Another dream of Steve

 Steve, last night I dreamt we were at a work conference. You stood near me, and at some point put your arm around me, and it was nice. You made me feel secure. It was friendly, not more, but I felt so secure next to you, so sure. 

We didn't mind anyone seeing us together. 

You were younger, like when I met you, the first years--not how you looked after your bad year, your rough times. You were healthy. 

We were sorting out where to spend the night and it was clear we'd spend it together, and that felt ok. Very ok. Natural. Not a sexual excitement, but secure and sure. 

Was this kicked off by your son's Father's Day post, seeing photos of you? Maybe. Or by yesterday's reveal by my partner (or, "partner"?) which got me thinking about security and reality and love? Maybe. I should have reached out, asked more questions, spent more time. Honestly, you shouldn't have fucking died before we could talk more. I might be kind of mad about that, at both of us. 

Is it weird that I miss you? The imagined can be better than the real, I guess. 

For Steve

Last night, I saw the news that Steve had died. It came as a shock, crushing news at an already somewhat fragile time for me. I had just wished him happy birthday the previous day. He hadn’t responded, but that wasn’t unusual, though he also hadn’t responded to my Christmas message which I did find a little strange. We could go for long periods of time out of touch before reconnecting and sending long missives back and forth for a couple of days before drifting apart again.

He was a gruff old farmer, a punk rock musician, an amazing single dad, a fierce advocate of farmland and small business and integrity, a tractor fixer-upper. He was a friend.

I first met him when I was a member of his CSA, when my now-huge firstborn child was a squishy little newborn who nearly fell out of the sling I wore him in, into a bin of zucchini when I was picking up my weekly farm share. Steve was gruff and funny and kind and he pulled no punches. He was fair, and he was ornery as fuck about topics he was passionate about.

We got closer in the aftermath of what I will refer to as his Very Bad Year, when he shared with me the heartache and truth behind the headlines. I believed in him, and I advocated for him, though it was hard for him to regain his market footing after that.

We last spoke in October; we had some good conversations last fall, and I felt as close as ever to him and kept meaning to go see his new place in western Massachusetts, though we weren’t the type to visit each other. The last time I saw him, he was coming through town on a scrap pickup mission, and we sat on my front steps talking, and laughing--when he got back into his truck, I was nearly doubled over at one of his typical hilariously crude jokes (about religion and sex, if you must know). Honestly, we had a longtime joking flirtation thing going on, a light running joke that we’d probably end up together in the end, when we were old and scraggy and no one else could tolerate us (and do NOT come at me about how this was unfair to any of my past lovers/boyfriends/partners--this was always in the realm of somewhere between a joke and a dream, not a plan and not reality, just our running joke).

He'd asked me more than once to help him write and edit his memoirs, and we'd talk about it, and he'd tell me some gems from his very colorful life, and we'd veer off onto the details of whatever situation he'd just told me about, and we never did make a plan to get that all down on paper.

There's been too much loss recently, and this one really hurts, because unlike heartbreak it can’t be talked through, most of the gravel picked out of the wound until it can heal into some level of closure and loving friendship. This is fucking unexpected and permanent with too much left unsaid that will have to forever remain unsaid--certainly not unrequited love, not at all, but a longtime mutual something, I don’t know what.

Rest in peace, Steve. I wasn’t done talking with you and I can’t believe you’re gone.

Ice Walk

 The big cat and I stare into each other's eyes, matching pain. His pupils are huge; mine are probably normal-sized, but that doesn't mean I'm not hurting. 

He's just in physical pain: bladder, urethra. Male-cat stuff. Me, ulcer stuff. But I also feel bruised all over, a virtual black eye, figurative lip split and metaphorical bruised cheek. That was Monday. After last night, I feel shredded as well. 

Tired, bruised, shredded, and I can't even fucking drink coffee or go for a run, because my stomach is so inflamed. 

-----

I don't exactly know how I got here, why I'm still here. I keep resetting the goalposts, moving my own boundaries. It's insidious; that's the problem. And every incident slips me further into the crevasse, just small slips, the occasional bigger drop, but certainly nothing dramatic. Little tinkling of ice shards showering down but I'm still holding, right? 

