When I was a kid, every winter, the school system would hold a wrapping paper (or chocolate) fundraiser. It wasn't really compulsory, but you'd kind of be guilted into doing it, even though the teachers really would have preferred to just do their real jobs and teach.

I was terrible at it. I really hated it, and I hated going door-to-door, asking people if they wanted to buy any wrapping paper. When I did make a sale, I was usually more surprised than anything, and it was just a distraction from the fact that I was walking around my neighborhood, and sometimes other neighborhoods, trying to get anyone to buy this wrapping paper. I'd be walking around for a couple hours at a time, wishing that I could just stay home and watch TV or play with Legos or read.

When the fundraiser was over, and the rolls of paper had arrived for distribution, I'd get embarrassed by how little I'd sold. I'd maybe have 8 or 10 rolls, not realizing that most of the kids that had sold so many rolls that their parents had to come pick it up, had done so specifically because their parents took the order form to work and passed it around the office or store. They were well-to-do kids, but I had no idea what that meant. All I knew was that I'd bring the wrapping paper home, I'd have to walk it to the neighbor that had bought some from me, and then I'd go home and have hot chocolate.

If I was really lucky, I might have sold enough to cash in for a prize or something. That almost never happened, but there were two times that I can remember that I pulled that off: one time, I was able to cash in for a CD. I had recently gone nuts over the Beatles, and so I scoured the list for anything from them. I came up a little dry, but I did find a copy of John Lennon's greatest hits from his solo career. This is probably the first time that I jumped into a record without having any idea what it sounded like, and I remember being disappointed because it didn't sound like the Beatles. It sounded... darker. Deeper, only because it was harder to understand. "Mind Games" sounded like it went on forever. "Give Peace a Chance" mentioned Hare Krishna, and what was that? "Love Is Real" confused me, because it was some sort of a love song that sounded like it came creeping out of some sad and lonely place, and then disappeared again, with a coda that was just as despondent as the song made me feel. And "Cold Turkey" really made me uncomfortable.

There was only one other prize that I remember getting. It was a pen with a digital clock in it. It was pink and yellow, and shaped like an elongated teardrop, and it had a lanyard on it. I guess it was probably something you were supposed to use for timing things and writing down the results, and I imagine that occurred to me, but mostly I just carried it everywhere. Effectively useless, I had it on me at all times, and I remember hanging onto it and poking at the clock buttons while sitting in the back of the family van, as we drove all over Lewistown looking at the different lights. I made up some sort of story, some sort of fantasy that involved a very contrived and involved backstory, for the pen, and it became a sort of luck charm for me, long after the battery died out because I'd pushed the buttons and timed and re-timed everything I could think of. Probably the death knell of the thing was when the ink finally dried up--for me, this was quite some time, because I hated using pens when I was growing up.

Seeing strings of lights, and mentions of the holidays, and videos about magic snowmen that may or may not exist, dredge all this up, unbidden. And, with the realization that this may likely be an extremely quiet and solitudinous season in a city not known for snow, I may need to find a pen, or begin listening to solo John Lennon again.

There are few things in modern American culture that are as instantly humiliating and emasculating as realizing you're a man that is about to begin crying on the sidewalk while on the phone.

I should back up.

Earlier this year, I split up with E.*,  the woman that I had thought I would marry.  This was preceded by probably six months of increasing unhappiness for both of us, probably catalyzed by her loss of a job that had been a stressful and upsetting place for her to work, but was a decent paycheck nonetheless.  I found out that E. had just been laid off while on a 12-hour layover in Peru, on my way to a guitar project, which in retrospect is fitting.

*E. is not her initial, but her actual initial makes this really confusing.

I'm not sure that it's useful, or even interesting, to recount ephemera or minutiae or anything specific about the last three months.  There were fights:  some of them more bitter than others, and some of them higher in stake than others.  But as anyone who has lived with their significant other will confirm, they almost always begin as small disagreements about matters that are uninteresting, even to the two people involved.  Listening to anyone recount an argument with their spouse or someone close can be tedious, as the opening statements are usually banal.  But what really distinguishes the big ones is the sheer velocity in which they move from banality to extremely serious.

I wouldn't doubt that you could just throw up a decibel meter and watch it like that.

The tipping point was in January, after leaving a trade show and picking her up at the airport.  The ensuing argument--utter bewilderment at my lack of caring, utter bewilderment at the anger directed at me--were the beginning of a long slide down.  I felt horrible about her not working, about not having an outlet for... anything, it seemed, but every new argument made me clam up.  I withdrew further, which frustrated her and made her even more likely to push hard for any sort of reaction from me, which made me withdraw even more.

There was one argument where she complained, justifiably, that I drove her car to and from work and I just took it for granted, while she was stuck at home.  After this, I immediately began taking the bus, because I wanted her to have the car--it was her car, after all.  This meant leaving for work at 6:00 am, and arriving home usually around 7:30 or 8:00 at night.  Even more isolation for both of us, and I was exhausted by the time I got home, so I maybe got another three hours of awake time before I began passing out.

One night, I woke up to E. crying next to me in bed and trying not to wake me up.  I pulled her close, because I missed her, and it felt horrible, and I didn't understand anything that was going on.  I wonder how many other nights I missed that.

I couldn't bear the fighting.  Especially with someone that I love, my habit when in an argument is always to assume an air of rationality, to try and meet in the middle, or at least be conciliatory.  And as the arguments ceased to be about different opinions on music and culture and started to really turn into really serious discussions about the state of us, and as the stakes rose higher and higher, I began to answer ever more slowly.  E. would ask a question that I wanted to give an honest and good answer to, something personal about us, and I would take one or two minutes to respond, or longer, because I would take every possible answer I could give and assess everything, in order to come up with a carefully constructed and non-inflammatory answer.  I constantly failed to understand that E. just wanted me to show some sort of emotion and just react.  It was not unusual for her to call me a robot, at this point.  But then, I had become so unresponsive, just as a matter of trying to not set her off, that this was sort of an accurate statement.

