Three Wishes
Home alone and happy – nothing brings me down.
Emiliana Torrini has the perfect end of the day music. Makes me feel like the stress is packing up and going on a 10-12 hour vacation. A little popcorn and some planning for tomorrow makes me feel quite Jean Pargettery and by that I mean quite lovely and domestic and cozy.
A different day. Sort of betterish, I feel. But I’m still dodging punches that seem to come out of nowhere. I am trying to keep the sense that I might be okay and don’t have reason to come home sobbing in control. That not everything from Billy Mays to a returned check to a man laying in hospice is my fault.
When not one of those things has even a tertiary connection to anything I’ve done. I just feel it. Might have something to do with this whole feeling crazy thing as an excuse to disengage. If I were to spend my free hours doing something as wanky as self-analysis.
I didn’t go see the man in hospice. He wasn’t close to me though I knew him, met him several times, liked him. I was just an employee of an organization he belonged to. And so many people were going, he was going to be loved up until his very last minute. It was just strange, to be working all day and glancing at the clock and aware of all the laypeople who had decided that he wasn’t going to make it 24 hours. That his wife who had been so by his side for the past 3+ years of his illness was already headlong, almost wildly careening into grieving him. That I will go to bed and make the assumption he can no longer make: the sun will meet me in the morning and dreams will keep me safely bound until I rise. I’m listening to the very apt Loreena McKennitt.
I don’t feel like I need to cry for him or for her, but perhaps for them. This broken thing that kept them safely bound until this moment. This planned for, promised, but still uncertain moment when they part. When those vows are released as he is from whatever earthly pain wracks him. There’s something powerful in watching a woman become a widow before your eyes. In watching a man go beyond the trappings of the physical. It’s hard not to think of myself, this single voyager with this gift of strength I might be cheated or cheating someone out of.
That said, I got a letter from someone who wants to get to know me better. I am not as open to it as my best self would like. I am very protective and this one future is clearly precious to me given everything I’ve forgone to maintain its integrity, and this feels forced to me. I think I know very well I’d do what I’ve done before. So I kinda have to buck up and say that I don’t want to waste his time. That I’m more than willing to write letters, share writing, but I don’t want to give a litany of myself and read one of him and huzzah, we’re so in like that we should meet. I feel beholden already. Not excited. Not pleased. Not with this little curl of desire in my head. So I have to buck the fuck up.
Yes, I’m a mishmash. I’m a troubled creature. I do not behave in ways that would best bring be happiness.
I just want what I want, okay?
