I Need You Like A Heart Needs A Beat, But It's Nothing New, I Loved You With A Fire Red, But Now It's Turning Blue

--"Apologize", Timbaland featuring One Republic

You remember listening to the noiseless fury outside, the calm collection of silence and anger that hearing bad news entails. This wasn't your husband. He wasn't your guy. Your husband wouldn't hurt you like this. Not like this. Not him. But the news was true. He wanted the two of you to seriously consider getting a divorce.

"How can you even be mad, Breanne?" he asked in that delicate patter of his, belying his own ire. "You're the one who cheated on me, remember? You're the one who started all of this."

That was all the reason he needed. That was all the reason he was going to give you. And it was true, you're the one who had strayed first in this marriage. You had placed your own impulsiveness before the health of your relationship. You had decided to tear down all the trust you had built up in the last five years for something ephemeral. You had struck the first blow. But to have him question your right to feel betrayed yourself was rather insulting. Just because you had cut out his heart first doesn't mean yours suddenly becomes invulnerable. You may have brought the wrath of Heaven down upon you, but that didn't mean it didn't hurt something fierce. When you decided to work it all out, after you had reconsidered, you thought that would be enough to get the two of you back on track. You thought all you had to do was show your penitence and that would be enough of a first step towards reconciling with your husband. You didn't expect that he would want to drag out the proceedings himself. That wasn't your husband. That wasn't your guy.

Yet here he was, asking for a pound of flesh. If you didn't know him better you would have thought he was raking you over the coals for retribution. No, this was something different entirely. This was your husband telling you in no uncertain terms that he had lost faith in you, in what you represented. This was him telling you he wanted out. You had caused him to suffer and he wasn't sure you weren't about to do it again.

"I'm trying here, honey. Can't you see that? I don't see why you have to decide this now, now that we're in the midst of finally working our way back..."

"Back to what? Back to what we once were? We'll never be that again."

"Back to something better than we once were," you said simply.

"And what do you think that is? Where do you think we have to go from here?"

The truth was you didn't know. You hadn't thought it out that far. You knew you wanted your husband back. In what capacity you had no clue. Your future was cloudy. Your future days were blurry at best. But planning for the future was never your strong suit. Breanne doesn't think; she just goes--that's what the saying was. And what your mind was telling you right now was that you had to be together with your husband. No more detail than that was necessary. To separate, to divorce, was not in your plans. You couldn't let that happen. You would never let something opposite to what you wanted happen. You always got your way. That's why it was called your way.

Maybe it was foolish to think that you could just come back and he would just take you back. You've always had an easier time dispensing forgiveness than asking for it. That probably stems from your sense of infallibility, your vanity, or maybe your sense of entitlement. But you weren't asking for much. You weren't asking him to forget what you'd done. All you were asking him was to forgive you. That didn't seem so difficult. Divorcing you wasn't forgiveness. That was quite the opposite, actually. Divorcing you meant that whatever your efforts to show contrition had been met with failure. You hadn't done enough, said enough to show just how sorry you were.

You would think this would prompt you to do more to earn his trust once more. That's not how you approached obstacles, though.

If he couldn't forgive you that was a failing on his part. You were always taught that all you had to do was show you were sorry, apologize earnestly, and then await the inevitable blessing of being forgiven. It had never occurred to you that if you went through the prior steps that the result would be any different than absolute forgiveness. You weren't even aware of there being any other consequence. From Church to your own business dealings to television and movies--you do wrong, you ask forgiveness, you were forgiven. That's how the progression worked.

"You can't just wish yourself out of this situation. I don't know if we can ever work around this. I don't know if I can ever trust you again. I'm thinking this would be the best solution for both of us."

"How can it be the best for both of us if I don't agree with it? For it to be the best for both of us we both have to want it, to see it. Right now I don't see it being the best solution at all."

"I do."

"I know you do. I just don't understand why, sugar."

And that's when he walked away, without any further explanation. At the time you thought you had won. He didn't mention any talk of divorce for the rest of the night. But it wasn't till a few weeks later, in therapy, that you realized he hadn't let go of the idea. He had just come to the realization that you weren't ready to see the truth yet. You weren't ready to see that asking forgiveness isn't the same as being deserving of it. You weren't ready to see that wanting to be cleansed of your sins wasn't the same as being clean. You weren't ready to see that wanting to be somebody's wife wasn't the same as somebody wanting you to be their wife.

