Secret Hope of a Hidden Self

I knew that I would learn something important by going right into a sense of hiraeth, nostalgia and sense memory from a shared city. I had no idea, frankly, what the hell I was doing, or why, except that I have done this before, and it has always revealed something. This time, it took a couple of days for me to realize what I was after. 

The oddest thing about my psyche, and maybe yours, is that I am capable of keeping a secret even from myself. I think nothing speaks to Jung's central concept of "the unconscious" quite like this dynamic, where there is an independently operating self (he would have called it a "complex," but not in the Freudian sense) that is not even known to my waking mind. Or that only partially emerges at times and then gets shouted down, denied, argued with, ignored, dismissed, and denied. It's a form of self-anosognosia, like Dunning-Kruger but for the self. We assume confidently that, of all the people in the world, we know ourselves best, and this is often a serious delusion. 

In this case, the visit to the city of memories revealed that a dark, mostly hidden, sense memory, "soft animal" (only very, very human) continued to hold on to the secret hope that "we" would still be together somehow. This astonished me. I honestly had no idea, in my daylight mind, that any part of me was harboring this idea of a future partnership. If anyone had asked, I would have honestly said, oh, no, I've accepted the ending, and moved on. It's sad and all, sure, and it was lovely, but yeah, I got it, I'm done, I've moved on. 

This sorrowful, attached, dark human beast/man in me is far from that, however. And the encounter also taught me that I have not been listening, obviously. Instead, I have been treating this hidden shadow ful of hope the way an exasperated parent treats a hopeful child, who is obsessed with something they can't have. He's not swayed by reason, by dismissal, by exasperated frustration, by exhortation. He is inconsolable and not swayed by anything that my daylight self can bring. 

So I had to find some way to deal with this Other man, heart-centered, sense memory drenched, emotion, blood, dark and hidden, deeply bewildered and sorrowful. I sat on a rock looking out at Lake Kabetogama and realized I could just listen to him. I could leave space for him to be heard. I guess it's a little like that "inner child" work, but, in this case, an inner beastman. The soft human animal of my body, but much more than that as well. Deepest primal cellular self, resonant with the anima. 

He and I are beginning a relationship. He's requested I continue to keep his fondest hopes and wishes hidden from the world. He's torn to bits, forlorn, bleeding, and angry in a lot of ways, and it turns out I haven't been listening to him for a long, long time, not just since December 2018 or whenever. There's a very profound lack of trust. I still have the tendency to respond from my daylight mind, and be dismissive, or try to reason with him. He runs back into hiding if so. It's like coaxing a feral cat out for food. I have to practice simply leaving open space and only watching and listening. Essentially irrational, he believes, or even knows, a great many things I simply do not. In our estrangement, he's largely written me off. There's a lot of mistrust and resentment there that's well-earned by daylight me. 

But I am beginning to learn. He knows what he wants, he knows what he loves. Why do I keep exposing him to heartbreak, confusion, absence, abandonment, loss and longing? That's one of his aching questions. My daylight self jumps to strategy, explanation, reassurance, dismissal. Sometimes exasperation. He makes me feel like a fool. That isn't his fault. I even find myself asking him the same question: why have you led me into so much heartbreak? But in this fissure between daylight me and this dark beastman, I finally get a clearer picture of my complicated grief. The "complex" nature is actually a complex, tat is, twofold self: day and night. For years I have been able to "move on" by simply abandoning him, making a project of forgetting him, and vaguely hoping he would just go away. 

This is no longer a working option.  

Learning to live with it

For some reason, the welter of memories conjured by going back has led mostly, eventually, to gratitude. I'll take it, considering the alternatives. I was driving around a couple evenings ago and the fact settled over me that whatever risks and complications, tensions, nostalgia for what couldn't be, loss, frustrations, sorrow, confusion, or even outright bewilderment, all of it, 100% worth it. I think we need to find moments where this is the case, or something in us turns from blood to cinder. 

I am feeling worn down to the bone today. I taught a demo lesson for one school, via Zoom, and then was in four hours of Zoom interviews with another school, yesterday. I went out afterward to a place that held some sweet memories, had a huge dinner, watched the Minnesota sunset from a dozen different vantage points on the way back to the hotel. The school for which I taught the demo is recommending that I be hired, but it has to go through the university HR department, as the faculty of the school is adjunct at the university. My fingers are crossed that there won't be any hitches, but it means a complete transformation of my life over the next three weeks if so. 

