I have been hankering for a change, some sort of fundamental change maybe, something life-altering like moving away from here to a place that is so different that the corner stores are unrecognizable. Moving away somewhere where no one knows us and we have to start all over. Or running away by myself to live in Europe all by myself where no one knows me.
I suppose this is a kind of escapism, or an attempt at escapism. There has been so much stress in my life for the past two years, particularly the past year since James was hospitalized last July. The stress has been unrelenting. And I feel this constant bubbling of guilt underneath myself because I have not done whatever it is that needs to be done to get James into physical shape. He is still scary thin having lost so much muscle tone. And I don’t feel qualified or inclined to physically condition someone who has no interest in exercise or movement. I have a hard enough time taking care of myself. This is why I’m working to get James a place to live outside this house and away from me. I need help and he needs a life of his own. Some people from a local care home called Open Arms are coming on the 7th to talk with us and see if James would be a good fit for their program. Progress is being made.
But I want to escape this heaviness, this weight of taking care of James and my brother. I want to escape all this responsibility. I want to move into a flat ranch house that spreads out and out in all directions and has different textures on every floor for my feet to move over when I stroll about the house. This house is always clean but still cozy I wear silk everything in this house except in the winter where I wear silk with soft soft wool. Many things are white in this house but there is lots of art in this house to soften all the white. I live alone in this house no one disturbs anything but me. This is my fantasy. Last year I found myself writing stories about people who had lost their memories completely. They did not recognize anyone in their lives. They had escaped the heavy weight of being.
Of course what I really want is to be alone with Dale. I want to be with just only him and I don’t want anyone else to be in the house with us, for at least two years. I want to be close to him I want the right to walk around nude in my own house with my naked husband I want to reach out and find him and no one else bumping into me in the hallway in the dark we have never been alone. I want him all to myself before one of us dies.
I want this escape from everything and since we are not going to move right now, I thought we should get a loveseat, a reclining loveseat so that we can be closer together. But the love seat hasn’t gotten here yet because it was a special order from Lazy Boy so I decided I wanted a car instead of the SUV that we have which is a Honda Pilot. Monday we drove up to Cleveland to buy the car and we ended up not buying it because they wouldn’t give us what we wanted for our trade in, So.
I’m glad we weren’t able to buy the car Monday I think we need more time to think about it because it would be a huge change from what we have been driving. I have had an SUV since the Honda CRV that I probably started driving in 2004? I had the CRV and then I had a Honda Element and then I had a Nissan Murano and then I had a Kia Sorento and now I have the Pilot. My knees are better, but are they so much better that I would be comfortable getting in and out of a car all the time, lifting myself up and out unto the heavens? Are Dale’s knees up to that? I don’t know. All I know is every time I drive Dale’s a little Honda Fit I am thrilled. It is small and zippy, kind of like driving a go-kart after driving the Pilot. It is a stick shift and quite old and unfortunately smelly from being parked in our ridiculously ridiculous basement. And from the air freshener that they put in when they detail the car. That smell coupled with the basement smell is really bad. Of course I get used to it once I’ve been in the car for about 20 minutes.
Why don’t I drive this car more? Probably because it is parked in the basement and I would have to pull it out without hitting the rock wall and the sides of the garage door… I am bad at avoiding these things. Of course if I want to drive it all the time I could just ask Dale to park the Pilot in the basement instead but then of course our big fancy expensive car would get smelly from the basement which has a water problem no matter what. I think the car also just smells old which cars are wont to do after ten years. Or is it fifteen?
Also, we sometimes haul three people with us and it is too tight without the third row seat.
In any case this is a windy ridiculous way of saying I want a change and I don’t know how to get what I want exactly. Maybe I want life to feel the way it felt before Covid. We lost something during the lockdown… Initiative? Spontaneity? Youth?
And maybe all of this is a later life mild crisis– I will be sixty in November. I’m not upset about being sixty, but it’s weird but think about. I look back over the last twenty years and realize that it is a very very long time, however brief it seems sometimes, but will I get twenty more years? Or will I get ten? Will I get another five ?
This is speculative and not helpful. And yet.
~r.
