I’ve got a theory about my theories.

I’m sick of them. Sick of all of it. AI, generative bullshit, language models, words, tokens. Blurg! Blort. Snorglesnatch?

My theory is I can only atone for my own transgressions. Celebrate my own wins. Leave others, enemies, lost lovers, friends who become ghosts… Leave that emotional vacuum behind. Move into the light of your new life. Start a project with new friends, new people, a new tribe. But definitely, start a project. As the last one ends, there can be depression, ennui, even anger, as our emotions come unthawed and we feel what we could not feel years ago, when the dark changes started happening.

In my second marriage, to the mother of my children, I gave all I could give. My soul poured out in labor to make more money for our lovely children in our lovely house in a lovely neighborhood. It was all so “white picket fence” and home-cooked meals, except…

Something wasn’t right. While the kids were in the early developmental stages, the family life was as blissful as I’ve ever been. Then it got hard. Then 9-11 made it all even harder. Today, complications in my ex-wife’s life are causing complications and handwringing for all of us.

“Don’t tell your dad,” is what I imagine her telling my daughter, the nurse, now by her side. What’s going on?

I am tired of my theories and my words. All this typing and ticking. All this promotional work. I just want to write. Be famous. And be loved. Amen. Easy, right? I’m not asking for much.

There’s a Pink Floyd line that keeps echoing in my mind. “There will be no strength in numbers, when the right one walks out the door.” I’m not clear on the idea of “right one,” but I do know I caught a glimpse of something magical and fierce. I lost it. We lost it. It was lost.

I spend so much time in my own thoughts, writing, polishing, publishing, writing, singing, writing, sleeping occasionally, drinking coffee, playing tennis, and doing some stuff I have to do to pay the bills. Writing for others. Words for hire. Not necessarily the “words that inspire” motto I have over my typewriter, that’s now a computer, that’s now a phone with ChatGPT. < That was a joke and a lie. It might have even been a warning. AI is not helping you.

It’s not helping with your relationship. It might help with your meeting notes and summarize emails. It even did a splendid job summarizing the emails that were piling in. Gemini did capture the essence of the breakup, and the language of the emails, as the timbre changed. As silence telescoped on in her mind (I was napping) it was like watching stages of grief. Denial. Sweet talk. Anger. Threats. Goodbye statements.

It might all take place before I even rejoined the conversation.

“I’m not ghosting you, I’m sleeping.”

Sleep, again, I can’t emphasise this enough. Sleep is the engine, the lubricant, that keeps my mind from seizing up, misfiring, or needing expensive repairs. I have dialed in my sleep protocol. A sleep tracking app on my Apple Watch over the years has shown my progress. My resting heart rate is way down, since I’ve lost a bit of weight. My ex-girlfriend says I didn’t snore much, or very loudly. I spend 85% of my sleep time at a 20% decreased heart rate. That’s good. It’s like my own internal combustion engine is having to do less work.

I’m fitter. I’m getting enough sleep. I have recently added some client work, so I’m not going to lose my house, my car, or my two cats, Sid and Hunter.

I’ve got theories about what could’ve made it work out between us. I have theories about my own culpability. And yet, I’m still doing it. Right? How can I stop? The books would be so lame without a love interest, without some romantic narrative and poetry. I don’t want to read a manual about building a healthy relationship. Hell, I want to write it with you, if you ever come up out of the web, spell, illusion you have fallen under. It’s not everyone else that’s making you unhappy. It’s you.

Not me. Not this book. Or the books before this one. Not about my love poems to women over the ages. Not my mention of crushes or sirens. None of this can be about you. It’s about me. I know very little about what’s going on up in your beautiful mind. The glitching has become unsustainable for me, for my health. I know you can’t see that now. I know. I do understand. Sort of. I’ve never been in your situation. I do have some experience with the other partners I’ve had since my divorce in 2010.

I have experience in being alone as an adult. I’ve made peace with my solitude. I am leaning into my own creativity not as an escape but as an expression of myself, my hyper-soul, what I will leave behind when I shuffle off the mortal coil I inhabit this time around.

What’s your song? What project can you initiate, dream, burn for?

The relationship is not a project I am interested in negotiating. Align or move on. Find your own wings and fly. If you want to come back to me, do. If you find something else you’re looking for, go for it.

We cannot be tethered to each other. It’s simply too soon. You’re too raw. And I don’t have the capacity or desire to navigate the demilitarized zones anymore. I’m out.

Until we can find a pace and comfort that helps us both feel connected, loved, and seen. What are you going to work on that you can share with me in a month? What’s your idea? How many hours do you want to put towards your ultimate human-crafted artifact? What are you spending time thinking about, mulling over, running through the traps of your mind and history?

Let’s find a reset. You do your dream. I’ll continue doing mine. We’ll meet up in the messy middle sometime in the future. Right? I mean, if you are my ONE, there is nothing you could do to fracture that. Well, that’s not true. If you wanted to burn the boats, kill the messenger, and seek higher ground before the loneliness floods in, I suppose you can do that. But, here’s my idea. Be well. Rock your world. Show up in all you do. Now, untethered as you are, in ways you have never been able to show up. Show up in your life. Show up in the lives around you.

And find your reasons, beyond the obvious ones, for why an evening with me is a different kind of gold star. Many people can give you attention, empathy, and even gold stars. But there is a difference. When I am attached, there is only one person I hunger for.

Now that we’ve ended as lovers, let’s chart a course to what’s next in our own lives. I am not leaving or disappearing. I am also no longer willing to fight about my writing. I fight with myself, my own inner demons, and the world at large. I will not fight with my lover about my words. The time for that has passed.

What’s next is TBD.

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