Ball and Chain
On Being the Lesser Half
We don’t spend time.
Nor do we travel. Eat the same foods or share playlists. Our friends have little carry-over. My in-laws don’t speak to me. He talks to my parents, whom I rarely communicate with, daily.
I only sleep at home.
He never leaves the house; this was the case even before COVID.
He is older. I'm the one dying.
If quizzed, he would be in a pinch to say what I ‘do’. In my perception, he doesn’t accomplish squat.
He’ll never read my writing and I can’t remember the last time I bothered to look at his sketches.
He is not funny, not at all, but Lord, he cracks me up. And has a notebook of all the wack shit I say.
There is a good deal of disconnect over what I ‘think’ he means, vs the thoughtless comments I make.
Cut to last night where I was met with a familiar nightmare of how to manage, not emotionally cope, but base-level manage in a World absent of Robert. The terror is broken by my knee-jerk, nightly complaint: “Roll over, baby.”
“What?”
“You’re snoring.” (In truth, grunting, but so be it.)
Annoyed (i.e., my baseline domestic emotion, second only to panic, followed swiftly by fatigue), I return to sleep, forgetting, or nearly so, the relief that came before the correction that I was just ‘not alone’, but together with him in particular.
I have been writing a good deal about my domestic self, impliedly/explicitly. Not so culturally unusual, huh? I mean ... history is most certainly on my side. Speaking of ‘norms’, navel staring and self-focus, what is it with commitments?
A good deal of life is geared towards such allegiances. The word itself has no morality, and yet runs in line with those that do – examples being: loyalty, discipline, character, integrity, and ethics. Funny, as none of those traits has an actual thing to do with commitment, per se. One could be “loyal” to one’s inclination or have the character of adding and dropping practices as fancy strikes. Or what about the integrity to give up on a dead end? An ethical backbone to walking away if reason and want dictate.
But no, we don’t think that at all – we take on commitments, as is much the case with marriage, on convention, tradition, laziness, ease, acceptance, romance, real estate, fertility, and other convenient interests. Matrimony is part of a bigger and individualized picture a body takes on with a body or more for the aspired interests either that, we hope, don’t spoil when united. In that, there is a good deal of conceit. I think of it as a measuring. What Tracy wants in totality vs what she gets this afternoon. The health of Robert’s (a/k/a Mr. Bullock) hopes and actuality in comparison to his disappointments.
This appears, at least from my vantage point, a lot easier for him than I. I bemoan, as I am here, the losses; I many times have too much difficulty reasoning around what often feel meager wins. My life prior to my present partnership is a dense volume. More like a serial or rag, really. Embellished, terrifying, hilarious, sad, and cringe-worthy. Robert’s, though much of the details I know not, it also fantastically speckled. And yet, perhaps it is the age gap between us, he seems much more at peace with the history staying as such. I peddle back into memory and could’ve-beens. The bars! Dancefloors! Outfits! People and places, faces and laughter. Tears and time to myself. How I might decorate without his shit all over the wall or trivia I could happily forget or not know had we not met.
Cruel fantasy. Big fat lie. Well, not “lie” but fidgetly pipedreams I, as the signature entrepreneur, would have chosen if I actually … well wanted to. Any more at least...
This is no argument for settling. No, it is a mark upon the idea of reason and the importance of honesty. Reason, in that we have only so much life and even less energy. Privilege and boredom too often outweigh the rational knowledge and enlightenment there is to ability. Rather than actually farm the field or connection before us, or me if you like, there is a habit that much of societal distraction and dialogues allows shooting for what is NOT thus far present. We aim to DIY dinner or mend a sock, but more often there is a practice of and encouragement of seeking for what might be. An ‘opportunity’ that some entity simply messed up based upon presumptions and unrealities.
“You are not having enough sex” is the title of an article I have read enough times to have forgotten. Or try this one: “My partner does not listen”. You ‘dig’ me? These things may be true, how would I know? See, my ass is too busy Googling all about the sex that ‘should’ be vs fucking as the fucking is fucked at present.
I take on and encourage this ‘inventory’ approach with clients frustrated with a fallen routine or some other something that does not seem to be coming together. There is no accurate data in a complaint analysis. Once the ‘ugh’s hit, the learning ceases. Madness and not working is WONDERFUL. Strong reactions are great indicators that the richest information is at hand.
