Adult-ness

Still photo from film Waking the Dead

I can’t seem to handle adult emotions anymore. I swear it’s the truth. The older I get, the less I seem to be able to handle these things. Job pressure, romantic strife, friends coming and going, some even dying. When I was younger, all I wanted was to be old, or at least, to adopt the mantle of elderly men. I wore cardigans (still do, come to think of it), support socks, sansabelt trousers…

I guess it was easier in my early twenties to do such things. In college, no real cares other than getting the term paper turned in on time. Now it takes nothing less than a friend coming for a weekend to fill my heart with glee, but upon their departure I find myself completely distraught again. I think my therapist has a name for this kind of emotional swing, but I will just call it “getting old”. I mean cardigans are cool. And sans-a-belts can be too in the right situation. (I don’t think adult diapers will ever be so I will just content myself with urine stains and leakage.) But the head that you have to grow into when you get older seems to be something that I cannot handle these days. Job pressure, romantic strife, paying taxes – each of these individually are enough to send me into a tailspin for days, but combined make me want to sleep a deep sleep for the remainder of the winter. My therapist says that these are all impetuses for my chronic co-dependency. And I usually say, “huh”? Apparently need hearing aids too now. Then he reiterates, “These are all common elements of the malaise of the codependent subject.” Oh well. All that I know is that my baby has moved away. Yep, it started with a job offer in another town and slowly we seemed to drift. Nightly phone calls turned into weekly ones. Trips to visit her became less frequent and less enjoyable. My penis became relegated once again to performing only the most utilitarian of purposes. I curled up after returning from the office everyday and listened to music and watched movies. Sad movies about heartbreak, imminent departure, loss of love. Like the one last night, where the protagonist hovered above her lover and made advances of what can only be called a sexual nature. In that soft light, she carressed his body like she had in every similar scene for the last hour, covering over a decade of time. Everything was the same – the room, the light, the bed. But this time the music had changed. This time he lay there like the last of an endangered species of whale that had washed onto the beach. His arms hang limp to the side of the bed. And the shots of his eyes showed only dark, blank pools. He waited until his unspoken language began to speak to him. To let her know that he was somewhere else completely now. She rolled off – exasperated. He got up and left the room, saying he was going out of town for a few days. She knowing he had already left some time ago.