So, the thing with G blew apart in the last week, and we got some closure today. And I'm grieving, and I don't know what to do with that, except maybe keep grieving. I've been living in this so much the last week it feels ridiculous to write about it. And yet: I'll forget. And maybe writing and reflecting will lead to insight.
There is, at this point, so much I want to say to him, to tell him. I keep thinking of things. And I keep resisting the urge. Right now I want to text him:
"Thanks. The silence/space was helpful, but hard. Just an observation.
"You once said you swore I was the most thoughtful guy on scruff. I'm willing to accept number 2, maybe, but you obviously left someone out of your assessment.
"Hasta la proxima."
And I think I will just let it go, because while I want to say those things, there are a million things I want to say, and right now I just don't get to say them. And it occurs to me that he might be dealing with his own grieving process and not really want any more messages out of the ether.
I think that occurs to me because I read back over our chats. I screen-capped them all, and maybe some day I'll transcribe them. Or maybe some day I'll have grieved enough and delete them. But I was surprised to see, after the pain and silence of the last couple weeks (and the whole period when I had texted him and he wasn't responding and I couldn't figure out what was going on) - after all that silence, I was surprised to see how easy everything had been, and how much we seemed to like each other (and particularly how much he seemed to like me). There were so many times when he complimented me for being charming, or sexy, or whatever. I lost sight of that. I lose sight of that. I get into things and only see wonderfulness and ease and beauty on the other side of the table, and look at it from inside my swirl of confusion and self-doubt and anxiety.
But anyway - reading over the chats again I realize why this is hitting me so hard.
Two songs framing things. "Nice and Slow" by Max Frost, which I must have heard sometime around the first weekend we met. (Check of facebook - I had posted it the day I heard it. January 11. Which I think was probably two days after we first met at the Rocking Horse.) And "Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk," which I was listening to while working on grant applications, and probably while or just before chatting with him, and which keeps getting stuck in my head - and which I posted on facebook today, and which so perfectly describes the way I'm feeling.
G had said, after I shared "Nice and Slow" with him, that he loved finding new music. Hurting that I never shared this one with him.
The last two nights, Reg was out (hosting karaoke Friday, directing Terry's play Saturday), and I couldn't stand to be alone. It was clear where things were going. Thursday I had talked with Candice about it, over beers and barbecue; she was encouraging and it gave me hope that maybe things weren't just going to blow apart. But Friday came and went without news, even after I texted G asking if he could let me know when he had a few minutes to chat. And Friday night I poured bourbon down my throat, and although it didn't take the pain away, exactly, it did make it a little more tolerable, a little more distant maybe. And Saturday came and went without news, and by Saturday night I was pretty unable to be with myself again - and poured beer down my throat, and talked with Richard/Kay, and Candice again, and stumbled home at 3 am reassured by the certainty that sleep would come quickly.
As I walked to the diner on Saturday night, I knew it was a troubling pattern that was forming. I was in too much pain to think about doing otherwise. But I told myself it needed to be the last night drinking for a while. So today, I've been making my way through it. When John suggested coffee at around 1:00, I jumped at it, and though I wasn't sure I was going to tell him the whole story, that's what ended up happening.
What I mostly wanted to tell him about was the realization I had Friday night. I had texted G during the day, and there was no response; I spent the whole train ride to Passaic thinking "he'll text me when he's done with work," and that never happened. Walking from the station to the dealership, to pick up the car, I did a walking meditation. Along the way I observed how sad I was, and I stopped to think about how that fit into the five hindrances - since sadness isn't numbered among them, but it sure seemed to be clouding my vision.
And I realized how much of my sadness was anger, at myself, at the world - anger that I wasn't the person I wanted to be - in part, maybe, that I wasn't and am not queer - anger that I didn't get to date as a teenager, that I never had the nerve to wear little animal hats and get stoned and pierced and tattooed and make out with boys, that I've made so many practical and wrong choices that have me, at 48 - and this was the big revelation - I'm finding myself attracted to men who embody all of those things and might in some way enable me to recapture the life I didn't lead. Anger and self-doubt, the fear/knowledge/delusion that I will never be able to be any of those things, and that the version of me that I have been and am is inferior.
I told John some version of that. He reached across the table, and when I didn't take his hand right away, he reached farther. I don't know what made him do that. I was really a surprise. And it was a lovely gesture. And he told me he thought I was experiencing what it was to grow older. That seems right.
Right now, I'm experiencing what it's like to be sober. The hangover of the last two days is still with me, but it's more that I'm living with and experiencing and observing this pain and grief in a way I hadn't the last two days. I have, oddly, no regrets about the way the weekend went. I have no regrets about getting drunk, about the way I reached out, about having sat on my apology for a week while I sorted things out, about the exact text I sent to G. I wouldn't change a word.
I hope he and I get to meet again. I hope we get to be some version of friends. I think we might; or I think that's delusional; or I think that's the stage of grief called denial; or I think it just reflects a tiny bit of optimism about myself and the person I can be and the life I can live. It seems like it might be unhelpful to dwell on it too much.
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