For the Record

I haven't gotten any better. I've just gotten better at faking it.

I'm not like this. Folks who really know me know that I'm not like this. But to all the rest--and really, that's most of the folks out there--I could be like this. I may not be like this, but someone is like this. For all they know, I could very well be a regular person going through her regular day the way she regularly does. I could be a regular person.

As long as they're not peeping into the Gingerbread Cottage, that is. As long as they don't see that the place is trashed, just one big pile of unopened mail and dirty laundry and dirty dishes from mid-November. As long as they can't look in to see me curled up in the bed all day (or all two days or all three days or four days), only getting out of bed to pee or feed the cats or get a new box of tissues once I've run out. As long as they can't hear me talking to myself, trying to find some loophole in the logic of the universe and some how make things different, make things better. For Mr. Badger. For me.

To those who can't see into my home (or into my heart), I seem to be making progress. But it's pretend. It's all flash and glamour and illusion, just like all of those bullshit superpowers I used to possess.

And sometimes I get really frustrated with myself because part of me keeps saying that I don't have the right to be reacting this way, that it's arrogant and presumptuous and selfish of me to have fallen apart like this. Because Mr. Badger wasn't mine. I mean, he was in a sense...he gave me his heart in secret without realizing that I could see him doing it. And I gave him a lot more of myself than I would ever admit to anyone, and a lot more than I've given to other men. But these last couple of years, when we were consistently Officially Not Dating, I knew that I wasn't The One for him. I think I was definitely The One For The Moment. I think he needed someone like me, someone who lives in the body and the heart, a woman who is all desire and feeling and physical experience and messy inspiration and impulse. But I always had this sense that I was keeping him safe for his The One, you know? The local woman he needed to meet, the one who loves sports and politics and beer and wore sweatshirts and liked to argue and wasn't quite as fragile as I can be.

Some people might think that sounds kind of bad or self-deprecating, but that's probably because I think we have a pretty reductionist cultural view of relationships. Either you're "in love" and then that's TLA 4-EVA, or you "love but you're not in love" with someone, and it's all non-sexual and platonic, or you hook up and it "doesn't mean anything". But actual human connection is so much more complicated than that.

I thought it was really beautiful, actually...being The One For The Moment. Occasionally we can see the precise function we have in another person's life, the way we challenge them and the reason we're in each other's lives. It's rare to have that moment of insight, and it's only happened to me maybe once or twice before, but I had it when Mr. Badger and I reconnected again after my trip to the Eisenmann archives. And when that moment of insight happens, it's sacred. It makes a contract with the universe as well as with the other person (whether he knows it or not). I thought it was beautiful. And I actually kept an eye out for signs of his The One, so that I would know when to step aside and say, "Okay, you're the one he's really been waiting for. I took care of him for you, and you two are going to be so, so happy together." That might sound ridiculous, but that's what I saw. That's what I was supposed to do.

Of course, I never told anyone that I saw our relationship like that. I hinted at it to him, but I never explained our relationship that way to any of my friends, which in itself says something, since I have no filter, no shame, and no ability to repress my emotions, which pretty much guarantees that everything that happens to me will be told to at least one person. But not this contract with the universe. Maybe it's because I thought people would think I'm crazy. Maybe because talking about it would spoil the sacred.

It has been six weeks since Mr. Badger passed away. Six weeks tomorrow morning. And that's not a long time at all, but I don't feel any more equipped to face the world or to continue with the day-to-day concerns of work and bills and housekeeping than I did six weeks ago. I'm faking it a little better now. I have a little bit of a game face that I can put on for short periods while I'm in public. But I don't feel the tiniest bit better.

And of course, part of it is that it's not fair, and that Mr. Badger didn't deserve any of his suffering, and that he was supposed to live a long and exciting and passionate life. And part of it is just Mr. Badger's absence--not just in my life or his friends' lives but in life in general--and not knowing how to conceive of a world in which Mr. Badger is not out there somewhere, changing the face of government or going on road trips or quoting Yeats or singing Neil Diamond at karaoke.

But a big part of it is that I feel like I betrayed him. Like I broke the sacred trust. Somewhere in the near future, I was supposed to deliver Mr. Badger to his The One, all relaxed and satisfied and happy and comfortable with the body, so then they could get married and have babies and watch football together forever. And then he and I would just be friends who once had something very lovely and tempestuous and important and private.

I know it's not logical, and I'm not so narcissistic as to think there is something I could have done to actually make him get better. But as illogical as it is, I still feel that way, and that feeling still sits like a stone in my chest every moment that I'm awake. I failed him. I made an implicit promise, and I broke it. I couldn't keep him safe.

And I don't think I'm making any great revelations here, or that my experience is any greater than that of anyone who has experienced the loss of someone special to them. But I still need to post this stuff out here in the boondocks of the InterWebs even though no one will read it, even though it doesn't really matter to anyone but me, because it's still important. Because it still needs to be registered with the universe that this happened, that these emotions are felt. That this person is missed.

Someone needs to write it down. Because it's true.