Sun-Shower

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

You Still Reach Into My Dreams

(Written 2014/06/04, not previously posted, edited 2024)

To: Elizabeth

You are the only one . . .

My dream, filled with strange imagery, shifts into a home.  The house is a muted combination of the two places where we had lived.  Like so many dreams about you, there is a hint of Christmas.  We are in this house out of some odd occurrence.  Our real lives are still true, both of us independent.  As always, your warmth and cheer reach out, letting me know this momentary encounter is not an inconvenience.  We are figuring out where I can temporarily store my things, when we enter into conversation…

You are the right person for me.  Our years were perhaps my most joyous.  Alone in my hermit hole I have learned a lot about myself.  I was not the right person for you, and I lament any pains I cause.

People frighten me.  In my desire to please and keep the peace, I push down, push away, and hide bits of myself, little by little.  I lose myself.  There is a person in me who wants to sing out, but holds it in for fear of upsetting or unsettling or changing the perspective of others about me.  I need time alone, not to be merely in another room, but to be truly alone.  I need that time every day.  I need time to bang on the piano mindlessly, like a little child who enjoys the cacophony, with no fear of ridicule or rejection, not that you would, but the fear that anyone would is an every present pressure.  I cannot stay with anyone for more then a few hours, and then I must run to my hole of solitude, where I can expand.

I think of how we met.  We were at our mutual friend’s party.  And where was I?  There I sat, alone in the den.  Party goers came and went through the kitchen with fleeting greetings.  But then you came in.  You came in, and your warmth filled the room.  You more than spoke, you came over to me, and sat beside me, and beamed your cheer right at me.

You, and only you, full with your warmth and bubble, were able to reach down into the abyss of my solitude and pull me up, and out.

The dream brakes and restarts, a Christmas tree in the mingled composite of our dwellings.  Then suddenly I am old and feeble, and small.  As if a Benjamin Button, I had shriveled into a tiny old man in a hospital bed.  Alex comes in and says there is a visitor.  It is you, age making you more angelic, rather than the raisin it had turned me into.  All I can do is weep.  You are the right person for me, providing the most joyous human connection I ever had.  It is so sad that I was not the right person for you.

I Will Not Lose Her

(Written August 25, 2016, edited in 2024)

When a cataclysmic storm rages between friends, we often look at the relationship itself.  What went wrong?  That is what I did with her.  I examined the relationship.  I am sure she did as well.  However, I think a deeper part of me had a better, though unclear, understanding.

It was not the relationship.  It was me.  I was changing.  I had changed.  I had begun to yell.  I hate yelling and confrontation.  I had become rude and aggressive.  I made her uncomfortable, and made her feel embarrassed around her friends.  I would commiserate over events for days.  I had become particular and fixed.  Meaningless things stuck in my craw.  That was not the me I had been before.

What happened to the person who bought her a flower every payday?  What happened to the person who played with her like a puppy, right in front of her family?  Where was the person who left little notes of affection?  Where was the young adult who sat and listened to music for hours?  What happened to the person who cherished the differences between peoples?  The person I always thought I was, the person I had been was gone, buried under spite and burden, and mostly confusion.

We often point our fingers at familiarity.  Routine steps in, and things get dull.  Certainly, this played a role, but simple commonness would not turn playfulness into argument.  Moreover, I had lost the ability to communicate with others, of greatest note my daughter.  Something else was at work, though I could not see the condition while being consumed by it.  I had changed.  I was changing.  The me I enjoyed had been lost, left behind like a forgotten piece of luggage.

I did not know it at the time, but andropause was eating away at the younger me.  The symptoms, as I read them, did not apply, but every physiology is different.  Moreover, severe Social Anxiety was also setting in, almost to the point of phobia.  I have always been introverted, socially anxious, and awkward, but I was sinking into a much deeper abyss.  Did changing hormones fuel the anxiety, or did the anxiety alter the andropause symptoms?  Who knows?  I can only see it now because it is all done and past.

I did not leave her.  Oh, I started the separation, but it was not her I was fleeing.  I was not abandoning the relationship.  I dragged myself away from her like a dying animal sulking away from the group for the group’s protection.  I pulled the yelling, particular, touchy lunatic I had become to a safe distance.  During a mid-life crisis, most men think of fast cars and young women.  However, I sought solitude.  I hated hurting her.  I detest myself for doing so.  I needed to reclaim the original me and kill the monster I had become.  I needed to punish myself and protect the world from my beast.

