I don't know where it began, and, sadly, I don't know where it will end.But back when I was, say, maybe 7 or 8 years old, I decided that I would be alone for the rest of my life. Marriage, kids, couplehood...it just didn't seem to fit into my reality for some mysterious reason. So in a fit of childhood depression, I went into my parents' bathroom and scribbled this little epithet on the bottom of a drawer.
Not so surpsingly, my parents still kept this cabinet in a quiet corner of my dad's basement hideaway. About two years ago, when I was undergoing my 2,468th existential crisis, I visited my parents, found that bathroom drawer, removed it, procured a rubber mallet, took it down to the barn, and proceeded to smash the hell out of it until I removed its bottom. I took it back home with the hope that one day, when I knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that what I wrote was an evil lie, I could burn it in a semi-ritualistic fashion with my beloved, Mr. Nobodody.
The self-professed Mr. Nobodody came a-knockin' a little over a year ago. So happy to have found someone who was both lover AND friend to him, he listened sympathetically as I exumed the sad, living artifact from my childhood that became a guidepost for my life, and I told him what it all meant and pontificated on where such a tragic assumption originated. He then proclaimed himself as my personal "Mr. Nobodody."
Mr. Nobodody left the belongings I had at his house in the front seat of my car about five hours ago, along with the set of keys to my house and car that I had hesitantly given him almost a year ago.
He says he needs a break.
And not only do I believe him; I have absolutely no choice but to agree with him.
I need one, too.
Maybe I am splitting hairs, here, but I guess I could use a definition of "break."
I knew, from the very beginning, that Mr. Nobodody -- while sincere at the time -- could not possibly deliver on the promises (both implicit and spoken) he delivered: that marriage, forever kind of love. Call me over-analytical if you will, but I have always been one who believes it's the small things that reveal a person's character, intentions, and truest self. And, well, the small stuff he did wasn't jiving with the big stuff he was saying. I'm not saying he was deliberately setting out to deceive me. Far from it. He just didn't think about what that all really meant. He wasn't thinking ahead. He wasn't thinking to himself, "Yeah, she seems great right now, but I don't know her well enough yet. She might be what I want, but what I'm telling her might not be what I want."
I don't know. I don't expect anyone to be a fortune-teller. I think that's asking way too much. But $#%^! ...I was so careful not to over-promise and under-deliver until I knew, KNEW, that the two were in harmony. They weren't. And they certainly weren't on his end.
It's not like I didn't see it coming.
So here I sit, staring at my drawer-bottom and knowing it ain't burnin' anytime soon, if ever.
OB