I think most accurately the truth of the past many months has been that I am learning to live with all of it. I don't move on. It's not in my nature really. It makes it challenging to be getting older, since all of what I've been stays with me. But I am learning to accept it. I don't get over things, I don't move on. I learn to live with. Trying to force forgetting or getting over or moving on is futile. It's not in my nature. Letting go looks like accepting that I'm going to learn to live with whatever has happened. 

I've seen that going back and learning to live with are intimately connected. And no matter the anger, sorrow, confusion, chaos, bewilderment, since I'm going to be living with the reality, I'm charged with truth and reconciliation. It helps to use the tools I have for perspective. One day, sometimes one minute, at a time. 

Owning and taking responsibility for all of my own choices, decisions, all along the path. Letting blood stay blood. Washing the grit and cinders from the torn and slashed places. Praising whatever was possible enough to honor it with grief. Plasma is 90% salt water, so, basically the tears that platelets swim in. Learning to live with it. 

Going Back

I think I've probably written about this tendency of mine before, here on this blog, but I'm uncharacteristically too lazy to go back and look for it. I recall a visit to San Diego, during which I went back to a restaurant where the ex and I had had our fifth anniversary (and my birthday) dinner. I simply stood across the street from the restaurant, and remembered the occasion, and felt sad, felt sorrowful, felt the weight of the time that had passed between that celebration and the night I stood there again, and simply...was. In that space, with the reality. 

Last summer I had thought of going back to St. Paul and Minneapolis (I've been resisting "the Twin Cities" because my experience is distinctly different in these two cities, and they feel distinctly different, culturally, in spite of their seeming proximity). But it was clear, from the vantage point of Duluth, that I was nowhere near ready. It felt like it would be altogether too painful. 

This summer, at a remove of two years from my last extended visit, which surrounded a huge botany conference down in Rochester, I decided it was time. So, here I am. On Kellogg Street, within walking distance of 4th and Wabasha, where I stayed a few times. Last night, I had dinner at Cosetta, ice cream at Izzy's (sadly, the St. Paul location is no more, but it was only about 15 minutes to the one in Minneapolis), made a quick trip to a place on Hiawatha that held some of the best memories, and to Minnehaha Park and Falls at sunset. Then, back at the hotel, a quick walk to Wabasha, The Grey Duck, and the general area around the Wabasha Street bridge. 

Today, lunch at Key's Cafe on Robert. 

I will be here two more nights, but tomorrow is fairly full with a demo lesson for a school in LA from 1-2, and interviews with another school from 2-6:15, all via Zoom. 

I know why I am here. I lived it, and I need to honor it before, or while, moving on. I don't move on the way other people seem to, or the way I have been advised to. I tend to move on by going back. I need to feel it in my heart, and own it. I don't do well forgetting, or "detaching," or even just letting go, without some kind of cathartic encounter. I have learned this much about myself. 

Looking north up the Mississippi from Ford Parkway

One of the places

I've never missed anyone more than I miss someone through this process, but that's just one part of it. The larger part is that it is a way of memorializing a past and remembering the gifts of it, and showing up for where my heart actually is. There's a truth and reconciliation aspect to this kind of side quest through Hades. I have known, from other times that I have done this, that it may be excruciating, it may be so dark and sorrowful as to be nearly unsustainable, but the end result is a much greater integration, acceptance, peace, and serenity. 

In recovery, it's called no longer regretting the past nor wishing to shut the door on it. Being here, and grieving while celebrating, and remembering that grieving is a way of saying: "something was worth the praise of being grieved," I am especially made aware of how closed off and protective I had become. Brittle, expending a lot of energy on pushing away the reality of my life at this time and in the past. I'm reminded that it is okay to stop that. It won't kill me to be sad, to miss someone, to remember, and remember, and remember, and to grieve. 

It's not for everyone, I get that. But I know myself well enough to know that, if I want to make peace with the truth, it is one of the steps on the path. To go to the heart of the past. To bear witness to my former self and what he was able to do. To honor the truth of it. And to not be afraid. 

To hold a tender place of praise for what was possible and is no more, but what is still possible nevertheless. I think we underestimate terribly the great value of staying tender. 

