Holes

[Doktor Howl]

All my rage drained out yesterday.  I am fairly certain this is temporary, but it has left me feeling weird.  I've been angry so long that I didn't remember how it felt to be otherwise.  I remember now, of course.  I was a fairly cheerful lad, once upon a time, when summers weren't so brutal and politicians knew what was a reasonable amount to steal.

I had been clicking through facebook friends' friends lists, looking for more people to harangue with horrible updates, when I tripped across her.  It's been 25 years since I last saw her, but her face was immediately recognizable.  She looks pretty fucking good for a 40 year old.  She's also unmarried, and I gather that this is because her entire life was a series of fucked up relationships, starting with a dumbass 17 year old who had commitment issues. 

That would be me.

Over about 30 seconds time, I felt my normal state of being drain away, and I found to my interest & horror that there really isn't anything else there.  I have become a hollow man, with a life full of holes.

There's the hole where my best friend was.  He's alive and doing well, but he changed, he's not the Mountain Monk anymore.  He's some guy that worries about his portfolio and goes golfing on the weekends.

There's the hole where The Terrible Old Man was.  I expect that hole will be there forever.  The man was a titan, a 30 foot tall man made out of carbon steel that stomped anything and everything that tried to tell him how he had to live or speak.  The world is a little smaller, now that he's gone.

There's the hole where she was.  25 years ago, I could have said the right thing, and everything would have been different.  I could have put my butthurt on a shelf, it was a silly fucking thing to be angry about, but I couldn't stop and say "I love you, I've been stupid, can you forgive me?", and so we split. 

There's more, of course, some not so serious, some even bigger.  I got holes.  I got so many holes that I'm a piece of cheesecloth.

I expect that I'm not the only person that feels this way, in the small hours of the morning, when you can sit and think for a minute.  And it's not like I have lots to complain about...Things turned out pretty damn good for me, after all, and it's not like I won't be better in a few hours, back to the same old Dok that holds your hand and tells you everything is going to be okay.

But for the moment, I have holes.

Okay in a while,
Dok

[Cramulus]

I can appreciate that the long night of self. A leg of lamb, a jug of wine, and thou, beside me, whistling in the darkness.

These lonely introspective moments are worth savoring.

[LMNO]

You can get lost in those holes.  I can follow them down, into vast chambers of regret.  Sometimes, when things get really, really quiet, you can almost feel the impermeable membrane between what did happen and what could have happened.  If the math is right, the universe where it all happened differently is just over there.  I can see it unfolding out before me:  I found the courage to say something to her in highschool; I kept the band together, that first time; we broke up after the first argument; the chemotherapy worked the way it was supposed to; the fetus remained viable.  Things both good and bad, on the other side of never.  

The impossible universes are never more than a nanosecond away, and that closeness is seductive.  If I'm not careful, I can sit for hours, thinking about what could have been, if everything were already different.  It's better than TV, because it almost happened to me.  It never happened to me.  It's futile wish-fulfillment in reverse.  Instead of looking into the future and making pointless wishes, I'm looking back at my past and trying to change it, as if you could remove a single thread from a tapestry without unravelling the whole thing.

Then I have to remind myself that when I'm looking at a hole, I'm not looking at anything.  I'm looking at absence of existence.  I'm looking at a gap where something has been removed from Reality.  I have to stop staring at things that aren't actually there.  My life is there to be created, now.  

And when I'm barrelling down that Lost Highway, the wind whistles through the holes and becomes a cacaphonous symphony.

[Doktor Howl]

You can get lost in those holes.  I can follow them down, into vast chambers of regret.  Sometimes, when things get really, really quiet, you can almost feel the impermeable membrane between what did happen and what could have happened.  If the math is right, the universe where it all happened differently is just over there.

Sometimes, it's so close that you can see exactly how things would have unfolded, had you made a slightly different choice.  If I'd been a smart monkey, I'd still have had her.  But I wouldn't have the kids I have now, which I wouldn't trade for any number of possible pasts.  She would probably not have gone to college - and certainly not grad school - as a soldier's wife.  My life would have been a series of safe decisions, a quiet thing that would leave no horrible stains on the world.

I'm glad, in hindsight, that I made the stupid mistake I did, both for my sake and hers.  Doesn't mean I can't beat myself over the head about it once in a while, doesn't mean I don't sometimes understand Harry, beating his wrenches in a rythm on the workbench, looking for a world that included his lost daughter.

Terry Pratchet called this sort of thing "the trouser legs of time", and I fell - as everyone does - down one leg.  The trousers sometimes have holes in the knees, and I can see the horror of respectability and nice that my life would have become, because that's the sort of thing she liked, and I'd have done whatever it took to keep her happy.

And I think I'd rather be me, holes and all.

Okay again,
Dok

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Ahhhhh Dok. This is a good one.

[Adios]

Not all of those holes are empty Dok, many are filled with character.

[Doktor Howl]

5 FUCKING FRIDAY MEETINGS.  RAGE RESTORED.  ALL HAS RETURNED TO NORMAL.



DOK,
HAS ANOTHER MEETING IN 20 MINUTES.

[Anna Mae Bollocks]

That "if" thing's a bitch.
Oh well. If frogs had wings, they wouldn't bust their ass every time they hop.
RAGE FTW.

[Telarus]

Wow...



.........

[Don Coyote]

I've had those kind of days.

[navkat]

Okay, I'm going to tell you the truth because you Always (tm) tell the truth.

1. She would have gone to school. Eventually. This is about character: A girl who finished school and does fantastic wouldn't've allowed herself to be held back forever. Not by babies, not by you, not by anything.

2. You would have had other children with different faces that you felt the same way about. Those children don't exist as a consequence of your choices made. They were lovely. Beautiful. Smart. One of them's a real smartass...just like her ol' dad. Keeps the boys on their toes. She's getting a degree in Law...gonna argue the pance off the best of 'em, that one.

The other is steady and responsible and has a level of integrity he must get from his mother. He has an outrage for injustice he must've gotten from you. You hope he never gets jaded...never gives up. He's beautiful.

They don't exist.

Okay, here's the deal:
You might've made up and stayed together...you might've even married her...and then you'd be here, right now, looking back at facebook...remembering someone else. Fuck, you might've gotten divorced after she got sick of being your silly housewife...got sick of Tricare and dealing with the shit and politicking on stupid Army bases. She might've run off and fucked some cute blue-eyed douchebag while you were stationed in Germany. Or she might've taken your beautiful children away from you and the cunt that she is, had you declared unfit and out of your mind after that one year, back in 92 when your shit was clearly not together...just exploited you in a time of weakness so she could run off with someone else blameless and slippery.

I'm not pulling some Schrodinger's Cat Celestine bullshit on you, the way I see it is this: You are the biggest factor in the sum of your life experiences. You see things through the same eyes and with the same habits and feelings. You color things with your own character. You have the same probability of having the same basic ratio of "Really good times" : "Really fucked up experiences." It doesn't matter what they are. They might be different ones but the basic idea is the same. Good stuff that makes you feel fulfilled versus Bad shit and regrets that make you wonder "what if I had waited for someone else?"

The choices you made brought you here. Here's not so bad, is it? I mean, there have been at least three occasions where your words or something you said...some way you've reached out has either validated something I really fucking needed or slapped me across the fayce when I really needed to stop screaming and by the way: "here, hyperventilate into this bag while the world pulls your teeth out with no Novocaine." I'm glad to know you. This one's at least the fourth.

If I feel that way, I know others do like, WAAAAAAY more because they see you on the daily.

You have chosen wisely.