Eternity

I am far from perfect. Quite far.

Monday I blew it. I went up to Isaac’s room. I was going to say good morning, after all, I hadn’t seen him since Tuesday.

His room was a bigger mess than I had ever seen it. I mentioned how unwashed dishes had brought the ants back. Then I said something about how his lowered savings account would now cost him a monthly fee. And it all came out... I began growling, and then yelling... about his being late for work, about responsibility... about... too many things. I was frustrated. I went too far.

I hurt him a great deal. Enough so I... well... he needed to see a counselor.

The counselor wasn’t any good (he fell asleep twice during the session), but it was a start.

A good start to a number of changes. He needs to learn better communication skills. I need better listening skills. And I think I need to rethink what he is capable of, what might be too much to ask of him.

Brenda came to see him While I was at work Wednesday. I didn’t know she was here, but, perhaps it is OK for Isaac to want his mother do what she did... fix him breakfast, make Jello for his dinner desert.

I didn’t like it.

She wants to help him more tomorrow. She wants to come over here...

I don’t like it.

Went to a movie tonight. Two trailers, back to back, hit me in the gut.

The first was about a woman traveling to Ireland to propose to her boyfriend. Apparently February 29th is a date that a woman can propose.

I met Brenda February 29th, 1980.

The second trailer hurt.

It was about an older woman finding the love of her youth with the help of a young stranger. It was a poignant moment, her seeing the many of her youth, a love carried through a lifetime.

I’ve spoken to Brenda several times this week. My heart has never been further from her than it is now. There is absolutely no echo of the adamantine resolve to make our marriage work. It is gone.

But something else remains.

I desire to love, be loved. I desire to have a love that carries me to the grave.

The ol’ metacognition thing, ever present, has me self analyzing. Why do I feel this way?

It isn’t simply a desire to be wanted.

I am obsessively loyal. To a point of self destructiveness.

For a moment, watching that trailer, I felt overwhelmed, frustrated.

I’m not the bachelor type. I am uninterested in dating a string of women.

I feel frustrated that I cannot live a life of that kind of loyalty. The one I chose to walk to the grave with turned down a different path.

I took my glasses off in the darkened theater, bent my head to pray.

Why am I like this? Why do I so strongly want to be loyal to someone?

In that prayer, with my eyes tearing, I felt the spread of eternity around me. I felt time sliding not only into a future so distant that the form of this universe is thinned to a cold smear, dark... I felt that eternity stretching sideways... an eternity that pauses in a conscious yet static moment that will always be, has always been.

This eternity isn’t a theological theory for me. It is a truth that is intrinsically woven into who I am.

I was surrounded by many in the theater... I wanted to wrap this prayer up quickly.

I know this eternity.

It knows me.

I cannot escape it.

Being a part of that larger expanse of time, the one that never ends, in any direction, future, past, even perpendicular to now, is as real to me as the whispered voices in the darkened theater.

It is how I am made.

And there was tonight’s small epiphany.

I am still grieving the loss of the destroyed loyalty I had, the steadiness I felt even when my spouse was tearing the foundation of our marriage apart.

I fear choosing again... There is someone I am serious about. But I fear making the choice a poor one.

I fear it because I see that I am a loyal person. I will stick with it through the end.

That sense I have that eternity stretches around me, is similar to the sense I have of being steady for those around me.

I want to get the special love that will walk with me to the grave, but more important than that, I see that in how I know I am eternal, is similar to how I feel about steadiness in my relationships.

Part of me wants to move quickly.

Part of me takes great joy in all of this.

I like being an eternal being.

I like that I was made this way... even if it sometimes led me to cling to waht should have been tossed.