Fuck, that was one hell of a year.
Right before the end of 2011, I had to face Josh for the first time since I'd become a workaholic journalist; the first time since his catalytic departure; the first time since he'd shattered me, the first time since that break forced me to redesign the window through which I watch my life.
Then, in June, I slept in the ruins of a burned-out Civil War-era plantation, climbed to the highest point in Arkansas, watched a music documentary in a field with a hundred strangers in downtown Oklahoma City. I crossed the Continental Divide at least four times and entered a homemade castle deep in the mountains of Colorado. I climbed a benign-looking mountainside and discovered the bluest, high-altitude lake I have ever seen, while learning that parsley grows wild there.
I pitched a tent in the darkest desert of Utah late at night, and woke up surrounded by a golden sandstone fortress. I bought some homemade pocketbooks from a hippie in Moab, bloodied my leg on a rusty chain link fence that stood between me and the most mind-blowing apricots I've ever eaten; I swam in a desert stream with descending pools of fresh water and buffed my bare feet on ancient stone walls carved by eras of desert wind. I stole a cactus clipping that pricked me no less than three times that month. I hiked in a permit-only section of Arches National Park called the Fiery Furnace, where inexperienced hikers often get lost and severely dehydrated, and made it out with nothing but a mean sunburn and a small case of the grumps.
I rode shotgun for the entire length of the Loneliest Highway in the United States, which ended up causing a permanent association with that road and certain Beatles songs. I stole a neat spoon from a pho place in California, drank Carneros in Napa, and got the sweetest campground next to the sweetest spot to see the sun set over Lake Tahoe (it looks like sherbet). I saw the Pacific Ocean for the first time through a milky mist and had to stand on a rock for a second to wrap my head around the fact that I was standing on the west coast. I was terrified in a truck going too fast down Hwy 1 in a nasty rainstorm -- S-curves and only several feet of visibility -- camped in the truck and woke up to a bill for $30 on the windshield from the ranger.
I made a very strange jambalaya over a gas stove on a windy night in the redwoods, drinking champagne to quell my fear of the creaking 100-foot tree above me. I wandered through the redwoods like an ant would wander through any forest back home, and I wondered if ants also get dizzy when they point their eyes to the sky in such a place.
I went to the farm Josh has called home for the past few years, and slept in a garage I'd only seen in the background of our Skype sessions. I drank with the people he preferred over his own family, and I began to understand the choices he made. I got drunk and named our future children near some giant elephant ears on an Oregon riverbank, and sat on a cliff for an hour trying to summon the guts to jump into the river -- the guts never came, even as Josh jumped off for a third time. After the most miserably cold and misty mud-hike of the month, I got naked and took a dip in a natural public hot springs. Eventually, all the other folks left us and we found the pool that matched our body temperature almost exactly, and stayed there so long that leaving it felt like being born into a cold, dark world.
I went fishing with Dave and Paula in the mountain wilderness of Montana, made a campfire that would eventually witness my first grilled avocado, and woke up to a cold storm that we forgot about by getting incredibly stoned in our small tent and falling asleep, clinging to each other in the same sarcophagus sleeping bag. I laughed at how annoyed I was by the traffic in Yellowstone -- at how the 18 SUVs ahead of us would stop and hang cameras out the window every time a napping buffalo was spotted near the road. Tiny Asian children ran in circles around me as I filmed an erupting geyser with my iPhone, and was relieved when Josh said he wanted to get out of there too.
The Grand Tetons were like the event horizon -- the biggest things I'd ever seen, that I would never, ever reach. I hiked food down a ravine on the side of the road in bear country, pitched a tent near a stream and freaked out every time I heard a twig snap. I kept Josh awake until we got to a hotel in a state I can't remember, and took the most...productive...shower I might ever take in my life. The southern humidity switched on right past the Missouri state line, and I decided that Missouri was Missourable. As I looked at the GPS when we finally entered Louisiana, I caught myself looking for all the state parks on the map that I'd never noticed before. When I unlocked my front door for the first time in a month, it almost didn't register as home.
