Chasing Paper Clips

Possible chapter. Definitely still part of a work in progress.

“Normality is a paved road: it’s comfortable to walk but no flowers grow.” �" Vincent van Gogh

My cats, Mojo and Luna, love chasing paper clips around the floor. Sometimes, they’ll do it for hours and it seems to make them happy. Unlike me, they never overthink their options or agonize over every decision. They do what they do simply because it comes naturally, and that’s the only reason they seem to need. By comparison, I’ve probably thought myself out of happiness a million times, but I can’t remember a single time I’ve ever thought myself into it!

This makes me wonder if Mojo and Luna (and cats in general) know something instinctively that I’m still learning. They live in the moment, in the breath. They don’t get stuck the past and they don’t try to second-guess the future. They also seem a lot happier doing what they do than I am doing what I do. Could the secret to survival really be as simple as chasing paper clips, metaphorically speaking?

I don’t know the answer. I don’t even know if I’ve got any paper clips left (metaphorically speaking). Or the strength to chase them. Emotionally speaking. I just know that my life has hit another rough patch.

This one started when my formerly-reliable car put me on the side of the road for the second time in as many weeks. The first time, it was inconvenient, but not that surprising. I expect occasional problems from a 20-year-old car. Stuff gets old, stuff breaks, stuff gets fixed.

But regular breakdowns are very bad news for someone who does what I do, because 99% of being a wedding officiant is showing up. If I can’t do that, a lot of people who depend on me are let down. All of a sudden, I'm looking at a summer full of bookings with a car I no longer trust.

A few days later, my son experienced a health scare that sent him (and me along with him) to the ER. Thankfully, it turned out to be minor, but there wasn’t much breathing room between crises, and I was facing questions I’d assumed were years, or at least many months down the road.

While all that was happening, I was still dragging myself through the ordeal of getting rid of things I no longer need. It's a bleak, depressing process, and I find myself resisting at every step. Because I know that everything I sell or donate or throw away cuts another thread connecting me back to Joanne, and the life I lost when I lost her. The thought that I may eventually sever the last thread breaks my heart…and scares me to death.

My friends tell me there’s no rush to do this. My counselor tells me to get it done as soon as I can. And I know they’re both right. I know there’s no rush because I’m the only person who cares if I ever get it done. I could probably put it off until the end of time without changing the way things are, or the way things will be.

But I also know it has to be done, because severing the links to my past life may be the only way I’ll ever be free to create a new one. So of course I hate every minute of it. I hate letting go of any part of the 35 years Joanne and I shared, even the smallest parts. Because it was truly the best of times. My times, at least. Hers, too, I hope.

I hate that life is so unfair. I hate that a wonderful life can go so terribly wrong. But mostly I hate knowing that, sooner or later, I’ll have to stop hating. Because hating can’t bring her back, just like it can’t make the hurting stop.

I’ve had to say that to myself so many times over the last couple of years. It seems utter disbelief is incredibly resilient. I think I expected to have myself convinced by now, at least a little, but the truth is, I still wake up most days disbelieving. Because I haven’t figured out how to get my head around “gone forever.” It’s like trying to imagine a billion dollars, or the surface of the sun, or politics without acrimony. It just doesn’t fit within my realm of possibility.

This isn’t exactly unfamiliar territory. I’ve faced hard questions alone since the very moment Joanne took her life. But at least when troubles come one at a time, I can usually handle them. It’s when they land on me in bunches, as they’ve been doing lately, that I’m suddenly, painfully aware my emotional reserves are still at bare minimum.

So I’m torn, as always, between doing what I know I must do, and searching desperately for ways to avoid doing it. And although that’s been my “normal” state of mind since Joanne died, I also know in my heart of hearts that I can never be okay with it.

Some days, most days, I think, I feel like the worst kind of fool, the guy who stares into the abyss, seeing it and knowing it and dreading it, and jumps into it, anyway. And that makes me wonder if my life will ever get better.

It's hard not to feel overwhelmed by despair, and lately I confess I’m feeling that a lot. I’m cutting connections back to the best part of my life, trying to make whatever is left of it better, and frankly, it feels ridiculous. I’m 70 years old. Who the hell am I fooling? Certainly not myself, and who else gives a s**t? Is “fixing” my life even worth the effort anymore?

I wish I knew. In the final reckoning, my sojourn here, all my accomplishments, all my failures, every love and dream and loss, probably won’t add up to more than a drop of water in an endless sea, my entire existence barely a punctuation mark in the Great Book of Time, a blip on the Cosmic Radar.

I have no illusions I was put here for any special purpose, that I’m in any way extraordinary or destined to do great things. That didn’t really matter when life made sense, when everything felt right, when I had something that, at least remotely, resembled happiness. So why it matters now, when none of that is true, I have no idea.

I’ve wrestled with this question, along with so many others, since Joanne died, and the only answer I've been able to come up with so far, the only one that makes any sense, is that nothing matters unless I make it matter, that there is no purpose but the purpose I define for myself. And that sometimes, the greatest thing I can do is just haul my a*s out of bed and let the rest of the day take care of itself.

If that doesn’t work, maybe I'll try chasing paper clips.