It wasn’t going to work. In attempts at alignment a minor flutter of frustration causes a fight or flight response. I was hoping for fawn. I was not being angry, just pushing back against her over-the-shoulder management of my Instagram reading of a post she made about herself and her family.
Insert screenshot here.
When I understand why LibreOffice won’t insert image, instead it opens the image and wipes away the beginning text. Learning the free tools. GIMP over the Creative Suite tax from Adobe. Libre over Microsoft or Google Docs. Get thyself off AI as soon as possible. And quit paying for the Rocket Billionaires™ and their rockets or bunkers. They are not here to help humanity, only themselves and their shareholders. Shareholder value, was the thing Michael Dell used to shout into the void while I was working there in 2009, as the economic collapse was cascading through our economy. Half of my vast group, Global Online, was laid off. We were the lucky ones.
How quickly the end of the world becomes my own fuckup. Yesterday, at the “mothership” awaiting the arrival of my girlfriend from yoga class, I was having trouble connecting to the wifi of WFM. I asked the “shifty” (manager in charge) if the internet was down. He said, “Yes, there’s a ticket open for it. We don’t know when it will be back up.” “Have you tried just rebooting the router? That usually works, even in corporate America.”
In the struggle to regain my quality tether to the cosmos and beyond, I played with the deep settings within my Network Settings. I added a few DNS Server addresses. All wrong. All mucked up. All was lost, outside my Limited Field of Vision.
A cold front delivered rain and a 20-degree drop while I was inside. I drove through the rain to my other favorite tethered perch, Central Market, my old store, before my mom and brother died. Still no tether. Even my phone appeared to be having trouble. Oh, that’s because I’m out of “hotspot” bandwidth from ATT. Need to investigate those low-cost 2nd-tier cellular companies, that use the e-sim to provide a second number. I tried Google FI earlier. Seemed to work. The switching between simms was a pain in the ass. You could either BE number A or number B.
Perhaps a second e-simm, provider would give me a third option when the organic produce booth provides no love. Ho hum. Another hour and my girlfriend blasted through my dead text messages with, “Homeward bound.”
Yes.
I bought three different cut flowers: deep purple, yellow, and magenta. An arrangement she would make in her kitchen, almost as if the flowers had appeared magically, while telling me how much she loves cut flowers. “I’m not a fan of them,” I said. “But I couldn’t resist bringing you something lovely.” Blip. That was it. Not even a hug. She was busy with some home project. Some obsession about “starting work next week” and being productive. So she puttered, I mused and discovered my DNS cluster fk.
It was the wifi at WFM at first. I adjusted myself temporarily offline. The apocalypse I imagined was a flight a fancy. In my limited mind, I was the journalist who ID’d the fall of humanity. Welp, we’re (I am) still here.
My girlfriend, however, has become an ex-girlfriend again. It’s a strange configuration error as well. I have adjusted the internal settings somewhere, and I can’t get her back to factory settings. She is in a fuge state of some sort. About work, chores, “a boyfriend’s demands for sex” and her own worries. The imbalance is obvious.
She spends the rest of the day, 2 – 8, puttering, after the Instagram BS. I spent the time reading, napping and capturing moments. Perhaps that’s a good definition of what I’m doing here. Capturing moments of human love, human anguish, and human aspiration. I lean towards the higher ground. I am dragged back into someone else’s trauma of their past. Long before I arrived and illuminated her entire beautiful body. The damage was internal, unprocessed, and raw.
It was often, when she was talking, like she was trying to prove to me how smart she was. She would go on and on about some subject, unrelated to any of our shared realities. She also liked dropping the first names of her past lovers, her future suitors (“I’ve got lots of opportunities around me. It’s when your gone that I begin to imagine myself and my time with someone else.”) Why do I need to know the name of your high school sweetheart? The only man who really loved you right, according to your ideas. SRSLY? Your measure of a solid partnership is from your early twenties? Um…
Okay, I get it. Trauma is hard. Divorce is hard. We’d both been through two. Two kids, both of us. And she’s married to a guy (“He left me in October.) that she feels victimized by. “What was great about your marriage?” I asked, last night. I should’ve known to STFU, keep my questions about the offending men to my own secret questions. The questions were mounting, in my mind, I was losing track of all the offenses I’ve committed in our short 90-day tryst.
I leave. (To be fair, we are at the start of a relationship, I have two cats at my house a few miles away. I was going home. In frustration, occasionally. But to her, I was leaving for good. It was over. “I have started letting you go,” she said. “But you always come back. Give it a few hours. You’ll be back.”
