The Occassional Dread of Being Awake

I'm having a hard time going to work recently. In part it's because me and my team have been getting hammered with criticism, relentlessly since last fall. That's bound to wear on a Bear.

Part of it is the weather. Blazing hot temps that peel the sticky hooks off my wall and drop my shit to the ground while I'm at work. I come home to stretched and torn latex paint, and my frame drum looking at me from the floor like, "What?"

Most of it, I fear, is the love thing. I don't gotta love thing. Or rather, I've got bad case of the fucked up blues. Lauren's birthday just passed. Not that I noticed. It's been (counting... on fingers first and then on the calendar)... years. Three apartments and two girlfriends ago. Three if you count the one month stint.

That's how I mark time. Ages of my life have names. The Heidi Period, when I went on tour one summer, following around the remnants of the Grateful Dead and driving my ass off. The Lou Period, which is a lot like college. The Lauren period, when I lived richly. The Gena Period, when everyone thought I was crazy, including me, and I loved her like crazy.

That's the recent one, the one I'm stuck on. She called me after she emailed, proving that she really "demanded" a response. The non-response was not acceptable. She tried to keep the crazy out of her voice, like she had done so well in the email, but I heard it. And I was even more sure of not responding. Then another email: "Why won't you respond?"

So I'll answer her here: Because I don't trust you. You know I care about you and you'll use that to the best of your abilities, which are vast. You know I still love you, and so seeing your face or hearing your full voice (not through the digitation of the phone) or (God forbid) touching your skin would be the end of my resolve. Because I miss you so much it keeps me on my knees and hiding in my house, even while I know what I really miss is just part of my imagination. It is the image you want to project that I was happy to buy into. But you can't keep up the charade. And the results when it crumbles is disasterous. And in the end I give everything away, and you consume the life of me.

And the truth is: I don't know how to not give everything away when I fall in love. That's what I do. And so later, when I come to, and we're moved in and everything is in it's perfect locked down place, I will need room to grow, and move, and change, and expand.