About two weeks before it actually happened, and I don't remember what had happened that night, but it was very late, I was drunk and extremely tired, and E. had been pushing me on what was going on with us very hard, on whether we were coming apart.  I confessed that it had been on my mind, and in my state, I remember using the words, "... bring it to a soft close."

Like pouring gasoline on a fire.  Instantly my things began moving out of the bedroom, and she began packing things left and right and yelling everything she could think of at me.  I panicked, because all I wanted was for it to stop, and was trying to make it stop, and why wouldn't she stop, and, "E., I'm sorry.  Please.  Can we try couples' therapy?"

In that moment, I really did want to try therapy.

But we never went.  The pressure had been released, and was taken off for about a week or so, and we just started to build up again.

I wish we'd gone, at least once.

At this same time, E. had been going to job interviews, and things were suddenly looking up for her, professionally.  She had several good interviews, and had one particularly good prospect in front of her.

The night before she would find out whether she got the job or not, I came home from work, to a meal that E. had made, which tasted good.  The subject of organic vs. non-organic food came up, GMO vs. non-GMO, and within minutes, after I'd taken a moment to look something up to verify what she'd said, I watched as the same ugly fighting cranked up in front of me, like someone had just pushed a button, and we stepped helplessly into the same bitter arguing, completely automatically, unable to stop ourselves.

The next night, I cried on the bus back home, knowing that she'd gotten the job.  I walked into the apartment, sat on the bed, and told her, "I think I have to move out."

Everything moved very quickly after that.  I spent most of the night pulling stuff together as E. locked the bedroom door.  The next night, I bought boxes to put everything in, and E. and I talked and sort of argued, as I began packing the boxes, and she asked if we were just taking a break, and I couldn't answer that.  Same as the night before, I slept on the couch as E. locked the bedroom door.

That was the last time I saw her.  The next night, I finished packing, but she stayed at a friend's house.  And the night after that, my last night in the apartment, she wouldn't come home, which I have always regretted.

I couch-hopped for the next month, and eventually landed in a place in West LA.  There were some text conversations, arguments, and discussions of feelings.  But no voice conversations.  I sent her money, because she'd said that I'd used her and dropped her when it was convenient, which wasn't true, but I could see how things would seem like that.  I didn't initiate any more conversations, but I was very clear when I told her that I wouldn't shut her out, ever.  We both acknowledged that we needed a cooling off period.  She was furious and angry and felt betrayed by me, and I felt horrible and terrible about myself.

We haven't spoken in five, almost six months.

I hated being told that I didn't love her.  Not just because it was not, and is not, true, but also because it was so hard for me to express anymore, and because I was hurt as well, and being called a robot and uncaring and unfeeling were in such opposition to what my experience was.  I never admitted that I didn't love her because I couldn't admit a lie.

-------

The bottom dropped out, this past week, and the crushing sense of loss landed hard, finally.  The past six days have been a miasma of intense self-hatred and doubt and anger and a single desperate question that has kept me awake and mostly not eating.  Being able to rationalize an answer is different from really knowing the answer, and not having anyone to talk to and measure out and discuss things with will really just turn acute emotion into a toneless and awful feedback loop.

Finding myself in conversation with my old teacher, V., we exchanged pleasantries and caught up a bit, and then he pushed straight into "so why did you really call?"

I was honestly surprised to find out that the breakup of his marriage and the breakup of our relationship were very similar, though his was a much more drawn-out affair.  And, after reminding me of the five stages of grief, he mentioned that he was also beginning to experience something of the same thing I was entering into:  after all the logistical matters of how to separate have been taken care of, and you've actually done the work, and you can finally come to a rest, you'll usually find that... you have to face the loss.  It's there, and it always was there, but this is your life now.  It's different than it was before.

I said that I had known it was going to be hard, and that at the time, I was fully convinced that it was the only just thing to do, that it was the kindest thing I could do.  Going back to that night, I had seen us fighting about GMO foods and realized that it was totally automatic and beyond our control, and knew that I had to do it either right then, or the time would pass, and a year later we'd really have to do it and end up in much worse condition.

It was about here that I mentioned that I was really having trouble having compassion for the person that had brought about such disruption.

"Compassion for who, for yourself?"
"Yes, I--"
"Stop.  You don't get to judge yourself for your actions."  And V. proceeded to point out that the only reason I'd brought about that disruption was because of a much bigger disruption, and that if this was what I had to do to preserve my sanity, then that was fine.

"Listen, I've known you for a while, and you're a good person, and you're a very caring person, and I know that it wasn't what you wanted to do.  But you did it, and you can't keep beating yourself up over it.  You did your best."

Even now, writing this up brings tears to my eyes.  That single desperate question that has been burning in my mind, both this past week and for some months now, has been, "Am I good?"  It's like that terrible imposter feeling:  even if you get the job, someone's going to figure out that you're not really able to do it.  I wanted to be good.

After this, V. said that it's not a black-and-white thing, and that there is a process that has to be undertaken.  There is now a void where something once was, and it would be good to stay with that void, instead of trying to fill it again.  That's a difficult process, but ultimately it's where creativity resides.

A few more pleasantries, and a suggestion that I check in sooner rather than later, and we both hung up.

And I walked inside to get some doughnuts.