Facing the Music

It is either a sign of improvement or of regression that this week I have finally been able to transfer some of my circa-1994 CD's to iTunes.



There are several songs I have not even remotely been able to listen to since JP's death. There is a stack of CDs that has moved with me from apartment to apartment and finally to this house, carefully packed each time, each time arranged in my CD rack, left to collect dust. All the Nirvana, for example; anything by Smashing Pumpkins; Catherine, Freedy Johnston, the Alice in Chains "three-legged dog" album. Many more got sold for heroin money along the line, but the songs are still burned into my brain and inspire an immediate avoidance reaction. But over the past few months, piece by piece, I've tried to gather these songs and desensitize myself.



It is so.....damn.....hard. Listening to these songs is like sticking a spear into my belly, then yanking it up and down, left and right, in and out. Each of them has a story; each of them has a memory. All of the memories remind me: something has been lost. Someone will never be back. You will never see him again in this life, and this life could have another 60, 70 years left. No comfort; no compensation. No one will ever hear these songs with the same ears you hear them with.



Back when I was living at Mom's, back before I moved into this house, I got myself into a mindset of looking around and looking back. I tried to find Kevin, with no luck; I tried to find Sophia again. And I -did- find Carol and Paul--my old roomie and her ex. Carol was Paul's girl, and Paul was a camping buddy of Chris's. Carol and Paul had broken up just after she and I had gotten the apartment on Chase--just before we met JP.



When last I saw Carol, she was living in Wicker Park, dating some guy, talking about her career, her freedom, her life. That was about a week after JP died, and she had called me wanting to know if I was okay. We hadn't spoken since JP and I had moved in together; her attitude toward our planned madness had convinced JP that Carol might be an impediment to our dream, and so we just fell out of touch, until she called me a couple of days after he'd died.



When I found her name online, I discovered she'd gotten married and had two kids. I wrote to her and her reply was...distant, like she was speaking to someone who didn't exist, or existed on a level different from her own. Paul was married too, with a third kid on the way...And I realized something: my life, my hopes and my expectations are all frozen nine years in the past. Even when CR and I were married, I never thought about having kids with him the way I did with JP. I never think about a future with LJ--if he's here when I wake up and still here when I go to sleep, I count that as a victory. We won't get married; we won't have kids. We might grow old together, or old-ish--but probably not. Probably within a year or two, he'll get restless and take off--and when it happens I'll be hurt, yes, but it won't begin to match the pain of losing JP. I am stuck in a past I never would have given up, had I been allowed a choice. In some ways I have moved forward, and I know that if JP was magically returned to me these nine years later, he wouldn't recognize the person I've become, or the world I'm living in. This isn't how we planned it, I imagine him telling me, and no, it isn't.



But in the ways that matter, or the ways that matter to the world outside my door--marriage, kids, planning for some distant day--I have frozen in 1995, a 25-year-old woman who found the man she loved and absolutely WILL NOT relinquish that dream--no matter what reality says about it.



I think of Sophia, of Kevin, of Paul, of Carol, of Chris. I think of people I haven't seen in years, and I remember them as they were back when last I saw them. They have moved on, and I haven't.



I keep reading reviews of _Before Sunset_, the sequel to a movie I never saw. Apparently in the first movie, a young couple met in Paris and realized they were soulmates, but their paths diverged and they never met six months after, the way they'd promised. This movie picks them up nine years later, when they've met again by "chance", and traces their conversation and the choices they've made, and those they haven't.



Reading these reviews is painful to me; each one makes me think You want to see what happens to someone nine years after they lose their soulmate forever? Here I am. Here's what happens: People get older, and they get married and have kids, and they define themselves by their choices. I get older, and I define myself by MY choice: my choice to give up on the things that don't seem to matter to me anymore, or even to be possible--because it seems to me to be the only choice I have. The world moves on, and I don't.



I miss him, always. Sometimes I miss him a little less; sometimes I miss him so much that I can't actually believe he's not ever coming back. If sheer force of will and desire could bring someone back to life, or even earn a second chance for someone else--well, whatever. That way madness lies, I guess. Or maybe I'm already there.