I had coffee yesterday with a fellow writer friend. Who also happens to be hilarious. Brilliant and hilarious. We started off the conversation with her making the comment, I forget about what, but she said something in her life went from Woo Hoo! to Uh Oh! I laughed and could immediately relate. That happens to me a lot.
As my dear friend says, “all of my decisions looked good going in...” Well, isn’t that the fucking truth!
I can’t tell you how many times I have been so excited about something in my life, very much in the Woo Hoo! To rather quickly find myself in the Uh Oh! Well, to be honest, it is usually more the “oh, fuck no, Uh Oh!”
My life is dramatic like that...ok, well, maybe I am dramatic like that.
Somehow this realization, that things in life quickly turn from smashingly exciting to scornfully dreadful, is comforting. I am having this experience this morning actually. I woke up to a beautiful quiet morning, as I do pretty much every day. And this excites me. I love the morning, the quiet, the serene time where I am the only one awake, free to think deep thoughts, safe to feel, safe to miss a partner laying by my side while also being way too early to do anything rash about that fact. I love mornings. So I woke to my usual Woo Hoo! It is morning! But then, a murder of crows gathered in the giant oak tree in my neighbor’s (yes, the one that hates me) backyard. And they started a crow rebellion. I am not sure what was up with them today but they were vociferous! Still are, they have been going at it for about twelve minutes now, and it is disruptive, totally upending my beautiful quiet morning. Very much a Woo Hoo! to an Uh Oh! morning.
It didn’t help that my dog hates crows. She barks at them when they invade her airspace. I was worried that she was going to lose her mind this morning, but instead, when I went to bring her inside I found her cowering on a garden chair, she too very disturbed by the cacophony of ravens that ushered in this day.
For me, it doesn’t help that a group of crows is called a murder. Really? No one knows why either...lots of suppositions, no real, true answer. That is just what they are called. Pretty ominous for a Tuesday morning at 5:30 am...
I guess the universe is just letting me know that this is just another incident, in a long, long line of events, that have started out Woo hoo! and ended in Uh Oh! for me.
Dating has been like that, pretty much exclusively. I always love the Woo Hoo! factor of dating, so good right? I mean if there is no Woo Hoo! in the beginning, why bother? But I have so often, quickly found myself in this place where I am in Uh Oh! land. Drifting perilously close to the rocky shores of Fuck No!
For no reason whatsoever this morning, as I made my way into the kitchen, my morning pilgrimage to the holy coffee pot, I found myself thinking back to a time with him. A time where he made the pilgrimage for me every day. Today I was thinking about how I would lie in bed, waiting, excitedly for him to return. I mean the coffee was a highlight, but how truly excited I was for him to come back to bed. He was gone but a few minutes, but I felt the anticipation like it was a century passed. I have never, ever felt that way about anything, even coffee...being delivered by a pretty much naked man. That is saying something.
Which led me to thinking about how much that particular Woo Hoo! still haunts me, even though it has long been in relegated to the Uh Oh! scrap heap. How is it, all these years later, I still, with an unbridled fondness, can I romanticize moments with him? How can I still miss him? Is it him I miss or do I just miss feeling like that? To be waiting with bated breath for him to return to the bed...
I miss that feeling. I miss that connection. I miss loving some one like that. I miss the way that my whole world hung in the balance until he returned.
I know now that it was really Uh Oh! from the word go...I cannot afford to indulge thoughts to the contrary, because they land me in an ugly thought spiral that leads me to our painful lack of conclusion. The just endless space that has spanned between us with far too few words of closure, reconciliation or even hurtful arrows slung as the heart renders itself shattered.
I know, I know, I should be beyond such morbid reflection. I know this is only a trip into Uh Oh! land. I get that. But, I endeavor to tell the truth, even when, and it does this a lot, paints me badly. Shows me in my worse light. That is authenticity...I am not over here feeling no pain, living my best life. I am over here, feeling my life with the best of intentions...which sometimes cause me a great deal of heartache.
I guess, for now, I can just be happy to have the memory. The vision of him exiting the room, naked, or at the very least shirtless, stumbling towards Mecca, our morning salvation of coffee and communion. I miss the sounds of him mumbling to himself, contented noises of happy homemaking. I miss the feeling of excitement I felt at his return. As if he had been sent to battle years before, and I sat waiting for his return. He was gone five minutes, ok maybe ten. But as I sat waiting for him in bed, tangled in the sheets and barely awake myself, I longed for him as only a lover can. I felt connected, seen and safe in a way that I had never before felt. And that is a heady, intoxicating feeling, one that is not easily released once captured.
So I guess I haven’t. I haven’t indulged in that thought until recently, I guess it was too painful to remember so I locked it away from myself until it bursted through my mental linebacker ridden defensive line, landing squarely in the end zone of my heart and mind. I miss him. But more succinctly put, I miss loving him and being loved back.
He is my best example of Woo Hoo! And also my best example of Uh Oh! Which has left me seven years later, still lost in the heartbreak at times. Did I really love him that much? Or did I just enjoy the feeling of loving him? Clearly from the trajectory of our relationship, his love and adoration highly skeptical and easy to doubt. Perhaps this is what made him so safe to love so much...he was never, ever going to stay. Which in my world, made him irresistible, because I could love with abandon, wholly, fully, completely because the ending was present from the beginning.
Unpleasant really to think about that fact. Painful even.
And it all leaves me guessing, wondering really, doubting all the Woo Hoo! I have had since then, since those morning rituals of coffee, intimacy and love. Left me doubting my own ability to judge. Reaching the conclusion that in at least matters of the heart, I am indeed a poor judge.
I guess in my review and analysis, I can see that the Woo Hoo! was worth the Uh Oh! Which isn’t always the case. Often times I find myself wondering how I ever called it Woo Hoo! to begin with...I mean, really, what passes for Woo Hoo! these days is getting more and more paltry by the day. Which is, I am sure, why I relish the memory of this time. Innocent, and sultry at the same time. Foreign with the passage of time, but sublime in reflection. Was it truly love I felt or did I just get lost between the Woo Hoo! and the Uh Oh?
I do not know. Even all these years later. I only know that while I have closed that door, moved on with my life, readied my heart to love again, I still am enchanted with the memories that lie behind that sealed portal.
But as all domestic life calls, the dog who refused to come in, hiding from the murder of crows, she barks now in a forceful way that brings me back to today where I pilgrimage to the holy coffee pot solo. And relish in the thought that my Woo Hoo! is very different today. Maybe not quite as pleasurable...but not as likely to lead to such heartbreaking Uh Oh!
I will take it...it is enough. The dog a much more loyal companion than a man...or a crow.
