Flight

February 7, 2009 | Laughing Knees | 17 Comments 

Af­ter go­ing through it nu­mer­ous times in my life hav­ing some­one break up with me ought to get eas­ier. And at times it has. I can see the signs as the ex­pe­ri­ence grows, I know what’s com­ing. And I pro­tect my­self from the blow by back­ing away be­fore it hap­pens. I’ve avoided get­ting mar­ried to cer­tain women that way and I’ve side­stepped get­ting fully in­volved in many re­la­tion­ships as a way to pro­tect my­self from fu­ture pain. But all of these re­la­tion­ships have al­ways proved to be un­sat­is­fac­tory, in­her­ently call­ing out the pain that I had tried so hard to deny.

This time I let my­self go with­out reser­va­tions. I flung my­self into the river and, flail­ing, of­ten scared, I let her take me where I never knew the heart could go. I knew the risk very well. I even said to her once, when she first start­ing voic­ing her lack lack of con­fi­dence, “If I fall from this I’m go­ing to fall hard, very hard.” Nev­er­the­less I forged on, trust­ing in the pos­si­bil­i­ties she rep­re­sented and ig­nor­ing the tell­tale signs that were ring­ing bells all through­out my head.

Then it came, the fate­ful af­ter­noon when she in­sisted that it wasn’t work­ing and that she wanted out.

It was a dig­ni­fied break up. In keep­ing with my mostly dig­ni­fied in­ter­ac­tion with her through­out our re­la­tion­ship, never once los­ing my tem­per with her even when she was un­fair or un­kind, we qui­etly dis­cussed the cir­cum­stances and spent hours lis­ten­ing to one an­other. I left with as much poise as I could muster, with the in­sis­tence that we were good to­gether and that if she ever re­ally needed me I wanted to be­come part of her life. I think we were speak­ing dif­fer­ent lan­guages: I pointed out the ad­van­tages of be­ing to­gether and how well we both got along… she saw the re­al­i­ties of dis­ap­point­ment and mak­ing money and hav­ing time for one an­other over long dis­tances. Both of us had good points, and nei­ther of us was will­ing to give.

So here I am try­ing to be in­tel­lec­tual about some­thing that tripped me up very badly. A week af­ter break­ing up the pain got to me and I pan­icked like I’ve never pan­icked be­fore. I re­al­ized I was los­ing some­thing that I had wanted for a very long time and that she had of­fered a way of liv­ing that I had needed. Des­per­ately I con­tacted her, beg­ging her to re­con­sider. And, as all such des­per­ate pleas tend to do, it did noth­ing but turn her cold and more dis­tant. The last time we spoke she hung up the phone on me and we’ve never talked since. To end it that way, af­ter it had at first ended with such dig­nity, snapped some­thing in­side me. I went men­tally com­pletely numb and couldn’t so much as lift a sponge to wash the dishes. I got home and there I was alone as ever, but this time with this hulk­ing empti­ness that threat­ened to con­sume me. I cried and cried all night long, more cry­ing than I’ve ever done in my life and it wouldn’t stop. The next day when I had to go my uni­ver­sity to proc­tor se­mes­ter fi­nals tests for large num­bers of stu­dents I stepped into the room with all those faces look­ing at me and sud­denly, with­out warn­ing, every­thing came shak­ing loose in my head. All the bad de­ci­sions and mis­takes, the un­happy jobs and failed re­la­tion­ships, the drift­ing from my orig­i­nal pur­pose in work­ing and liv­ing, my failed mar­riage, the years of fight­ing, the ar­rival here at this dis­mal place and the re­sult­ing, soul-​​eating iso­la­tion.. all of it came crash­ing down and right in front of all those stu­dents I lost every rem­nant of courage that I had and fled from the room. I just fled, bump­ing into walls, obliv­i­ous to stu­dents say­ing hello, sob­bing and very alone. I needed to speak to some­one, any­one, an­other hu­man be­ing whom I could trust with­out ques­tion, just feel that there was some­thing and some­one left with­out her to latch onto. I stum­bled right into my boss’ of­fice and she agreed to talk to me.

We talked for a long time, with her lis­ten­ing to every­thing I said and of­fer­ing to help me out. “Why don’t you work on the Tokyo cam­pus?” she sug­gested. “Get a year con­tract there and then we can work out some­thing for you to move on to from there.” It was com­pletely un­ex­pected. A chance to get out of this place and jump start my life again? Was there re­ally some­one that nice at work who would help me out? Could I fi­nally get away from the iso­la­tion I’ve been in?

The need to be with some­one was so great and the prospect of an­other night in my cof­fin of an apart­ment so dis­tress­ing that I called my wife and asked if we could stay to­gether. She said, “Of course! You are al­ways wel­come here.” Right then and there I went all the way into Tokyo and spent three days with her. We talked. About every­thing. And I spilled my heart about the woman I loved, know­ing that the story would hurt my wife, trust­ing that our friend­ship was real and that she would un­der­stand. My God, her for­give­ness and gen­eros­ity were al­most too large to bear, and yet she was there and she lis­tened to me for two days straight. I sobbed over and over again un­til there was noth­ing left and I felt sapped of all emo­tion. She was just there, within reach, al­ways ready to touch. An­other hu­man be­ing. A friend. Some­one who saw me and let me know that I would be all right.

It’s been three weeks now and the pain still rolls in in waves. Every woman on the street looks like her. Dur­ing a yoga class ear­lier this evening the in­struc­tor turned out the lights at the end of the ses­sion and as I lay there in the dark, breath­ing and re­laxed, the room sud­denly filled with mem­o­ries of her and a tear be­gan form­ing at the cor­ner of my eyes, but then I let it go. Enough cry­ing. She had never taken the time to get to know me bet­ter and just wouldn’t have any idea what a loss it was for her. Be­cause I’m be­gin­ning to re­mem­ber what it is I have to give and how much liv­ing I want to do, with or with­out her. Be­fore we stopped even our friend­ship, she had asked, “Can we still go hik­ing to­gether?” And I had said, “Of course!” That is gone, too. She’ll never re­ally know why I love the moun­tains so much, and how much I could have shown her about that side of me.

I leave for Tokyo at the end of March. I’m pack­ing up this apart­ment and get­ting ready to say good­bye to a place that brings back two year’s worth of rea­sons to for­get. This is an­other chance. I hope I don’t screw every­thing up again. For once I want to get it right and live lightly and a part of some­thing other than just myself.

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