One of the refrains that tends to stick out to kids in childhood at church is “And he walks with me, and he talks with me… and he tells me I am his own.” This is because nearly all ministers have told the joke about the supposed child, and in every telling it’s every pastor’s own child, that said child asked who “Andy” was… you know… “Andy walked with me.” Kind of like the joke about God’s name being Howard…. so old it has hair on it, and not attributable at this point.

(Our Father, who art in heaven, Howard be thy name….”)

Also, the tune to that hymn is particularly catchy.

I’m reminded of that hymn this evening because it starts out “I come to the garden alone, while the dew is still on the roses…” It’s not early morning, but the room has that kind of vibe- sitting in the quiet, talking to an old friend. It’s kind of neat that my old friend is you…. but also me…. but also you. I could go on, and I’m surprised I didn’t. Sometimes, you have to play against type.

I am sitting out here in my office hopping mad because I fell and hurt myself badly while I was walking Jack. It’s not as bad as Zac’s bike accident, but I hit the heel of my hand so hard on the pavement that there’s still pebble indentations hours later and I’m in pain despite Tylenol and aspirin. However, it has taken the edge off. No need to go to the doctor to get something more substantial. I’ll live.

But it’s something I need to keep an eye on, because I also managed to bang up my knee pretty good. It’s not funny when I fall in this neighborhood because it’s uneven and gravelly with no sidewalks except in a few places. I was listening to a podcast while I was walking Jack, and I should know that I can’t pay attention to both Rachel Maddow and anything else.

Beautiful women always hurt me. That’s because when I think they’re beautiful, I trip over things.

There are stories out there. Most of which I’ve told. I love self-deprecating humor. I even love it when people tease me, as long as it’s not too mean. However, I have a pretty thick skin, so I pretty much have to let other people tell me their boundaries. The neurodivergent sense of humor is dark, as is the physically and mentally disabled. Plus, I’ve been a line cook. If I have not offended you yet, you haven’t been here long enough.

Or, you don’t know me personally and can’t actually be paid to care about my problems, you just like surfing. That’s even better. It’s hard to feel deeply about people you don’t know, and I don’t mean the way we fight on the internet. I mean that it’s very hard to get other people to genuinely care about your life because they have their own. That’s appropriate. But what people can handle is a slice of my life. Watching me entertain myself by entertaining you. Or, some of it’s entertaining. Mostly it’s cathartic. I can be funnier when I feel lighter, and I feel lighter than I have in a long time.

I sent Supergrover a note that said she really needed to let me know whether she was focusing on moving on with her life or whether she wanted to fix our relationship. That she said it was clear I didn’t want a relationship, and I said that it wasn’t true. That I’d given her my heart 11 years ago, and I don’t remember asking for it back.

She hasn’t responded, and if she doesn’t, all er e-mail will eventually go to Spam again. It’s not because I don’t want to work on a relationship. It’s that I don’t want to work on a relationship in which both of us are unhappy enough to explode after a week. She’s punishing me with some sort of silent treatment, because people are only as busy as they want to be. I feel like if I cannot have closure from her, I have to get it on my own. I can’t keep looking back across the river to make sure she’s okay, too.

She is not okay, and neither am I. I’m not blaming. We both come by our poor reactions honestly. It’s just at some point I cannot take these ups and downs of “don’t talk to me anymore” and “it’s unfair to compare me to Daniel.” That one actually did go to Spam, so I didn’t realize that she didn’t really want to have a conversation. She wanted to berate me for what I said. I felt like an idiot because she sent an e-mail to a different e-mail address asking if I’d gotten her e-mails, because she’d sent some a while back. I said that I hadn’t been looking for e-mail from her, but that I was so excited to hear from her………..

Then crushed when she forwarded me everything she said and it was a shitstorm.

I got mad about it and we worked it through. We were doing okay. And we both went right back into “I can’t do anything right for you.” Because that’s the game, right? If she doesn’t have any boundaries, then she can pick anything she wants as a boundary after the fact. I can be wrong a hundred times out of a hundred.

I cannot keep a rhythm, much less dance a quickstep.

I feel like I am laying out my boundaries the way I know how, but what I don’t know is how they play to a neurotypical audience. I know she heard “everything is over, go away” when I meant “I’ve seen everything you don’t want to talk about and I can’t find anything you do. Tell me when you figure it out.” She was on me like white on rice, saying that I was the judge and jury. She had no intention of really working on anything. It was an escape hatch. It’s like everything I’ve been saying for 11 years registered with her in a whole new way, and she’s not sure that she likes it. She’s not even sure that she likes me. But of course, I can only say that is my impression of her. I cannot remember the last time she gave me any affection at all.

Yes, I can. It was last September.

It was a heart emoji in response to a sentimental message she left me and I took a screenshot. It was very, very old. But I still keep it in my digital memory box because it came from her.

I remember saying that she reminds me of new life, new hope- the color green in my assessment of what would go on a soundtrack to fit her…. even though sometimes she reminds me more of Morton Gould’s “Jericho.” It’s as warm and dissonant as our relationship.

I keep saying that it’s no skin off my nose to keep waiting, and it’s more anxiety driving me to write than anything else. It’s not as if her writing back will make a difference. Even if she says “you’ll never hear from me again,” she cannot possibly mean it. I want to feel settled, and there’s nothing anyone can give me but time. Yet, as time goes by, it gets harder to maintain the cognitive dissonance. It’s clear she doesn’t want what I want, because nothing in her list of things to talk about included any direction I wanted to go with her, because if she doesn’t want to talk about her childhood and healing, then it’s going to be a whole lot more of me telling her what I’ve learned while she’s sitting there bored because it’s not what you want to talk about and overwhelming because I talk so much.

There’s an answer to this problem, and right now it’s waiting for the moon. She will arrive at the moment I need her most.