Piggly Wiggly...
It's a grocery store.
I love to grocery shop, especially with a partner or with a crew. I like to look at things and say words about them. Loads and loads of fun can be had in a grocery store with the right people and the right attitude. I like to watch people examine produce. (Examining produce appears to be less about empiricism and more about instincts. Maybe a little squeeze, a little poke and possibly a sniff... seems ok, maybe I'll take this one... nah... that's not the one. On to the next one... on on to the next one.) As I walked through the store, I started to remember.
I hate remembering on short notice. It's like a memory ambush. My brain doesn't seem to subscribe to the notion of the customer always being right.
Brain: Tyler, good afternoon sir, here's your memory.
Tyler: Uh, thanks, but I didn't order this... could you send it back and get me something else, this looks a little heavy. Or you could just send me nothing at all. I'm trying to remember light these days, surely you understand. You know... trim my emotional waistline. Haha.
Brain: Ah, yes. Very clever. Also... we're the same person having a dialogue, so while you're reconciling that, I'll let this highlight reel of funny and/or touching grocery store moments from your past with people long gone from your life play in the background.
Tyler: Oh, Jesus. How could this be worse? Wait... is that Pink's "Who Knew," playing on the PA?
Brain: Hehe... yeah, pretty incredible timing on that one. You need to pull your shit together, collapsing into a heap of sputtering tears in a grocery store stopped being acceptable 25 years ago.
Tyler: Well... shit. I'm just going to stare into this cake shaped like a cheeseburger until you shut this video off.
I could not be more, deer-in-the-headlights, in that moment. I was completely surrounded by memories, all unique, almost all of them with a different person, all of them I miss deeply. So many keystone relationships, all of them representing a time when things were different, all of the people... gone. All I could do was lower my weapons and surrender. The times weren't always great, but at least I was moving.
Some time later... guiding the cart around the turn for home, a familiar seductress caught my eye. My stomach turns and I feel my face go pallid. Right back, handcuffed to memories again. My mind reliving what it's like to have the racing, frantic thoughts prior to a relapse. Talking myself into and out of drinking... until I would grow tired of playing speed chess with myself and finally succumb, often just to shut down the anxiety associated with the self talk. I could taste it. I felt both my mouth water and my stomach cramp at the same time. There is no relationship in my life with a more complicated history than the one I have with the smooth glass bottle. It has taken everything from me, and still, has this bizarre traction in the muddy trenches of my deepest origins.
I spent nearly the rest of the entire day processing, fighting off tears, all the time completely dumbfounded at how this emotional breakdown unfolded. I'm carrying things with me that I'm not aware of. Shame, sadness, fear. So much of it, stowed away, that it's altering my reality even without always showing itself. These people from my past, I hurt them. I will carry that with me forever. Slowly, I'm letting it eat me. Maybe because I think I deserve it, maybe because I'm more comfortable in pain than I am without it.
I know what I would say to a peer. You can't carry that load for long, it will kill you. Self abuse is a luxury you cannot afford.
Which led me to a sickening unveiling. If I would forgive you for the same offenses that I'm not willing to forgive myself for, then fundamentally, I must think I am better than you. I always thought my narcissism was a harmless facade to grab a cheap laugh and to keep a safe distance from peripherals. Maybe it's more than that.
Maybe it's here to stop you from establishing a root system, so when our relationship dies the hole is easily filled. When I walk through the memories of my life, and I touch the giant craters of a scarred landscape, where incredibly powerful support pillars once stood... I waiver. I tremble. I feel so much I freeze.
Sounds lonely and cold.
I just can't afford any more holes.
So, here I am. A couple years older. Still Tyler. Still lost. Still crippled by shame and pain. Still delusional about what I'm capable of or where I should be. Still no idea how to manage my grief. Still no idea how to handle human relationships.
Still struggling to find good in the mirror.
