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House Arrest
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I returned to Minnesota recently to serve a short jail sentence for a DWI charge I got in August 2004 just two or three days after Matt and I returned to Minnesota to live together. Today is the first day of the seventeen-day sentence I am to serve here. The postponements of its commencement have eaten up all my disposable cash and left me with almost nothing to carry me to the end of my time here. But I have enough groceries and Skoal and can make do well enough from here on out with that, I think.
It has been a blue day. I’m broke again. There was a tremendous anxiety about beginning this sentence and all that goes along with putting myself into the toils of the judicial system. There is the additional stress of being in such proximity to Matt after three months of struggling with each other from across the country following our break-up. I also have not slept or eaten much in the last few days, and I’m not running on all eight cylinders.
I’ve been in trouble before, several times. This is nothing new. The fact that this is nothing new makes it worse, however. I am forty-one years old. I have eight cents in the bank and about six dollars in my pocket, in spite of traveling north with enough money to handle the basics of this trip. I have had money wired to me more than once in the ten days or so since I arrived in order to take care of additional expenses associated with the completion of this sentence, and it has evaporated as quickly as I received it. Drunk driving charges are justifiably expensive propositions to overcome, and I have no argument with that generically. I should have had enough extra cash, however, to carry me through any eventuality above and beyond those additional expenses, and it’s just gone.
I have some trouble in my life with authority. I’m frightened of it. I have spent a good deal of my adult life under some sort of community supervision. That’s not something I think I should brag about, and I don’t. It’s just a fact. The fact of it is never quite as onerous as the anticipation, however. I’m not in prison, though I could’ve been easily without some Grace and the good fortune of circumstance in this instance. Surrendering control over the littlest details in my life is one of the hardest things for me to do, as it likely is with most people. I feel so helpless and squelched and ashamed and embarrassed. I guess that’s part of the point, though I don’t see much use in it for society’s purposes. People who have lost loved ones to drunk drivers understandably feel differently about that. I don’t blame them, but I still don’t see how this makes it demonstrably any better. I allow that I may be completely wrong about that, however.
The last time I saw Matt we were still married, or had been until just a few days prior to that time. In the ensuing three months we have pulled each other back and forth and tried to establish some way to relate to one another. I want to remain close and be friends and even be intimate. He wants to avoid that and says he has to in order to “move on”. I think breaking up and dating other guys is a pretty good way of moving on, and there’s no reason why we can’t remain close so long as he’s not in an exclusive relationship. And I don’t think any of the three or four he’s got going right now are exclusive. I understand what he’s doing and why. I just don’t like it or think its necessary. Perhaps that’s only because it’s not what I want, and I have a hard time letting other people follow their own path when I have so much of my identity wrapped up in how they behave towards me. The fault in that case is mine, and the solution lies within my range of choices should I choose to take the high road. God, that is difficult, but it is also simple and doable. I’ve been praying a good deal for Matt’s health, prosperity and happiness. I pray that he’ll be given all those good things that I want so badly for myself. I do the same towards the guy he started dating the day after I left. It works when I put it into practice, and it’s one way of keeping myself from coming at people from a place of resentment and hurt feelings. That can be spiritually damaging for everyone and only serves to create more wreckage that I’ll have to clean up later. Restraint and consideration are the watchwords in this instance, I think.
Do I really miss him, or am I just smarting from the rejection and embarrassed that he no longer wants me? It’s been three months since it officially ended, but it had been over in both our minds for some time before that. Yet I still love him deeply, more so than anyone I’ve ever been attached to. I still want him to love me and be close, and I internalize his efforts to put it behind us as a sort of emotional Nielsen rating on my worth. I don’t always feel that way about it, but it’s easy to pick that up and wallow in it when I’m not operating from a sound spiritual and emotional basis. Life goes on. That is a blessing and a curse. I find myself once again trying to fix the world of fluid circumstance into a fixed pattern and predicating my happiness upon that object. That never works, and I know it. I want a belief system and a way of behaving that works and carries me forward. I want to think of myself less, rather than thinking less of myself, and I want to be engaged in what I am doing rather than awaiting the reaction I should take towards the actions of others. That, I suppose, is what I want most of the time. It’s harder to accomplish that in his presence, for both of us. I want him to be happy in a way that includes me as a source of that happiness. That is possible, but not without stepping aside and letting the world do what it will – him included.
I got a good night’s sleep last night after I started this. My throat is a bit sore, but not dangerously so. And I have plenty of opportunity to rest here now. I haven’t eaten or done my morning business yet today, but I have prayed and had coffee and lots of water. I may try some meditation and a little food momentarily after I shit, shave’n shower. I will also do some housecleaning to show my consideration to Matt and make things a tad more comfortable for him. I wish I could give him some help on bills above and beyond the fifty bucks I’m giving him for the phone bill, but that would be nothing more than an exercise in grandiosity at Dad’s expense. I don’t have the resources on my own to effect anything in my life, and that’s another source of shame and embarrassment for me. When I feel like that, I interpret every glance and remark from Matt in such a way that it reinforces that image I use to beat myself up. That’s not a healthy place to put myself, but I can overcome it so long as I recognize it and stand ready to discard it when it comes up.
Life doesn’t have to be difficult. I spoke to BiL from www.wankycomics.com, and he gave me oracles. He said that he wants to treat this summer as if the life he leads is one of his own choosing – with purpose and no worries. Life can be a vacation for me any time I want it to be that way. I can live as though this is my choice. Today I’ll do that and attempt to remain engaged in exactly what I’m doing every moment. That itself is a meditation and a step forward.
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