Traveling Alone
Saturday evening was so normal. I wrote a bit, a friend came over to help me clean and kvetch, I baked a cherry, gooseberry, nectarine crumble, put on my 'Flying Down to Rio' dress and went to a family dinner. I was worried and scared, as I have been for the last month but it was manageable for the first time in two weeks. So, I drove out Suffolk-way, soaking up the sunlight, Eric Dolphy's music spilling over me.
Three hours later, feeling most ill from Beef Wellington - pastry and red meat conspiring to bring me down - I'm sitting on the stairs, phone pressed to my ear.
The next three days have a blur of emergency planning, booking flights and an extortionately expensive PCR Fit to Fly Test, and tying up loose ends for work, and I sigh, wondering how a seemingly so 9-5 job is anything but 9-5 and why people struggle to take what I say in. Is it my voice?
I'm not really sure where the disconnect between what I say and how people perceive what I am saying actually is or why it is confusing. And yet...I remember a dear friend of mine having a severe reaction to aenthesia post-wisdom teeth removal and winding up in a cupboard at the hospital. 'So, X is in the cupboard. I'm at the hospital but they can't get him out. I'm not going to be able to go out to dinner.'
'What do you mean, no dinner? What do mean he is in the cupboard?
When the former husband arrived and realised X was, in fact, in the cupboard...well...he was surprised but there was no apology forthcoming. A bridge too far?
My dad fell the week of 14 June. It wasn't his first fall. It probably won't be his last. He is a stubborn man and refused, as he has since 2016, to go and see a doctor. This time he couldn't get up, really didn't want to. An abdominal aneurysm, what looks like advanced leukemia and a general desire to just not be on this life journey has kept him pinned there. After a dicey weekend, he's able to start chemotherapy.
So much of our time together lately, we spend arguing. Over dumb stuff, which is actually the big stuff. The little things at the matter, always seem to be the most challenging to say.
6 years ago, I was in Sophia, at a writing workshop. I met some amazing people, and encountered others from past lives, including an old customer from a bookshop I worked at in Uni. Apparently, the luster of my voice and eyes moves him haunting 5 years on. 'If not now, when?' My immediate response is 'How's about never, friend? Does that work for you?' It wasn't a difficult 'block' to make on social media.
On the one hand, I appreciate that a soul is brave enough to share their truth. I'm vain enough to be flattered but there is a sinister air to this approach, like a turkey buzzard circling over a wounded animal. As another friend says 'Read the room, dude.'
'Is this kind of message a red flag? Survey says yes.'
'Oh, Rachel. Yes. This is all of the red flags. A man who puts his desires before your needs? All of the red flags.'
But I don't always know or see. It make it a dangerous place to be at, when you live just on the other side of the river.
I cycled to my therapist's last night, feeling quietly assured in my uncertainty. But I also felt quite keenly the weight of this continual traveling alone and I wonder how it became my habit, especially when it isn't something I knew I desired. I have to remind myself there's a price we pay for every decision, for every sin, for every habit we hold too close. I suppose this sense of reluctant responsibility is mine.
Comments
Post a Comment