2007-03-26

Endurance

I watched this documentary over the weekend about people who die and have no next of kin and about what happens to them.

It was awful in the sense of what sometimes happens. The County empties their homes of everything and strangers go through their papers to find out if they have enough money to pay for any back-owed rent and cremation.
The dead get shuffled around and not interred per their funeral pre-need arrangements, if there is one. In one case, the cemetery didn't keep good enough records and despite the fact that the decedent had kept excellent records at his mother's urging, to the point where he had a picture of the family plots and where he would be buried, he wasn't buried there.
The a-hole at the cemetery was saying that because the plans were made so long ago, and we're talking about plans the decedent made only 20 years prior to his death, then the records were messy and there was nobody to blame.
The real truth is that there was nobody to fight the cemetery on behalf of the descendent.
He was all alone.

This is my Number One, Worst-Case Scenario, Gut-Wrenching, Powerful-Grip fear about death... not that I won't be remembered, not that I might go to Hell, not that I will face Afterlife too early, without having lived enough.
My greatest fear is that I will die and there will be nobody to make sure that I am laid to rest in a place where I'm surrounded by people I loved while I was alive.
I'm terrified that I'll die and nobody will know what to do with my blackened, maggoty body that nobody finds for several days or weeks and then when they do, that I'll get turned over to the County and they'll not be able to find anyone who wants my County Dispo ashes and then I'll be buried in a common grave with strangers.

I was so torn up about this that I called about 8 times and would have called more had I not been obligated to go to practice and then scrimmage.

It got me stuck on the usual themes that trip me up - like how I don't have any other male reference, really, besides Steve.
My dad died when I was so young that I don't think I learned about trust and emotional boundaries with men and stuff until I was involved for so long with Steve.

That's big stuff, man.
It's not bad, I mean... it IS and there's not much I can do to change it.
He was the person who entered into my life at the time when I was starting to be an adult.
He was circumstance and fate.
He was the first person I was in love with, and he the first male person who really, really stuck with me through lots of emotionally difficult things over a span of many years.
And vice-versa for that matter.
It's not like I've been a big believer in anyone else.
I've been in love with other men - a couple of them specifically - but what do you do with love that's arguably analagous to Pet Cematary?

What do people do when they clearly have a bond that has demonstrated itself to be unbreakable through time, adversity, ugliness, sorrow, lust, and a base quality of general elation about the fact that you are in each other's lives and you've gotten this stretch of years together?
What do people DO when they feel that THING for one person and they can't find it with anyone else and God knows, not for lack of trying?

Being alive is such a paradox of fleeting momentuality against years that feel eternal and as if they will never break through to some intangible "bigger."

I don't know what to do with that.
With this.
I don't know what to do with this feeling of only having truly known one man and of being so far away in every way you can imagine but also being so much closer to him than to anyone I've ever known in my life.
I can't believe that's a choice that I've made somewhere along the way.

I can't really believe after everything that's happened in both of our lives and given who we both are separate from one another that I CHOSE to feel like THIS is the person who I would almost unquestioningly follow into a raging ocean or for whom I would kill if his life was threatened.

I can't believe that I would chose to hang myself up there while I have gone well over and above the duty to reinvent myself in what was mostly an effort to not be that girl who was in unhealthy love.

I moved 1697 miles away, years ago.
I've been a yogi, a rollergirl, a sort-of-lesbian, a dog-owner, a hermit, a Game-Boy Loser, a constant dinner date and regardless of all of those efforts, one phone call back in October seems to have erased, at least temporarily, my ability to think outside of the terms of this nebulous, huge relationship.
It never really lost power - neither its power over me nor the power I have over it.

I just can't think that there was a choice there, that at any point did I say to myself, "Self, you are never going to be able to move on from this. Try anything you want, anywhere you want but you'll never, ever meet someone that you'll love as much or more."

I'm not even going to spend time referencing the negative aspects of that relationship because they are many and I know them as well as I know the alphabet.
I know that those are what prevent me from getting in my car and showing up, at least they prevent it so far.

So what is it?
What is it that he accesses over and over again?

I could be the fear of dying alone, sure.
It could be my father-issues or the idea of home or even that at some point, I unknowingly chose to allow this one to continue to be one of the most obviously definitive relationships that I have.

It sort of blows my mind that I am completely open to someone totally amazing coming along.
It sounds like I woudn't even be trying or tht I wouldn't be considering that I will and to having a relationship totally have a relationship that takes me even further into someone.
But, yeah, I strongly believe that it's possible to go even further and to go there with a man who is as healthy as I am and... I dunno... maybe even who lives in the same place as I do, which would be as good a place to start as any.

Confusingly, this does not change the endurance of me and Steve.
I know that I've done the things I needed to do for all of it to be over and to move forward in love with someone in the same way that I was in love with him but at the maturity level I have now.
I know that I want that and that I wholly believe in it as a distinct probability.

What I don't know is why it hasn't happened and more importantly in terms of the context of this essay; what I don�t know is, if my intention is clear to have the next level of relationship , that why does it keep feeling so fucking good when my phone rings and it's him.

What else I don't know is how I can move to stop thinking of him when I think about the eternity of the soul, of death - of where I might spend this thread of forever.

________________________
Out of context, I need to make an important note.

This writing is never, ever the extent of a person or a situation.
These are essays, born in the moment of a feeling.
A person is a novel and a relationship a trilogy but an essay?
An essay is a moment - nothing more and sometimes less.

arizonasarah at 10:04 a.m.

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