Lime Meridian

There is a spectrum of self-disclosure that extends from The Lion King to listening to a lion eating someone alive in the next room, and I’ll happily admit that I tend to confuse the latter with the former. Maybe I don’t need to wrestle with my own humanity while searching through the pile at the grocery store for the correct lime, and my dating life has been a tour de force in not understanding that all women want is a man who moisturizes his face. But one of the realities about Sloane and I’s relationship that has helped me adjust to more regular domestic comfort is her lack of judgement around my own revelations. My parents are wonderful people for real, but my concept of home historically has been a place where I could always have been better no matter what the subject is and my life has been full of performative honesty partially because I’ve found the world to be stranger than people seem comfortable admitting, and partially because I was hoping to shock my environment into accepting me.

Take our trip to HEB this weekend for example: I talked with her while we were looking in the store for raspberries and yogurt or something about how I’ve discovered some ways I’ve kept her at a distance because of my fear of her dying. The realization started with an interview with Zizek I listened to Saturday morning while piloting my fishing boat around the bay in Dredge where he talked about how Orpheus turned around to look at Eurydice in the cave not because of some protective impulse but because he wanted subconsciously to manufacture his own pain from which to create. He loved what her absence contributed to his artistic life more than the reality of her alive in their home, a theme which is a bit Doric and harsh for the grocery store.

My struggle is basically the opposite of Orpheus. I’ve been filling up my life with projects partially because of a personal renaissance but also partially because I was scared of being even more crushed by her dying than I already would be, which is a completely insane thing to say to someone when you’re standing next to a slope of turnips. And no she’s not sick or anything, I just future trip like it’s my literal job. The problem with falling in love is that I don’t feel like I can handle any more heartbreak, and adjusting myself to the reality that loss is the most consistent thread used for our individual quilt-like existences is still very much a work in progress for me. And maybe you can’t really adjust. Maybe you just go on getting outrageously sad and you just sort of have to accept that. But either way, the rest of the people at the store should have charged me for having to listen to it while we wandered through our list and I’m glad they let us stay long enough to get some groceries.