Beans and rice

Breakup. I did an audio recording of this one. (I'm going to try and record everything going forward) This link should take you there: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B_JsPCME2sNDSy1fcFI0b2

Do you have some time this afternoon? She texts me.
After 3:30 and before 7:00 I inform her. What’s up?
Wanna talk/check in about us. We can save it if you’re not up for it.

I’m pleasantly surprised. Something is wrong, and I haven’t yet divined the right way to come at it. I’m glad she’s decided to set time aside to talk about it.

Totally into it. I text back. You at home? I could get to you by 4:00 if that works.
She’s not. I’m at work. Could pick you up. Got my truck back. This is good news. Her transmission broke and she was trying to bike back in the dark last night. I had planned to stop by the hardware store and pick her up a back bike light today.
Oh cool. Yeah I’m at Mama’s. What time should I look for you?

3:45

Kay, I’ll be ready.

---

Last night we danced outside at the Pope Marina downtown. I arrive right as its beginning and Eithne is standing there. She turns her bright smile my way and I pretend an indifferent wave as my insides melt away.

The speakers aren’t working, so we set a little mobile bluetooth speaker in the middle of the dance floor and Pella and I dance around it until by some miracle Jose and Lisa arrive, and just happen to have a speaker system in their car. They set it up, and Jose becomes impromptu DJ, rushing off from whatever dance he’s in to change the song as it ends.

As is my custom I only ask Eithne to dance after I’ve remembered how - three or four partners after the beginning. As is my custom I find myself utterly frustrated with her. We’ve built something tangled together on this dance floor - she who taught me how to dance this way -  still dances with me as if I’m that same inexperienced man I was nine months ago, and I’ve grown so much. Everyone else trusts me, but she won’t let me lead - even though she refuses to follow.

It’s okay with fast songs. There’s enough fire between us to make up for the frustration of not having that connection I know she’s capable of, but when we slow down, she won’t listen to my rhythm and I can’t lead to hers. I find myself stuck in the same small vocabulary of things she knows I can do, unable to break out.

I’ve tried telling her, but in the context of a dance it's hard and she took offense. I’ve tried letting her lead, and then trying to lead more like she does, and it’s worked a little, but it doesn’t feel good for me.

Any other time, we connect just fine. It just seems to be dancing. I play with the idea of setting time aside, in her room, alone - tell her to just follow - build back up to the both of us dancing, with that basic structure back in place. I wonder if she’d put up with it. This one claims Artemis as her own. She does not take well to men telling her what to do - and I try and respect that.

It probably doesn’t help that I’ve dropped her before.

The night is full of beautiful dances with other people. Iron has been dancing with me since near the beginning but she and I have built vocabulary together until now we trust each other implicitly, and even if someone ends up on the floor its all in good fun. Lisa melts like buttered rum in my arms. There is so much intimacy here.

When it finally ends Pella pulls me aside and asks if I can make a coordinator’s meeting tomorrow at 7:00 at the cellar door. I tell her I’ll be there. Then it’s over to Eithne
“I’m yours tonight or tomorrow night if you want me.”
“I don’t have a way to transport you.”
I snort. “I can make my own way to your house just fine.”
“I think I need headspace right now.”
“Fair enough.” That has to come first. I say my goodbyes to the people who matter, and leave without fanfare. As I’m walking, feeling a little empty inside, she bikes past me.

“Goodnight Pan!”
“Goodnight!” - then she’s gone. I love you, I miss you. I yell after her in my head. I don’t think she hears. Something is wrong, but I know the nature of it. She’s withdrawing for her trip, even still, and I’m extraneous to that.

This woman is a practice in self soothing. I think to myself, and chuckle aloud getting odd looks from the asian couple sitting by the fountain. How strange that I, who am one of the best people at taking care of myself I know - am given even more opportunity to practice.

When I get home, there’s a facebook message asking if I can call her phone because she’s lost hers. I call, and keep calling - pleased to use my new super power of infinite calls on my new phone, until she finally finds it. Her voice exclaiming “I found it!” on the other side tugs at my heart again.