Not Knowing the Half of It

My father's interment was Monday, and it's been a weird week. I drove over to see my best friend in Jersey for a little bit, and hang with his amazing DAWG, named Luna, and then went to Long Beach Island, quite intentionally to grieve the death of my father, as he was at his happiest on our vacations there. The Vivian Maier photograph featured here had reminded me of this, a couple weeks ago. The man in the photograph looks almost identical to my father—same clothing, shoes, hair, body type. 

Vivian Maier, August 22, 1956, Chicago Man on Beach

The interment, everyone masked and distanced

Lovely Luna

Several other themes coalesced around the Long Beach Island jaunt, haunt, and tumble. I stayed in the Holiday Inn in Manahawkin, that I had stayed at way back in 2011 on a really weird day where I originally started driving as if I were going to just drop in on an ex of mine in Rhode Island, but then almost the whole way there realized it was a stupid idea, and turned south, and ended up driving through New York City late at night, and all the way to Long Beach Island. This was after a brief family visit, and I just felt insane with loneliness, so I guess that's why I figured "just dropping in" on this particular (married, problematic) ex would be "fine." So I was recalling that odd chapter of my life and feeling some heavy codependent energy. 

Then I went onto Long Beach Island proper and had some incredibly good seafood and went to a little place called The Custard Hut, where we used to buy frozen custard cones when I was like 7 years old. 51 years later the place is still up and running. So a whole flood of memories of my family and my father was coming up. Down to the end of the island to photograph the sunset, which then reminded me of the night before a decisively fateful day, a little more than three years ago. 

The southern end of Long Beach Island, sunset, June 29th, 2020

In short, Monday the 29th was like a Proust novel packed into one day. It turned out, when I woke up Tuesday, that I got a dozen referrals from a private secondary school headhunter I am working with, so to make things even weirder, I did a full job interview with a school administrator on the way back to my sister's, pulled over on the side of the road. 

It's a lot to try to unpack. The switch to looking for a secondary school teaching job was not easy to make. I console myself that I can still search for postdoctoral or college level jobs as time goes on. I feel like a failure, though. It's odd, because I love teaching secondary school. I just had this secret hope that those days were gone. The job search for postdocs or college has been a total frustration, however, and secondary schools are jumping all over me, so it seems like the universe is speaking. Who knows. I'm just done trying to figure shit out. I'm just letting go of every single hope or expectation I've had. It seems like it works best. 

It is the three year mark since a life changing experience that I didn't even realize I was having, at the time, until a little bit later. It's interesting from where I am now to consider that, on July 3, 2017, I had no idea what the next 10 days were going to be about, nor that July 14 on would be so significantly different from my daily experience prior. I think this is always true anyway, but it lends an odd perception now that some surprising thing could be right around the corner. Like, who knows? I tend to think that ten days from now, I'll feel like shit, exactly like I do today, but we don't even know the half of it. Of course, the surprise could also be unpleasant. My sister, for example, who went to bed on March 3rd and woke up a widow March 4th. 

And the estimation of what occurred is always subject to revision. I wish I didn't have a mind that tells and retells and figures and reconfigures so ardently. But, well, if wishes were horses, etc. 

More wilderness and solitude, please. I will probably be on the job hunt while traveling. For this very reason, I switched to the Verizon network, so I'll have a lot more coverage in more rural areas. The tempting feeling in my heart and on my mind is to disappear. To get somewhere perfect for remote hermit life and sink into monastic silence. I had the weirdest dream the other night, where a mysterious woman lived in a shoe box, and she was saying the famous phrase: "All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well," and I couldn't keep from laughing. A buddy of mine reprimanded me, saying, "Dude, that's Julian of Norwich, show some respect" and I just laughed harder. 

Sunk

Having traveled back across the country, taking from May 27th to June 8th, with stops back up in the Gunnison National Forest, visiting a friend in Denver, to Lincoln Nebraska, Davenport Iowa, Toledo Ohio, and a few days exploring wild parts of Pennsylvania and New York to which I had never been, or had been many years ago, I found the general atmosphere confused, tense, inconsistent (pandemic-wise), dark and feeling heavy. Two days after I left Tempe, my father died, so the entire rest of the trip was wrapped in all of the many responses to that. 