A month spent seeing incredible things forced me to redefine home, in ways I saw both immediately and gradually. Most immediately, I realized I had just spent a month in a dirty truck and a very small tent with one person, and that there was not a day -- nor hour, nor minute -- where I felt anything negative toward him or our conditions. It was so good, it probably looked fake from the outside.
If anyone had told me that I should be waiting for the honeymoon to end at that point, I'd have assured them that I was wincing in anticipation. But no one did, and I eventually stopped wincing. What is a honeymoon, anyway? It's come to be seen as a couple's last hurrah; the sweetest vacation the two will enjoy without the future burden of children and mortgages and fights and aging; a period of time two people spend doing nothing else but reveling in their own love story. I might have been waiting for ours to end, but six months after our June getaway, I haven't stopped reveling in our love story.
There are ups and downs -- we've gotten in one boss-level spat in the near year we've been together, and our emotional frequencies don't always sync up. We've hurt each other both accidentally and intentionally, but we have never left those rooms when one of us is still bleeding on the floor. We've never been so angry that we're not patient with each other when the fire dies down. And, in all its pride-eating glory, that gesture continues to show me something that nobody has ever been able to explain to me about love.
It's just like me to try to explain it, of course.
Through the events of a life, a person has opportunities to grab the stuff that makes them capable of loving someone else in a real way. Collecting the L, O, V, and E isn't the end of it though. Those letters might elate you, empower you, and make you believe in altruism, but they alone won't let you understand the word they spell. I thought I understood the word. I even swore I didn't need a serious partner to display my understanding -- it was all about the universe and how you treat people; you don't need to give it all to one person to make it pure -- which is correct, more or less, but it's looking at only two dimensions of a three-dimensional concept.
I didn't understand that third dimension until I had to face Josh a year ago. After his actions made me rip up the L, O, V, and E I'd collected throughout my life, after I'd convinced myself those letters were destructible as they regarded him, and after I had finally shut him out of my life, in much the same fashion as he had shut me out countless times in our long history, he showed up at my doorstep, wanting a beer and my company. The same night, as I laid on the couch across the room from him sleeping, I spent a good while trying to suffocate my happiness, simply because I knew he'd done nothing to deserve it. I tried to think about all the pain in an effort to become angry.
I would say it came on gradually because it seems like this sort of thing wouldn't happen all at once, but it was anything but gradual -- in a breath, I saw both the absurdity and the futility in what I was doing.
When I allowed myself to think it, "I love him" became the only thing I knew. It no longer mattered what he had done to me, nor the blatant inconsideration he employed to show up here, nor what he'd ever do to hurt me in the future. It had never been about him loving me back equally -- though I wanted him to, and had always wanted him to, I finally accepted that it was unnecessary. If it were -- if it had ever been, I wouldn't still love him, would I?
Dealing with it required me to give up the belief that I had any control over it. When I raised my white flag, I felt the spectrum: A mother's love for her children; a sister's love for her brother; a Christian's love for God; God's love for humanity; a husband's love for his wife of 60 years; a dog's love for his owner. And somewhere in between all those (or perhaps within them all) existed how I felt, and would always feel, for this guy sleeping on my couch with a giant beard who broke my heart in every stage of my life, and there wasn't a damn thing I, or anyone else, could do about it -- not then, not now, not 10 years ago or 10 years from now. When you feel that kind of thing, there's no going back.
Sure, maybe two years ago I did have the L, O, V, and E in my possession, and I certainly put a lot of love in the world that wasn't aimed at Josh. But two years ago, I didn't have the guts it takes to be completely vulnerable to one person -- I would've called that sort of thing a weakness. I'd have climbed on top and looked down at it in judgment, when in reality, it's the bravest and hardest thing we can attempt to do as human beings. In retrospect, I see where others have attempted it with me, and how I failed to meet them in that hell. It's hard to think about, and I have spent a lot of time thinking about them this year.
On Christmas night, Josh and I popped a nice bottle of Cava and he raised his glass:
"Here's to all the amazing women who taught me how to love you."
When all is forgiven, I hope everyone I've broken ends up finding the person who can see them as I couldn't.
No comments:
Post a Comment