john in the morning is talking about his son's birthday coming up. things are renewing. there's the slightest promise of fall in the air, and this is the time last year when everything started to change.
I came home from work again, wondering how much longer I'd be able to keep it up for. hating the house, hating the garden, hating everything I'd acquired. all tangled up and wanting, but not knowing what. a few days later I sat him down and told him that I couldn't do this anymore. he thought I was talking about sleeping in or weeding. I meant being married. and you've seen the rest, from then to now, spilled out on these white pages as the cursor blinks, waiting. stories of The Boy and endless shows and awakenings and the church of charlie post and the camera and the things kristin has shown me. emotionally exploding, bursting at the seams (from absorbing everything) and all of it, all of it pulling together to form the now. and now. and now.
the divorce was finalized today. I knew we had to go to court, but I thought it was some kind of an appearance thing, with another date in a few weeks. but this was it. and it sort of snuck up on me. it was all very mechanical, we were third in a procession of broken couples, yes I signed that willingly, yes I think these decisions are fair and equitable, no I won't seek alimony in the future, thank you your honor, next case. it was like court tv - a little wood paneled room, maybe about a dozen seats in the back, and a no-nonsense black woman deciding the fate of our relationship. this is not where I thought I'd be in the first flushes of romance... going to the show, knowing his girlfriend wouldn't be there, spending what seemed like hours on the couch under the christmas lights talking. waiting for my song to be sung. knowing I shouldn't be wanting him, and doing it anyways. phone calls until 4 am, tired at work, smiling. first "I love yous" in the chaos, and then the unraveling. calls from karen, lies, creative slumber, being lost.
so I guess there's a progression to everything. but I didn't know it would feel like this. I stumbled down the stairs in tears, three dollars clenched in my fist, wondering what the fuck I was crying about because I don't want to be with him and I'm not sad. there's no underlying emotional garbage, I don't secretly wish we could have stayed, to be honest we never should have begun. and I sat and ate a granny smith apple in the sun with bloodshot eyes and it was like a movie, with locusts as loud it will go, merging into death cab as the cds shuffled forward. and I'm in my movie.
death cab really is truly and tremendously gorgeous, which I already knew, but today it went from my head to my heart and then into my veins. it took a tragedy to put it there, and then the driving was surreal, and the light was so strange, and the wind whipped my hair around and the sky was full of blue with clouds interrupting sometimes. and everyone else was driving too, wherever they were going with whatever was happening to them. and I still don't know what I was crying for.
pauline talks to me about how the ports weren't open, about ships caught in my bay. when I was sad for the words "your husband" and "my wife" today, and talked to matt for a while, I told him that maybe I was sad because I had a shot, at the happily ever after. he said, no, you didn't. you stopped doing something that wasn't working. which is against the grain of everything I know. I like to do the same thing, date the same guy, use the same nailpolish color, over and over and over expecting it to turn out differently somehow. and it never does. so maybe I sobbed for the unfamiliar, for the tortured poet taking a blow, for the change in view - I still can't quite figure it out.
and it's hard to write right now, I keep going back and changing and editing and I'm thinking about writing and swimming about bicycles. to think that maybe if I say it a particular way that I'll understand or that it will make more sense to you. I physically feel different right now, but it's not alone or afraid or everything I'd expect to be feeling. a little displaced. a little bit caught off guard. a little bit worried, a little bit alone, but not about him. I can't even engage in retail or other types of frivolous / unhealthy "therapy", because (a) I don't have the money to and (b) I know better.
I bought a nine dollar water bottle from starbucks. it helped.
for the first time since the beginning of this site, truly:
~vvb
cue kexp:
you seem so so out of context
in this gaudy apartment complex
a stranger with your door key
explaining that I am just visiting
and I am finally seeing
why I was the one worth leaving
the district sleeps alone tonight
after the bars turn out their lights
and send the autos swerving
into the loneliest evening
and I am finally seeing
why I was the one worth leaving
and it's like I've never heard it before. not like this.