Yeah, so it’s about two minutes to two, been a long day, good day… and I have one more. This is how I do it… no blogs forever, then, when it’s really worth it, you might get two, three in the course of twenty four. Maybe sometime soon I’ll be more prolific. Now… well. Here we go. It’s late, and I’m tired, but here we go.
Long time ago, I was pining for some closure with a situation, a relationship, a time that didn’t go so well. It was (another) one of those things where I gave as much as I could, where I dedicated all I had to someone who just wasn’t ready, then, to take it.
I always wondered why things ended up the way they did. I always wondered what I did to deserve it. I always wondered if I would have gone right back and done it again. I wondered if anything came of it.
Found out, today, for sure, that I did something right.
Understand that I’m not easy with my past. I have history that walks in front of me when I close my eyes, before I go to sleep, and at those moments when there’s nothing else to fill the screen on the inside of my forehead.
My mother, she has the same deal. Now me. I think it’s why I write, when I write.
Anyway.
So fifteen years ago or so, I was wracked with guilt and pain and I was wounded, soul-deep, from things that had been done to me and things I’d done to others. And I met her. And it was very, very important to me that what we did went right.
Of course, given who we were, there was no chance it would go anything but bad. When it ended… I had so many questions. I think I thought if I got the answers, I’d absolve myself of something. Or, at least, I’d feel less of a fool.
So today. I found out I don’t need to know anything. I spent some time with her, and her kids, and her husband.
I spent some time with them, and saw that she still struggled with the past like I do, but she’s struggling from a position of strength and hope, and surrounded by love.
I spent time with them and glimpsed their life, and saw parallels and juxtapositions, and discovered that I don’t need details to fill the holes in the past. I don’t need every motivation, every mistake hauled out and justified.
My resolution with that particular chapter of my life is embodied in the peace she seems to hold inside of her. The need for answers to questions I thought I had was washed away watching her be a mother and a wife.
Thanks for the beer and the hamburger and the conversation, CJ and Michael. I had a great time.
I have a present:
It is the present
You have to learn to find it within you
If you can learn to love it
You just might like it
You can’t live without it
There’s a million open windows
I’m passing these open windows
There is plenty to criticize
It gets so easy to narrow these eyes
But these eyes will stay wide
— Blake Schwarzenbach