Looking for salvation January 17, 1985
I haven’t talked much about Fran or let myself feel much
about our separation.
It’s just too hard for me to go through again, even though
it is also something I really wanted for some time.
Maybe I’m just too much like Pauly, needing more time to myself
than I had been getting with Fran.
There is always a price to be paid for having company.
Especially burdened with having to care for my uncle,
Ritchie, whose apartment I am living in now.
With Fran, I faced the constant conflict between pleasing
her and doing what I needed to do, as a writer, even just to keep my sanity.
Yet losing Fran, I put myself on a road to self-destruction,
unable to tamper down the pain as he creeps back into my consciousness the way
she used to creep into my bed.
I’m on the verge of depression I know will last for months.
I’m trying to work it out, like a controlled crash, so I can
keep on with my life. But I struggle to fill the vacancy inside me.
Maybe Christianity is right with it claims complete happiness
is not possible on mortal earth, and only faith in God can give man some
measure of contentment.
I work too much and look ahead to things I do not and my
never have.
I struggle with my tendency to hide inside myself and forget
the exterior world; the world, however, refuses to forget me.
Just when my personal world falls apart, I get news Ritchie
is being released from the mental hospital.
All this is like a test or a pathway to salvation.
To know which will take the distance of time for me to gain
perspective. Yet, my encounters with me uncle in the now distant past do not
suggest salvation, merely one more step down into personal hell.
I would feel worse if I abandoned him the way some other members
of my family have, an intense guilt I still sometimes feel with I refused to
move in with my mother a decade ago.
Taking care of him also helps heal guilt I felt about hating
him when we both lived in the big house back in Clifton.
But it is all soooo difficult.
Hate still wells up inside of me from time to time,
especially when I cannot control his tendency towards suicide, and I find him
staggering out in yet one more attempt to throw himself into the river.
I hate being out of control, just as I felt with my old inherited
feral cat “Flake,” who refused to eat the food I gave it, then embarrassed me
by mooching off my neighbors.
Man, nor beast, once having a taste of something better, tends
not to settle for less, no matter how well-intentioned the offer.
My uncle has always been a free bird, yet at the same time
enslaved by much more addictive, sponging off members of our family – not just
for a place to live, but emotionally as well. We are all supposed to feel as
sorry for him as he feels for himself.
His brother, Frank, is right in saying Ritchie manipulates
us.
But he lives in a constant flux between love and hate, a
backdoor man who made love to the wives of husbands who hired him as a carpenter,
Ritchie ever found, could not find true love – except perhaps with his sister, Alice,
who loved him unconditionally from when they were both kids in The Great
Depression.
Even Ritchie’s relationship with Grandpa had ups and downs;
the two men so much the same in so many ways, they could not help but berate
each other.
Shy by nature, Ritchie drank to become the life of the
party, a habit Grandpa condemned him for.
When Grandpa died, we all had mixed feelings, sadness over
the loss, relief about his passing, and guilt about feeling relieved.
This is much the way I feel at losing Fran.
Ritchie, however, had no mixed feelings when it came to
Alice. Her death devastated him. She was more than his sister, perhaps a dream
lover as well.
Now I’m stuck with him; I’m all he has. Everybody else has
turned their backs on him; which means I can’t.
Unfortunately, I’m a lot like Grandpa, the same internal
rage, making the same bitter judgments about Ritchie as Grandpa made.
I’m as lonely as Grandpa sometimes was, he, sitting in his
boat store, dwelling on all the curve balls life threw his way, the death of
his father pretending him from pursuing a career in profession ball, up to his
elbows in motor oil the way I am in donut dough and yeast, both of us watching
dreams fade away.
Fran is one such dream.
I know that in a few days or weeks or months, I will start
kicking myself, wondering why I let her go when I had it so good with her.
I need to remind myself I didn’t have as good as I thought, feeling
the need to have something else, not another woman, but another life I could
not have with Fran around.
My relationship with Fran was simply too extreme, right from
those early days when she came here hat-in-hand fearing I might not want her,
scared of a rejection she almost invited.
Everyday had its weird ups and downs, yet somehow on some
level seemed to work out.
I do love Fran.
I just couldn’t take the pressure. I couldn’t (or wouldn’t)
give her what she wanted or needed, what I’m already giving to Ritchie, and the
menagerie of animals I have collected as pets, each demanding my total
attention that leaves no time or energy to give to myself.
I can’t give everybody everything when I’m desperate for a
kind of love none of them can not possibly give back, this need for importance.
I do not feel important. I don’t feel strong about myself.
Until I do, I can’t give anybody anything, and I won’t feel even
moderately content.
Maybe I need to pray again, praising God for what he has
already given me.
Yet somehow that seems like a cop-out, hiding in a bowed
head or bent knee, praying for salvation I know I need to earn for myself.
So, I sit here again, Working out the details of my life,
feeling the sadness creeping up on me, climbing out from my chest, dripping out
my mouth or eyes like blood.
I miss Fran.
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