In some ways, she was correct. The logic was flawed in her mind-reading experiment. My thinking would go like this. Upset woman. No more logic and love. Time for silence and contemplation. “I am leaving. I need to feed my cats, and I have a tennis match later in the afternoon. Do you want to make plans for tonight?”
Oh plans. That seemed to be her hangup. She’d been living in the time of no time. Tending to loved ones with health issues. She existed, before my arrival, in some form of suspended animation. Like a chrysalis ready to transform. If I would “leave her” in her mind, we were done. She began deleting our chat accounts, wiping out her novelization of rebuttals. Telling me how I was wrong. How I was lovely. How I was a bastard. Did I want to come over and snuggle? No words.
No thank you.
Except, I gave in. It was like a drug dealer with great uncut cocaine. If there was a possibility of a ‘hit’ I was probably going to indulge. The last one was good. A few new adventures and explorations. All good in the skin dance. Something not well inside her skin. In the overthinking, unprocessed, raw, emotional fallout of an 18 year marriage of compliance. And a 15 year marriage before that, of a stoic with no intention or knowledge of closeness or intimacy. (It seemed to always be the fault of the idiot husbands.) They accidentally had kids. They didn’t want to be married. Her mom orchestrated marrying her off. I guess she got grandkids out of all three of her daughters.
I won’t detail the damage. I will say things became frightening anytime I’d push back on one of her glitches. She would blurt out some mind-read, or projection of what I was thinking or doing. She was 98% wrong. She was correct in assuming I was becoming more irritated with the repetitive and recursive blowups about… a. my leaving, b. my book, c. my tone of voice, d. my body language, e. my anger. She liked the physical. She fractured at an discord.
For the first three weeks I allowed the transgressions. I overlooked more house fires and bottomless lakes. I snuggled into the most amazing physical partner I’ve ever found. It was the mental part, I was having trouble aligning with. Or, she was having trouble staying in the present moment.
That’s what happens with trauma when it’s unprocessed, unreleased. It pops up and fucks up your perspective about everything. I get triggered. I have worked on my own self-soothing and mindfulness to bring my intensity back down.
Yesterday, after she blew her top a third time, I went back to her bedroom. “I’m going to nap. I’d love to you join me.” She was making tea. She had projects to project. The flowers, the organic blueberries, and even the “Boy Shorts” I’d purchased at the mothership for a joke, but also as enticement. Nothing worked. She was beset by demons I could neither see nor do battle with.
I was done trying to slay her dragon. He was still living in the house with her. She was exercising him slowly, irratically. Leaving issues and leaks open for months. Somehow, he sprung the “leaving” on her too.
“What was great about your marriage? What were the parts you wanted to keep?”
“We had some fun times. It wasn’t all bad.”
“But…”
“His porn, his weed, his inattention to this nice woman. Me.”
See a pattern?
Much of adulthood is identifying patterns. Oh, I see I tend to pick unavailable women so we have fireworks and stuff to work on. My AI critics say I’m manipulating them to get more material for this… whatever this… is. Writing.
When you join the other room of AA, Al-Anon, the first thing you learn is this:
“This program is not about the alcoholic or qualifier in your life. This room, this circle, is about you. What do you need? What are the next right steps for you? You can stay with the alcoholic. You can also choose to leave. Most importantly, you are not a victim. You have agency. All contained in the compact and truthful prayer of serentiy.
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change (the past)
The courage to change the things I can (action)
And the wisdom to know the difference.
Only focus on what you have control over: yourself, your words, your actions. Let go of things you cannot change: your past, your ex, your qualifier, your painful traumas.
Learning the difference between what was my responsibility and what was not, has given me more peace in the world than any prayer of the Jesus variety. I’m a god man, not so much a Jesus, man. I would call myself a seeker. My favorite sister called herself, Anahita. She was given a Sikh name by Pir Va-light (spelling). I am more of a Rumi spiritual.
Learn the path of the beloved. I like the pronunciation be-love-éd. Rather than bé-loved. I am seeking god through the eyes of my beloved.
Last night when I held her for the first time since my self-inflicted blackout, I saw a sparkle in her eyes that appeared mystical. I had no “magic” on board. It was all love and light. I came with intention, gifts, and an hopeful heart. We were not good at just spending the afternoon together. It seemed to be a thing for her, so I sayed.
We hit a patch of black ice. She ghosted inside her own shell and accused me of being cruel and unpleasant.
“What are you doing? What were you showing me?”
“Nothing, John! I was doing nothing wrong.”
“You tried to correct me three times, on the Instagram post.”
“So what! Why is that a problem unless your triggered.”