The love and affection has not faded.  It has always been there, though it had to be concealed.  I needed to find music again.  I needed to learn to communicate again.  I needed to understand parts of me I had never known, and rekindle parts that had been long gone.  I have learned I am emotionally broken and immature in so many ways.  I cannot reconcile love and sex.  Introversion and Social Anxiety have always been parts of me.  I am a dweeb, a dork, unable to be adult about the emotional and social qualities of life.  I can write a book, talk sciences, teach a class, and solve problems with the best of them, but I cannot properly handle human interactions.  The human equations, the personal qualities, are knots I cannot untie.  Autism, Asperger’s, perhaps there is a sprinkle of these in my matrix.  Looking in someone’s eyes is more frightening than revealing.

I miss her.  I always will.  I dream about her more than any other person or thing.  I wake up crying several times a year, and I do not see that changing.  My hormones have settled.  I have crossed the mid-life crisis, and understand myself.  I listen to music again, and play.  I let things go.  The tensions are gone.  Life’s difficult challenges are faced straightforward.  The love is there and always will be.  I will die with her name on my lips.

I have lost her presence, though I will not lose her.

Lament

Before I let go of you, I thought I could find happiness. When I let go of you, I thought I would find happiness.

I was wrong.

2024/03/06

Memory Loss On Memory Lane

(2024/02/17)

When a relationship is broken, one of the many things we lose is mutual recall.

We all get nostalgic feelings from specific things, perhaps a place, a scent, or a song.  For many of us in my generation, TV theme songs can be a real kick down sentimental memory lane.

Lately, part of my late night routine involves the TV being turned on to Catchy TV, and the show “Newhart” – not the “The Bob Newhart Show”, where Bob Newhart plays a psychiatrist, but “Newhart”, where he plays the owner of a little inn, in Vermont.  For me, there is something very emotional about the theme.

The emotion connects directly with my ex, Elizabeth.  But here is the catch; “Newhart” ran from 1982 to 1990.  I did not meet Elizabeth until 1990.  As such, the bulk of the show ran during a previous – and most unsettling – marriage.  The nostalgic tug of the theme does not bring up any of the negative emotions or associations with the first marriage.  The feelings the theme brings up are tied to Elizabeth.

Elizabeth and I were big fans of “Twin Peaks” when we first met.  I have a very strong emotional response to that theme song.  “Twin Peaks” premiered in 1990.  My memory of it and Elizabeth is crystal clear.  But my memory of Elizabeth and “Newhart” is non-existent.  I have only the emotional tug of the theme to give me a clue.  And when I look at the dates “Newhart” aired, she and I could have only watched the last season together, or perhaps reruns.  That said, I do have a vague recollection of us discussing the college drinking game, “Hello Bob”, where everyone is required to take a drink whenever someone says “Hello, Bob” during “The Bob Newhart Show”.  Likewise, there is a nebulous memory of discussing the fun characters Larry, Darryl and Darryl from “Newhart”, but these memories are so foggy, I could have had those debates with anyone.

Oh, how I wish we could have remained a friendship connection, to email each other or to be able to have a dinner every now and then.  I do send her a happy birthday email every year, and I give her a Christmas gift every year – secretly place by her door around midnight on each Christmas Eve, with the card signed, “ . . .  Santa”.  The three dots represent, “I Love You”.  She knows who “Santa” is, but she does not know what the dots mean.  Fourteen years now, Santa has left his gifts.  Fourteen years, and she has sent me a small gift of her own, sent via my daughter.

In 2023, for the first time in those fourteen years, I did get to see her and talk for a bit.  Her cheer and bubble was as effervescent as ever.  She looked happy, and healthy, and honestly, beautiful.  She had moved into a new house, and had an old family clock from my Dad that she no longer had a place for, and she wanted to return it to me.  I crumbled in the meeting.  I was not emotionally strong enough, but all this is a bit of a digression.

Would that I could ask her, “Did we watch ‘Newhart’ often?”  As a couple, you have more RAM and even more ROM – your hardwired memory is larger, and your randomly accessed recall is greater. When a relationship is broken, we lose so many things.  At times, like my first marriage, the breakup was the beginning of a new life.  I was reborn.  The breakup with Elizabeth has left me feeling old, feeble, and forgetful.

“There’s that one person you’ll never get over no matter how long it’s been.”

— Avinash Wandre