Scarred

Did you know that you can Google "how to get rid of a wedding ring indent?" and there will be dozens of articles and advice tips in less than a nanosecond.  I learned that today.

I was sitting on my porch, sipping tea, reading, sun just high enough to not be in my eyes, but still warm on my legs. and I look down at my left hand to see the dent on my third finger.  To be honest, it took me a second to realize what it was, then another second to be mad, then sad, then frustrated that it was there.

I wore a ring there for a little over four and a half years. I took it off to shower sometimes, or to sleep if it was hot.  I would take it off when my hands would swell if I was walking, or had eaten too much salt the day before. But for the most part, I wore it daily since the day in June it was given to me.

It was his grandmother's ring. A lovely wedding band type, set with channel diamonds in antique cushion cut.  Not expensive; the engagement ring to the set would have cost more.  He didn't have the engagement ring, he said, because the jewelry had been divided up when the grandmother died, and this was what he got.  He had never let anyone else wear the ring before, and had pulled it from a plastic film container he had retrieved from his junk drawer.

It never came with a question, and I liked it that way.  He had been married before, and so had I, and while we planned a future, the idea of matrimony never came up for longer than to work out if a certificate once we retired would make finances better.  It would be a transaction.

But as I looked at the dent on my finger today, and thought about the memory of the day he gifted it to me, all I could think was that the word transactional was actually the best word for most of our relationship.  

I gave him a ring later that year, just before Christmas.  At first he didn't want to wear it.  I asked him about jewelry, and he said that was not the issue, he had worn rings before.  I ask him about comfort, and he said that he was okay with wearing rings that fit him.  So I asked the elephant in the room question, and wondered how he felt about outward physical signs that our relationship was more than casual. 

This is where he balked. He wanted me to wear a ring, but he didn't want to.  He wanted the casual freedom of not having to be asked about his "wife" (the reason men wear rings on their third finger on their left hand) and then either have to explain that I was his girlfriend (that got some looks a few times), or cringe at the word. It was okay for me to have to explain, but he didn't want that. Because almost invariably the questions would become about why we weren't married, when we would get married, how long had we been married if we chose not to talk about girlfriend status.  Fielding them when we were together was easy, I had more language for the ways to answer.  And after a couple times when he had just rolled his eyes, or said something truly vile like "Oh God no she's not my wife!" my responsibility was clear. If he was going to wear a ring, I was to protect him from looking like a flake.  Men whose opinion he valued, and women whose attention he desired, needed to think he was shiny.

So on the day I gave him his ring, and he didn't wear it, I put mine in a bowl on the nightstand and didn't wear mine either.  This bothered him.  He didn't have my undivided adoration right then. Manipulative, maybe, but more than anything, I wanted us to be equal.  Partners without the paper.  If rings meant something to him if I wore one, I needed for him to have that same kind of faith.

He broke the first ring.  It was black hematite and shattered completely one day, without a good reason.  The next ring I got him was titanium. 

The day we ended, we had been out for a walk.  As I said before, my hands swell and, like had dozens of times before, I took the ring off and put it in the inside zipper pocket with my wallet of the jacket I was wearing.  It was his jacket, and I loved it almost specifically for the pocket that held my wallet and ring so perfectly.  When I left that night, I took my wallet, but not the jacket, and hadn't put the ring back on after coming home. When I left that night, I didn't take the ring with me.  When I left that night, he still had his ring on.

He told me two days later that he wanted the ring back. Another day went by before I told him he already had the ring, and where to look.  He informed me it wasn't there.  The ring is gone.  Maybe still in the lining of the jacket. Maybe on his floor near his dining table from it coming out of the pocket when I took my wallet.  Maybe on Market Street somewhere. I don't know.  I only slightly care.

When I returned his keys, dropping them with his concierge without seeing him, he texted later and asked about the ring again. I told him again that I didn't have it, but asked if he was willing to talk about something other than possessions.  He wasn't willing, and honestly, I am glad he was just as transactional this time as he had been with most everything else. He didn't give back his ring, so maybe it lives in the film canister now. No matter, I didn't ask for it or want it back. 

