I Am Alone

I Am Alone

Originally Written and Posted July 10, 2012, edited in 2024

I am alone.

The dream was like most dreams.  Something observed.  Something I was a part of, yet detached from.  It began as an odd, nonsensical musing about the American Indians battling their oppressors.  The scene quickly shifted to strange, almost Dickens-like imagery, an odd series of narrow water locks, more like flumes, and youngsters fooling their betters out of cups of cream with feats of magic and escape-style trickery.  Large whale-like creatures rocked the small boats that worked through the locks, each whale larger than the one before, as if Escher himself had a hand in the maze like twists and turns of the locks, and the creation of the whales.

Suddenly we were in a home.  I say, ‘we’, while I was clearly all by myself, I could feel her.  I was more than just me – I was a part of a ‘we’.  She was in another room, getting ready for something.  This home was not like any place I have ever been, and yet it felt familiar. Upscale, with all the flourishes that bring her comfort.  She was bustling about, filling the air with her bounce, as she always did.  I was in a vulnerable, prone spot in some back corner of some back room.

She appeared in the open door of the room where I lay, and said, “Well, I’m on my way. Won’t be back tonight, and then tomorrow, we’ll be off.”  She had that slight English lilt that she adds when she uses her favorite British phrases.  But, “we’ll be off,” did not mean we were going for some ride.  As casually as she said it, the phrase was devastatingly final.  Panic ran through me.

I chased after her as she stepped out of the front door.  “What?” I yelled, but she did not hear or did not respond at first.  Outside, the yard is covered with the flotsam of a moving day.  Neighbors and passersby are picking at the debris like crows on a carcass, yet the sun was shining and the air was damp with morning dew.  I made it to the porch where I felt the need to cower behind a pillar, in retreat from the busybody collectors.  She cheerily flipped her shawl over her shoulder and helped a Mr. Butler to negotiate the purchase of a garden hose by one of the neighbors.

Then she turned, looked at me and responded to my earlier cry.  “Oh, didn’t you know?  I won’t be coming home tonight, and then tomorrow, we’ll be off.”  I understood it from our reality.  She would be working out of town, and appended to that was, “we’ll be off.”  Not “off” as in leaving for a trip, but “off” as in the turning out of a light.  I felt the sorrow swell up in me.  I could feel the corners of my mouth curl down, like a child about to bawl.  I clung to the bit of column I crouched behind, hiding from the crows.  I peeked out to catch a fading glimpse of her as she gave Mr. Butler a final word and began to head to her car.  “I’m sorry,” I cried, the tears swelling up as I cowered and clung to the pedestal, avoiding the gaze of the neighbors.  I watched her as she drove away.

I woke, the sorrow thick.  I am alone.

Your soul vibrates like an exuberant child.

Your spirit feels like a crescendo with no resolution, a shepherd’s tone forever rising, lifting all within your influence.

2024/02/19

Sun-Shower

Every day you sparkle into my thoughts like a sun-shower, bright beams of light with a sprinkle of rain.

Fortunately, my love for you is greater than the heartbreak of not being with you.

2024/02/21

The Hole Where the Rain Comes In

Originally Written and Posted on 02/22/2013, (edited in 2024)

In the early hours of the day, I floated into a morning dream.  I was in a house.  The house was ours, though separately.  That is to say, we shared it, lived in it, and owned it, but each to our own share.  I was inside and I heard her car pulling up.  I leaned out of the window and applauded, happy for her to be home, happy to see her smiling face through the windshield.  It was she, but with a more tanned and modern look.

She came inside and began complaining, quaintly, about her current assignment.  “Do you know where they sent me?  To Virginia.”  “Virginia?” I queried.  She confirmed her statement and we began talking about why they would send her so far away.  Government cutbacks, reductions and furloughs caused court administration to farm things out to distant states.  I worried about how the current state of government could affect her and hoped it would not.

As we talked, we noticed the sound of water inside the house.  We went to the living room to find that it was literally raining in a section of the room near an outside wall.  A large section of the ceiling was perforated and water was coming in as if it was rain itself.  I said, “I should have checked the attic before we bought the place. I’ll take care of it.”