It would take you a few more months to realize that in a marriage, more than any other relationship, was about giving what you want and what you thought you deserved, and putting in the effort to make sure your optimal outcome came to pass. You couldn't just expect your dreams to happen; you actually had to put in the spit and gristle to make sure that they did. It took you awhile to realize that being in love meant sacrificing being happy sometimes. Sometimes being in love meant making the other person happy in every way at the expense of your pride, your vanity, and, yes, even your stubbornness.

Breanne

It's Sixteen Miles To The Promised Land, And I'm Doing The Best I Can

--"With Arms Outstretched", Rilo Kiley

I started a new blog:

Sixteen Miles

In my own words,

This is a site about you and all those memorable times that life thrust upon you in or around your car. This is about all those late-night drives, conversations in the pouring rain in the parking lot, and the pleasant surprises you had while on the 210. It's about a record of your life.

One mile at a time.

I felt it was time for something new. I haven't grown tired of this site yet, but sometimes I miss the interaction. That's what I hope 16 miles will be about, a place for people to send in the kind of stories I like to read. For some reason that always happens to me. I always get myself into stories involving sitting in a car somewhere with somebody I care about. Sometimes it isn't a huge deal. But other times the huge life-affirming or life-destroying events happen to me out of nowhere. I wanted a place to capture that.

----

Before I started driving I didn't think in terms of this happened on this day or this happened on that day. I remembered the experience more--first day of school, first kiss, first heartbreak, &c...--but I never bothered to pin down the day on a calendar. I never kept a journal before the internet. I hardly ever took pictures. I just remembered what happened for what it was.

When I started driving, though, I noticed that a lot of more times I could remember because I could look to my odometer and see how long ago something happened. It's like my car was keeping a silent record of the comings and goings of my life. It occurred to me that somebody could keep a kind of record of their days just by the miles they've put on their car. I certainly could. If I looked back at my blog I'd have to say 50% of my most memorable times involved a car somewhere. Whether I was driving somewhere in one, parked in one, or just sitting on the curb next to one, it's difficult to have a day go by where I'm not near my car when something pivotal happens.

So that's what I thought of when my car hit 34,839 miles the other day--a site where good folks could post all the happenings of their life and where they were when it happened. More importantly, they could post up at what mileage the golden moments of their life took place so that way any time they stepped into their car they could realize how long ago (or how recently) their world was changed.

The format's simple. I don't want anything too long. Five hundred words should do. And all you have to do is title the post with the mileage on your car and send me the idea through the twitter account Sixteen Miles. If I like the idea I'll reply back for a more in-depth article to post it here.

I only hope that sharing the experience here will remind them of the good times people had or maybe take the sting a bit out of the bad times.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

When The Night Falls On You, You Don't Know What To Do, Nothing You Confess, Could Make Me Love You Less

--"I'll Stand By You", The Pretenders

One of my fondest memories from the last twenty years has nothing to do with Breanne, DeAnn, or Tara. In fact, it barely has to do with Jina and she was the one standing right next to me.

It was a day in July of 1995. Her whole family and I had decided to go for a walk. Seeing as my family never just went out walking together for anything, it was a nice change of pace. I hardly remember what we were talking about. I hardly remember the circumstances of how we ended up where we did. I just remember being caught up in talking to my best friend at the time, of just being into her, and thinking how I had made the right decision in coming out to visit her for her fifteenth birthday.

The next thing I knew the two of us were walking together across the bridge alone. Her mom, her sister, basically everyone but me and her had decided to stop short of the bridge. I don't know if it was intentional--I'd like to think it was--but it left the pair of us alone on the bridge. Once I noticed that she and I stopped where we were at. We had, for the lack of a better word, a moment. I looked at her, she looked at me. It's what Mia Wallace referred to as two friends sharing a comfortable silence that didn't need any punctuation. The sun was bright, the breeze was lightly blowing everything, and I truly didn't have a care in the word other than soaking in every moment. I can't speak for her, but for me, it was one of those perfect instances that recalled a film where you know it's just too good to be true and that instances like that don't actually happen. But for those few seconds, they did.

I brushed the bangs out of her eyes--as I was wont to do in those days. Our eyes lingered on each other for a couple more seconds, and then we walked back to rejoin her family. And that was it, that's the memory that's seared into my brain--a whole bunch of nothing. Glances, nothing more.

I know the whole affair insignificant in the grand scope of life, especially considering the horrendous decisions I made in regards to Jina a scant few weeks later. But that was a time I felt completely secure with another person. Jina or not--those moments don't come along all too often. I find myself even today thinking today how that one event, or non-event, truly was free of bitterness or stress. I find myself believing that one day for those few minutes I was a perfect person to someone and I truly mattered. It was one of those times where I knew I cared about somebody or something other than myself--where I had no doubt that I was a good person.

