2000-11-04 - 16:50:22
Brooding on the meaning of life and the lives of my friends

November 4, 3:30 pm

Isn't it funny how life goes?

I think the scriptwriters for "The Matrix" had it right. Human beings thrive on adversity ... without it, we'd go insane. At least, it seems that way sometimes. What other explanation is there for the way we consistently force ourselves -- and others -- into making hard choices, accepting situations where nobody is really happy, sitting alone in an attic with a bottle of black cider waiting for yet another Saturday afternoon to pass?

Some friends of mine are hosting a birthday party at their place in half an hour. I'm invited, but I'm not going. Why? I have to drive my brother home this evening, and I'm not sure how to get from their place to his place, nor do I really want to add that much driving time to the hour and a half I'll already spend in the car going to his apartment, then driving to our parent's place. I'd have no time to have fun, to socialize, whatever.

I do have time, it seems, to sit and brood.

You know, I usually don't drink alcohol, and especially not in my own place. Not good practice. Besides the fact that my current workplace will suspend someone over a single alcoholic purchase, and has, alcoholism runs strongly in my genes. Stupid Shell. Somehow, though, it seemed appropriate today.

I'd saved that bottle of black cider to share with Hildegaard when she came. Then the shit hit the fan, and a lot of things we meant to do on her visit simply didn't get done. Her shampoo is still downstairs in the shower, my teddybear is missing, and my phone sits mutely waiting for her to call and tell me she's okay; small things, caught up in a whirlwind of loss and grief.

What is that counselor of hers really doing for her? Does she see Hildegaard as a person, a girl who's being dragged further down with every month in that town? Or does she only see that if Hildegaard moves, she'll lose a client? She's been seeing the woman for a year now, and even before the catastrophe, she was more depressed than I'd ever heard her since '97. That was the year she washed down 12 aspirin with half a bottle of cough syrup, trying to escape it all. Maybe I'm just being cynical. I sure hope so.

I miss my old friendship with Jocasta, too. She, Hildegaard, and I were the Solatiga in days of yore. It's an Indonesian word, meaning "The Three Mistakes" ... more catchy, we thought, and more appropriate than "The Three Musketeers". I'm living in Sarah's attic now ... but things are ever so much different than they used to be. She gets irritated (read mildly jealous) at so much about me now, not least of which is my friendship with Hildegaard. She even looks disgruntled when her husband laughs too much at something I say, or shares a joke with me that "she wouldn't understand", or when I do something better than her in front of him. It's hard to take ... we've all been friends for at least four years now, and I try to be as inoffensive as I can. I mean, I love these people. So what am I doing wrong?

I want Hildegaard here, where her support group is; I want Hildegaard here, so I can move out of this attic and claim some territory as my own. (I make too little to rent an apartment by myself!) I want Hildegaard here, so she and Jocasta can spend time together when I'm busy or moody or frustrated and nobody will feel jealous or slighted or neglected.

I want everybody to be happy ... Doesn't matter how crappy my life is if I can bask in someone else's emotional glow.

Funny that it's other people's stress weighing me down the most today. Yesterday, it was all me. Probably will be again tomorrow. I guess stresses come in waves.

Hildegaard's life ... Jocasta and Nappy's marriage ... my brother's friends ... Josh's job and moving woes ... Kadee's dealings with her inlaws ... Nellanor's efforts to hang on to Madman, and Popsi's efforts to hang on to Nellanor... (You know, I really think it's inappropriate to assume that your friend, no matter how long-standing your friendship, will value you and be loyal to you above her serious relationship with her boyfriend! But I won't go there right now ...)

It's nearly four now ... time for me to stop. But before I go, let me leave you, my humble readers, with a poem that struck my fancy today. It's called "The Tide Rises, the Tide Falls" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:

The tide rises, the tide falls,
The twilight darkens, the curlew calls;
Along the sea-sands damp and brown
The traveller hastens toward the town,
And the tide rises, the tide falls.

Darkness settles on roofs and walls
But the sea, the sea in the darkness calls;
The little waves, with their soft, white hands,
Efface the footprints in the sands,
And the tide rises, the tide falls.

The morning breaks; the steeds in their stalls
Stamp and neigh, as the hostler calls;
The day returns, but nevermore
Returns the traveller to the shore,
And the tide rises, the tide falls.