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By Abogada Submitted by abogadalbny Date: 2006 May 13 Comment on this Work [[2006.05.13.20.46.11810]] |
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Is it okay to love the butcher? I have to smile as I type that line, because I'm not entirely sure that anyone has ever put those words in that order before this exact moment. I also smile at the passion of my confusion, because you know you're really living your life when the deepest questions about your future look like random sentences created with those refrigerator magnet words. I have this idealized portrait of the man for me. The more I think of it, the more I realize that it resembles my ex-husband more than anyone else: tall and sturdy, financially secure, educated and intellectually curious, and with endless admiration for me. (A far cry from the bitter young man I faced in divorce court, whose hate for me was surpassed only by the eight months he spent suing me for a $99 blender. Yet they are one and the same.) My "life coach" would later tell me that it was about "levels of intimacy," and his abandonment by his mother, and his ultimate hatred of women. But who knows? After two sessions with the life coach, I invested my insurance co-pay money into that pre-made margarita mix, and I worked through the issue with Pablo Neruda poetry and loads of tears and gallons of that margarita mix! So much so that even my drinking buddies were having interventions with me about my drinking. When I contemplate turning my back on the butcher, I realize that I've lived a lifetime of "turning my back on the butcher"--just in different forms and different ways. In my loneliest hours, I know that I got here by playing it safe, putting my pride first, and making sure that I loved more with my mind than my heart. There are at least two great loves that I completely screwed up. Pretty harsh to remember when you think that most people only get one shot in a lifetime. Does it matter that he is a high school graduate, and I'm a lawyer? Should it? At the end of the day, does $100,000.00 in school loans make me a better person? I doubt it. Every time I think I need an intellectual man in my life, I remember the "diplomatic immunity" argument. When we were first married, my ex-husband and I once had a simple argument about the bounds of diplomatic immunity. Every day for the next two months--sometimes twice or three times a day--he sent me emails about why he was right. I mean, emails? I was his wife, for God's sake! I slept beside him in bed! How can you continuously email your intellectual superiority to the same woman you slept with an hour ago? He just wouldn't let anything go. I had an argument once with the butcher over something silly that I've since forgotten. What I recall is that I went back and apologized. Then it was over. That's it. He never mentioned it again. Relationships that last, I think, are built on tiny, little bits of compatibility--mere moments. Part of me knows that if I don't decide whether it's okay to love the butcher, I will eventually push him away. God knows, I'm a master at that. |