I expected to have internet soon after arriving here, back at my sister's, but through a set of miscommunication and mistakes, it took 8 days. It just went live yesterday. The entire time in between, I was just stressing about looking for a job, feeling aimless. I went to Allentown to help take care of my mother for a few days. Otherwise, it's just been weird. Limbo. 

Meanwhile, the pandemic has hammered Arizona (and many other places that "reopened" much too soon), and I'm glad I got out of there. I was going to stay three nights and I made it two. It felt apocalyptic there. Also, meanwhile, while I was traveling. George Floyd was murdered by Minneapolis police and the country erupted into protests and round after round of police brutality. I saw hardly any of it on my drive east, as I was passing through areas very little affected, for the most part. But it was always in the background, always on social media. 

Now I'm feeling like I just want a job so I have something useful to do a lot of days, and a place to live from which I can venture out with comrades and get tear-gassed. The purpose of the job is not even to get paid or handle my career or whatever. Just to make some slight semblance of home possible, as a base for participating in some community or other's efforts to defund police, center marginalized narratives, and change for the better. 

Trying to remember to breathe deeply and let go

In spite of everything, emotional keywords are: bereft, lonely, angry, bewildered, sorrowful. Lots of grief in all of its forms unfolding over these days. I am no skilled judge of my own progress, so I take with a grain of salt that I am flat out stuck. Probably something is being worked out in me. 

It definitely does not feel that way. I summon protection, and long for consistent inspiration and fire. But the reality is, I feel sunk.

Death of a Salesman

My father died at about 8 a.m. on May 29th, and I was camping in a fairly remote area of the Gunnison National Forest that morning, off the grid. I got my brother's text the following day when I came down off the mountain. 

My first emotions were a feeling of relief on his behalf, since I had just seen firsthand the incredible constraints within which he lived, physically and emotionally. Also, knowing he had had a stroke a few days before, and was now not only physically imprisoned in his body but also mentally impaired, the idea of life lingering on for him in a bedridden and incapacitated condition just seemed hellish. So I was relieved. 

Of course, I'm also saddened. My father and I had reconciled, in large measure, over the past decade or so, after years of estrangement. He and I were on friendly terms when he died, for which I am grateful. He began to learn how to be supportive, kind, respectful and admiring of his children in his advanced old age, and I was able to let him know that, whatever he had been able to do for me, I was grateful for it. 

There are a great many other complex emotions. My father was a judgmental, controlling, emotionally undeveloped, toxic, bullying, abusive man for much of his life, and, in a direct sense, he did very little actual fathering. Well, honestly, he taught me almost everything I know about self-hatred, hypercritical self-awareness, hypervigilant anxiety, and shame. He also taught me, by negative example, how to be a better man. How to listen to other people, how to value my own experience, how to trust my instincts and pursue my own happiness. 

I would have gotten a lot out of a direct, frank, honest conversation with him, but he was never interested in such an exchange. Talking about experiences and emotions was simply beyond his ability. He had been severely abused by a raging alcoholic in his own childhood, and he carried with him most of the earmarks of the "adult child of an alcoholic" for his whole life. By comparison with his own father, my father was a veritable saint. Not having the opportunity to heal or recover from his own hellish childhood, my father did his level best to "do better" than his father had done. My father's way of attempting this was to be sure we were materially provided for. That was about it. 

The problem with my father's style was that it was rooted in martyrdom. His provision of a reliable material and financial context for his family came at a tremendous cost for him. He hated his job. I believe he never really wanted to do about 90% of everything he did in his whole life. 

He was performing the entire time. Not having access to authenticity and recovery from his own trauma, the best he could do was look good, keep up the look good, and look good at all costs. Imagine how bewildering and horrifying it must have been to try to do this throughout the 1970's and 1980's, as his children were (for example) 15, 17, 19, and 21 years old (in 1976), and the world was collapsing. A staunch defender of the Vietnam War, of Richard Nixon, of "law and order," watching his children be wildly progressive, etc. There was a ton of drama. The themes of chaos and collapse then coincided with the total train wreck of the American steel industry (in which my father was a white collar executive), and a great many other indignities, not the least of which was his being forced into "early retirement" at age 54, after 32 years of "service" to the steel industry. 

