I walked out this morning, and I wrote down this song...
It's a warm, sunny day today. There are no clouds. This is October in California. It's early afternoon. I'm having coffee. I should be running errands and accomplishing some things around the house. I have the impulse to write. Maybe I will get busy after I finish my coffee.
I have been reflecting on my relationships the last three or so weeks, well, longer than that, actually, but especially so in the last three weeks. I've been thinking about one, in particular, a woman I was seeing a few years after Crystal and I divorced. I was told that composing a letter to her, whether I sent it or not, would help me collect my thoughts and possibly learn some interesting things. I have been wrestling with that letter for three weeks now. I haven't "set key to digital paper" yet, and yet the exercise, still unactualized, has inspired insights. I have the gist of some of the things I might say, but I am not quite sure how to say them, and as James Taylor sang: "I just can't remember who to send it to." Should I write only for my own edification, or should I share my thoughts with her? Am I feeling an unwarranted sense of entitlement to think that she would be interested in what I had to say, after all this time? Maybe she had enough closure and doesn't need to read me "talking about old stuff." It's tricky to consider. I would still count her as a friend. We did not part in acrimony but rather a gray cloud of disappointment and ambiguity. We have spoken since we stopped seeing each other. I suspect that she would still count me among her friends...but we haven't spoken to one another since 2013.
Be that as it may, there are things I would say. There are things I would own. Parts of me feel that I owe her an apology, and truths and explanations, whether she feels like she wants these things anymore or not. I am suffering an internal pressure to acknowledge what is. I told myself, and some others to whom I have spoken about this time that I was in a state of ignorance about where things stood between she and I, that our relationship was in a sort of fuzzy state without definite understandings. Whose fault is that? Mine. Curiosity is the treatment for ignorance. Why did I not prescribe that for myself? Did I not owe both of us more of my curiosity? I believe I did. I'm sure she would have welcomed more of my curiosity, and initiative in making clarity in our relationship. Even writing it just now, arouses a rising feeling of disgust with myself, and regret. There are no lies more messy than the ones originating in the untruths we tell ourselves.