rest in peace to the relationship, as it was once warm and blossoming, but now it is cold and withering

#24

“Excuse me, hey, we just broke up, can you tell him he’s an asshole?!”

(Twas a clammy yet refreshing Saturday evening, and I was headed home at a strikingly early hour, as the day’s debauchery had begun early, and nothing good happens after midnight, especially when the first beer has been cracked before sunrise.)

Listen, woman, I don’t know your story, and I don’t know his story, and better yet, I don’t know YOUR GUYS story. You are in this together after all, right? Or you once were, but you let some alcohol-induced argument send your proverbial swerving car off the cliff, and now you can do nothing but hope the crack of the skull and subsequent permanent blackness is swift and quick. But I fear that immediate catharsis is not on the menu for either of you, at least from my experience. No, this will be a slow bleed from the gut, as if an English soldier had thrust his blade through your midsection, and you will be forced to experience your own death in slow motion as your guts spill out on that muddy field in Agincourt.

If baffles me why you would decide to break up while stumbling home intoxicated on a random Saturday night at the bars, which makes me think neither of you are serious about it. An amateurish move it was, and one you both will regret should it become etched in stone forever. But I would be lying through my teeth if I told you I had not made similar childish blunders in my younger years as a wandering, roaming romantic coursing through the great unknown that is courtship. (There was that one time when….. no, you know what, I will save that thought for another medium. A novel, perhaps. Besides, that vehicle is long gone. The bottom rusted out on the passenger side, and I peeled the entire polyurethane covering off the steering wheel. The bozo at the car lot couldn’t believe it! He acted as if this was the first time he had seen something in this world that caught him by complete surprise. Yeah, I doubt it pal. I know you’ve gotten into some shit over the years while you were slinging cars at the used automobile place. Whatever, that car is long gone, and the sins gone with it. Just know that many of the blunders of my youth involved that wretched mode of transportation - a product of being an American).

Perhaps the argument is a microcosm of a larger issue at play in the relationship, and the cheap liquor was but a catalyst in the cataclysmic collapse of your companionship. I am no doctor, but those symptoms would be investigated further; there would be no interest in simply treating the present ailment, as we must get to the root cause of the pain and agony. Are you unhappy? No, are you really unhappy? Or is it life that is unhappy with you for failing to extract every single drop of joy from the ripe fruit she has gifted you? Do not mistake a failing, loveless relationship for a general lack of love for life. I often wonder if the rising divorce rates are simply a product of ennui. Would we all be signing up for legal separations if there was something greater to live for? Life, liberty, and the pursuit of unhappiness (I know the Declaration says “happiness”, but I’m convinced this was a typo. Under no circumstance were the Founding Fathers in pursuit of happiness. If they were, they wouldn’t have started a Revolution. This was an early example of a writer pandering to the audience. Don’t get me wrong, I respect them though - just a minor critique of the verbiage. I know what they really meant.)

It does pain me to see two star-crossed lovers at quarrel on such a lovely night, one that was unusual for the time of year. The city was electric, more buzzed than the younger sibling who found the beer cooler at a graduation party, and yet here you two are, making fools of yourself in public, summoning strangers to be the judge, jury, and executioner of your dying relationship. I guess all the world’s really is a wretched, eroding stage, one that will crumble under the weight of your emotional baggage, should you decide to part ways and look for a new and shiny toy - the grass is always greener, as they say (but what if the grass is spray-painted? That’s what my parents’ neighbor does. Well not actually, but he is a menacing psychopath about his front and back lawns. I have never seen a display of suburban greenery so perfect, with each blade of grass manicured to perfection in a way that seems fake and phony. He might as well have astroturf installed around his house. And the shrubbery and trees and mulch and all other flora on his property look like something out of a Dr. Seuss book. It really does take a new level of anal retentiveness to maintain that level of sod supremacy, and he will go to desperate ends to defend his territory. He once famously opened a lawsuit against the household to his right when they were installing their own sod, and some straw from the protective layer ended up on his property. Can you imagine? Suing your own neighbor because some wind carried a few pieces of hay onto your magnum opus, and now there is a minuscule chance that the patch may die? You may as well be suing God! Although I wouldn’t put it past the man who has a urinal in his own home to take up a legal battle with our Almighty. A fucking lunatic. It’s almost respectable).

So I will leave you to it. I will tell you to go home, drink a bottle of wine, fuck it out if you need to, and sleep on the irrational decision. Feel the warmth of each other’s aura radiating against your own skin, and imagine what it is like to have a cold bed. Or sever it entirely, and go run with the rest of the chickens that have had their heads chopped off, scampering aimlessly around the farm until the blood loss is too great and the lifeless body falls to the dirt. You will probably need some time away from each other to figure it out though; that’s how it typically goes. You don’t know the feeling until it is real; humans are rarely capable of simulating loss until it slaps us in the face and is still standing over us after we splash our faces with cold water and tell ourselves it’s not real. The clarity will hide from you until that moment, and you will either gravitate towards each other, or the memory will wisp off into the wind and the once warm aura will be but a shivering ember in the raging fire that once was. Regardless, you will know, not only in your mind, but in your heart, as that desired moment of clarity will align all thoughts and feelings to a point of singularity that you will be unable to elude. Water always finds its level.

And I will return home, lit cigarette in hand, and say a prayer either in gratefulness for your resilience, or in memoriam for your chasm.

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Forty-nine days
Surely I should be feelin' whole lot better
Ways and ways
You keep on coming back
I keep letting you in

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Onward,

Tony

Humble Wordsmith

Writer Boy

Mr. Muscles (according to multiple independent sources)

Cougar Catnip