Everything betrayed him, because he had put all of his stock into a variety of completely unreliable and dishonest propositions. He believed the lies of the American Dream, and he wanted his children to be impressive, and America was indifferent to his loyalty, and his children did whatever the fuck they wanted. It was only in the past ten years or so that my father learned to accept me (well, about 60% of me) for who I actually am, and I feel like he reached at least some kind of marginal peace with reality before he died. 

The real arc for me was that I saw him as a hero, and then a terror, and then a profoundly pathetic figure. There's a lot of drama in there. The little boy in me, so to speak, always profoundly loved him and wanted his approval. The adolescent in me was contemptuous and resentful of him, bitterly hated and feared him. Now, I grieve the life he had more than I grieve his death. I grieved not having the father I wanted years ago, when I worked through a lot of family system recovery. I did a few thorough inventories of my own role in our conflicted relationship as part of my sobriety work. By the time he physically died, I had reached clarity and peace with the entire story, and it was as if he was already gone, 100 times over. 

His obituary, written by my brother, reads as a set of very fine lies, and I think there's nothing more honest than that, in the final analysis. I still find it shocking that I come from a family of liars and expert denialists. I find the tendencies in myself of course to be the most pernicious. 

One of the phrases in the obituary is "He was happiest surrounded by his kids, grandkids and granddogs with many happy memories of holiday gatherings at home and weeks "down the shore"." This is not how I remember him. I think obituaries should tell the truth, or at least honor a person enough not to tell lies. Our family never used the Jersey phrase "down the shore," for example. We went to the beach. These things matter to me. I guess this is why no one asked me to help write the obituary. haha. 

The idea that we honor the dead best by lying about them seems absurd to me. 

Martin Prechtel, in his somewhat annoying but useful book about grief, The Smell of Rain on Dust, makes the essential connection between grief and praise. We grieve to the extent that we are willing to praise the dead. I praise my father for finding one way out of a hellishly abusive, grindingly poor, dark and sad childhood. I praise him for his sense of humor, his basic decency as a provider, his astonishing capacity for suffering in silence, and his gradual mellowing and increased spaciousness as he headed through his late 70's into his 80's. I praise him for everything I learned from him, negative example or not. 

Naked Faces, Rage, Ghosts

Three vignettes from my cross country Pandemic Tour of America that stand out:

Front of house staff at the Four Points Sheraton in Elkhart Indiana was also the cook in the kitchen. "We only have chicken baskets or fish baskets."

A young woman at the same hotel walked up to a guy in a car and said something in Spanish and he assaulted her, throwing her to the pavement (I think using the car door) and then he sped off, coming perilously close to running her over, and smashing into another car in the parking lot on his way. Offer of assistance to young woman met with "fuck you, asshole, leave me alone." Did not call law enforcement, because who trusts the law enforcement officers of Elkhart Indiana to do right by a young woman of her probable ethnic background in her predicament? Not I. I don't call law enforcement hardly ever, anymore. This is America. I quickly weighed in my mind, is her worse enemy the abusive fucker in the car or ICE? That's where we find ourselves.

Walmart in Gunnison, Colorado. Quick run inside to get some basic groceries. Most people wearing masks, practicing distancing, even obeying the little arrows on the floor. On the way out, a very large, intimidating man of the caucasoid peniscite variety, not wearing a mask and standing about two feet away from a much smaller male employee, yelling, "Goddamn it, if I can't try them on, and if I can't return them after I buy them, I don't want them." Employee: "But you already bought them and left the store sir. We can't take them as a return." "Oh hell fucking no, you fucking twerp, I'ma kick your goddamned ass!!" "Sir, staff is currently on the phone with law enforcement, I advise you to calm down. Our policy says we cannot take them as a return." "Bring all the police in here! They'll be on my side!!"

I could not get out of there fast enough. Basically, I could not get out of any of the places featuring human beings, anywhere between New York and Arizona, quickly enough. There is a weird, palpable madness across the land. It is always there, but it is much more visible now. Our system seems to have ground people down to suicidal desperation death wish distraction and restless, angry mean ignorance. Trouble's brewing, big time. I have never even considered arming myself before, not when I lived on the upper east side of Manhattan in the early '80's, not when I lived in North Philadelphia, not when I lived near Inglewood in Los Angeles. But watching caucasoid America in its restless, manipulated, poisoned madness, being armed is starting to make real sense, as merely a reasonable precaution. I find that appalling, but reality is a thing.

