Saturday
Oct292005
Is Perth a Floodplain? It Is NOW.
Saturday, October 29, 2005 at 11:06PM
Overview Post, Wednesday, October 26
I thought that I was well-equipped to withstand being in Australia - being in Matt's city. What I didn't factor in, or I guess it's more fitting to say, what I didn't fully understand - is what it would feel like to spend my time with his friends.
That's not to say I don't like his friends - all of them were lovely. It's not to say that I wished I hadn't been with them, that was wonderful as well. It's the sudden shock of being in the middle of a tight group of 10 or 12 friends and being introduced as Fitzi's ex-girlfriend. It's the ongoing after-shocks, like little earthquakes, of fear and pain everytime someone tells a story or the phone rings and he's on it.
Yet, there really in all honesty is no other way it could have gone. People require a frame of reference and to Matt's friends - that's the one. I had already limited their contact with him just by being there and I'm not so sure that was even something I should have done.
I know that I consider Tim and Yeti to be my friends and that I always will and it is just simple circumstance that makes them a part of both of our lives in a way that's delicate. At least, I imagine it must be for them, Yeti more so than Tim. They, as well as I, have to find a way that it's okay for all of us.
I do know that I'm not as indifferent as I thought. I'm angry with Matt for leaving, I envy their lifestyle and their ties with each other, I'm ashamed of myself for being so weak as to miss him still so much. I'm hurt that he refused to see me as I refused to see him. Part of me wants to run him over and the other part wants to wrap my arms around his ankles. Like all matters of the heart is is not entirely rational, not sentimental and definately not inspiring.
I see the plans they are making and the lives they are living and it all seems so perfectly matched to the life I wanted with Matt and I hate that as well because I had everything I'd ever wanted and sometimes I can only see him as the person who took it away from me.
Jen told me over dinner that she'd thought and thought about why Matt had left me behind and all that she's been able to come up with was that he was coming back to a time in his life where there would just be too much happening and so I was the thing he deemed the only thing he could control. When I think about it he actually did say much the same to me.
But what I don't think I'll ever understand is why eventually he won't just let me come home.
She also told me that she's never seen anyone compartmentalize so well.
It's a little ironic that she reaffirms the things I believe but that doesn't make it any better. Or any easier.
I don't know if it makes me feel better to know he's not with anyone else - I guess in a way, it does, because at least it shows that he really was being as honest with me as he said.
I cried myself to sleep every night and by Monday all I wanted to do was get in the car and run as fast and as far away from him as I could. I drove down the freeway that skirts Perth from north to south with silent tears running out from under my sunglasses and it was a while before I felt my own sun come out again.
So many stories of seemingly fated things are told in hindsight by people who are willing to say they never doubted something for a moment. I tend to believe those people and over and over again, I'm proven wrong. From the very beginning I believed that Matt had been the one I'd been waiting for all of my life. It gives scant comfort, however, to believe it still.
I lost faith a hundred times a day for years and now, I lose it a thousand times a day. Even now I am certain only that everything I have of love in my life has come to me as grace, anew, from the ashes of my faithlessness and through the fires of my doubt.
But fire does not always cleanse and unlike the plants I have learned about here, fire does not always kick-start new life. Sometimes it only continues to burn and leaves only banked coals behind, waiting for new tinder to set it alight anew.
I have learned that grief is not a song with a beginning and an end, but an endless sparking symphony playing infinite variations on the same theme.
One part fades and another starts.
Yet somehow the sun keeps moving across the sky.
I thought that I was well-equipped to withstand being in Australia - being in Matt's city. What I didn't factor in, or I guess it's more fitting to say, what I didn't fully understand - is what it would feel like to spend my time with his friends.
That's not to say I don't like his friends - all of them were lovely. It's not to say that I wished I hadn't been with them, that was wonderful as well. It's the sudden shock of being in the middle of a tight group of 10 or 12 friends and being introduced as Fitzi's ex-girlfriend. It's the ongoing after-shocks, like little earthquakes, of fear and pain everytime someone tells a story or the phone rings and he's on it.
Yet, there really in all honesty is no other way it could have gone. People require a frame of reference and to Matt's friends - that's the one. I had already limited their contact with him just by being there and I'm not so sure that was even something I should have done.
I know that I consider Tim and Yeti to be my friends and that I always will and it is just simple circumstance that makes them a part of both of our lives in a way that's delicate. At least, I imagine it must be for them, Yeti more so than Tim. They, as well as I, have to find a way that it's okay for all of us.
I do know that I'm not as indifferent as I thought. I'm angry with Matt for leaving, I envy their lifestyle and their ties with each other, I'm ashamed of myself for being so weak as to miss him still so much. I'm hurt that he refused to see me as I refused to see him. Part of me wants to run him over and the other part wants to wrap my arms around his ankles. Like all matters of the heart is is not entirely rational, not sentimental and definately not inspiring.
I see the plans they are making and the lives they are living and it all seems so perfectly matched to the life I wanted with Matt and I hate that as well because I had everything I'd ever wanted and sometimes I can only see him as the person who took it away from me.
Jen told me over dinner that she'd thought and thought about why Matt had left me behind and all that she's been able to come up with was that he was coming back to a time in his life where there would just be too much happening and so I was the thing he deemed the only thing he could control. When I think about it he actually did say much the same to me.
But what I don't think I'll ever understand is why eventually he won't just let me come home.
She also told me that she's never seen anyone compartmentalize so well.
It's a little ironic that she reaffirms the things I believe but that doesn't make it any better. Or any easier.
I don't know if it makes me feel better to know he's not with anyone else - I guess in a way, it does, because at least it shows that he really was being as honest with me as he said.
I cried myself to sleep every night and by Monday all I wanted to do was get in the car and run as fast and as far away from him as I could. I drove down the freeway that skirts Perth from north to south with silent tears running out from under my sunglasses and it was a while before I felt my own sun come out again.
So many stories of seemingly fated things are told in hindsight by people who are willing to say they never doubted something for a moment. I tend to believe those people and over and over again, I'm proven wrong. From the very beginning I believed that Matt had been the one I'd been waiting for all of my life. It gives scant comfort, however, to believe it still.
I lost faith a hundred times a day for years and now, I lose it a thousand times a day. Even now I am certain only that everything I have of love in my life has come to me as grace, anew, from the ashes of my faithlessness and through the fires of my doubt.
But fire does not always cleanse and unlike the plants I have learned about here, fire does not always kick-start new life. Sometimes it only continues to burn and leaves only banked coals behind, waiting for new tinder to set it alight anew.
I have learned that grief is not a song with a beginning and an end, but an endless sparking symphony playing infinite variations on the same theme.
One part fades and another starts.
Yet somehow the sun keeps moving across the sky.
Reader Comments (1)
For all that, I feel glad you went there, and saw this and felt this. things don't always get closure. Forgetting is something that happens to us, it's not something we DO.
[And what the hell?! New blog???]