Unrecovered

It is common to use the instituted markers of time as a means of forced reflection. It just so happens that I woke up today– a few times– and had already been naturally undergoing the process. I guess that’s apt, I haven’t been doing a good job of it lately, at least not here, which is my sanctuary for all things of the type.

I like to draft up personal etymologies for words and slang. It is one of those things that is so secretly personal because the personal etymologies are so stupid and silly that I’ve never even told anyone that I do this, but I also feel like it is one of those things that a lot of people grow up doing on their own.

When I think of the word ‘bug’ (e.g. ‘the fact that Hannah Montana never replies to my love letters bugs me’) I always think of the time that I stumbled into an underground Yellow Jacket nest with my neighbor, Josh B. I’m not going to tell the story right now, but the short of it is that he started getting stung before me, and took off running up this big hill, leaving me hopelessly confused. Then I looked around and saw these insects– bugs — all latched onto my skin, humping their little stingers in and out. There was about a 30 second round trip delay between each stinging assault, my nervous system sending the signal of pain to my brain, and my conscious brain processing that I was getting swarmed. I’d call that bugging for sure.

See, in my mind, when something bugs you, it lingers for a while, it does it’s damage. It is like Snidely Frickin’ Whiplash, with his cunning, and that conniving, obnoxious mustache, slipping in and out of your path, implementing small obstructions, until at some point you realize that you’re beaten up and bruised as a cumulative result. And in my experience, that’s much how a bug works. They obstruct you subtly, in the background, then on delay, you pick up on it, and a nuisance is born. Bugging.

So, something has been bugging me a lot. This morning was when I saw it crawling on my walls, slipping through the cracks, swarming me from all angles.

It is a very well known story that I’ve reworded and placed in different perspectives over and over again, but there was a point a few years ago that my love broke. The easiest thing to liken it to would be when Bane broke Batman’s back, except I was arrogant and stubborn and in love, and instead of asking for help, or seeking some kind of relief, I tried to should all that weight with a broken back, and then the rest of my bones were continually cracked off into incomplete shards.

By the time I crawled out of everything, I was spaghetti. I went through that stupid phase in life where I had lost all belief in the idea of love. It crept into all aspects of love. Take all the greek words for types of love (because I am not as familiar with any other languages), and it was damaged in some way. The romantic love you feel for another was gone, and I was convinced such a thing was never there.

More embarrassing recovery story later, queue up Eye of the Tiger, and my training/recovery montage arrives, and I start to get bits and pieces back through a lot of hard times and a painful work.

Here is where everything ties back in.

Every time I’ve started to think I can get this ability to love back, it seems like something just pops back in and crushes my leg to bits with a mace, or grabs my hand and holds it under a fire.

I can’t recover my love.

I know that it shouldn’t be up to external factors to determine if I recover it, but I don’t want to get into the ins and outs of that side of things. I just want to observe.

What I will say, is while the external environment should not dictate my ability to restore the love I had in me, it doesn’t mean it can’t impair it. Maybe it isn’t always popping in and impairing like I think it is, but it definitely has enough.

Seems like there always has to be something just as I’m starting to get that broken wing working again; an unforgiving friend who pushes away, the rare love interest who is already taken, the departing family, the departed friend, the defeating job hunts, the inability to connect to anyone new, the Houdini friend; all sorts of things, a lot of it trivial, some of it severe.

I wouldn’t classify it as a ‘Woe is me!’ type of thing, but I can’t deny, I’ve been fighting a battle with a fresh set of handicaps every couple months, and that has worn me out.

That’s what I realized bugged me.

I had a dream last night that I had road tripped with someone, to somewhere down south and west (not Texas). We took a big U-Haul and I basically dropped this person off, and went on my way. At one point, I got downtown, I don’t know where, it was just downtown. It was almost 2 am, which was the time my friend was getting off work (which actually parallels something that was the case like that in real life), so I decided I’d pick her up and we could ride in this U-Haul back home since she was probably tired and it was dark and late. I wandered all over downtown. I thought I knew the place, but each corner and back alley I took further revealed my ignorance. I did find the building, and got there just as everyone was starting to leave. I even saw some people I actually knew– a lot more people than I expected, almost as if I were the one who was left out of something that I should have been at.

I tried to run up to the next floor to find my friend, but couldn’t, so I followed everyone out back into a huge alley that was kind of like a basin. It was very dark, and all I could see were shapes of shadows and the sound of chatter bouncing off the buildings. I just tried to keep up with the largest conglomerate of people and see if I could find her, but much like trying to swat a swarm of gnats, they dispersed much more rapidly than I could approach. Eventually, a homeless man with a piece of wood carved to look like a very rudimentary dirk was chasing me around and poking me with it. Somehow he was faster than me and kept poking me. I couldn’t run into the crowds to shake him, and after a long chase through the streets and various buildings, my only solution was to give up the search and get into the U-Haul truck and go on my way.

The next few days that transpired in the dream revolved around my trying to chart my way back home, unsuccessfully trying to find a few more friends I thought who needed me, having a guy I picked up as a travelling companion try to con me so he could take my truck, a police chase, and a navigation error that led me to drive the wrong direction for 3 hours and cross a river by ferry, until I decided to teleport back to the starting point with the proper directions.

I got as close as having to walk from actual downtown Nashville to another friend’s house by foot and late at night, but I never made it home. Though, I was glad that I had been hiding that teleportation ability the entire time.

I don’t think there is any real point to sharing any of that dream, but every image, emotion, moment of that dream translated to my conscious brain into this thing that has been bugging me so strongly for so long.

Sometimes I find myself wanting to be mean, or just generally sour, just a weird black stain in me, and I haven’t known what it is, or why it is there, especially because these days I am the most joyful I have been in as long as I can remember.

I know what it must be now. It is this thing bugging me. No matter what, I just can’t seem to recover my love. The victim in me wants to go as far to say that I can’t seem to recover my love, and nobody seems to want to help me.

But woe isn’t me.

The bird’s gonna fly again.

At some point.

I’m tired of things trying to keep me down, and if I had to guess, any anger that pops up within me is really wanting to be directed at that.

I hate that I am processing this on this on the first day of the year.