Double Down

Yesterday DM, RJ's youngest son, got engaged.

Later at night, RJ turned to me from his laptop with that WTF silent chuckle. I glanced over. Even with my increasingly severe myopia I could tell it was an email from Amelia.

"I've been reminded that it was on this day I married her," said RJ.

Understandable.

"Do you keep track of dates like that?" Asked RJ.

Do I?! I see birth dates in digital time all the time. And there was a time, not long ago, when I memorized everyone's birthdays and anniversaries and would promptly send a Hallmark card. For years. Never needed a black book. I've shunned that sort of commercialism since.

I took a deep breath and said, "Today is Taylor's birthday."

Nine nine. That should be easy to remember. But I didn't remember it the previous years.

The fact that I remembered it this year was perhaps the first sign of complete healing.

I haven't written in a while. Naturally, when one hasn't been on something, one wonders how to go about it once more. Well, one just goes at it. I may never be a great writer, but I'll always be a writer.

It was only recently I started talking to RJ about JD with ease. Hated the fact that it took so long. Taylor is the next to tackle.

Yesterday was also the last day of festival in Taylor's town of residence. Still couldn't go. Still think that it would be awkward to run into him. So I went to Castorville. Lame. Was I expecting to find culture there? Big shocker.

Not like I find it a mistake Taylor and I never worked. But if I could just mourn him, for the monument that he was that I put up on a pedestal, maybe, for good, I can move on.

With Taylor, love was always laced with pain and loss. All the way. So there were nights, such as last night, when I longed for silence and peace, when I couldn't help but want to relive pain and loss per se.

When I write about Taylor, it's not about Taylor, but the segment of my life from which I barely graduated. Not with honors.

I put my mother on a pedestal too. Setting myself up for constant disappointment. I should know all about unrealistic expectations. Yearning for Taylor was reenactment. It was the only way I had experienced intense love. Love was pain and pain was love. That is the worst confusion.

Comes RJ and it has been so EASY, my brain is not used to the absence of heartache. Frankly this is weird.

My therapist would tell you our mind is like a vinyl record. All those tracks, over time, want to be played again.

So it takes some unlearning to rewrite those tracks. Toss that album and burn a new CD, if you will.

Yesterday I went to lunch alone. I've gotten by doing many things alone: dining, going to the movies, traveling, activities some couldn't fathom engaging in without company.

I did, I enjoyed, didn't bat an eye. I prided in my independence.

My favorite motto was, "If I was to wait till I had company before I did anything, I'd never do anything."

It is a general misconception that, once you're married, you'll never have to do anything alone again.

Wrong.

Cadence. Never force it. Marriage is no obligation for congregation.

I'd never be caught dead dragging my S.O. shopping, making him carry my bags AND my purse as if it were my birth rights, either.

And yet with age, that loneliness sets in.

I don't have much of family around (the little that I have sometimes come with restrictive conditions, through no fault of their own), and friends have moved away. Or I have moved away. Or both.

With age I've grown increasingly aware of aloneness, if not loneliness. And it's a thin line.

I used to not care. That's the freedom or oblivion that goes hand in hand with (relative) youth. Now I feel pathetic.

With bravado I went to lunch yesterday. It was not even a showy, gimmicky joint, and I was self-conscious.

I sat down at a table for a party of one. I ordered, I waited, I looked around. Not a soul cared that I was there all by myself.

I ate. Quietly and contently. For the most part.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: It's never about the food.

Nine nine. In Chinese the number sounds like "long-lasting", which forebodes well for a partnership or union.

Here's to the last ambivalent September 9th, if universe willing.