Category: Through the Looking Glass

Woke up cold today. Not physical, internal/emotional. No real response to anything. Thoughts or mails that generally bring response, smiles and warmth, stir nothing in me. Equally absent are anger, hurt; passion itself, no matter the passion, has left. Even the internal conflict that was chewing at me so badly last night, the stress and nerves, gone.

I don’t know why. I have the vague feeling I should want to cry, but I don’t want to. A vague emptiness, poking the socket where a tooth once was. Maybe the internal conflict pulled me too far, and I shut down? Perhaps it was too much stress, too many nerves at once, and a failsafe triggered?

Maybe I need some physical contact, a real expression that someone cares.

Maybe I’m just tired.

Maybe I just need to talk.

I admit, it’s been a long week, and it’s only Thursday. Work has been relatively quiet, so I’ve had time to continue nursing some of the doubts (mostly of self) that came up in weekend conversations.

I haven’t really had a chance to talk much with Jenna about the breakup with Mars. It’s something we always danced around a bit, but rarely directly mentioned. When we did, it was always in terms of how it affected me, never why it happened.

We started to cover why it happened over the weekend. It was a lovely drive, out towards Portage Bay. Appropriate, in a way – the only other time I’ve been to that bay and glacier, I was with her and Mars. Like I said, it was a really lovely day. The sky was a shifting pattern of clouds, occasionally rain would splash across the windshield. All the colours – the greens, browns, blues, and whites – they all looked punched out, like someone had used a colour enhancing filter on a grand photo of the north.

Somehow we got on the subject, and we drifted towards the whys. About how he changed, so quickly and dramatically. Of how I called her in the late summer/early fall, telling her I didn’t know who he was anymore. About all the balled up anger he carried inside of him – towards his family, himself, his work, and ultimately, me. How the end, the breakup, really wasn’t a surprise – how I had mentioned to Sachin a week beforehand that we were separating, and how everyone really just knew. That it wasn’t the breakup but the manner in which he did it that was so shocking.

We talked more about his interal anger, the conflicts that exist; – so passionately against big business and globalism, yet at the same time working for a company who practices both things, torn away from and towards his family, sexuality, and again, ultimately, me. Of loving what had been, not what was at the time.

And, I suppose, of my feeling the same way. Of being baffled by such a major, unexpected change – one that deviated so greatly from the path he and I had been on. Of being in love with the person I had married, not the person who existed at the time. Of wondering where he went, and why he didn’t take me with him. Wondering why he never planned a future with me in it, it was always about him and only him.

It was hard, listening to all of this. Hearing Jennas opinions, and my own given voice for the first time. Hearing where she thought the breakdowns were, and why. They’ve been haunting me a bit. She’s interested in seeing if my Swede and I end up fighting, the way Mars and I fought. I think that will be the biggest sign for her … not sure what it will be, for me.

We also spent a bit of time talking about the Swede. It’s different, she assured me over and over. I was acting different; happier, more relaxed and easy going, more self confidant and generally confidant. No scrambled panic to make sure things worked, just an unnerving assurance that things will.

We’ll see. I want her to be right. I’m talking to him at the moment, and if you were to ask me, I know it will be right. It’s just those times when I’m alone with my thoughts, when it’s quiet and still,…

And not in *that* way.

Ryan came over to talk to me, and started playing with my Galileo’s Thermometer (I’m just going to assume you all know what these are). He wanted to see if he could drive the temperature up by holding it – and then he hit on the brilliant idea of running off to the server room and using the air conditioner to drive the temperature down. So, we cheerfully ran off to play.

A few minutes later, we hear a pounding on the door. For some reason we both just looked at it rather quizically, kind of like “could that be for this room?” (You’ve to understand that the room is a *server* room – it’s noisier than any other place around here. Pack tons of servers into a small space and you get the idea.) The pounding gets louder, so Ryan yells “Knock knock?” More pounding. So, I lean over and open the door.

Two devs are standing there, looking from me to Ryan, turning bright red. They look at Ryan and start asking their question, avoiding me completely. I keep glancing at Ryan (he’s holding the thermometer, after all), and suddenly realize “OH GOD!” just about the same time Ryan must have… he leaned over, showed me the thermometer, then handed it to me. The two devs looked back at each other, back to Ryan and I, and exhaled, “Oooh. Neat, a Galileo’s Thermometer – did it work?”

Sigh. How’s that for kickstarting the rumour mill?

I’m eating animal crackers. I just came across a cat and a moose animal cracker, merged together, baked together, in oh so suggestive a manner. One wonders; if I eat these crackers, am I joining their sex life? Does eating them literally transcend to figuratively? Am I disrupting them? What happens if moose are like dogs, swelling and engorging to the point of being inseperable, and then I bite them in half? Then again, I am biting them in half – does that make me the ultimate expression of Puritan thought, then? Disrupting this happy couple because it’s not what I want?

Then again, I could just eat the damned things.

It’s the little things that wear at you, like pebbles down a mountainside. It’s not one thing all at once that makes you curl and whimper and need to be alone, but tiny persistant nibblings that eat away at your foundation and strength. When you collapse and crumble there is nothing to do but rest a bit, and then rebuild. What else can you do? Stop? Stopping is not an option, not again, not yet. Hand over hand you pull yourself back up, and hope that you occasionally get another, extra helping hand.

Some people, I’ve heard it say, have a complete separate extra support in another person, and I wonder how this would be – not being able to completely crumble and fall. Is it less lonely, or is there something to be said and had for only relying on yourself?