When I look back, I can't explain it. I can't see the turning point. I know his mental state is so much worse than I had realized, and it gets darker and darker. He revels in it. His self-pity can be outsized. His inability to look beyond this very moment is frustrating. His escalating tornadoes of pure darkness are bigger and bigger; they make me cry now, even if all the debris isn't raining down on me personally. I don't even want to be near it. I don't want to see it, or hear it, or stare it as it grows and grows, spiraling out of control. 

I used to be able to help redirect him. To help him shift out of the dark places and grab the rope to get back into the light. He would remind himself of various recovery aphorisms; he clung to them like a life buoy at times, no matter how fatuous they could sound, and he'd quickly pull himself back onto solid ground. 

But now he keeps walking out across the ice, slipping down into the crevasse and then complaining he's freezing and stuck and doing nothing to save himself, just shaking his fist and yelling, "See? See?!?" as if it's anyone's fault but his that he's there in the first place. 

-----

I give the big cat his pills; he's feeling well enough this morning to resist, which is promising. It takes me three tries to get the second pill into him. As for me, I've done all the things I'm supposed to, mostly, before drinking coffee: Prilosec, a banana, some time. I grimace at the pain, but I'm hoping the GI doc will have some better answers for me later instead of just "Don't drink coffee; don't run."

Avoiding these things that used to make me feel good but are apparently bad for me is not something one complains about to an addict in recovery, sliding on the edge of relapse, though that person understands better than anything how much it fucking sucks to have to avoid things that temporarily make you feel good even when they're bad for you. Life isn't even worth living, he's said. I'm just in pain all the time without them. 

I believe him. I have no advice except to kick in your crampons, fall on your ice ax if you need to—use your tools, use your skills. You don't need to slide off the edge. And I can't stay roped up to you if you keep endangering us both. 

1-29-25

Override

"Don't listen to your gut," my therapist tells me. "Listen to his words and accept them."

She's not really a therapist, more a coach who works for some app my employer gave us access to as a benefit—12 coaching sessions per year, for professional or personal use. I grabbed the chance for free therapy earlier this year when shit went sideways.

"But I did that already," I remind her. "I didn't trust my gut all summer, and you know what happened."

"Yes, well, give it a chance," she says. "It's different now. And if your gut tells you something, just put that aside and maybe in a month take a look and see if you notice a pattern."

Lady. Come on. 

I've been trying to do this, to trust the words and not my gut feeling. 

IT IS NOT EASY. I feel like I'm gaslighting myself—convincing myself that what I know is real is not. 

Friends have mixed takes on this approach. I listen to their perspectives. 

It is not, in some respects, a terrible approach: When my gut clenches up, I sit with it, think about it, give it time. And this is mostly serving me well, to be honest, but there are a couple of things that nag at me, dissonance that steps out of the rest of the flow and catches me later. Things that, frankly, don't add up. Is it a different perspective on details and timeframe, or are indeed some things missing or twisted? 

I don't want to always interrogate, which is how I come across. But I'd feel more secure with these loose bits in place. 

What we need is to find the line between my need for neat organization of facts and his need for...not sharing? Not being quizzed? Between my need for—let's just say it—honesty and his need for...the caginess a friend warned is unavoidable for him, the shapeshifting of truth, an essential need to lie so common with addicts. 

Again and again, the warning lights come on and I ignore them, like the lights flashing across the dashboard of my ten-year-old Subaru. Sometimes when I restart the car, they're gone, and I'm calmer. 

The red and yellow words and symbols don't always mean the engine's about to blow; sometimes the sensor is tweaky. 

Right? 

I'm back.

 sometime early 2024

Hello. 

It's high time for a new blog. I know the glory days of blogging are over, the side lists of "blogs I follow," the online parties, the keeping up with each other or being discovered by new readers.

The need for privacy, the changes brought by social media, the risks of discovery, the need for anonymity. 

And yet. 

Journaling isn't the same; there's something about blogging that's like writing a letter to someone, a very personal letter, yet you don't have to make eye contact while doing it. 

So I am back, kicking my way through the risks, draping those around me with sheets and shadows, knowing so keenly the need to protect those I love. I'll protect them as fully as I can. 

But I need to write.

Run

August 3, 2024

I don’t know what to say about this run except that I didn’t enjoy it, I had more spiders on me than I prefer, everything was horribly overgrown, I got very sick of plants touching me, and it was unscenic and very buggy.

—————————

I found myself annoyed that I was not instead mountain biking with my group up at Yudicky and then spending the rest of the weekend lounging with M. Or spending the weekend at 24HoGG. Hell, taking care of some overdue yardwork at my house. Basically, anything but this obligatory long run.