After my first couple of encounters with foolish America, dumbass people pretending there's no global pandemic underway, I decided to head to back roads and camp the rest of the way. I went through northeastern Colorado, then to Gunnison National Forest, then to Utah, and then a remote area in northern Arizona. Doing it this way added a couple days to my trip, but it brought great peace of mind. 

The main roads down into Phoenix from northern Arizona were blocked due to accidents, the usual nonsense on any holiday. I had forgotten that my plan had me returning to the Valley of the Sun on Memorial Day. The two hour drive took five hours. 

I had thought I would hang out here a few days, maybe even see some people. But too much is completely wide open. No masks, businesses not limiting people, no social distancing. Restaurants are open for dining in. I don't feel safe here, so I am headed out tomorrow. Not sure where I am going, but I will be camping as much as possible as I travel. 

One of the weird things over Memorial Day weekend was how many of the usually deserted or very sparse National Forest camps were completely full. I think this was due to the combination of people having been cooped up for months, and many of the developed campgrounds were closed. It was nightmarish, to see so many huge campers and so on parked in remote wilderness areas. 

Meanwhile, my father had a stroke a couple nights ago and is now bedridden and unresponsive. It may well be that I am headed back east. I definitely need to find some way to have a stable internet connection and continue a job search, but not spend much money. It's a bit of a conundrum thanks to the pandemic. 

The wilds are calling again for now. Amazing isolation, silence, rivers and mountains, night stars (the Milky Way at the zenith at about 4 a.m., still weeks away from summer stars per se). My heart is not particularly well but I'm feeling totally exasperated and done with the human race. Hermit inclinations to the extreme. It's a funny time of year, camping-wise, as cooler spots during the day are very cold overnight, and warmer spots overnight are blazing hot during the day. I know I want to be in the far north country in July.

It's been surreal, having so much alone time after a few solid months of family. And yet, along the road, there's always someone with me, a feeling of conversing with ghosts. 

What are the different parts of missing someone? For sure, one of the parts is to want to show them everything along the way. Look at those mountains. Look at that river. Look at that sky. Look at that canyon. Hey, how funny. How weird. How many stories you'd tell but you'd rather just live them. It's too much to ask, to live them, and it's too much energy to tell them. Sinking therefore deeper and deeper into silence. 

Self-Absorbed Tosser

Which title is how a rather perceptive and boldly deep reader recently described good old Percy Hades, after dipping into this here blog. 

Okay, why not? I mean, it is likely to be true, since the accusation is wounding enough. If it were a complete misrepresentation, good old Percy Hades would just chuckle wryly, and say "smdh."

Yet somehow I feel perhaps the one wielding that particular rusty dagger, as brilliant and percipient as they clearly are, might have missed a slight detail we like to call context, that is, that this blog is specifically one of those "personal journal" blogs, yes? 

As in, a blog specifically about good old Percy's experiences as he bravely trundles, self-absorbed tosser or no, through hell. I mean, it's not as if Percy is not engaged in a great many other activities, thoughts, writing activities, and endeavors, *as well as * trying to limn the strangeness of being a callow newcomer in relationship recovery, after a decade and a half of substance addiction recovery. Trying to find ways to describe having had his entire life burned to the fucking ground a mere three years ago, and then all of the other *interesting* experiences, and their internal and external ramifications, that have happened in the interim. That, DEAR readers, is *entirely what this fucking blog is about*, so, yeah, there's a certain endless omphaloskepsis and self-absorption. Katabasis Central is, lo and behold, *self-absorbed tosser central*. 

Is it useful or even entertaining to others? Or is it all just annoying whinging and fucking endless agony and "self-help stuff" as another friend put it (a mischaracterization of recovery, but that's okay, I get it, I really do). Well good old Percy is here to tell you that he does not give one flying goddamned fuck whether you bloody wankers find it entertaining, useful, engaging, purposeful, meaningful, or whatever the fuck. 

Furthermore, anyone who would weaponize the bloody fucking mess that is this blog and use it to try to wound or ridicule the real life blood and guts human behind the persona of good old Percy can fuck the fuck right the fuck off. 

Self-absorbed tosser Percy Hades, signing off, with love, reciprocal daggers, and an enthusiastic oh hell no. 

