I watched the end of Jacob’s Ladder and the end of The Accidental Tourist.
Both films, at their heart, are about fathers and sons. Death, coming to terms with death. Letting go. Dying. Returning to the empty house. Taking the taxi through Paris. Allowing ones self to love again after being ‘shut down’.
Unconditional love.
It’s been a fucking tough two years. The Big Dog, The Cancer, The Penguin.
Not necessarily in that order.
I think about her everyday, her tangled bloody body. Waiting for her to die after the lethal injection. Carrying her home to the grave we dug for her in the garden. Now she is just skin and bones under the rock, hidden so the coyote couldn’t dig her up and eat her. Laying there with her collar on, wrapped in my shirt, laying by my shoes.
Waiting patiently for us to join her.
I just couldn’t stop crying. Apologizing. She was innocent!
As I write the Little Dog is dreaming. Yelping in his sleep.
It’s been tough to concentrate, to make anything happen, to imagine any sort of future. I need all my wits about me to make things happen. I don’t have the energy.
If by chance I look in the mirror, I don’t recognize the man staring back at me.
Who cares?
I don’t really know who I am. Drifting inconsolably since she was killed. Inconsolable when I saw the truth about him. Me reflected in him. The grueling hospital. Private desire that it would kill me.
That the doctor would say, “Mr. Roy, you have six months to live.” He didn’t.
I let myself believe that it was all over and frankly, I was furious that all my body wanted to do was teach me a lesson.
Then I got involved with him. He was nothing. A sick, lost man. I thought I could help. He was nothing. He wasn’t the one. Like crumpled paper. Like chewed gum. A crude, inelegant parasite come to suck my blood.
Then I got involved with him. I was nothing. A sick, lost man. He thought he could help. I was nothing. He wasn’t the one.
I was never going to be good enough for him. For anyone. Let’s face it.
Letting life and its dangerous current drag me across this angry ocean. Untethered.
It feels like I am finally waking up from the past two years. Waking up, yet desiring, desperately to sleep. I don’t want to wake up. Why in hells name is there any reason to be awake?
There is no child waiting to deliver me from madness. There is no innocent boy to take my hand and lead me to a better place. There is no Big Dog because I was a bad owner. There is no lover because I am a bad lover.
I did not leave the house today. I filled another can with weeds. Compulsively weeding the garden. I close my eyes and all I can see are weeds. Panicking that there is one last weed to pull…and I may have missed it.
