The Feeling

I'm sitting here this morning listening to music, unusual enough.  And listening to The Feeling, the band I discovered in a taxi the last time I came home from England alone.  March of 2006, I think. This album hadn't even been released yet, just the EP.  And I listened hard, and wrote the name down, and found it.  I love this album so much.

And I love sitting here by myself and drinking my tea, and it's quiet and semi-clean.  I'm getting things done, and I'm thinking some happy thoughts about Tim and the weekend, and things seem, if not ok, just for this moment manageable. 

But listening to this music... I want so badly to be able to take everything that's happened and put it in place, sort it neatly into a file.  I was so happy sitting in that taxi.  We'd gone to London to the US Embassy to deal with the paperwork and visa interview, and although hideously hard for Michael, we did it, and everything was clear to go.  I'd come back in a month to fly back with him, and then we'd be married.

I wish I could freeze time right there. 

We were happy and eager and everything was falling into place.  It was all going to work, everything we'd seen through to that point, the visa and the packing and sale of the house, and just getting Michael to move on...  all of it.  He was going to come here, and he was going to love Jonathan, and we were going to live happily ever after.  And get well.

It seemed like everything went wrong from the first night in America.  That's a little bit of an exaggeration; there were some damn good times.  But that night, when everything went wrong at the airport, and then I spent 7 hours driving a sullen, miserable person up here... it was like the emblem for everything that would come after; him not being able to control his temper/whatever, and me trying to appease him and coax him out of the sullens.  I wish I'd never done that, not even once.  I wish that when we had that huge fight about whatever it was, and he locked himself in the bedroom and said he was going back... I wish that I'd just let that play out.  I have this idea that it would have changed the dynamics of everything, for better or for worse.

Oh, Michael. We could have been so happy... maybe.  I don't absolve myself of blame, but you know, I'm not hard.  You just throw a little love at me and keep things peaceful, and I'm pretty ok.  I loved you, maybe not in all the ways that we needed, but I loved you for so long and so hard.  And I miss you, although I can't allow myself to think of missing you, of the ways that things were once.  The only shred of that which I'm allowed to remember is lying in bed at night holding your hand.  Just that.

But anyway.  But anyway, I want to put it all in a file box and sort it out and label it all so I know what it means.  And then I want to listen to this music and dance alone and not cry.