All around me are familiar faces / worn out places, worn out faces

What is it about you, October?

You've brought such extremes to my life over the past four years. In the first, it was sugar-high love, the kind you can never get enough of. But even with the sheen of love, life exploded- mania exploded. I remembered, today, the extremity of the Pumpkin Carving of 2006. One wasn't enough. Nor two. Nor three. I distinctly remember driving to buy more pumpkins because she hadn't carved enough. I thought it was cute. I thought it was good: creative energy. But the carving segued into seed-roasting, staying up late to percolate the house with garlic and dill, cinnamon and sugar. Five or six pumpkins' worth of roasted seeds, and we never ate them all, but I knew, for her, it wasn't enough.

October 2006 was also the month of the minor car accident and my distorted/hopeful thoughts that she would always be that compassionate. It was also rolling over in bed the morning after the car accident and feeling so terribly unsafe but not knowing how to say that without ruining everything. Instead, I cried. I shelved the anxiety and she held me and I felt safe again but that moment was off and running before I could so much as focus in on a mental picture that would pull me, lull me through confusion.

But that night, carving on the wooden floors of my parents' kitchen, laughing and loving and her saying: "You are enough. I have no doubt that I love you. I have never been this happy. I have never been this happy."

Is it a lie when you say something without realizing that you actually have no idea what you're talking about because you're saying you're something that you have no concept of? But you're saying it because you want to believe it: "I don't know what happy is, but if I put air into my lungs and exhale with a word (happy) maybe it will be real and I can say all along I knew what it was but had never felt it until I said it and I said it because I want to be. I want to be happy. With you. I want us to be happy."

Here is the truth: I don't think I ever really was.

I know this because June and July, 2009, I finally opened my eyes to happiness. Each morning since then, each half-smile and sparkle of the eye, each deep breath on Saturday afternoons-- I realize, yes, I am happy.

But in October, I have been notoriously unhappy because I have been frequently blindsided and led astray by extremes. In 2007, Columbus Day gained new meaning and now I refer to it as The Columbus Day Massacre of 2007. She said she'd never forget it, and for a while she apologized a lot for it, but she doesn't have to open that closet door multiple times a day and if just for a moment recall that image, that punched-through-the-stomach-into-the-throat feeling, that complete loss of rationale and understanding. For her, it is probably just another step in her unhealthy journey of attempts to forget herself. But I remember the shaking. I remember the blood. I remember my total and complete lack of movement. What I also remember is the anger.

That should have been the last October- it should have been the last of many things. But despite that, despite the following corrupt months of tension and instability and push & pull, DESPITE APRIL... despite my heart arching elsewhere, aching to bloom in spring but instead being drowned by not tears but by hope: October 2008 existed. And it existed for us.

Two things happened in October 2008: she came here, and I went there. The stretches in between were roughed with knowing the end was near and not knowing how to escape it or embrace it. So I avoided it. Because that is what I do.

When she came here, she left a present of blood on my garage floor. I don't know where it is anymore (I stopped looking for it long ago) but I know it's there. There were demons and manic impulses, there was a clear sign of things being anything but right. I pushed, that time. I pushed hard. But my heart is weak, and in the end, I pulled like hell. I tugged with every ounce of my being until I found myself lying alone in bed, feeling the sinking emptiness of our love streaming out from my pores. It needed to be aired out. It needed to be freed.

There was one night in particular when she packed her things and was ready to go. It was late. I was worried. She'd been slipping in and out of consciousness/sanity and I didn't realize until December that what I'd been so worried about was most likely an act of psychosis, in that nothing was wrong with her other than the fact that she was crazy, knew she was losing me, and yet again was pulling extreme measures to try to keep me. I fell for it, then, but only part of me. The other part was too far gone already. Too aware. Too ready to leave and be safe again.

When I went to her, at the end of October 2008, we were sitting on the bed, she was unusually sweet, I was in a horrible mood, and she said our next step was to get married. An extreme leap, again, to maintain us, to push us forward. Never mind that the logical next step was for one of us to move. Or for us to get counseling, together. Or for me to go. I know I didn't say yes, I know I couldn't hide the look of slightly irritated surprise that shocked over my face.

Marriage never came up again.

It couldn't, as no more than two weeks later, she avoided me steadily for a few days and then we broke up. Finally. And I must have known it was coming, after that last visit. Because in the same moment everything felt warm and I was so, so starkly cold.

