September 21, 2023
Two nights ago, I had a dream about The Guy. You know, the guy who doesn’t visit anymore since the website went down. The guy I’ll never see again.
I dreamed we ran into each other somehow. We were glad to see each other, and we were still in love. But we were very sad, because he was still married.
Then suddenly, we remembered: Um, this person passed away several years ago. This guy is a widower. We can be together, after all!!
And we were very happy.
Last night I dreamed I was away at college, and for some reason I had to return home. And I had no way of obtaining transportation, and I had to do so by bike. Across 600 miles of our state, on dangerous interstates and highways. In the rain. Alone.
I didn’t even have any money, and I didn’t realize it was going to turn colder and rain, so I wasn’t adequately dressed. When I woke up, I had stopped off at a bookstore in a town, and met some kind people there who gave me a little money and some food and a warm poncho-blanket kind of thing.
But I would have to set off again on my bike, and make my way home alone.
This is a fitting metaphor for my life. I had dreamed I would find someone to have a good life with, and not have to be all alone, and I went to that bookstore, and I found two people.
But one of them died, and I had to go on alone. And one of them really doesn’t want to be with me, for whatever good or bad reasons. So I got some small sustenance along the way from those people, but now I am left to ride my bike home in the dark and through the wind and rain, all alone now.
Those people were mere stopoffs on my journey through life. They can’t come with me. Home is the grave at the end of my life, and the rest of that journey will be traveled alone.
I wish things could have been better. I wish things could have been happier. I wish I could have had loving companions, and more of the good times I only got to taste for but fifteen years out of my whole entire life. And things were STILL difficult even then.
Why did I have to pick such a hard, lonely, crappy time for myself? For that matter, why did this person have to choose such a hard, lonely, crappy time for HIMself???
We could have traveled together. We could have been happy.
Oh, well. We can’t have ANYTHING much good for very long in this life, can we???
I can only hope he’s chosen never to come back for a reason that makes him happy and not a reason that makes him sad. I can only hope this person decided that an intact family is happy enough to make up for what it can’t give him, and not that he’s sitting there resentful that he’s doing ALL THIS for ALL THOSE PEOPLE and not getting anything in return.
That’s a choice. You don’t have to choose it unless you think you would be worthless if you left. Because if someone’s not meeting you halfway in a marriage, it doesn’t mean you are worthless. If you look at your kids in marriages and good homes and with kids of their own, and decide your relationship with them has to change because you are tired of living with a roommate in the same house for forty years and feeling like you are alone, it doesn’t mean you are worthless.
It means you have needs that are just as important as other people’s, and other people having to recognize that isn’t a tragedy even though they may see it that way for a while.
But, oh well. No matter.
This person will never decide that, for whatever reason. I will know no more about this, nor anymore about his life ever again, and I will pedal my bike home across 600 miles in the wind and rain alone. I feel so much grief that this has to be my life. Shitty from childhood, such brief joy cut so short, and shitty from here on out.
But I will never forget the kind people in the bookstore who gave me succor along the way.
Fare thee well all.
It would be nice to stumble across something better than this sometime before I die.
But I have learned you just can’t count on it.