No Business

Someone whose friendship I valued recently pressed toward more romantic/erotic interaction, and I was flattered, and I tried to respond in an available way at first, since this person is attractive, brilliant, fascinating, and we obviously are simpatico in many ways. As things began to heat up, I could not ignore my burgeoning sense of unease and dread, however. I started having horrible nightmares about past situations, and began to realize feelings of deeper disturbance. I felt fundamentally dishonest, and as if I had to exert effort to ignore my gut-level qualms. 

Sadly, and truly regretting the necessity, I stepped back, communicated my boundary directly, and had to admit to myself, most of all, that I have no business at this time pursuing an intimate, romantic or sexual interaction with anyone. At first, this had me feeling very negative toward myself, struck by my incapacity, and the framework of inability to be available for an interesting adventure. I felt nearly bottomless despair, wondering when I will ever get myself back on my feet, and realize that love can be so sweet, pace Joni. I was surprised by many of the aspects of the pain that came up for me, even just barely venturing into this territory. 

But I also had to be honest about not only my incapacity, but what I truly want. I want to be alone. I want to be footloose, fancy free, and autonomous. The plain fact that I am not yet, and that I am still inconveniently attached to a corpse of a relationship from the past, is neither here nor there. Pursuing something in any effort to get free of the past is bad faith, and doesn't work anyway. So, re-framing my reality as a matter of what I want is much better. For now, I want NOTHING. I am single and unavailable. I am in particular, *unavailable*. This is by choice. At least, the ways that it is operative in my daily life is by choice. Conscious choice and a conscious commitment to myself. It has the force of a ton of fucking rage behind it, and that in itself tells me a lot. 

At some point, a fully manifested, sunlit, real partnership with someone in the actual world will be grand. But that is not what is happening now, nor is it what I want. It is neither here nor there what I am able to do, at this time. Of course, my capacity or lack of capacity informs my choice and my desire to be single and unavailable at this time, but it is not the whole story. 

I regret that my vagueness for a while made me seem available, or had me "trying to be" available. I am only now learning how to be single and unavailable. so it's not surprising that I would make mistakes. I have always allowed for the possibility of a new romantic/sexual relationship in my life, and my boundaries have been loose and weak in the past, so it's no wonder that I am simply unfamiliar with standing firmly in being unavailable. The person who was interested is a total knockout, also, and that didn't help matters. One of those weird things where one feels like, hell yes, I need to make myself available. The problem of course is that that doesn't work. The gut level resistance and reservations will be heard. I have a long enough history of ignoring all of it in my past, and ending up in long term, highly problematic, bad faith, dishonest, "halfway in" relationships as a result. Perhaps if I stand in my unavailability now, some day I will learn how to say an unequivocal YES to a woman, something I have not often done in my life, and the last time, to a woman who was 100% maybe-morphing-into-NO, and made no bones about it. 

I'm still sad. Fuck all of this goddamned fucking bullshit, is the angry energy around all of my grief, also. I'm sick of all of it. Exasperated by my own heart. If there were a way to extricate cleanly and be cold as fuck, without ripping my own heart out and watching it beat a few last times, and then die, I would do so. But there simply is not. I may well admire others who seem capable of killing their feelings, but I don't have the capability right now. I have had, in the past. It has not served me well, anyway. 

But here's the bottom line. Nothing can be precarious for me at this time, or hinge on the life and behavior of another person. My stand in being single and unavailable is fundamentally a stand in taking responsibility for my own life, my own reality, and goddamn it if I will have my reality hinge on the behavior or decisions of others. That is the reality at this time. It is the only safe place I have found to stand, through all of the past three years plus. The fickle, unreliable, hesitant, changeable, unavailable realities of A and others are all well and good for them, but I absolutely MUST find a steady course for myself, or die. It is that dire and urgent. It sounds fairly dramatic, but it is exactly how it feels. 

Anyway, I am single and unavailable. That's that. I lean fiercely into it because I haven't done it before. I am a garden of NO's. I am more wall than boundary, because I'm weak in it. I am done, done, motherfucking done. When I get more easy and comfortable with it, perhaps the walls can be opened up a bit. I expect to be in a remarkable and inspiring, beautiful, passionate, devoted and creative living partnership someday, because I have the capacity to be really good at that. 