As aforementioned, those times don't come around often. Sometimes it isn't about falling in love with a person or wrapping a moment in romantic notions of attraction. Sometimes what drives a moment of connection is just how much you like being in someone's company and how much they like being in yours. Without words. Without agendas. Without the added pressure of it all having to lead somewhere.

Sometimes it's about two people standing on a bridge, looking at each other un-ironically, and seeing each other plainly.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

Oh, But Boy Do I Remember The Strain Of Her Refrain, And The Nights We Spent Together, And The Way She Called My Name

--"Dixie Chicken", Little Feat

Enough time has passed I believe for me to start this little project up again. I don't know if I truly needed the last two months to collect my thoughts or if it was more of a cooling off period. I know how I get. I know what my writing becomes when I write in the heat of the moment. No good comes of it. It all sounds like thunder--full of fury, but ultimately leaving nothing physical behind. It's not the first time I've lost somebody and I'm probably thinking it won't be the last.

It reminds me that when it comes right down to it there's only a handful of people I can count on. While I can't stop myself from feeling a little saddened by the loss, the loss isn't something that's going to define my life. You can't define your life by what's missing from it. That's like describing a song by what you're not hearing, a painting by what you're not seeing. I have too many people in my life to constantly tether it to the absence, noticeable or not, of an individual. If she comes back, she comes back. That's why I'm not taking down the header because, when it comes down to it, I'm not the one walking away from her. My door is always open, my phone's always on, and she knows where to find me.

----

What I've been working on for the last few weeks is a little 'ole card game that was inspired by The Name of the Wind, the best book I've read in the last year. It's a trick-taking game called Corners that utilizes partnerships and powers, all aspects I really admire. It isn't my most creative endeavor--there's only so much you can do with a trick-taking game--but it's a solid game and I've been having fun playing it with local friends and friends from my boardgaming group. I don't know if it's going to go anywhere. I want it to, but I know the likelihood that it will be published is somewhat less than a dream right now.

One thing that it does have going for it is that I received encouraging words from the author, Patrick Rothfuss, when I mentioned to him that I had designed a card game based on the one mentioned in his book. He wrote back:

I'd be curious to hear the rules for your game, and maybe even try a hand or two. But right now I'm absolutely burried in work, and if you e-mailed them to me, they'd just sit on my computer while I ignored them in order to get other things done. Then I'd feel guilty.

If you dropped me a line in a couple of months though, I might have a little free brainspace to devote to the project....

pat

So there is that. I mean--the best case scenario would be I design a game he likes and he allows me to use the Kingkiller Chronicle name to promote it. I wouldn't even mind giving up some profits if it meant exposure to the hordes of loyal readers his books have. Hell, I'd feel honored just to have something I created be a somewhat small part of that universe. The worse case scenario would be to develop this project on my own, change the name, and have the only copy in existence because all the companies I contacted find it unpublishable. Even that wouldn't be so bad because I like playing it, and, it being a partnership game and all, I know at least three other people willing to play it.

That's kind of where I'm at right now. Unemployed, unattached, and yet still searching to do something that makes me happy even if it doesn't land me a job or the girl. I don't want to be the guy chasing down every hope only to be hurt again. It doesn't mean I'm going to give up on my dreams of happiness, it doesn't mean I'm not working hard to make my life somewhat more presentable. I'm just not willing to give up my self-respect or my sanity to do something desperate to get my game published or, in the former case, to get somebody back I deeply miss. There's a time and a place for sacrifice, for stowing away one's pride, but I don't think that time has come yet. I'm still the master of my universe and that's a place I'm intent on staying for the foreseeable future. It's taken me two months to realize that just because you don't get who or what you want doesn't mean you need to be sad over it. Plenty of people lose people or dreams that were important to them.

It just means you put your efforts into new projects, into new people. Or, better yet, it just means you go back to those endeavors, those individuals, that you know you can fall back on. Whether that's a friend you've known for almost two decades now and who has been nothing but understanding when you come bitching to her at five in the morning or that's a website you've been working on for the last eight years now--you have places to go to so you can mitigate the sting of disappointment and bitterness. True, you'll always remember the golden days when you felt like you had more than you have now.

But just because you've lost a step or two, it doesn't mean you stop walking forward. You just keep putting one foot in front of the other and eventually you'll be right again.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers