introspective periscope : peeking inside since Y2K ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- when your past comes to call today with yesterday - 28 august 2014 "when you have no one, no one can hurt you."~palace brothers my mother and her aunt have headed south again this morning. i watched them drive until i couldn't see them anymore and headed in, declaring somewhat sadly to sam that 'we're all alone again, buddy.' he sighed and went to his perch at the top of the stairs and settled in for a late morning nap. i can't help but feel the emptiness of the place that was, before they left, cramped and full and constantly busy with some chore or other. i'll probably go pick some blueberries in a little bit...there are so many and while we picked gallons of them already, we barely put a dent in them. yesterday, i wasn't feeling very well. i'm not sure if it's the heat or the fall allergies moving in or what but i missed work and took a long nap instead. i woke up to a rapid fire of messages making my phone ding. "...i had questions for you on the level of what is wrong with me? and i really am wanting to know in case it is helpful for not continuing to be whatever way i am." i didn't know how to answer this, truly...and said so. last night, i was waiting on a pork roast that i'd had slow-roasting for over 24 hours to come to temperature before i headed to bed. mom and her aunt went to bed fairly early so they could get a head start on the day. the phone dinged with a clarifying message. so we talked for the second time since june after all those years of not-talking. i explained my reasons for ending it between us. it's strange when the past comes looking for an explanation and it forced me to reflect on some things i don't think of very often anymore. when i was just a few days shy of 18, i was dropped off at college. that first semester didn't go too well. i developed a habit of writing....long before i started writing here. poems and paragraphs but hardly journals. those notebooks full of poems and my memories are all i have to prove that those fall and winter nights truly happened. the story is probably a skewed telling, i'll admit. i would pack my pens and notebook and walk uptown to the main drag of bars and pizza shops to a little coffee shop with sofas and coffee tables. the barista was from ireland. the music was played on an old cd player. it was the 90s, guys. the coffee shop also had a pinball machine that i was always too embarrassed to play because back then...i was embarrassed about pretty much everything, wasn't i? yes. i'm pretty damned good at pinball and prefer it over any video game. instead, i'd get some mocha or coffee something or other, get my regular spot on a couch, and watch people coming and going while i wrote. some people would come in and play chess. others came in for coffee to go and headed back out into the cold snowy evenings. there were regulars, of course, and i got to know their faces. just like now, these sorts of people find their way into my imagination, characters in oddball stories in my head. there are so many little poems that reference the Pinball Wizard (super creative!) that used to come in the door every night. he was a giant of a man with birkenstocks and a beard and long hair. he wore a gauze hippy skirt like a lady and even in the snow, he usually wore his sandals. he had a routine. he'd come in and order a coffee (for which he never had to pay) and push a few quarters into the pinball machine. after he'd finished with all the balls in the barrel, he usually disappeared to the back room with mike, the man who ran the coffee shop. i was pretty naive at that time and only years later realized they were smoking pot in the back room. he'd take his coffee and, as magically as he'd appeared, he'd make his way out into the night again. sometimes, i'd spy him on campus but it seemed out of place. he was a night-creature in my imagination. part fairy, part giant. it never made sense that he could also walk around in the daylight. i never really spoke to him but i was fascinated with him. he was a fixture in my every-night. at the end of that semester, when the grades came back, it was clear that i wasn't returning for another semester. over the holiday break, the coffee shop where i'd played music with a little misfit band of friends and spent so many special nights closed for good. i had some art in a show there and was lucky to be able to reclaim a few pieces that hadn't already been discarded in a dumpster. i didn't return to the university for 2 years other than to visit the few friends i'd made. when i did return, i needed to have a job and applied at a call center just around the corner from where the coffee shop had been--replaced at that time by a medical supply store. after a few days of training, they put me among the general drones on the phones making cold calls for political polls and other market research jobs. it was terrible work but it paid well enough and i found that i wasn't too bad at it. one night, i finally was brave enough to look at the people sitting around me and was surprised and delighted to find that familiar face. he wasn't wearing a skirt anymore. instead, he wore rockabilly overalls and combat boots. he was still a giant...in fact, he was larger still and his beard was longer and greying. it took me a few weeks to be brave enough to ask him if it was really him i'd seen years ago visiting the coffee shop. of course he didn't remember me (i was a silent wallflower that nobody noticed) but he remembered the coffee shop. we started talking more frequently and, over time, became friends. i don't remember the first time we spent any time together outside of work but i do remember getting together on what felt like dates but...i was so shy and so was he so...it never went anywhere. we had dinner out a few times. he'd come over and spend time in our apartment, becoming more of a fixture over time. i remember riding on the back of his motorcycle happy to have a reason to hold on to him. he took me to white's variety store once where i ordered a few pairs of carhart's overalls to wear to my ceramics classes. the things i remember most about him are things that are only romantic to a college girl in her early 20s, i suppose. he could roll a beautiful joint. he had the knowledge of a hippy priest--bringing along licorice root and tampico on those weekend nights when we swallowed acid. the first time i watched Harold and Maude was