A Meditation on Burning
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I did it again.
I ruined another relationship.
I keep doing it, by virtue of unrealistic expectations. Or maybe just fear. My fear. I’m afraid of commitment, I guess.
Or, maybe, I’m just not a very good person. This is probably closer to the truth.
I’m erratic. I swing from stability to insecurity in a matter of milliseconds.
I’ve been feeling neglected. She even brought it up a few weeks back, saying in a sickly sweet voice: I’ve been neglecting my baby . . . .
I said: no, of course not, but secretly, I agreed.
If you ask me to trust my intuitions, I will say this:
She’s right — she has been neglecting me, sending nothing more than a platitude in the morning, nothing all day while she works, and then a few more platitudes in the evening before bed.
My intuition says this was a planned retreat.
My intuition says she wanted out.
Nobody wants to be the bad guy. Nobody wants to be the cause of a relationship’s demise.
It’s much easier to be the good guy, the one with the legitimate grievance.
It’s better to be less at fault.
If you pull back far enough, the other party has no option but to bail out.
I’ve brought it up many times. I thought I was being mature. I thought I was doing the right thing.
Me: “Hey, you don’t have much for me. What’s going on?”
She: “Oh, I’m just busy at work.”
Me: “Hey, I’d like to be more connected . . . .”
She: “Oh, I’m just scattered. It’s my ADHD.”
Me: “Hey, I don’t like this distance between us . . . .”
She: “Oh, I’m busy at work.”
I think — I’m busy at work — is shorthand for a brushoff. It means: I don’t have time for you (I have lunch duty).
It doesn’t matter. It really doesn’t.
It doesn’t matter who’s at fault.
It just matters that it’s over. Again.
Another one over again.
An endless stream of starts and stops, lurching forward and back, forward and back, always ending in the exact same place: alone.
Alone is this vast universe with trillions of stars. Alone in this vast globe of 8 billion people. Alone in this enormous sea of consciousness because I guess I just can’t fit in.
A square person in a round life.
And that makes me think of hope and hopelessness, more beginnings with matching endings, until one of those endings ends up six feet underground.
That’s the sum of it.
I did it again.
Round and round.