“Thanks for the help!” she messages me a few minutes later. “Tell me about your new job.” I tell her. We joke about not feeding the 6-10 year olds in my care raw chicken, but as always there’s an edge under it. She still hasn’t forgiven me for my mistakes of several weeks ago, her helping in a catering job gone awry, and things still haven’t really settled back into their comfortable senescence.

“I miss you” I message her. “I feel like there are stories I haven’t heard the all of.”
“Like?” she asks
She had a break down when she tried to buy her tickets for this trip to Auschwitz that she’s had all her energy focussed on. I convey this. She largely ignores me. Sends me a link to a sacred tree getting ripped out in the amazon. Soon we’ll have to really, actually check in.

Something is wrong. We need to talk, problem solve, and find workable solutions together - because that’s what relationships are about.

---

Newton tells us that any object moving will continue moving unless it is interfered with. Not only that but it will carry on in the same direction. It seems simple, obvious even, but it serves as the foundation for half of modern physics. If you see a change you know to look for a cause.

Given this cause and effect, one obviously wants to measure how hard something is to interfere with. If you can calculate how much interference is necessary it tells you something about the power of the interference that did make a  change. This measurement we call Momentum, which in physics uses the symbol P, that being one of the few letters left when Newton decided to try quantifying momentum, and M already being taken with Mass.

The basic formula for Momentum is P = M*V,
V stands for Velocity - speed with a direction. How much distance you can cover in how much time. It’s usually described with an arrow, to point the way it's going.
M is mass, a measurement of how much matter is in a thing - not quite the same as weight which is the measure of how much gravity effects a thing, and can often be used synonymously.

So Momentum is simply described as how fast an amount of matter is going in a direction.

To stop something, to end it, it requires Force (F) equal to the momentum in the opposite direction. Too much force and it begins moving backwards, not enough and it keeps rolling more slowly. The exact amount of force is described as

F =(M*v)/t

Where F is force

And t stands for time.

A little bit of force over a long period of time will slow momentum as effectively as a lot of force over a single second. You can stop momentum with friction, or with putting a wall in the way. This change in Momentum is called impulse - the derivative of momentum - and without getting into a lot of calculus - it’s the difference you feel between slowing to a stop at a stoplight and crashing into a telephone pole. The speed at which things end is the difference between life and death.

Notably, Momentum is conserved. So if you slow momentum it has to go somewhere else. Usually we don’t notice, because if a ball bumps into a table the mass of the table is so much more than the ball that it doesn’t seem to gain momentum at all - but you can see it if a ball bumps into another ball. If you track them after the collision they have the same amount of momentum between them as they had originally, just some of it transferred into the other ball.

So when something stops, when something ends, the first thing you look for is what happened to the momentum.

---

I’m in the back yard when I see her beaten up blue truck parked outside. She’s early, closer to 3:30. I finish watering this bed, and head inside to find she’s already found Mama, and they’ve begun talking. I get my stuff ready. It’s unlikely she’ll ask me to stay over, but there’s the vague possibility she’ll want to come to the coordinator’s meeting and take me home with her after. It’s worth bringing my backpack with its spare toothbrush and computer just in case.

When I’ve gotten what I need, I sit and listen. Eithne is telling Mama about her trip - going into the pros and cons and telling just the story I wanted her to tell me, in just the detail I wanted. I quietly note that I can bring her home to Mama to get stories out of her as effectively as Papa. I like how both parents ask questions I wouldn’t have thought to ask. I knew Eithne was premenstrual when she broke down, but hadn’t connected them - but a woman’s wisdom could. Mama suggests a flower essence - Yarrow - and Eithne promises to go get it right away.

We head out, with me feeling like I got just what I wanted and there’s no real need now, but I don’t mind more time.

We head to the herb shop and while Eithne is talking to the clerk - a friend - I get her the yarrow, and get blackberry flower essence for myself. It’s about manifesting dreams, and I’ve been working with blackberry lately. I figure it's worth a try.

