aerating and weeping

 I've listened to this song about 40 times since yesterday. Maybe more because I'm time-blind or simply because it just resonates. I feel it. 

"Time blindness is a general term for the difficulty in perceiving and managing time. It's not a formal medical diagnosis, but it can significantly impact daily life.

Some signs of time blindness include: Being chronically late, Missing deadlines, Procrastinating often, Misjudging how long a task will take, and Feeling like time is passing quickly.

Time blindness is often associated with conditions like ADHD and autism spectrum disorder (ASD). It can affect a person's ability to: show up to work or appointments on time, hand in assignments or projects on deadline, pay bills on time, remember to eat, and stick to routines and schedules."

 This week has been a banner week. I been able to successfully write a few entries here and enjoy the therapy of expression online to an audience of who knows. Not only that, I got a tattoo this week that takes up the majority of my right forearm. I'm greeted by the image of a red baby's breath on the back of my hand as I type this. It's an overall more pleasant experience for me, I hope the same is true for you.

I can almost guarantee there's a reference in a previous post where I proudly cry out that I DO NOT CRY!!! Well, I do now. I have been openly weeping periodically all this week and last. I can't tell if you can tell from my recent writing but I have tapped into a well of sensitivity and understanding that I had previously walled myself off from.  

As I came of age, crying was not really permitted. Anytime a young me would be moved to tears I would be terrorized by a nearby adult threatening to give me a reason to cry. I remember when I was in grade school taking music lessons on the trumpet. Blowing my own horn is an old habit of mine, it's one I still have but it's also old. On one occasion, wanting to show off my newly honed ability to play taps or some beginner trumpet score, my mother stopped me mid-performance to provide some constructive criticism. "Please just stop, that sounds terrible." She calmly told me and I promptly ran upstairs to cry in my closet. I was about 7 or 8 and when she heard me sobbing she came upstairs and dragged me from the closet to scream "I'll give you something to cry about." As if screaming in the face of a child isn't already enough to cry about.

Pretty much every time my adult eyes have begun to water I can still hear her screeches somewhere in my mind. I can still feel my hair being pulled out or taste the soap or feel the dread as whoever doling out the punishment for unwarranted tears went in search of a larger or sturdier implement of violence.

It was a peculiar site yesterday as I rode around a client's yard aerating and weeping. Weeping and aerating, the homeowner saw me in this state and I think wisely decided to continue walking her dogs. When she arrived back from their walk I had composed myself better and managed to get into what will probably be a $2500 job. Read that and weep.

I hope that this woman thought I was just really passionate about lawn health and not finally healing from well worn mental illness. It doesn't matter to her that my heart is in pieces and my mind is dysfunctional and I can't even begin to imagine how long the job should take even though I've done thousands like it before. That's time blindness. It's related to the fact that prior to a few weeks ago the only reason I'd cried in the last 25 years was because we had a miscarriage last year.

That was the first time I let "my muse" really see me cry. Her name is Denver. Using these phrases like "my love" or "my muse" or whatever nonsense language is diminishing to the woman. Using Denver to describe her is accurate, she is a mile high stack of lovable quirks and mental illness and hope and love, but that is also her real name. I told her I might use it today because I feel this way. I told her I need to name her here in order to continue with honesty here. Using those possessives is not only diminishing to her but also to myself. I didn't fall in love with an idea, I fell in love with a woman. 

Our problems arose when I stopped just loving the woman and began to love the idea. We were planning a life together but she was the only one ready to live. Both of us have ADD but I only discovered mine at the end of our life together. This is the underlying problem responsible for all of our problems but the final straw for Denver was when I drunkenly emailed another woman for the tenth or eleventh time. I was taking on more stress than either of us were equipped to handle because I was afraid that if I couldn't provide enough for her and our future family that she'd want to leave me. I would then throw money or aquariums at the problem when she would maturely set aside her own issues to confront mine. Instead of simply listening and understanding, I chose to love her on my terms and not our terms. It's a subtle, yet exceedingly important distinction.

A series of MY bad decisions pushed her away and finally burnt her to ashes. I love this woman more than I can understand but that lack of understanding was ultimately part of the problem. I didn't understand myself. I didn't understand why I couldn't just live our life. She chose to live her life with me. We had even picked out a name for our future. Then I killed it. The insanity that I brought into our home took a skeletal, black hand and plucked our future from Denver's womb. 

I may be time blind but that's different from never knowing time. Imagine being in your mother's womb and the only experiences you know are the soothing muffled sounds, the total nourishment needs being met, and then a series of huge tsunamis of stress and negative emotions. These waves of course being the emotional distress I forced onto Denver because of my issues and insecurities. There was a storm outside the womb and that's not a bunker, it's susceptible to the onslaught of my bullshit.

Imagine heaven even if you don't believe in it, the notion is basically the same as a mother's womb. The proximity to an all loving god, every need being met, and basking in the warmth of a mother and father's love. The feelings of security and safety in the mother are some of the necessary elements for proper development. With these feelings absent from our home, I had truly killed our child. I had murdered our future with unnecessary stress. Stress I should have shouldered instead of unburdening it onto Denver. 

Time and finality provide meaning and value. They make life worthwhile. They make you treasure today because tomorrow isn't guaranteed. Giving time is the same as giving love. Attention is love and ADD is an attention deficit. The reason Denver and I fell in love was because we both saw in each other someone who needed to receive more love than anyone else could be reasonably expected to handle and someone who had more love to give than could be reasonably expected. I forgot that. I got lost and though I may now be found, it's too late.