been a different relationship altogether had we not trauma dumped everything, cultivating an instamacy that sunk us both in the end. I am much more circumspect these days, and keep my story to myself. I have learned that rabbit holes are almost always more trouble than they’re worth.
I think, and this is important for her to know if I am indeed correct, that the longer she reads the more I hold out hope that this isn’t the end of our movie. That I’ll go on to write more and different things, getting away from this time in our lives and making her feel comfortable enough to reestablish contact. If I stopped seeing that particular location in my stats, I would be sad, but I would know that our movie has ended. If it is my responsibility to stay away from her, then it is her responsibility to stay away from me.
I don’t want all of this to be any harder than it has to be, but again I am saying my father’s mantra:
- Nothing will ever be the same.
- Everything will be okay.
My life and career will not go the way I’ve planned for the last 12 years if Aada and I do not make up, and that’s okay. Just because the future is not going to be the same does not mean it won’t be okay. There is always a Plan B, or however many plans it takes to get to the one that actually fits you.
Stories That Are All True 