Living As All of Me

[Blueberry]

 

[HannahOne]

It was good to go to PT. I was late and teary during. The PT asked what she could do and I said let's just get into it. Getting into my body, exercising is the best medicine I have found. I sat outside for an hour afterward and listening to music. Listening to the latest playlist I've been compiling, it's all about unrequited love. I'll be missing you, With or Without You, Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd, Breakeven, Shallow, Set Adrift on Memory Bliss by PM Dawn. I remember having so much love for my parents. Making them breakfast on a weekend morning, tiptoeing tiptoeing, setting the table. I can't ever remember them eating it. The table was all set, flags and signs for a party, toast and jelly... empty chairs.

What was I doing?

It's hard to remember longing for them. I remember bitter grief, bitter tears, sad rage, always alone.

They never came to the party.

One weekend morning the kitchen window was punched out. I'd heard it in the night, thought it was the silverware drawer falling. We never spoke of it, just put cardboard taped over that window and didn't look out that way anymore.

It's easy to blame these feelings on my life. My partner. My job, or when I don't have a job, my lack of a job. My friends, or not having friends. But these are all me, these are my feelings. They're not About anything in the present, anyone in the present. How to carry them, or feel them and let them go back to wherever feelings go. What do I do with this unrequited love? Grief is only love that's got no place to go. What a great song that is.

When a heart breaks, it don't break even. That's a great song too.

Took my dog for a long walk to the place I took her when I first got her. After my longtime therapist retired, when my second kid started preschool, when I quit my Big Job. What to Do with Myself. Trauma all processed, ROFL, analyzed six ways to Sunday, skilled and resourced. Now what? Get a dog. Went to get the dog. Hesitated. She was running the yard, running flat out, half greyhound. I can't handle this much energy, I thought. Paused. "Do you want a dog or not?!" the dog rescue lady crabbed at me, flicking her cigarette.  Yeah yeah, I want a dog. Signed the paper, handed over the cash. "Good luck, dog," the lady said, and turned to the ratty terrier in a tiny pen on the linoleum. "now all I have is YOU," she said to him, as if talking to a pile of vomit. I took my speedy half-greyhound to the car, loaded her up and looked at her. She looked at me. "It's you and me, kid," I said. We went to the park. Something to do. Walk at the end of a leash. I followed her for miles.

That was eleven years ago. She'll be leaving soon. We took maybe our last walk at the special park. She trotted for half an hour, the leash never taut, perfect alignment with my left knee. We have such a groove. She's my one and only. My bestie. It's just been me and her in so many ways. Because I feel so alone so much of the time. Surrounded by family, out in the city, doesn't matter. I have a habit of aloneness. Of unrequited. Of empty chairs. Of questioning myself, what am I doing?

Even though I already did PT in the morning, I went to the gym in the afternoon. Haven't been there since I hurt the shoulder. Lifted a lot of weight. My trainer gave me a thumbs up from across the gym. I lifted too much and now the shoulder hurts. I want to get stronger before the cortisone wears off. Hope I didn't make it worse. I want it to be better already.

Tomorrow the dog and I go back to the dog hospital to get the path report and next steps. Cool cool. Cool to have an animal hospital with a CAT scan machine and chemo for canines. Cool to have cash for this luxury, cool to have nothing else to do but drive a dog to the doctor, cool to have a blue sky with no bombs falling out of it. How lucky am I. Lucky, lucky life. Lucky street dog, put on a plane to come be my beast and live a life of luxury. She's eaten nothing but rotisserie chickens for the last two weeks. I"m going broke on rotisserie chickens. We sit together on my bed and pick at the carcass, a piece for you, a piece for me, a piece for you. It's part of my meat and squash diet, so it's cool. Who cares if her tongue touches my finger and then my finger goes in my mouth. What's a little bacteria between besties? At least she comes to the party. She shows up. She responds to my love and requites it. That's something. That's a lot.

I'm ashamed she's not a human. What am I doing? I admit I don't understand, cannot believe, that thirty years of therapy did not somehow make me able to requite my love, make me able to have a party and conjure people in the chairs, make me able to have whatever it is the love songs are about, when I have a perfectly good man in the house and sturdy kids and a nice town full of nice people. What is my problem? Why can I not better do this simple thing? Why do relationships become tangled, burred, thorny, heavy, brittle? I feel the simplicity, it's right there, setting out the napkins, the forks and spoons, buttering the toast, it's very well-intentioned, it's on the right track. But then, a blank, or pain. I feel it, it's on the tip of my tongue. The words I want to say.