Grr. She also bandies about the word “triggered” for me. It *never* applies to her. Never.
“And then it’s me with the problem?”
“Yes. There was no reason for you to get angry.”
“Can someone be frustrated at you, without it being the end of the world, end of the relationship?”
“I did nothing wrong.”
“So it was all me? Right?”
“Oh, now you’re going to turn it around to be about me. Well played. So easy, so quickly, from attacker to victim. I see how you do this. I’m not going to take the bait.”
“What am I doing?”
“Now you are blaming me. While you appear to be the one who wants to fight all the time.”
She lifted that idea from my earlier conversation. “I’m not sure why you want to get into a fight. Does it heighten the bond or something? It seems to send you into the void. You seem unreachable.”
Enough of that. I flew back in for one last checkin. The night before had been ecstatic. A new bar of intimate explorations that haunted me, aroused me, and reminded me of my own addictive traits, last night I couldn’t stop replaying the hot scenes.
Today, it’s cold. The power is still off here, but it’s fun. Saving money. New contract begins on Monday. Not sure I’ll be able to salvage my credit rating, but over the next 24-months I should be able to put things right with my own money. If things go as planned. Shit, things never go as planned.
Last night I brought gifts, and open heart, and some still heated and carbonated blood cells. I played all my cards: gifts, flowers, organic blueberries, and a new kind of underwear, that was styled a bit tighter and higher, more like wearing her underwear. The Boy X felt too tight. I didn’t venture the leapard stryped version until later in the afternoon when I was trying to reboot the mission. The mission to return to our best state: naked. It wasnt’ possible.
After her fracture she stormed around her own house. I reclined in her dayroom and discovered my own self-inflicted internet blackout. Fuck. The internet returned, the world was saved, the girl was lost. By 8:30 she had booted me from her bed and out of her house. All the while pointing the finger at me for causing the upset. Starting with the Instagram attack. Um… Let’s replay the tape. Here’s mine. Let’s see yours.
“We can’t talk about this, you’re too upset.”
“And you?”
“It’s not my problem. I’m not trying to cause a fight.”
“Okay.”
I learned not to fight her. Ever. I would not become passive. If she did something frustrating, I had to say something or become a less-than-man. I’m not going back into that roll for anyone or any future lover.
“What do you want, right now?” I asked.
She was apoplectic. I left.
When I went looking for her, she was gone. The lights were all off in the living, kitchen, and dining room. I wondered if she had driven away. I called her, but her phone was in the bedroom. I texted her.
“I am leaving you in peace. I will call you in the AM. I have tennis with John tomorrow afternoon.”
I heard the back door as I was closing her front door and getting in my car. Even before I had started the car, the front porch light went off. Nice move, woman. Then the living room lights came on. I guess she was preparing her night watching tv or reading “Attached.” She should actually read it, not just skim and share the Instagram posts about “attachment theory.”
I’m what they call a “secure.” There is an entire chapter about how to heal your trauma so you can bond with a secure, and become more of a secure yourself.
She always liked to point the finger at me, my trauma, and my avoidant behaviors.
“When you leave me…”
“Yeah, I’m not leaving you, I’m going home.”
“When you leave me,are you just needing alone time? There are better ways.”
“It’s not alone time. I can tell you, from my own heart, I have not once longed for “alone time” since we’ve been together. So, that’s not my truth.”
“What is it that causes you to leave me?”
“This.”
“What? It’s my fault?”
“I don’t court discord in my life. I cut it out of my life. I curate a peaceful and loving space for myself. I have mindfulness ideas, meditation, movement, and writing. I am not seeking alone time. I am seeking you. Seeking our connection.”
“You say all those amazingly sweet things in the afternoon, then at night, now, you erase all of it by getting upset with me.”
“How am I erasing my loving statements and behaviors?”
“It always leads to this.” She was heated now, and defiant.
“What is this?” I opened my arms to the room.
I was still in her bed. I did not “leave.” I was also not trapped. Wifi and power were available in many places. My bed and cats were happy for my return. The return on this investment had now paid off. It was time to sell and recoup my time. It was both a win and a loss.
Mainly a loss. A foreshadowing of my next lover. All of that, this, and a pain body that was free of the demons of the past and fright about the future.
“You are always leaving.”
“So, let me ask you a question. In the 44 times I’ve left you, like really left you for good. What am I doing here, ten weeks in. What am I doing here, now?”
“I don’t know. Is it just the sex?”
**infinity symbol**
here is the cloud pilots exploration of this chapter
> back to index: proofs of life
Look >> There’s a new Facebook Group on *hyperfiction*
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