A Tale of Two Cities, revisited

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times".

yeah, yeah, so sue me - i used the book a week or so ago..... it fits again.

"it was the best of times"
i got to see my daughter this weekend. it's been too long. i should never, never have gone this long without seeing her. i won't again. it wasn't the most ?comfortable? of visits. it took us some time to get past awkward and to some semblance of comfortable. we never got completely past awkward, but we did reach some level of comfort.

she is such a wonderful child, student, person, (almost) woman. for whatever small part i've played in helping her to grow to be such a wonderful person, at least my life hasn't been a complete waste.

"it was the worst of times"
when i got to my former home state on friday, i got a rental car and left the airport. it was a nice day... puffy clouds, blue skies, cool temp. the flight was smooth. the car rental was smooth (and a brand new car to boot!). tooling along the highway outta the airport..... then it hit me.

no one in the state wanted me there. 99.99995% of the population could care either way, but the remaining 10 people or so actively didn't want me in the state.

my daughter kinda did, kinda didn't. i know she was glad, at some level, but it causes her anxiety, disrupts her routine, and frankly, she's not ready to deal with her father and all the disruption he's caused in her life.

my ex and the family - they didn't want me there. understandably, i suppose. still, being actively disliked, actively unwanted is a tough pill to swallow.

and B. she said it doesn't bother her when i'm in the state, but i know it does. she's still afraid that i'm stalking her or something. i know she's a lot more comfortable when i'm 1200 miles away, just a disembodied voice on the phone. when i'm 200 miles away, i'm too close. too much more liklihood that i might show up in her area, be seen by bf or something, somehow intrude upon or disrupt her life with him. that's no surprise in and of itself because she still wants to hide from me, still won't open up to me, still stays hidden and anonymous. but that's different than knowing that my presence within a few hours drive causes her discomfort.

and all the days leading up to my trip, right at the edge of my thoughts, i kept thinking that i was gonna get to be close to her again (yeah, 200 miles is close) and even that proximity made me happy.... just to be that much closer to her.

it reminds me of a movie scene where the horribly disfigured man, confident that the woman he loves loves him enough to overlook his appearance, finally gets the courage to reveal his true self to her and upon seeing him she runs screaming from the room.

we had a long talk on friday that ended poorly. my fault, no surprise. i was really melting down. and that's how we left for the weekend. i wrote her a long letter. but it's just me talking, in the end she's still there, i'm still here and that's that.

she does have an effect on me though. even though my solitary times were filled with too much loss (and the accompanying self pity and woe-is-me-ness and why-why-why), i didn't drink. it was hard though, damn hard. those hours i spent alone, thinking of her and hurting for what i don't have, g-d i wanted to drown it all, make it go away, just stop thinking about what i don't have for a little while. how is it possible to want someone so much?



side note on the unfairness of the universe: how can the presence of something be and bring so much joy and enhance everything else in the world and the absense of that can make nothing else matter at all?