After that we head to her house, largely in silence - listening to the music. “This one is called let down,” she comments, “and after that last song it is a let down.” Then we’re getting out of her truck, and I follow her inside, stashing my backpack outside of her room since I don’t mean to imply I expect to stay.

She hasn’t eaten - despite just being in my mother’s house right after lunch - she claimed she didn’t want to impose. I sit and watch her. There are beans soaking on the counter, and these go into a pot, then rice goes into another - unmeasured like pasta. She cuts half an onion, correctly this time, and then goes to the fridge to look for vegetables, pulling out a cucumber, grimacing at some rot, and then putting it back in the droor.  She finally decides on a beet and grates it.

I keep the conversation light. Commenting on the sharpness of her knives. Asking if there’s anything I can do to help. I’m just reveling in her. I remember a post once, asking women what they found attractive about men - and several mentioned how much they enjoy watching their men cook. I can understand that here. The thousand small ways she moves. The way the all of her fits together. She’s just so beautiful - I start having butterflies, even though I’ve been courting her for nine months - she is just so beautiful.

We’ve been kissing for a little over a month. Maybe not so odd then. I hope I’ll get a chance to write this scene I think idly.

She goes out to harvest in the garden and her rice starts boiling over. I go over to turn it down and realize I don’t make rice like this. Papa is forever coming and turning down my cooking, and sometimes it takes me a while to figure out why everything is taking forever and not browning right. I am not my father.

She comes back, turns down the rice, and says we can start talking. We make our way to her room “Make sure to remind me about the food on the stove,” she says.

“I will.”

---

It’s morning. We’re in Eithne’s bed. We’ve been kissing all night for the first time and it’s finally time to get up. I sit up. My shirt is unbuttoned in the front. I’m determined to get up.

She flops down behind me, curls her body around mine, and just with her lips starts kissing my side. Not particularly sexily or artfully - just with her neck. I look down at her, head sticking under my arm - kiss - kiss - kiss. ‘I don’t want to stop’ she seems to say, ‘I won’t stop.’ Kiss - kiss - kiss.

And it is a moment. One of those moments when you see someone and see something and maybe a piece of me comes and veils her in my desire - or maybe one of her veils drops and I see beneath. Maybe her veil dropped and I covered her with mine, like a blanket slipped aside in the night.

---

I ask for a contact point, and she accepts, I sit beside her, facing her with my leg pressed against hers. She asks how I’m feeling. I give it to her in layers. The butterflies now, the unease, the sense that whenever I’m with her I have to remind her why I’m important.

She agrees with my assessment. She starts telling me how she wavers back and forth about me, and how that’s not fair to me. How she doesn’t want to do that to me, how we’re echoing the relationships she’s been abusive in in the past. How she doesn’t want to do this to me anymore.

I listen. She’s said this before. She said this at the beginning. I’ve heard her make this wavering argument so many times.

“You don’t get to make that decision for me,” I tell her, as I always tell her. I know everything isn’t as stable and healthy as it could be - we’re in a vaguely defined thing that’s an open relationship on her side and monogamous on mine - but she’s worth it. I’m getting what I need, and that’s enough.

“I know, but it’s not just for you. I thought after the whole raw chicken fiasco everything would go back the way it was - but it hasn’t”

There is no going back, I think, There is only going forward.

“I need to honor what’s going on inside me - and that doesn’t include you. I don’t want this anymore.”

Oh. I wasn’t expecting that. I thought this was a conversation about how our relationship needed to continue. I thought we were talking about us. I feel ice begin to creep up my belly. I know how this works. I’ll be understanding, I’ll tell her I forgive her, that I honor her choices. She’ll tell me after, that she’s never had such a sweet breakup.

I’ve been quiet for a moment. “How are you feeling?” She asks.
“I’m shutting down,” I tell her.
She reaches out and wraps her arms around me. I’m feeling shellshocked - those words, that intention. I can’t argue or beg with that. She knows what this means to me. I start to shake a little. I force myself not to shut down, to feel. I do the thing I do, the pretending to cry. The closest I get to crying. Some impassive part of myself notes that I’m putting on an act for her. I’m not really crying, I’m pretending.

