Love

It's hard not to be cynical, when you look back.

It's hard to believe that love exists.  Love between partners, that is.  Love between parent and child, between friend; that's a different thing.

Back a million years ago, on a usenet board that I used to frequent, people talked about unconditional love and debated whether such a thing existed.  Everyone was pretty firm in agreeing that there are always boundaries in love, and that there should be.  That there is some limit to love.  And I guess that I agree with that, really.  But it seems to me that my limits have always come when I've been pushed right over the edge, and that everyone else who has loved me had meant it in a much more finite way.

My first husband, who loved me, but not enough to change anything about the way that he wanted to live.  Not enough to talk to me.  Not enough to try to keep me, if it meant moving at all out of his comfort zone.

The man I loved more than anyone, who left me without explanation because... I don't know.  There is no because, since I never knew the answer.  Except that ultimately, whatever the reason, he didn't care enough to tell me the truth.  Or even to be decent enough to tell me the truth.

Michael.  Who loved me more than anyone, and who I loved with all my heart, even if not perhaps in the way he wanted.  And in all fairness, he tried.  But he never took the idea of suicide off the table, never.  And you can't live if dying is always an option, just over the next hill.  He said that he would not do this, for me.  But he did.  And tried to rip my heart out in every way that he could along the way.  I blame him least of all in a way, because so much was about illness.  I will never be able to separate the threads of illness versus... whatever the alternative is.  But still.  Never off the table.

And the man who says he loves me now.  The least of all of them.  Because those are just words that he says as part of the image that he has of me, the game that he wants to play because it suits him.  I know it's a lie, and sometimes I think that even he knows it.  And I'm willing to pretend to believe the lie, because that little bit of warmth staves off some darkness.  He will walk away, probably sooner rather than later, when it becomes inconvenient enough for him.  And I won't be sorry.

It's hard not to think that the whole idea of love isn't a pretty fantasy that we create for ourselves.  It's hard not to believe that I would be a thousand times better off if I could figure out know not to wish and long for someone.

It's very hard, on a night like this, not to be completely bitter.

May you be sound

I found a lovely comment on an old post today.  I have no idea how long it's been there; apparently I didn't have this set right to notify me when comments appear.  Because mostly I figure that I'm musing to the cosmos, or something.

Anyway, it said, among other things, that what you say in Turkish when someone dies is basically, "may you be sound."  I like that.  I am trying to be sound.  I am trying to be whole.  I am not so sure that it's working, some days... because some days, it still seems so hard to even breathe. 

Today was like that in patches.  I woke up very early and anxious and lay in bed for hours listening to podcasts and just worrying about all the things that I haven't done.  Then I fell into a fitful sleep and dreamed of some bizarre vision of the island and the ocean and fear and surreal people. 

I set out to really get some things done today.  It's late afternoon now, and I haven't exactly gotten a lot checked off my list.  But I did a few things, and some odds and ends.

And I listed some eBay things.  For the first time since Michael died.  And it was hard.

This is the business that I built, that I worked at all the time for years, back in the real heyday of eBay.  And then I basically gave it to Michael, so that he would have a focus, something to do.  Because he wanted to.  Because it made sense.  Except that in a way, it never did.  It gave him something to do, but it also gave him something to obsess over.  And that's what he did, obsessed over better way to do things, to organize, to photograph... everything except actually listing things and selling things. 

Part of that, in all fairness, is that the market has changed over the 12 years that I've done this.  But more than that... it's funny; I look at these photographs and listings, and I realize that he never really had the eye for this.  Strange in someone who was so good at things like this in general, and great at writing stories and funny listings and so on.  But the photographs are glaring and not beautiful.  The listings... there are things that catch your eye, but not things that draw you in.  He didn't love the charms, and it shows.  That sounds like a stupid thing to say, but it's a thing.  It helps if you love what you do.  But he didn't.  He just did it.... if there was a part that he loved, it perhaps was the organizing and the obsessing. 

But as he got sicker and sicker, both physically and mentally, the obsessions got crazier and deeper.  The buying of things and more things... oh, just so much.  I don't even want to think it out.

So now, I need to do something to reconstruct my business, I guess... I could let it go, I suppose, but I have thousands of charms, and what would I do with them?  But it hurt today to put together the listings.  So much memory.  So much memory of Michael, and that combination of sadness and anger that tears me apart every time. 

And so I sit here in my quiet house, and try to figure out what to do.  How to be sound.  How to keep putting my feet ahead of each other.  How to stop with my own obsessions... love and death and my inability to stagger out from under the weight of it all.  The weight of the past and the present combined. 

Some days I think that I can do this, that things are starting to seem lighter and more possible.  And then some days, I can't breathe, all over again.