Sick Day

Is today a sick day or a vacation day? . . . I can’t remember. Either way, I’m hiding. . . Election day? Doesn’t that happen in November? . . . Oh jeez. Already? What a heavy year. These elections won’t change anything. No, not for me. Politics never seems to change anything in my life. Do they change anything for you? . . . Hairless monkeys running a different kind of zoo. I’ll vote for whoever brings her back to me. Is that a thing? . . . Well, they should make that a thing. I’ll toss this wedding ring down a wishing well and listen for the sirens to sing. Ha. I can’t afford a ring. Or a house. Or a new car. Or a ticket to the super bowl. I can’t really afford this coffee I am drinking but I am alive today and coffee is a small luxury that makes life worth living. It’s tasty and I need it today. Hey, at least it’s not booze. It’s 7:17am, the gray day today is still just a babe. I love drinking and writing when my heart is breaking. So, I took a sick day—which used to be a vacation day, until I didn’t get on my plane, and told my boss I was going to stay, and asked if there was any way I could work. Well, that was before yesterday, when I broke down again. I don’t understand it. It shouldn’t be this hard to let go of her. I should be getting better at it. If our relationship was so terrible, and we really weren't capable of making it, then I should feel relieved? . . . Our relationship was so fucking challenging. She was in ‘fight-or-flight’ when I met her but together, we were healing her. But then, I got crushed like a love-bug. An ending I never saw coming hit me like a cancer diagnosis. A pair of Doc Martins stomped on me. I died. I must’ve died 18 times. But for some reason, I am still alive. Nope, I don’t know why. I looked for answers for why it happened and mistakenly thought I had found them. This lady blew a hole in my soul and I crawled through it looking for clues on why she did it. Call me Alice. I tried to make myself fit. “Empathy without boundaries is simply self-destruction,” the trees told me, but I wasn’t listening. When she came back, now both her and I were in ‘fight-or-flight’. I wanted to be the old me so badly but I kept panicking. I wanted to be steady but it was too soon, I wasn't ready. While I was so busy trying to figure out why she broke me, I didn’t stop and think about what it really did to me. My fears got amplified. My anxiety grew like a weed, and my garden (my mind) was poisoned. A central nervous system shouldn’t be running laps like this. More than anything did I want to let her in again, but I just couldn’t. At the first sign of trouble one of us would split. She was terrified of repeating the past. I was terrified of repeating the past. Landmines were laid around our hearts and we’d have to dodge them to reach the other, and sometimes, we’d get blown to bits. I tried to control it. And this is how a man becomes a cage—through fear. Proving to me she wouldn’t run away again became the unconscious goal. I set timelines. I set boundaries. I set goals. I sought control over a broken bird for fear of being hurt by her. She came to meet my family. But I couldn’t relax. “Choose me or lose me,” I said constantly. That’s not a safe space. “Show me with your actions, not your words.” I said, ready to run. “Consistency is key. So is communication. I am simply trying to find peace.” And I started to filter myself to prevent from disturbing the fragile ecosystem we were in. I stopped trusting her with what was on my mind and with what was weighing on my heart. Being constantly compared to her ex got exhausting. Dodging the landmines, while protecting myself, was an elegant dance of avoidance and dysfunction. “She has the superhuman ability to avoid anything that might unsettle her and you have the superhuman ability to think yourself into misery. What a beautiful space for you two to grow together,” said the birds, who continued to sing even though it was snowing. Well, that’s just a birds-eye-view on us. But the trees and the birds can be wrong, can’t they? “Listen to the body,” the moon says to me. “Listen to the body. Listen to the body. Listen to the body and the signs around you. What do they tell you?” And it was because of the moon saying this, and because I actually did stop and listen to my body, that I was overwhelmed with grief yesterday. All my body is telling me is to grieve. Grief is what’s inside of me. It’s just so much damn grief. I lost a beautiful thing. We can say it was just bad timing, but the trees argue with me. The birds won’t let me forget this lesson. I pushed away love by trying to control it because I was afraid of losing it. . . . Anxiety and booze beat me. And she couldn't forgive me. The body tells me to grieve what’s been lost. Election day won’t change a damn thing. We do not discover our authentic selves by burrowing inward, we create our authentic selves. Change is in play now. Old identities fall like the leaves. I see an effigy inside of me, ready to burn. I lost a beautiful thing, so I grieve.

CH 11/3/26