Rolling with it.

I am the type pf person who really gets into the movie or tv show she is watching.
I really need to identify with the characters or there is no point in my watching... i don't inherently value stories about people i do not relate to.

That said, i am in the fifth and final season of Six Feet Under and

Hot F-in Damn.

that is what i have to say. I have to give props to my girl, Nancy Oliver, for her mad screenwriting skills...
okay, ditching the vernacular i want to talk about a special crazy phenomenon that i just experienced.


In this season, without giving too much away about a show that aired its final season about three years ago (a shout-out, too, to the netflix people who keep old shows fresh for years) ,
Nate breaks up with Brenda because they fight too much; he's tired of it and they don't seem to "fit."

And i got totally sucked into that world and remembered that not that long ago Chris and I were seemingly ill-fit, and though we weren't really fighting with each other, it felt as if we had been fighting for our life-together for as long as either of us could remember and we were tired.
sick-tired, nauseous-tired, dreadfully-tired, bone-tired. marrow- tired. and we felt like the brave thing to do, i definitely thought that the brave thing to do, would be to break-up: to walk away and cut our losses and face the world as individuals. individuals, the parts that cannot be divided being the ones we keep. let go of each other and stop fighting the very matter of reality and give in.

We didn't belong together it seemed. fate was apparently against us and we were

fatalities.

i have struggled with a dreadful sense of fatalism probably since my youngest sister died. it makes sense, you know? And this was that all over again- the need to let someone go even though everything inside of you is begging and pleading for that someone to stay, to live with you, to be with you. So i mustered up the idea and then the will to face that maybe, just maybe,
we were doomed. star-crossed.
for real.

It was at first a terrifying thought and since it was i knew i had to face it, i knew i did. so i held the thought in my mind and tried to embrace it with my heart and sat with the notion for about a month. yes, a month. for a month i did not look away from the tired sad thing we had become together, from the misery and the despair, from the existential questions that seemed legion.
I did not say to myself that God was with Us or that we would See with our Eyes some Good from this Pain. I did not make excuses for the rot and decay of the years set into our blood and bones; a sepsis and cancer. I did not look away to some better future.

as an exercise of the moment. to be present and to be brave.

tonight, watching nate and brenda collapse reminded me of that haunted time. the echoes of disappointments and disapprovals, of unfinished business and buried hopes filled my ears. i heard and i remembered the hollowness and illness.

and no one around me could answer for it, because it isn't the question of the mind hearing or realizing that the night has passed.
but of the ear listening past the echoes for what is now being whispered.
i heard something better tonight after the echoes.
something solid and something hale.
something set aright,
Illinois.