As I crossed the living room, another spongy area opened up in the ceiling and I walked right through a steady trickle of rain.  I headed up into the attic.  Once there, I could see where pieces of paper towel had been stapled to the underside of the roof, as if a paper towel would soak up all the water.  The paper towel, like tiny squares of toilet paper on a poorly shaven chin, clearly marked where every little hole was.  I affixed a sheet of plastic over the holes, keeping the rain out until some day when I could repair the roof itself, which I hoped was within my abilities to do.

I returned downstairs.  In that dreamlike way, she looked completely different and yet was still herself, her spirit shining through another body.  She was younger, but not young.  She had an air of youthful vitality within her mastered years.  Her hair was beyond blonde, almost white, but not the white of age.  It was the bright blonde of playfulness.  She was thinner, but not merely smaller.  She possessed the shape of activity.  She was clothed in a flirtatious way, but not skimpy and revealing.  Her dress was fun and outgoing.  She was dancing wildly with a coat-rack, almost like a 1920’s flapper as she kicked up her heels and swayed her body.

I stuttered softly, “You know I – I l-love you.”  She turned her back to me in the midst of her flamboyant dance with the coat-rack, and said in an unclear single breath, “I do don’t do that.”  I turned from her to head into another room, saying, “I know,” expressing understanding, yet I did not understand.

I woke.  The dream was clear in my mind.  I could feel my love for her is forever and unchanging.  I was aware I could never give her what she deserved.  I could not understand what she said and meant, “I do don’t do that.”  Did she know I love her, but didn’t want me to say it to her, or did she not want me to love her?  I was detached with no understanding.  All I knew was that I could not fix the hole where the rain comes in.

Tale of the Tat

I was recently asked if I have any tattoos…

Elizabeth and I had been together for about 18 years, and married for about 14, when I walked into the den and said, “I’m thinking about getting a tattoo.”

Her response was, “If you do, you’ll never again have sex with me.”

Do not judge her.  I had no tattoos when we met.  In her mind, I wasn’t “that” guy, and I am not that guy.  I was wrestling with a changing body in a changing world.  Andropause is only an excuse in some regards, but hormones are strange drivers.  Regardless, she had every right to dislike the idea of having to look at permanent scar where one had not been before, just as I had the right to consider willfully creating one.

Her response struck me.  After my first marriage, a burden had been lifted from me in one regard.  That marriage was aggressive and angry.  That ex was controlling and manipulative.  Freed from her, I had started to find myself again when I met Elizabeth.  She supported me and helped me in wonderful ways.

Unknowingly, her response to my thought of a tattoo brought up feelings from my previous marriage.  The feeling that I was no longer in control of my own being.  This only added to the wacky hormones and feelings of bewilderment and isolation I was experiencing.  I did not resent her response, but I did not know how to deal with it either.

At a following Christmas, she gave me a gift certificate to a local tattoo artist whom she had selected, expressing she realized it was wrong of her to control what I might do with my own body.

I appreciate her understanding, but now I was left with a new quandary.  The gift represented a new form of control.  I did not get to pick where I would have the tattoo done, or when, or who would do it.  There felt some restriction based on price, size and perhaps body location.  I had envisioned passing some martial arts test in my instructor’s city, and celebrating with a tattoo.  Now, I had a gift from a woman whom I love dearly, a woman who does not like tattoos, for a set amount within a given time-frame.  The feeling went from, “you can’t” to “you must”.  Again, I felt left out of the equation.

It took time.  Months passed while I internally debated the situation.  Do I or don’t I?  I am sure Elizabeth wondered through all that time when I would come home to show her the dreaded tattoo.  I finally expressed that I just couldn’t do it, because I would be doing it for the wrong reason.  I hated wasting her gift, but I just couldn’t use it.  Sadly, this all happened near the end of things.  It was swept up as part of it, though I feel it was not.  It may be an example perhaps, but not a part.

The world has changed since Elizabeth and I met.  Tattoos have moved from accepted to expected.  I was recently asked if I have any tattoos.  I do not, and I never will.  As an act of contrition, I will not get something that would upset her so, even though we are no longer together.  This is my choice, even though she will never know - an act of my love.

2024/02/22

Lonely Because

(2024/02/12)

I am not lonely because I was not loved,

But because I was loved.

I am not lonely because I never loved,

But because I love,

And I threw it all away.