This afternoon I was feeling quite invisible. Not only as a writer on OS but as a salient human encased in flesh and bone.
On a pedestrian level you could say that the empty nest syndrome has sparked my descent into self-doubt and second-guessing by proffering me the gift of uncommitted time in which to reexamine my soul, but it is much more than that.
This biological pause in the rat race of evolution has brought me to the edge of a precipice that has no logistical orientation or psychological categorization. I am just here. Merely apparent. Faintly alive and barely grounded. My children are gone. My house is empty. My marriage, in an advanced stage of dysfunction.
Truth and probity are sober concepts in that they belie some sort of cosmic redemption. They speak to stalwart souls and honor and sainthood and they hold the promise of perfection. The part of me so deeply aligned with Don Quioxte resonates with these connotations.
But none of these attributes can be gained without having first been held fast over the fires of the mundane coals of everyday life, and no truth is ever revealed without bone grinding suffering; whether by the principle or of the supporting cast.
And yet truth is called for if advancement is aspired to.
What can I say?
I can't reveal the soiled character of those around me who beg off such exposure.
I can't slam the ignorant who have no notion of the impediments that litter their objectivity and prevent balance from being achieved in their lives.
I can't hurt the fragile who cling to their feigned reality as though it were sound.
I can do nothing but offer the vague depictions of my life insofar as it remains solely mine.
You want truth? From my vantage point truth changes moment to moment.
Tonight? Tonight my truth is bartering with my conscience and my sense of obligation. Tonight my truth tells me that my marriage is over; that it has been over almost since it's inception but has maintained its status for the past twenty-eight years through sheer force of will and a fear of failure; both at my moralizing insistence.
I wanted to comment earlier to all those who took such time and such care to address my post this afternoon, but I was called away by life. Some friends of ours, my husband's and myself, invited us to an impromptu cookout at their home late this afternoon, so rather than address the comments, I addressed my life.
By all ostensible accounts it was an uneventful evening spent in the company or our friends and some of their young neighbors. There were burgers being grilled into oblivion, hotdogs verging on cremation and all the predictable condiments to spice up the midsummer fare. There was even a testosterone-funded croquet game unfolding on the verdant surface of a level and suburban-ly compliant backyard. And a couple of the neighbors ferried newborns under two months old, which lent that unavoidable air of beginnings and morbid awareness of endings to the gathering.
For me it was the same untenable game of screening and borderline socializing that I have been practicing since I was twenty-five years old and the "two shall be as one" principle was thrust into my formerly highly rebellious and autonomous field of play.
For every word I spoke tonight, I could hear the muffled and displeased voice of my husband as he hovered nearby directing me to either shut up, change topics, slow down or cease fire. But this is the status quo between us.
If I laugh, it is too enthusiastically.
If I don't participate, I am anti-social.
If I speak candidly of my life, I am revealing too much.
If I praise someone, it is not necessary.
If I fail to address or acknowledge something he deems important, I am negligent and indifferent.
But on the way home as he was criticizing my driving although too impaired to drive himself, I felt a surge of regret gathering in my gut; mile for mile reconstituting into exasperation until I heard myself saying to him out loud but without any venom whatsoever, "Enough!"
"I am done!
I am done being censured for speaking my truth!
I am done being edited for my sincerity!
I am done being defined by my tits and my acquiescence to your demands!
I am done being accepted on conditions I did not design!
I want to be loved for all of who I am and not for what I appear to be or how well I perform!
You cannot dominate me anymore! The children are gone. I have no reason to remain.
If it is too trying for you to cope with me, then I beg you to let me go because I am not going to submit to your anal imperatives anymore. I no longer need to. The choice is yours."
Being a short distance from home I was concluding my statements when we turned into our drive. Once, parked, he exited the car faster than I have ever known him to move and went directly upstairs. By the time I put the car in the garage, turned off the house lights and made my way upstairs, he was already in bed and asleep.
Apparently, anger and denial are both agents for somnolence.
You want truth? This is my truth and my current reality.
What becomes of it tomorrow is as much an unknown to me as it is to heaven, but I'll keep striving to get there nonetheless.
So now, at 1:42 on Sunday morning this is as raw as I can be.
Truth? Truth is no longer eloquent or polite. It does not round out sentences with juicy adjectives or smooth jagged inferences with soft allusions and gentle vowels. It is dry, humorless and utterly despairing. It is real.
You can take it or leave it.
I don't have that option.
When the sun rises at dawn, I remain embedded in the circumstances that surround me.
But I refuse to be defined by them.
And so it is.
For now.
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