Seesaw

03/14/10

Not knowing is often my undoing.  Admittedly, most of life cannot be scripted, but we can set goals, make plans, look ahead.  I like a plan.  Not so My Dead Husband.  He was a fly by the seat of his pants man, and we once drove across the continental US without a single motel reservation.  (And more amazing than that, we didn’t exchange one cross word).  At first I was hideously nervous every day when we got tired and ready to stop for the night, imagining us in a roach motel and being infected with bed bugs while drug dealers and hookers knocked on our door all night inquiring as to our need for their services.  

After the first few nights, I realized I had a choice. I could end up feeling like a bird hanging upside down on his perch or I could make an adventure out of the whole thing.  I chose to jump on the back of Clint’s horse and ride it with him.  We stumbled into quaint little towns and sought out the brew pubs with the reputations for the best burgers.  We once got lost trying to find the Pacific Ocean, driving over the mountains from Mendocino to San Luis Obispo.  We should have never told our family and friends about that.  For years they have been holding onto to it like a snapping turtle in a storm, and they bring it out and make fun of us at the least provocation.

That dichotomy of basic personalities we shared, I believe, is a great part of the secret of our lasting love.  We needed one another.  We balanced out one another in a symbiotic way in almost every aspect of our relationship.  He seed while I sawed.

Now there’s no one sitting in the other end the seesaw, and here I am on the ground, surrounded by clouds of playground dust, searching for a way to propel myself upward far enough to see beyond the empty seat at the other end.  Ever try to go single on a seesaw?

I’m unsettled about going back to work, about not having a solid plan.  I need my man.  I need a pep talk and couple of drinks and some incredible sex, the kind that makes you invisible and bulletproof, the kind that makes you powerful and soft and sweet all at once, the kind that kindles the Power Goddess that lives in me but who keeps hiding.  There are simply some things for which there is not substitute.   When I got my new vibrator, I thought I was set for life.  Not so.  I need a man.  But I don’t want one.  I want the one I had, the only one that I am 100% guaranteed never to set eyes on again.  

Must I squat here on my end of the seesaw until something comes along to move me up?  It could be my job, but what if it’s a tornado that dislodges me?  Do I get off and just say fuck it and move on?  Where would I go? Wouldn’t that just complete the breaking of my heart, leaving me altogether without one?  Who would save me?  I am a living and breathing riddle of which I can make no sense.

And it scares the shit out of me.