with him and a few other friends...tripping on acid. he knew things that i just didn't. he also had a sleeping disorder and would sometimes fall asleep in the middle of a sentence, perched on my blue velvet couch. his snores would raise the roof. young jones had a pretty big crush on that giant man but never did much of anything about it on account of being too shy and having way too little self esteem. instead, i wrote more poems that nobody ever saw and kept it to myself. he was probably too old for me anyway...and i convinced myself that i valued his friendship more than that...and wouldn't want to spoil things by making it into something else. i put in 5 more sad semesters at the college again...my grades were good but i was losing interest. i'd started talking with toby by then and had my sights set on california (i never did get to california.) i found myself in what turned out to be a long-term relationship for the first time in my life and was in love and happy. after a few difficult years that, when i recall them, weren't so bad (we definitely tried, didn't we?) the plant where i worked announced a closure and i decided i was going back to school. by the end of that first semester back, toby decided he was leaving for LA and, by christmas, it was over. i got through that difficult winter and by spring had a new circle of friends that i love dearly. i finally found my people and started to figure out who i am when i am me...when i'm on my own. my friend tom moved in. i took another roommate to help cover the rent. i was back to work at that old call center again. i'm not sure how scott and i started talking again but, eventually, he came for a visit. we went out for beer and wings and came back to my house. we talked until late at night and, even though i had those same old girl-crush feelings, he slept on the sleeper sofa that night. another case of not knowing how to ask for what i wanted...and part of me not sure how to proceed because, even then, after years, my heart was still on the mend. i only learned last night that he took that as my rejecting him. silly stupid things that people think when they're afraid to ask (we were both too chicken to figure out what to do next.) a few months later, the call center announced a closure of it's own and, in the end, we threw a big party at my house when it was all over. those faces that had been part of my life for so long gathered one last time to be together. since scott had worked there, of course he was invited. that night, the sleeper sofa was taken and so he overnighted with me. more than ten years after watching him come into that coffee shop to play pinball, we were giving something a go, i guess. i was happy with that and decided to let things take their course. the thing about us was that neither of us had very much confidence. i'd not really dated much and my self-esteem after toby left was pretty low for so long after that. my relationship with scott only lasted for a few months at best...but we tried. it ended in a messy way that made me think that we'd risked and lost our great friendship...and until a few months ago, i didn't speak with him again. so he wanted to know why i'd ended it, i suppose. i pointed to my reasons...namely, issues with my own body image compared with the pictures that others were sending him on his phone...skinny women with animated breasts dancing on his little cell phone screen. then there was the night that a mutual friend told me about things he'd said about me and my body when he was angry with me. those things coupled together (and mostly confused and out of context) broke my heart and i couldn't find any way to reconcile the situation so i ended it. it was strange to talk to scott about this after all this time. maybe if i'd had the tools i have now to say what i need...maybe if either of us had had a modicum of self-esteem, things would have been different. but i learned from that experience. i learned to value myself more than i was able to back then. it was probably the very beginning of my learning to like myself for once....learning to value myself enough not to put myself in a situation where i felt so terrible about myself again. it was the beginning of a journey to who i am now. i told him last night that while it didn't work out between us, our relationship taught me valuable lessons. i can say how i'm feeling and i can speak up when something bothers me that much. i can ask for what i want and i can handle disappointment when there are things i can't have. my heart isn't so breakable and it hasn't been since then when i think about it. after everything that happened with the baby's father, i have been more protective with my heart, i know. that thing with ian, as messy as it was, had lessons, too. it was a good test to see how far i've come. i've handled everything thrown at me with grace, i think. i've just gotten a little bit more careful. less easy to be trusting, perhaps? over time, i will be ready for something again.... it's like i told scott last night: "...maybe someday, there will be someone i'm willing to risk myself with again. i hope so." it might not be for years. it could be next month. it just depends. i'm open to whatever now...i'm just being a little more careful with my heart. sometimes, when the past comes knocking, you have to answer and face it. i know that i can still talk to scott and i know that he is still that old friend i've known half my life. i'm thankful that we can talk to each other like friends again. that's all it'll ever be and i'm thankful that we've managed to reconcile that somehow. there are few people from my past that i could talk to like this after everything and i'm glad we've managed to make something of it. i can't tell scott what is wrong with him but i can tell him what i learned from us which was a whole lot. there are a lot of scars on this old heart that time has indeed healed. it's good to know that i am finally in a place where i can talk to some of the assailants and manage not to rip open too much of the past so as to bleed out completely. i'm so thankful for this revelation and thankful that scott reminded me of how far i've come since then. my heart is a lot stronger than i've given it credit for these days and i am thankful, thankful, thankful for that insight. xo, jones ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- .what came before. - .what happened next. a diamond at the bottom of the drain - 20 october 2017 |
||||||
|
||||||