But what I have is this dent where the ring used to be. I took a photo to see if it was truly noticeable to anyone but me. It is, but barely.  Google says the only thing that truly gets rid of it is time.  I added lotion just in case.  I am hoping it just stops being there, and I don't notice when. Apparently, not yet.

I semi-wonder how long his dent will be there, but not really.

Uncharted

I am planning a summer vacation.

I am also planning to cut my hair.

Those two things are battling for importance on my to-do list.

My mother is turning 90 this year.  There is a party being planned that will coincide with another birthday, and a wedding anniversary thrown in the mix.  It is going to be an event.  Think huge venue.  Think catering deposit.  Think hotels need to be booked for out of area attendees. Think every family member invited.  Think Vienna.

The whole thing is happening in Vienna. Yes, Austria.

My mother grew up in Vienna.  Her family, but for my brother and myself, live in or near Vienna. And by near, I mean that they would need a train or plane ride of less than a few hours.  Me, not so much.  I am looking at 15 plus hours just on the plane, with a couple transfers, and booking a hotel from California.  My mom is traveling, too.  My brother will travel with her, but she could easily, even at 90, do it alone.  They will stay with family, in rooms converted from sitting rooms or hobby rooms to bedrooms for the duration.  I will not.

This is not because I could not get someone to give me a room.  I am sure my uncle or auntie, or one of my dozen or so cousins who own apartments would put me up. They would even be gracious about it. But the truth is, I don't want to. At least I think I don't want to. I am kinda thinking I want to do this alone. But I am not sure.  Stick with me here, I will try to explain.

My last several vacations have been with my ex boyfriend.  We were together for just shy of five years, depending on how you count, and all of our trips, while seemingly collaborative, were really my ideas.  We went to DC for cherry blossoms and the Smithsonian.  We went to New York, via train through Chicago, for a Broadway show and a little romp around the city to iconic movie locations (think Rainbow Room and Serendipity III cafe).  We went to Dallas for Valentine’s, only to get caught in the Snowmageddon. We went to concerts, and Vegas, and Kansas City.  We went to the Liberty Bell and Constitution Hall when he lived in Pennsylvania for a year. We went to baseball games. We drove across the county when he moved back. With the exception of a random weekend the first year we were together, most of the trips were because of conversations that went something like “Hey sweetness, wanna go somewhere? Sure, where? How about (fill in the blank)? Ok.” with a mixture of already thought up desires, and a little bit of online research.  I thought it was a joint effort, but not really. Vacations in my head have always been journeys to see what could happen.  He was about destinations, and for lack of a better way to say it, he was completely unwilling to take the journey. 

Now I am not saying every place we went was perfect.  We literally slept on the floor of the airport in Chicago because our train was so late (like 14 hours late) we needed to cancel our last leg and fly to NY or miss our Broadway ticket. The train was uncomfortable , and the food was only adequate to keep from starving. Kansas City was hot. Vegas was hotter.  It rained to the point of being drenched and flooded in DC. And in Dallas, well, it was just the weirdness of the year, and there was not much to do in deep snow with a high of 9 degrees. The road trip through California gold country had us in motel rooms that were truly sketch, and the best thing we found to do on the coast road trip was skeeball in an arcade that had creepy orange lights with gnats hovering and crashing in large swarms around them, making the shadows seem extra spooky.  But in all that time, I was laughing, and enjoying the company, and taking pictures, and laughing some more.  Memory building, at its finest.

But it had a darker side I never really acknowledged.

