(no subject)

[kingtycoon]

The snow's been relentless & that's just the way things go — all the things you might do take that additional effort & just living becomes challenging — as in, the sky itself is challenging you to exist.  Day by day — the living ain't easy.  So you settle into the easiest versions of the things you do & are.  I should really work on a book.  I don't know if I'm going to make anymore this year.  I mean — I have it in my plans.  But this is an uncertain moment where death & failure seem just at the edge of all the things you might do.  I sell a hardcover book here and there — when I remember to check my sales I'm always pleasantly surprised anymore.  Hey, thanks for buying a book!  I hope it helps you.  But I got ideas, and no will to execute them.  The couch & the easy time are what you settle into, the bare minimum.  Wake, go to work, go home, eat & sleep.  

It's pretty maddening though - there's a reason you end up with some despair.  And my job is... my job.  This place keeps trying to persuade me that it's more than what it is, that it's a track toward something more or better.  But it's just a job, 8-5, keeps food on the table & the lights on.  I don't let it get to me, it's not important.  Not in the hierarchy of the things worth caring about.  

Of course that list needs some help, encouraging.  

User Aslant was on me about telling the tale of my latest-fated relationship.  I don't know what there is to say.  Let's see-  toward the end of summer she mentioned that she'd been looking at flights — that's what she does, she loves traveling — and found discount fares from CLE to CHI and I should do it, and fly.  Now, I don't mind flying but round trip that journey keeps on going for >$500 — vs. the $50 round trip bus trip.  And I love buses.  Everyone knows this.  But under $200 my ears perk up and I think of flying.  So I do it, go to the airport and the flight is... cancelled — a storm in another town, the plane never made it to Cleveland.  Delayed till tomorrow.  We're on the phone & it's tense & sad but we're consoling each other.  I go back to the airport in the early morning.  This flight's connection (because it's not direct, it goes to Detroit?  or maybe Minneapolis first — anyhow that connected flight is delayed interminably — so again, cancelled flight.  I get about half my money back and have a lot of angry conversations with people at the plane company.  I hate them all.  I get home from this fiasco around noon when she returns my calls — I mean, it's been a long morning — started at 4:00 — ends with her really sad and me really mad (not at her, you know) and she's after me to rent a car & spend the night just a little.  I bow out — I know when a journey is cursed.  I don't know what to say.  But in my heart I'm a bit grouchy — from being thwarted.  I think — You know, you could come here once in a while.  This is a thorn that settles in my heart & begins to fester.  

Some days later I've had yet worse shocks — problems in my life about my family.  I maybe was shaken — about the airplane, and then there were these other shattering things that came up, and then...  I called her up and she was having her own bad time — she intermittently goes through a more arduous leg of her neverending divorce and in those instances she does become what you can say without risk of misogyny - hysterical — as in relentless repetition of the same statements, audible rocking & a lot of shouting, incoherent shouting.  It's a crying shame that she's in that spot.  She's very regretful about it too — so that's that.  But I was really, really low & I reached out and I got it, there's no room in someone's life for your own sorrows.  So the thorn goes a little deeper and she's a little more distant from my focus.  

Next up she's not available to go on a little trip I have, doesn't want to.  So after that I let it go, a lot.  Forget to call, go on some other dates.  That type of thing.  Somewhere in the midst of this fighting sulk she turned 40.  When I put it together that that had happened — that I'd missed her birthday (though she refused the paltry trip I'd arranged for us for that purpose) — I realized that there's really no coming back from that.

Anymore I miss going to chicago.  I miss her — we talk a little.  About the same things, her neverending divorce, her child's problems, her inability to find a decent job or boyfriend.  Samey things.  Once in a while it goes back to real-talk and missing & love but just as often that's avoided.  

So I don't know.  It seemed like it would go one way & was going one way &?  I put it on me, mostly — the missing the 40th — unforgivable, you know — you don't come back from that — but she'd been noncommittal, avoidant.  

I speculate that there's something about me — about the way that I have or experience love that is off-putting in the end.  I've never been in love that I haven't been finally rejected from — have I?  Maybe not at one point, but lately- that's how it goes.  Earnest & devoted & really invested & then — I get refused — or put off, anyhow, you can tell when it's going against you and that's how the thorn comes to be.  

But it'd be nice to have a trip to her to look forward to.  But it's probably better having all those trips to look back upon fondly instead.  

Comments

[aslant.livejournal.com]

Thanks for telling the story. That’s rough times. Whatever else may have been going on, it sucks that you felt there wasn’t room for your pain in her life — sounds a little one-sided in that regard. You did the traveling and the emotional heavy lifting. The birthday was just the final straw, sounds like. The death rattle? Idk.

Having been through my own long distance relationship once upon a time (though without custody agreements in the mix), I’m bothered that only one of you was doing the traveling. Especially since you are the King of Cleveland, if I recall correctly. She missed out on a golden opportunity to see the city as curated through you! I am an unrepentant egotist about my LJ friends so naturally I’m offended she didn’t think that was worth traveling for. But also it sounds like no matter what was going on, you both had good reason for being in your respective cities? There’s something to be said for that. It wasn’t some arbitrary angsty decision, to move or not to move. When kids are involved it’s like, okay yeah, probably don’t move them around.

[kingtycoon.livejournal.com]

Obviously you are wonderful. I have to speak up for her a little here. First - she lived in CLE with me at one point, so she knows full well what I'm about here. Her attitude was... Well, she presents as fragile, a lot. So the journey across Indiana - was too hard. I can't say it's very nice, but whatever, she's got a car... blahblah. My house is too small, it's claustrophobic, it's too hard being in CLE where some stuff happened, and so on and on. My experience is that she's got a situation where she needs to have a rationale for her preferences - which I find to be sort of idiosyncratic & funny - but probably alienates others. Anyhow- putting on a show of how these things upset & damage her, and factually being in a rough spot...

I mean - you know me, I like to DO THINGS. So when someone seems like they're in trouble there's a lot to DO. It's good for me in a relationship to have something to DO for the other person because without that - I mean, let's be left to our own devices? What's the use if there's not something to DO.

(Terrible at relationships, still).

I have 3 years. Soon. I have 3 years to kill in this town and then I need to find something else to do somewhere else. I gotta go. And really -
I should probably start thinking of a plan. Chicago was in my sights - and might be again. Probably I'd err on the side of warmth though.