I was mad at myself for signing up for a fall 100 instead of, as I had sworn I would last year, having a chill summer and fall with no serious training plan and a lot more time on my mountain bike.

Here is where it gets ironic, if irony is a good swift kick in the teeth just after you turn your attitude around: I started feeling good about this run, happy to get to know this section of the trail, confident in my abilities, wryly amused that I had gotten so turned around in this dreadful clearcut area that I found myself going the wrong way on the trail, meaning I had to go back through the awful clearcut, and it would be that much longer until I got back to my car.

Of course that’s when I stumbled in a weird way—basically a stick came up and caught my shoe as my leg was moving forward going downhill, so it kind of forced my leg to twist and shock of electric pain went down the back of my leg.

Running wasn’t really an option after that. I’m pretty sure my SI joint is about as badly torqued/rotated as it has ever been. 

I hitchhiked back to my car, getting picked up first by an older woman whose car was full of used ashtrays and counterculture and magic, with a Pomeranian in the backseat. She was going straight and I needed to turn so she dropped me off.

I limped down the road and then another car stopped, a couple. The woman was a runner and recognized that I must be an injured runner. I sat in the back with, somehow, another Pomeranian (??) on my lap. Does everyone around here have a Pomeranian? Do only Pomeranian owners pick up hitchhikers around here? 

Anyway, I guess the run really ended at mile 16 because after that I was just limping until I got picked up.

A Flashback to Christmas Night

 July 9, 2024

I'm talking to my kids about visiting my father, whether we should fly or drive. It's about the same travel time, door to door, unless you hit delays, like the I visited on Christmas night, solo, and there were no rental—

**********

—oh, shit, yeah. That's when I was texting M, when I was on the shuttle to the car rental place at BWI, and I told him that when he just vanished, it really hurt and I was sick of it. And he apologized, and maybe I declared something or was just being really open and honest about it, and I was crying, because this was the third? fourth? time he'd just been there and then been GONE, unresponsive, over the past few years and dammit, I hated it.

As recent as Christmas. 

**********

I pulled myself together and walked up to the car rental desk; I'd reserved a car. It was Christmas night, and I'd handed my kids over to their father earlier, after a rushed Christmas morning, and driven to the airport; my lover and his family would be dropping off their son later that day and he (my lover, tall and sweet) was going to drive my car home for me. 

It was 8 p.m., and I was on my way to visit my father, who in some ways died years ago—dementia, and I was dreading it but also feeling guilty for dreading it—you know how it is with aging parents, the guilt/love/obligation/dread one big tangled ball rolling around your feet threatening to trip you at every step, and I still had a 2-hour drive once I picked up the car. 

The man at the rental booth—older, Black, with a neutral but not unkind face—told me they were out of cars and wouldn't have any available for at least 4 hours, and as I had not actually entirely pulled myself together from the text exchange with M, I could feel myself coming undone. 

"It's not you—I need a minute," I gasped out, and he nodded, and I stepped away as I started sobbing, or I started sobbing as I stepped away, but in any case Mr. Car Rental Desk was exposed to my outsize reaction to his statement. 

I went around the corner, cried and cried and cried, washed my face in the bathroom, and got back in line. 

"Sorry, that wasn't about this. So, I had a car reserved, and you're telling me there are none available?"

It doesn't matter how that resolved—I did, eventually, end up with a sweet Tacoma pickup truck with all the modern features, and I visited my father, and I got home again, with my lover picking me up at the airport—but what I was thinking of now, with my children already moved on from the trip-planning, was that Christmas night car-rental-shuttle text exchange with M. 

**********

What had I said? When had I started feeling empowered enough to tell him he caused me pain? 

The kids returned to their video games and I went for a walk, scrolling through my texts with M—so very many texts, so mundane but necessary—to find that Christmas exchange. 

So much scrolling, only to find that our texts began in March. I'd deleted the previous ones, as I'd often done in the past out of frustration with him, with us, with the us that would never be but I so wanted. Not in my deleted texts, either. Just gone. 

**********

Curious this morning, I find the texts on my laptop, after much scrolling, and I also see the absence of texts, the excuses about missed meetups to run, the confessions of relapses. I'm feeling sick now. 

He was so different as recent as 6 months ago. I never thought I would save him, but I didn't think I'd be too close to see the changes. 

Oh, M.