I have been holding my breath and walkin' on the tippy top edge of my toe nails for four months. From the day I moved to New York to start my life with David until last Thursday, I was in the front seat of a rollercoaster called Crazy with an extremely unstable, fried, strung out, drugged up, worn down, and angrily bitter conductor. On any given day, or any given moment within any given day, you would never know whether or not the conductor was going to snap and start screaming or invite you to catch the filming of the Wendy Williams Show.
If I were a guitar string, I would have snapped from the tension, curled up, and sliced my own face.
Three days ago, David's ex finally moved out. Yesterday, my best friend said that I must be doing jumps of joy and celebrating our ability to have our space without such a hurtful and wounded presence in the space.
Sweet Jesus, I wish that were so. I believe it will be so, but right now I am so damn exhausted (mentally, emotionally, and physically), that I can't begin to celebrate. Not quite yet. While I love being able to move throughout the apartment, take a piss, hop in the shower, or cook a meal without negotiating my emotional capacity related to my emotional well being and if I would be able to make it through chopping vegetables without launching the butcher knife through the back of old boy's neck. I am so worn down from the preceeding four months that it is quite literally all I can do to stay awake.
It is as if my entire being has begun to release all of the hurt, tension, anger, pain, frustration, indignation, and a whole host of other emotional baggage that settled cell deep in my body. I should probably have expected something like this, but I haven't experienced anything like this since childhood, when living in a home with that type of energy was all I knew. I should have remembered that when I finally left home for college and got out of that environment, it took me months and months and years and years to decompress from 17 years of non-stop (or rarely stopped) physical and psychic trauma.
You would think I would have learned to have some patience with myself. To quote my favorite Diva about to make a come back, "Hell to the No."
Unfortuantely, life doesn't necessarily pause in order for you to take the breaths you need. And Frank's leaving opened up new wounds in our home. He took our dog away. He took our friend away. He took our family away.
One of the things that made me so damn angry about the man, was that he used Tildon (the dog) as an emotional crutch, an emotional tool, and an emotional weapon. If Tildon were sitting in my lap in the studio, and Frank should walk in...within five minutes of him leaving the room, he would call the dog. If Frank got bad news or had a rough day, he would demand that Tildon be at his side, an emotional hostage, a "thing" to be controlled as a way to assert more control over this space. I got yelled at one time for walking the dog when Frank wasn't home, as I should have known that he wanted to walk the dog when he got back from wherever he had gone at whatever time he decided to come home. It killed him that the dog chose to sleep at night with David and I. And, more than once, as I lay taking a nap, he opened our bedroom door and bellow for the dog.
Nowhere in any of this or in any of his behavior was their a concept or a conversation about what was BEST for Tildon. It never occurred to him that when all of us were home that 85% of the time the dog CHOSE to be with David and I. If he wanted to go to the other room, we never stopped him. The Ex could not make the same claim. And, as a last ditch effort to cause as much pain as humanly possible, Frank took Tildon when he left. Anyone that has ever lived with me knows that waking me up from a nap for some bullshit is a good way to end up in a shallow grave with some quicklime thrown on your corpse.
Sure, David could have fought Frank for the dog. Even though Frank snuck and registered the dog as his own with the state. Even though David had purchased all of Tildon's food and paid all his vet bills (except the last one, which I helped pay). Even though it was clear that Tildon was happiest when he was with David. The hurt and pain and ugliness of the situation was such that to place that last burden on Tildon would have been too much. It was easier to let him go.
If that is easy, then I would like to assert that developing an affordable form of cold fusion should be a piece of cake in comparison.
And so, in the middle of our joy at finally having a negative cloud lifted from our living space, we have had to come to terms with the loss of a friend. It is my secret hope that one day, we will walk outside, and Tildon will be sitting on the front steps. He will look at us, lift up one paw, and underneath will be a a copy of Homeward Bound. On the backside of the DVD will be a note that says, "Bitches. How you gonna let that crazy ass man take me off to North Carolina. You are lucky I don't bite your faces."
I want to take a three day nap.
I know that in time the lethargy and sadness and tiredness will leave. I know that one morning soon, I will wake up and be energized and vibrant again. I also know that life is going to keep moving forward and moving us along with it whether or not we have the capacity to move through it and with it in the way we would like. Until then, if you need me, I will be in the living room, watching bad movies, and waiting for the sound of Tildon barking in the hallway.
