Another year, another breakup.
I knew dating a Minnesotan just learning to be social in his 40s was a bad plan, but I did it anyway. He lived right on the edge of the Oakland hills in a decaying 70s era apartment complex with a stunning view of the sunset, the Bay Bridge, and the Golden Gate. In the morning, he made me coffee, and overnight oats with fruit over the top. The fruit was from a 20-30 year steady relationship with the San Francisco Ferry Building farmer's market: the oats a recipe he'd been making for decades.
Some engineers have disciplines that change slow, and steady, eroding away their work into a smoother shape. He had that kind of patience, and intolerance for sudden crisis.
But he was kind, he listened, for a while he felt safe. It wasn't anything too serious, and was never going to be, but it was nice to be with him whenever I was in the area. I fell in a semi-casual kind of love with his competence, methodical approach to life, and excellent taste in produce.
Well, one of his friends was a serial rapist, a manipulator, the kinda guy you see in the dictionary next to dark triad. I figured it out before he did, and it turned out between the stresses from arguing about it, the fact that Oakland boy had two other girlfriends, and no conflict resolution skills, things went very rapidly to hell.
Half his fault, half mine. I'm an op: more often the mode is triage, not erosion. He'd never seen me triage.
This might have been something I had the patience to work through, but my ongoing corporate plotting to move back West to Portland hit a snag, and Dad ended up in the ER, and my patience for the absence of the boy evaporated. Probably the last straw was hearing just about nothing about my father.
So. Back to the drawing board.
It's not all awful. This last week I've been in recuperative mode up in Vermont, listening to REDACTED talk about REDACTED, shooting guns, eating bacon, drinking whiskey, and taking way too little else in the way of self care. It's been a good few days to wear the jeans with holes, refuse to go out into the wintry climes, and listen to people talk about tooling. There's a pair of cats who seem to claim they never have attention.
The tight feeling in my throat fucked off after two days, and I still feel a bit afloat in my head, but it's helped to be with friends, to sit on the couch, to do very little but exist.
This next week, it's back to Boston.