But then suddenly the pretending turns real, and my body is convulsing and I’m not making it happen. I bury my head in her neck and tears start to come, infrequently at first - like the kinda half misty thing my eyes do when cutting onions or watching Inside out - but then more and more until I’m making noise and can’t stop. Wow, thinks the impassive observer. I think you were fourteen when you last cried like this? That’s about ten years ago.
She lets me sob. There are things I want to say but I can’t get them through. My body has taken over, and when I try and talk it comes out high and tearful - the voice of a child protesting through tears.

Then she gently disengages and runs out to the kitchen. Comes back.
“Sorry,” I sniffle “I didn’t do a good job of reminding you to check on your food.”
She smiles as I was hoping she would smile, but then I’m back in it again. She holds me a little longer. Goes out to cook her food again. I sit there, wondering. At first I try and collect myself, but then think why? This is a better way to grieve her than anything else I could do. This is apparently a once a decade phenomena. I might as well enjoy it while I can. I kinda curl into a ball and put my hands around my head and keep going,

She comes back in - blows out a breath when she sees me there, comes around behind me and puts her hands on my back, body against me. That really lets everything out. The observer notes this as a good position to adopt when people are crying.

“This isn’t all you.” I get out.
She makes a little “Oh?” sound
It’s a moment before i can push more words through.
“It - it brings up everything. Me not being enough.”
“You are enough.” She tells me.
“No I’m not!” I sob at her.
“Yes you are.”
“No!”
“I guess there’s nothing I can say right now to convince you otherwise.” she says. This brings a new wave because I know the words. I don’t mean I want to give you up - I just need to take a break for a few months. You’re worth waiting for.

“I feel like I’m not worth waiting for.” I wail, and she knows better than to contradict me now.
“Like I give everything and my everything isn’t enough. It’s never enough!”
She just keeps rubbing my back. Another wave passes. She gets up and checks on her food again. I hear her talking with her housemates. She closes the door when she comes back in.

“How are you feeling?” I ask, having enough distance now.
“I just want to do whatever I can to support you,” she says.
“Holding my back helped.” She moves back and I start in again. Ten years is a lot.

“There’s just one more thing I need to say,” I tell her. I’m still crying but its less overwhelming now. “You know when you say ‘I’ll kill him’ and you need to say it, but you don’t want t get reported for planning murder? Similarly disregard me.”
“Okay”
“Don’t.” I say. She doesn’t get it. She has to understand. I keep going. “Don’t leave me. Don’t give up on me. Don’t.” She gets it now. She’s shaking a little like she might cry and I wrap an arm around to hold her if she does, but she doesn’t. She just says “I’m sorry, I’m sorry” over and over again.
I stifle the ‘I forgive you.’ I don’t. Instead I tell her “I’ve never said that before, and I always regret it.”
Then she turns “You wanna see something funny?” she asks. I manage to nod.She reaches over to a journal. It’s titled “Love” - with a picture of death on the front. I laugh.
“You’re probably right,” I say. “Good scorpio wisdom that it’s better not to let things fester. Thanks for reaching into my chest and ripping my heart out.” She laughs. Then goes off to her food again and this time takes longer comes back with a plate.

When she comes back I’m collected. I can feel the mask clicking back into place, the shields coming up, the Aries moon retreating to the depths of my stomach where it belongs.

“Whenever anybody breaks up with me,” I greet her, “They always couch it in nice terms. ‘It’s not about you, it’s me.’ I’ve only had one breakup where she screamed at me everything that was wrong with me - and while some of it was stupid, I’m not gay as she claimed - it was actually really helpful to have something to feel like I can learn from.”
“You want me to tell you everything wrong with you?”
“Please.”

She pauses.
“You’re too safe.” She says “You’re exactly what my inner child craves, but not what stirs my inner lover to passion.”
“Huh.”
And - I feel awful for saying it - it’s like something an abusive ex would say to me - but there’s something about holding some of you back that makes you more alluring.”

I watch her eat her tacos and wish that she was the kind of lover who seeing sloppily eat tacos, juice dripping down her chin, would make less attractive. The projection has never been about that.

