The Epic, Part Two: When Irish Eyes are Telling you it's over

I feel I should point out that this is leading somewhere. I read through the first part of this and tried to look at it as though I was someone else and thought to myself “Great, you worked at a Mexican restaurant.” Wooptie-fricken-doo.  No, this road has a destination. A destination that, if all goes according to plan, will be very disappointing.

Moving on….

I am not good at timelines. The plot points of my history always tend to be muddled and unorganized. I might think to myself “When I was thirteen, or was I twenty five? Yes, when I was twenty five I pooped my pants at a strip club. No, I was thirteen. That’s right.”

To avoid saying something in error I will use a vague term here:

SOMETIME around the time I began working at the tex-mex place I had gone through a breakup. The breakup hadn’t started then, it had started a long time before. It had just become official around this time.

We probably should have broken up a long time before. I think she tried to, but I was afraid and fought desperately to keep the kicks coming on this dead horse. My efforts resulted in a half-year of two decent people repeating a very tired routine. It was like hanging out in a Laundromat for six months with a person you were only mildly acquainted with.

Kathryn and I met through a mutual friend and we really got off to a good start. I can’t say what she liked about me, but I can say I was better looking then. I can, however, list a few reasons I liked her:

1.      1.  She seemed to like me. This is always a good start.

2.       2. She was thoughtful and had an intellectual mind. I think I might be incapable of thinking someone is more intelligent than me but if you ask an outside source they might say she was. But what do they know?

3.       3. She was the quintessential Irish-Catholic-American girl in my eyes. She was fair and had freckles and I always added silent parts to her dialogue; Things a leprechaun might say. She would say “I have to pick up smokes.” And I would hear “Begorra! I have to pick up smokes.”

4.       4. While I can’t say she was an “accomplished” musician, I can say she was good at it and I can certainly say she was better than me.  She was always very diplomatic about it. After listening to one of my original “pieces” hammered out on a keyboard she might say “Oh honey, that was beautiful. I never would have thought to play ‘Lean On Me’ backwards.” With both of my index fingers still resting on the keys like a freeze-frame of someone playing “chopsticks” I would say “Oh. Yes. Well, I wanted to play around with [insert music term here] and see what developed.” “Yeah, that’s the ticket.” I was thinking. I would justify my artistic expression to myself as something akin to Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Cans. I am picturing myself on stage before a packed concert hall unknowingly playing "Lean on Me" backwards......

5.       5. She listened to Jazz. It’s always been a music I can’t truly relate to. I’ve always assumed it was due to a lack of musical sophistication and her ability to enjoy it seemed exotic. I faked enjoying Jazz the same way I faked believing that prayer had any effect on the world. (Don’t be offended here. I didn’t DECIDE to feel this way, I just do. Also, I do not believe that my thoughts have any effect on what is real or right, so pray. By all means, pray.)

I’m pretty good at pointing out other people’s flaws when I am feeling judgmental but I don’t do it much when recalling previous relationships.  I can forgive even the most egregious offenses thinking that we are all trying hard to figure ourselves out. Kathryn committed no such offense.  As a matter of fact she tried hard to improve my life and, after a brief effort, I fought tooth and nail against such efforts. She’s the one that pushed for me to get my GED and start college. She tutored me and encouraged me. When we both started putting on weight, she started exercising and pushed me to do so. My reactions to attempts to motivate me to ride a bike or do sit-ups or stand up or at least sit in an upright position were reacted to much in the same manner that you might see young children reacting in wal-mart. Picture a grown man pouting and kicking his feet while his well-meaning girlfriend attempted to strap a bicycle helmet to his head. “I don’t WANT to ride the bike. I want a TRANSFORMER!” I was a man-child and she was bravely entering adulthood. She was thinking grad school and I was thinking “Let’s get high and play video games!”- Bad timing. I blame my inability to understand jazz.

The breakup had happened a while back and making it official just felt more like relief than loss.

The world I came into was a dull, gray and hopeless world. I imagine it’s what the creators of early rockets and flight vehicles felt like. Months spent designing a thing that, when it came time to test it, just flared up and dropped lazily to the ground. No explosion. No excitement. Just a failure and no budget to go back to the drawing board with. I was left with the feeling that I had wasted a lot of time and missed a lot of opportunities to have fun. It might have been different if I could say I was TRYING to improve the relationship. But that would imply some sort of effort. I was just waiting for something to happen automagically.

I robotically moved through my days.

BEGIN SYSTEM STARTUP

 ALERT: THE SYTEM HAS RECOVERED FROM A SERIOUS ERROR. THE PROCESS “WAKE UP FOR WORK ON TIME” HAS CAUSED A PAGE FAULT IN “DAY.” THE SYSTEM IS NOW CREATING AN EXCUSE AND INITIATING THE PROGRAM “GO TO WORK.”

WARNING: A PROCESS IS CAUSING THE SYSTEM TO RUN SLOWLY. THE PROCESS “HANGOVER” IS IN USE BY THE SYSTEM AND CANNOT BE TERMINATED.

EVENT: THE PROGRAM “GO TO WORK” HAS COMPLETED.

EVENT: RUN PROGRAM “DO JOB. HATE JOB.”

WARNING: THIS PROGRAM REQUIRES AT LEAST 512KB of COMPETENCE. THE PROGRAM WILL CONTINUE TO RUN BUT SOME FEATURES WILL BE DISABLED. YOU SHOULD UPGRADE YOUR SYSTEM.

WARNING: A THREAT HAS BEEN DETECTED. THE PROGRAM “MANAGEMENT” HAS MADE CHANGES TO SOME SYSTEM FILES. THE FILE “MODICUM OF HAPPINESS” WAS CORRUPTED AND COULD NOT BE RECOVERED.

EVENT: THE PROGRAM “WORK” HAS COMPLETED AND GENERATED THE FOLLOWING REPORT:

8 tables waited on

36 errors were encountered in this process

24 dollars in tips were generated during this process

End report.

EVENT: RUNNING SCHEDULED MAINTENANCE. PLEASE STAND BY….

Cigarettes purchased…

“GO TO BAR ALONE” completed….

“SPEND DAYS WAGES ON HALF-PRICE JACK DANIELS” completed….

The system is now stumbling home…..

“JACK DANIELS.INI” HAS CAUSED AN ERROR IN “STOMACH.DLL” BEGINNING PAGE DUMP…….

En error report has been created…

The error report was moved to the recycle bin…

The error report has been deleted…

THIS PROCESS IS SCHEDULED TO RUN AGAIN IN 4 HOURS

THE SYSTEM IS SHUTTING DOWN…..

It sounds pathetic, but it was a decision I made. I DECIDED to do this. Not all times in life are “good” times. They don’t have to be. I realize this now. People offered help and I rejected it. It was a chosen solitude. I need this to be perfectly clear:

I WANTED THIS.

To be continued……