Relaps

I find myself here again. Here again. Again. Why? It would seem, to any reasonable, logical person, that of which I often claim to be, that time heals all wounds. A man smarter than I once said that you know; and clichés are supposed to be true right? If it weren’t my sad, pathetic excuse for a nostalgic love-life it might be funny really. A smell, a song, a road I haven’t driven on in a while brings me right back to years and years ago when pain was my only link—my only safety tether secured by a cheap 39 cent plastic carabineer—to her. And now it seems so stupid, so 7th grade, so tight-jeans-and-eyeliner of me to still be writing, thinking, shit basically a whole album worth of music was released in tribute to what turned out to be one self-centered User. Am I over it? Am I over her? Ya. I’ve moved on (more convincing myself). I’ve dated lots of other women. I allow myself the possibility every day to be awestruck by a member of a gender that experience has shown me to not always be the nicest when playing the cat’s cradle heartstring edition. And yet, here I is. This time it was a park. A place we used to frequent.


As I drove around the windy parking lot slowing frequently for the plethora of unnecessary speed bumps listening to a radio station whose name hits a little too close to home for my comfort on this day a song I used to know comes through my speakers. It was a song from a band we used to listen to, the words to which seemed to stream through my brain and out my mouth at the very instant they were sung…no verse remembered but to the moment it was to resonate through my car. The sounds mixed with the sight of that old park mixed with the highlight reel of our time together now playing in my head causes a golf ball-sized knot to form just below where I would imagine my stomach is. A smile flashes across my face as a fleeting happy memory hightails it from one ear clear through to the other and…and…now it’s got me. After four some-odd years of relative ‘sobriety’ I relapse. I’m told from AA that it’s “part of the process” and yet that offers me little consolation on my drive home.

I am now basking in it, figuring I might as well enjoy the misery while it lasts; it is, after all, the only connection I have left. A friend pointed out recently that I hold on to loathing her very existence as a way of keeping the connection open and the ‘relationship’ alive. I disagreed on principle at the time, but he’s probably right, as usual, always right, I hate him. And now I'm back to that ever-familiar feeling of almost-nausea I have come to associate with love. Optimism is such the ignorant man’s sport, the luxury of those who are already happy. Ha. That’s not even a little bit true. I’ve seen the impoverished happier than the wealthy more times than I can count. Yet it’s still hard to tell myself that my time will come when there really is no proof of that at all. Statistically most people get married and at least claim to be in love at the time so I guess, looking at the numbers, there is hope. But any statistician will tell you that one cannot extrapolate a statistic to an individual case, of which I am. So I'm back to realism…which is simply cynicism in disguise (and not a very good one either). And nothing seems to help. One would assume that venting it would help. Or maybe suppressing it. Maybe just a fake-it-‘til-you-make-it method will do the trick. Sorry folks, no such luck. I've tied them all. It’s just a waiting game now, now, now on this ridiculously long drive home, which seems much longer than the drive there, I find myself sitting in my car, engine idling, behind a grocery store where once-upon-a-time-ago we spray painted our initials in black and pink behind a dumpster. As I stare blankly at the faded lettering of our less-than delinquent youth wondering how I got there (and how frightening it is that I drove my car so absentmindedly as to not remember driving it) I am caught by the sharp sting of my best friend inside my head giving me a look of disapproval that could make a Jewish mother proud. Rubbing my bruised ego (which, oddly enough, is located on my left shoulder for some reason) I put my foot firmly on the gas and zoom-zoom off down the road allowing the roaring breeze from all the open windows to hit me square in the face, through my hair, and out the back of the car hopefully taking with it the stench of pathetic I accumulated over the last few minutes. As the electric guitars, base, and drums of the new rock n’ roll song I like fills my car there seems to be no room left in the cabin for nostalgia. I smile. I smile for real this time because I know I have survived an attack, not of panic but of reminiscence, and, though there will be more as I am not the strong shell I pretend to be, here’s to the thought that better days are still to come…how, with whom, and when are still sadly, irritatingly, tangibly yet to be seen.