For now, this is about as naked and raw as I feel. And I am learning that I absolutely must protect myself, as a result, even from ones who would not harm me. It's harm I cause myself, more than anything. 

Reckless protection

The cumulative mistakes and missteps I've made, and how much these experiences have fucking mangled my sense of trust in myself, other human beings, and the universe, has all been on my mind a lot lately. I've been feeling appreciative, more open, more social, and more willing to be vulnerable, at times. But I must admit that such moves almost always result in a consequent or simultaneous feeling of dread, wariness, doubt, danger, and an irritable desire to withdraw. 

I think it's good for me to be wary. Fools rush in, after all, and my blind charge right past all sorts of very real, very painful realities in past situations has led me to where I am now. It reminds me of the cavalier impulse of an inveterate smoker of cigarettes, who says, "Who cares about cancer or heart disease? I'll deal with that when the time comes. Quitting smoking would take away one of my great pleasures. It's a risk I am willing to take." These thoughts of course occur in the free and clear hypothetical space where the terminal diagnosis has not yet been delivered. 

For me, part of my recklessness is that I discount how tender, sensitive, sentimental, and impressionable my heart is, and put myself in situations with people who are more capable than I of being distant, cold, unfeeling, practical, self protective. "I can take it!" I say to myself. I am finally beginning to learn that I sometimes can't take it. I'm tired of being gutted by people who are capable of a total disappearing act. 

In conversation this morning I thought of The Fool from the tarot, and how that archetype has definitely characterized a lot of the energy that has been behind many of my major life decisions. 

I mean, even the little white dog has better instincts, right? And yet, I think this is also one of my enduring strengths, this "Fool"-ish plunging and high stepping energy. The thing is, the heartbreak and suffering of the past period of time has been severe enough and bewildering enough that it may well be that The Emperor has finally gotten through, at least to some extent. 

Caution, a plan, boundaries, self protection, discrimination, taking red flags seriously, wisdom, parsimony, self preservation. The anti-Fool. Of course, the two are good companions, each balancing the other in crucial ways. When I was younger, I hated The Emperor archetype thoroughly, and always felt uneasy and rebellious when it came up in a reading. Now, I feel somewhat leery when The Fool makes an appearance, and welcome The Emperor a lot more. 

The plain fact is I have repeatedly offered everything I had in situations where it was unwelcome. Not sure unwelcome is the right word. Impossible to be taken, impossible to be received. Return to sender. The person or situation to whom you sent your whole self is no longer at this address. This was a capstone experience after years of throwing myself away, really. For example, being in a teaching job where I put my whole self into it, but in a school where I was completely disposable. And enduring the humiliations of the graduate school experience. Although, that constituted a turn in a different direction, since the Ph.D. awaited at the end of the process. Many, many of my other situations were scraps from the table, disposable situations, where the majority of the time I was subsisting in a kind of barrenness, and would glory in breadcrumbs, intermittent and niggardly. Precisely why I have been used to living an emotionally depauperate life where I was dependent on people and situations that could easily take or leave me is still something of a mystery. 

Clearly, my relationships within my family system were this way. And the first love and first heartbreak with the Lovejoy had this arc to it, also, with her pursuing her own goals blithely, without any compromise or gesture toward my well being or desires. I guess that was part of a pattern, yet also set it even more in stone. A quick review of the historical facts has me moving to accommodate the life of a woman six times, from 1987 to 2007. I have not once stood in a particular place or work situation and had a woman offer to uproot and re-arrange her entire life in order to be with me. This is similar to patterns with my family, where I think I have been visited where I have lived three times, in total, by family members, my whole life. I have always been expected to visit, and I've either obliged or not seen family members for years on end. 

Recent friendships have me feeling more connected, after a stretch of even more deep hermitage than I thought I was in before. But along with a sense of connection, a fiercely self protective and isolating energy arises. I'm feeling a lifetime of resentment and anger over having been played, so to speak. I mean, honestly, I've played myself, and let myself be played— ain't nobody's fault but mine. How easily I have abandoned my life to be with women, in particular. As befits a Fool, the rewards have been great, but the losses and discontinuity and chaos and lack of stability for myself have also all been profound. Perhaps there are new ways for me to find some kind of middle between Fool and Emperor.