He walks in the front door, greets his dog, and throws his keys on the counter. He stares at them contemptuously for a long minute, for in his weaker moments they taunt him with the idea that he could just up and leave now. Start the truck, drive to the airport, whip out a credit card and be off… simple as that. Patience isn’t something he’s ever had enough of and this time is killing him slowly.
4 beers and 5 hours later he is hanging up the phone after another depressingly melancholic phone conversation with his wife. They were both sobbing openly by the end and agreed that it would be best if they’d ended it there. They both knew that the sobbing wouldn’t stop by hanging up the phone though.
He mildly drunkenly gets into the shower, in the dark, and unleashes a torrent of invective at the Universe for putting him so far away from where he belongs. His roommate is gone for the night so he’s left the bathroom door open and is soon yelling quite forcefully at no one and nothing in particular, though his dog retreats to the corner of the living room.
“I can’t do this” is such a simple statement. It lends itself to the defeatist whims of those with weaker constitutions but, when shouted at the top of his lungs that night, it is the answer to an unspoken challenge. Drunk, wet, and naked, he stumbles around in the dark, working on a plan. If he can’t do this, then he must do something else. Another simple statement.
After arriving at work the next morning, hanging up from yet another brutally painful, missing-you-oh-god-missing-you-so-badly-it-hurts phone call, he thinks carefully about her words. She’d admitted that she’d had enough of his hemming and hawing, and she’s stretched just as thin as he is at being unable to be together. He tries to tell her that the decision has already been made, that it can’t be changed, and that it’s just madness that his keys taunt him so badly that he hides them sometimes.
His options are simple as well, his mother explains to him very objectively at lunch: Wait yet another month and suffer, drinking away his nights, unproductively wiling away his days, continuing to lose weight and possessions, painfully putting up with random bouts of tears that simply refuse to stop and a hole in his middle, and being completely worthless emotionally to those that are closest to him…
Or say “Fuck it. I’m going.”
He wasn’t sure it was possible, given the bureaucratic obstacles as well as the financial stumbling blocks that he was so painstakingly removing, so he didn’t tell his wife straight away. He wanted to know for sure before he got anybody too excited. Despite his best intentions, he told her anyway, and their combined excitement was palpable. The tears were stopped, for now, and in their place was this beautiful possibility.
Then, it all started coming together. Then, it all was together. He and his wife continually quieted their inner-voices of “it’s only two weeks earlier, what’s the difference?” because those voices simply don’t understand that the difference is control.
Would you suffer through a month of Winter when you had the power to have Spring two weeks earlier?
$100 to change the ticket, and I’m not going to be able to go to Montana one last time, but this situation became very clear over Szechuan and tea the other day… I am simply Not Me right now. For as much as I owe certain people a good-bye, I also owe them to not be the depression-laden wraith that I am without her. I’m aware of how fucked-up I am right now as well as why, and I know the only thing that can change that.
I’m going home on August 17th and 10 days is still way too goddam long of a wait.
I’m bringing her back with me in December, to introduce her to my entire life here, my friends, my family, my old home. For those that I won’t see until then, you know I’ll miss you, but keep in mind that I’m preserving what’s left of my sanity for not just my sake, but for yours as well. I think it’s safe to say that nobody likes it when I get violently drunk, sob uncontrollably, and shit myself.
For my readership I’d like to apologize for the poopiness of this diary for the last few months, but I’m not going to. I really just wanted an excuse to use the word “poopiness.”
And by “readership” I mean “how can so many of you frickin clowns still read this shit every day when it wears its suckage like a pervert’s trenchcoat, only flashing it’s pecker to an assorted few?”
Smooches.