Last October, in 2008, somewhere between her being here and me being there, I went to a pumpkin patch. I remember writing about it last year. I recall a particular woman, a lesbian at that, and I remember trying to get her to look up and catch my eye. I can't remember if she ever did. Today, I went to that same pumpkin patch. Today, I found myself sitting on a bale of hay on a trailer attached to a tractor, and I looked up to meet eyes with two lesbians sitting directly across from me. They had an elementary-aged girl with them- the daughter of the taller woman. The women alternated staring at me. I don't know what their motive was. Yes, thank you, I know I'm gay and I don't need you staring at me and getting me to curiously look at you for me to suddenly realize I like women. No, I'm not really attracted to either of you and that's why I'm not staring at you. Obviously. As you are staring at me, for whatever reason and no, thank you, I don't care for an explanation.

Today, mid-fall, I saw fall. I surveyed the light blue sky, alit with puffs of clouds, crushing against the burnished pale yellow stalks of corn. I searched for the globes of orange rolling about the crunch-beneath-your-feet landscape of farmland. I felt the wind whipping around me, through me, taking with it memories and leftover pain. I can see and feel these things, I can hear fall puncture the air around me, because October 2009 radiates with the extremity of absence and of silence.

Why does October always feel so cold? I see the warmth radiating between people, and people in-love. I felt that warmth last night: hour upon hour till all I wanted to do was sleep- and I was grateful every second of the night. I have been entertaining, again, the running (north this time: uncharted territory) but sometimes I simply have to be reminded of how lucky I am to have what I have. I am almost ready to admit how much I want that warmth back. I've touched glimpses of it over the past eight months, but it hasn't been enough. It hasn't been the warmth I crave... or the warmth I need, and I don't say that very often but with this whole happy, self-aware, confidence thing comes the reality and admittance that I do have needs and I don't particularly feel like suppressing them ever again.

I could settle. I know this. I could settle very easily, and the only reason I don't (everything there is pretty great, yes, except: ) is because while there is love, I am not in love, and I'm not going to compromise that. So beyond that, beyond the minutiae of my options (diverse as they are), beyond my lingering affections for the Obscure Object, I wonder: where is mine?

Maybe next October will be different. Maybe it won't be extreme. Perhaps next October, in 2010: maybe it will be mine.

Give me clear skies; I'll tell you a story

Here's something I've apparently just realized: The Obscure Object is kind of a bitch.

Her tone is my least favorite thing about her. Written, spoken, inferred with a look: it is either completely difficult to decipher, or flat-out bitchariffic. I can think of three recent & specific examples of this, and I don't particularly care to regurgitate them here. This is something I needed to realize, though.

Maybe it's me overreacting (because I never do that), but I pick up on tone much better than I do body language. And she and I have, in the past, misread each other's written tones. She's one- if not the only person- of a few people I have that habit with.

I over analyze, yes, and over-think. The perplexion and confusion and hidden/not-so-hidden possibilities don't help calm this over-ing. The fact that I can't seem to have a simple conversation with her doesn't help. Not knowing, knowing too much, failing to see how I can properly communicate this: not helpful.

I don't know where this leaves me, but I also don't know that I care.


I am tired, Beloved, of chafing my heart against
The want of you;
Of squeezing it into little inkdrops,
And posting it.
-Amy Lowell, "The Letter"

Where do we go from here

One of my coworkers ran into me in the hall today. She was on the wrong floor; I rarely see her otherwise, but always, always enjoy our stream-of-consciousness conversations.

When she saw me today, and after she realized she'd gone up an extra flight of stairs, she said: "You know, you should really be on tv."

From there, we talked about vocabulary, lexicon-flexing, teaching English, expressions, immersion, Middlesex, homosexuality, ES classes, epiphanies, influence, change, growth, Dr. Ruth, and so on. I so thoroughly love those conversations, the kinds that spread over landscape and grey matter without effort. Complete ease, unsuspecting flow.

As we parted ways, she turned and called over her shoulder: "So what are you going to be when you grow up?"

Without hesitation (there may have been a slightly abashed shrug, because for as much as I like to talk about myself, I worry that people A) don't take me seriously, and B) see me differently than I see myself because, yes, I can be dense/a little slow on the uptake/silly-excited about the most minute things/and occasionally I think I don't show my intelligence simply because I don't want to) I said: "Finish my masters. Get my PhD. Go teach college level. From there... wherever it all takes me."

And write. Sometimes, all I want to do is write. It's just that the words get stuck on my ribs, stuck in my fingertips, smeared around my teeth and tongue and nothing comes out the way I expect it to. But, I write.

And I write because I generally can't form sense with my voice.

Part of this, all of this, is because of my dirty habit called Over-Thinking. I place too much value in not only the things that people say to me, but also the way that they say them. I pay more attention to tone than I do to body language. It's easier; I hear more than I see. Maybe I pay too much attention. Or maybe I don't pay enough.