Monday, April 7, 2008

... and there will be blood ...

…and lots of it …

Mookie just called from Vegas, asking about her baby and making conversation. Because I have been away and called back home, during good, everyday times as well as crisis, I ‘heard and felt’ what she said.

Spoke to her about what she does when she isn’t at the hospital, how her sister is doing, and she mentioned how she didn’t think she could adjust to the atmosphere, the multiculturalism as well as the transient feel of Vegas …

… hence the use of the lyric from the Smith’s song, ‘Panic’, when I allude to ‘the provincial town I jog ‘round’. Not going to get all deep, but I don’t get it. Prolly why I can stand Detroit, with its boundaries and willingness to be ignorant of those around them.

So I am talking to Mookie and I can here the homesick in her voice, and I know that if I were to return in full, the emotion that she is looking for, that would be leading her on. As it is, I am struggling between the ‘yin and yang’ of my own feelings. I know that she needs support and tenderness, the kind of which she prolly has had the chance to realize she took for granted. I would not have been surprised if that isn’t something she and her sister talked about when she was in town.

She has said that she misses ME, not just ‘us’, including her daughter. What is with this, I wonder, why does it seem like women act like this with me, when things are winding down? I know that it isn’t anything special to my experience, otherwise Maury Povich wouldn’t have any topics to run on the variation of ‘Who’s My Baby Daddy Who Has Eight Other Children, When I Have Slept With Everyone In Our Graduating Class From High School And They All Need A Paternity Test’.

Not that I thought I was going to escape this without having to fight my way out. But I didn’t think that I would have to fight as hard as I see I will have to. Here I am, getting my gear in order, and going down my checklists and inventories, and she is three time zones away, thinking …

… thinking she has the love and support of a potential life mate, who is caring for her home in a manner she would expect of someone who is in love with her … only he isn’t. I remember hearing several times, ‘I love you, but I am not IN love with you’, mainly as a third party observer. I can ‘sense’ when someone isn’t that in to me, so no one has had the pleasure of being able to say that to me.

No, here is where I run into the most problems. I have had problems with the ‘disengaging’ part of relationships … just as in boxing I could fight ‘in’ a clinch, but I could not ‘break’ one. Perhaps a male role model could have helped here, as my high school mates were as clueless as I was, and in the service and in college, you were assumed to have known how to ‘sow’ your oats without stepping into the fertilizer too much.

I go back to when my Mother and I had a bad falling out over my first wife. Since it is me telling this, I think that Jan befriended her, brought her into the family under the guise of being a good Aunt and Sister-in-law. I think it was to spite me, and create a wedge between me and the rest of the family, including my Mom.

Those were some very, very, hard feelings. “Okay,” I thought, “I guess I am the bad guy.” I want to say that I went on without much effect done to me, but THAT would be denial. For a nice long while, I felt that I was out there alone, as I felt that ‘the girls’ had embraced an outsider at the expense of their own.

I was the one that changed their diapers, that took them on paper routes and to the gym when there was no babysitter around. I was the one who went with them to the mall and stood up for them at the playground when someone was pushing them in the mud. I was the one who found scholarship money and help Mom with tuition when things looked bleak for Jan. Never thought to mention that, or any of the other things that I can’t quite grasp, but know that I prolly put in on for them, and here was their ONE CHANCE to stand behind me …

… and they didn’t.

I remember more than that … but what is the point of recalling anymore than that? In my book, that is more than enough.

I bothers me, because I do have a sensitive heart, a loving soul, and a good conscious. But it is a ‘grey area’, and I am trying to drag myself out of it, into the black and white.

One of my favorite fighters is Sonny Liston, I made a mention of what was said in an article regarding his first win over Floyd Patterson: “So it is true, in a fair fight between good and evil, evil must always win.” I thought it was terrible to say, and I have never cared for Larry Merchant after reading that. But I also understood what words like that must have meant for Sonny. No one grows up as a child, looking forward to being the bump in the night, the bad dream of dark nights.

I can’t say what will happen when Mookie gets home. Don’t know what will change. But the one constant in this, is that I am going to leave her, whether in June or be it next week. I want to concentrate on making my appointments and getting what I need to have finished here in town, finished.

Weep for Mookie, but I don’t pity her. She should have thought about the direction of our relationship back in the

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Those "grey areas" are always tricky.  Writing can sometimes clear them up a bit, and it seems like that;s what you're doing.

Russ

Anonymous said...

I think she's missing her routine and is lonesome for it all out there in Las Vegas even though she's with family; missing lil Mook, you, etc and that is what is causing her to perhaps say the things she's saying. I would imagine once she's back and settled into routines, life will go back to how it was before with her feelings towards you; we tend to re-settle ourselves, don't we, once we are in familiar turf again?

betty

Anonymous said...

Mark, I think you do have a sensitive heart and a loving soul, you will make someone very happy someday, Hugs Lisa

Anonymous said...

You don't know what you have til its gone.  Something like that.  We like to think we don't need anyone, and that we can make it on our own, but I believe, we all need someone to support us...and love us.  I'm not saying thats how she feels, but I'm sure, in her mind, she does miss you now, and she will miss you more when you're gone.  But like you said, she should have thought about that a long time ago.  
xoxo ~Myra

Anonymous said...

You know the saying, "You don't realize what you had until it's gone"...I'm seeing that here with Mookie. As you said too little , too late. I have a feeling she will change her stripes once again once she gets into her old routine. The unfamiliar surroundings make her want to reach for something familiar - you. (Hugs) Indigo