Up against your will
Less than five hours of fitful sleep, one too many Widmer Hefeweizens at the Echo and the Bunnymen show last night, the usual predawn wake-up after a week of bad nights and early mornings: I am tired.
Two years ago my husband and I went to another Echo concert, the Ocean Rain tour, and I spent the first three songs of it sobbing in my seat, bathed in the sounds that accompanied my abandoned adolescence. Ocean Rain came out in 1984. It was the soundtrack for the long lonely time when I lived almost on my own, the years of isolation and pregnancy and death and the relentless sameness of life afterwards. The music tugged the emotions out of me. Not so much at last night's show. Until the encore. "The Killing Moon" killed me and there I was sobbing and sobbing on my husband’s shoulder, crying like I’ve been crying a lot anyway these days.
Before the Killing Moon tears, I cried in the lobby. Before the tears in the lobby, I went up to get yet another beer and then stood alone, back against the wall, until my husband came to find me. We’re stirring up a lot of stuff right now, both together and on our own, and it’s good, it’s all good, but I am one with these feelings that I used to keep at bay by focusing on the stories, their origins. It’s not the why that is so important now, it’s the is-ness of the feelings and sometimes I can’t believe the depth of them. These are just feelings. They won’t drag me down or threaten my very being or toss me off the edge, but for a while last night I had the image of my body flipping over and over again after a leap off a cliff.
There was no bottom to hit, it was just the fall and the flip. My old-fashioned dress swirled around me. I looked like I was twelve years old. My body turned like a pinwheel in the wind and I fell. I fell. The image wasn’t soothing and it wasn’t disturbing. It was representative.
We’re in the middle of it now, me and him, we won’t give up until our psyches are shining, clean, clear, the emotions floating out of us like words, meaningful, changeable, whole, complete. It’s a long journey, the end is murky. I’m grateful for my tendency to worry at relationships like a dog gnawing at a bone. I’m grateful for my husband's presence, too, for the fact that he is there with me, listening, trying, supportive.
So I float, I flip, my tears stream. I stand alone with my back against the wall. I feel the threat of love’s promise to always be there when such a thing is impossible.
From the prompt "I won't give it up."
I'm posting every messy Round Robin prompt, a prompt a day until the RR ends. I edited this -- a tired brain is a slow one and adds unnecessary words. Took the extra words out, made the language clearer, and there you go.
Image by James Dawson.