I always had to ask permission to do things. There was always something more important he might have to do. Realistically, he never suggested alternatives, but the answers were often “no, I don’t want to do that” without any explanation or options for other things.  I spent hours wandering around casinos by myself, or sleeping alone in a hotel room while he gambled.  I didn’t go to the museums I wanted to in DC or New York because he didn’t like that art, or that history, or those events having never done them. We didn’t get off the train because it was too much of a hassle for only a few minutes at a random stop. We didn’t stay at Coney Island because of a broken phone screen.  We didn’t go on the ferry around the Statue of Liberty because he had seen it and there was water. We didn’t go up into towers because there were stairs, or down into caves because there were ladders, or across bridges because they were too high. We got off at the wrong stops (that he wanted to get off at)  for places because I couldn't possibly have been right about the directions he was sure I had messed up. We left every baseball game early. He had to be the one to drive.  He vetoed off-beat restaurants, and off the beaten path attractions, and unplanned festivals that we came across. There was anger about closed restaurants, and broken room locks, and boats that rocked too much.  There was anger about orders that were wrong, and tired waitstaff, and having to wait. And always there were snarky remarks, and barely veiled insults, and absolutely zero gratitude. I eventually, maybe even naturally, stopped asking, and just gave in to the required compliance.   I stopped making decisions because they would always be wrong anyway, and I was sure to know it with the sulkiness, or the heaviness of just how unhappy he was about absolutely everything. Unhappy and angry and I could do nothing about it if I didn’t want to be the target.  And I was the target often, just subtle enough so it was unnoticed by others, and certain to be denied by him.  That left us doing nothing, because without my planning, without my enthusiasm to experience, he had no ideas of what to do (besides restaurants, because admittedly he was always good at restaurant reservations), and certainly not any ability to convey it even if he had. I had given in to all my codependent past behaviors and hadn’t even noticed.  

Even today (yes, today, about 20 minutes ago), when he texted me, he was completely unwilling to do anything more, be anything more. Everything consistently transactional (I had dropped off his keys and an article of clothing he asked for while I was in SF over the weekend), with him attempting complete control, but still being clueless. It makes writing all this down (since I was in the middle of writing it all down when I received the text) even more important.

But what does all this have to do with planning this summer’s vacation?  Glad you asked.

I don’t want to have anyone else telling me what I need to do while on a trip, but it has been so long since I made any real decisions without deferring to someone else's desires that I am having a hard time deciding about it at all.  Do I stay in Vienna for just the party, or for longer?  Do I stay in a family space, or do I find a hotel?  Do I go over to Portugal? Italy? Germany? France? Spain? Do I go by train? Is it cheaper to decide once I am there? Do I stay in a B&B or a hostel or a posh hotel? Do I bring gobs of checked luggage, or like a pair of jeans and some laundry detergent? Tourists, rental cars, maps, souvenirs?  Fuck me, when did I forget how to do this?  And fuck it if I am going to let anyone else decide this time. Even in my near catatonic reaction to my own vacation plans, I know that much.

So I am stuck.  Grand adventure to a once in a lifetime party, or taking out a tape measure to see if my hair is long enough to donate?

Instead, I will publish this blog. 

And, amazingly, I made one decision.

I have a hair appointment tomorrow.

Dodge

I had a  dream nightmare about you.

We were in your car, and you were driving too fast on a really long wooden pier towards a docking platform for a ferry we were going to catch. The ferry wasn't there yet, and I kept asking you to slow down. This went on for a while. We were over the water a long time.  I was asking you over and over to just stop, get out, watch the water together for a while. You wouldn't.

Eventually you looked over at me, then sped up and crashed through the rail at the end, plunging the car, and us, into the water.

As the car went down, I reached my hand over and unclicked your seatbelt, then unclicked mine and started pushing on my door until the water balance allowed it to open. I swam up, and over, and reached a ladder that ran the depth of the  piling on the edge of the dock, and climbed out.

The water was really deep, but crystal clear, as I looked back down to surface level to see the car now sitting on the bottom, full of water and sunk, weirdly still running. I could see my open door. I could see you were able to move, but you just sat there, still revving the engine and banging your hand on the steering wheel.  I knew you were completely unaware that you were drowning, and very angry that the thing you had always thought you had been in control of was failing you.

There was no one else around, empty dock, no boats on the very still ocean. Eventually the ferry pulled in and blocked my view of the car.  I got on, and the ferry pulled away. I could make out the car for a little while, but then I stopped looking and went to the front of the boat.

I woke up and I cried. You know how that works. You have been there for them.



One day I hope you figure out how to stop being angry long enough to realize the car is going nowhere.  Your seatbelt is unbuckled. Your door can open if you push on it, and the other door is already open. Even if you can't swim there is a ladder on the dock, and you can, if you want to, climb out of the water. 

The ferry isn't coming back, and I'm gonna be fine even after the crash you caused. But maybe someday you will realize you owe me an apology because I tried, and you will know how to reach me. 

Dry off first. There is probably a pay phone at the far end of the pier.

I loved you.