“You’re going to have to hold whatever physical boundaries you need - because I suck at self control,” she says - in an almost flirtatious way.
“F**k you,” I say. She laughs, and then I see the full weight of it slam into her. The power of a swear word spoken by someone who doesn’t swear, coming at her with the force of a train.

“Message received,” she finally says

“Just to be clear. You give me up, you never get me back. I don’t negotiate with terrorists.”
“You don’t what?” She asks.
“It’s a bit of US foreign policy. If you negotiate for hostages it encourages people to take more hostages. But if you refuse to negotiate than that situation comes up less often. I don’t want to be in a break-up-get-back-together cycle.

“In about four years I’m going to be kicking myself and asking for you back,” she says “And then you can say no to me.”
“Thanks,” I say. “That makes me feel better.”

---

She drives me down to my meeting. For once she’s turned the music off so we don’t have to talk over it. The mask is all the way up now. We’re all grace and boundaries.

“I’m going to need you to let me be the one to initiate communication, for however long I need that to be.”
“Okay.” I was clear about this from the beginning but it’s not going to be easy for her.
“You can talk to me normally at dance, but I need you to not dance with me, and leave initiating anything deeper than smalltalk to me.”
“What about visiting your dad?” She asks.
“I’m gone about half the time.”
She lets out a breath. “Fair enough.”

We’re there. She gets out and hugs me. She says something that afterward I won’t remember as much as I try. I say “Goodbye” - and walk towards the wrong door. Idle a bit until she leaves, before coming back around. There is Pella, just getting off her bike.
“How are you?” she asks.
“Fragile,” I say.
“Why?”
“I just got broken up with.”

“Oh - wow.”
“But I’m here. Do I get commitment points for showing up?”
She lets out  breath. “Yes - absolutely. I haven’t been keeping track but you can have the first.”
We go down and find the others are late. There’s a band just starting up, and the music is jazzy and danceable, and Pella asks if I want to dance. I start leading and then hand it off to her. For the second time today I just let my body do its thing. A lesson in surrender.

Finally the others arrive. Lisa asks how I’m doing, and I give the same - adding a name this time so we can start the rumor mill going.
“Aww” she says. Reaches into her purse and pulls out a little toffee. “Maybe this will help.”
I don’t eat sugar - but I also don’t refuse gifts given in grief. I unwrap it and pop it into my mouth.

I don’t add much to the conversation - I’m quiet and easily talked over on the best of days, but I like hearing all the ideas and possibilities. Lisa leans in and says “Cheer up,” as we leave - and while singularly unhelpful, I take the intention behind it as what it is.

I make my way back by a different route than I usually do. This is the first time I’ve really had time to think, and find myself getting angry. “Not dangerous enough?” Do you know how much effort I put into making her feel safe?! - and really? I’m worth a couple weeks of discontent? I need a girlfriend who can pass the marshmallow test. You don’t get to give up on me and then have me again when I’m better. You have to put in the work.

I suddenly feel used. Like she was only interested in my body, in my beauty, as if that was more important than anything inside - and having sampled she can discard. I check my phone to find she’s sent me a message “Sorry, but I just feel the need to ask how you are/if you need anything.” It occurs to me there’s a worse possibility, that she’s really seen what’s inside - wanted me for that- and it wasn’t enough. I’m feeling small, petty, and vindictive so I don’t answer right away. Let her suffer.

It’s now that I find my path has taken me past the house where the momentum stopped. Where I served raw chicken to forty house guests and Eithne saw me break down in a position of power. It’s not just that. There’s the friction of the trip - but I think everything would have been fine without that one day.

I still have a little pair of scissors that I accidentally took from their kitchen in my backpack. I go up to the front door, pause, glance inside, and quietly put the scissors on the welcome mat, and turn and walk away.

---

She tapped me on the shoulder but I felt it on the soul.

I was trapped when she grew colder

An instinct that she stole

It was just within my wherewithal

To check if I were full

A trust in her unbearable

Inclusion of the whole.