Do You Want To Come In?

Check me out. Erin said that she didn't really like me writing about her in here instead of just saying things to her face, but here I am, writing away.

Erin wasn't really responding to my texts. She wasn't exactly answering my phone calls. She most certainly was not calling me back. After about a week of this, I was convinced that there must be something up. Turns out I was right. She happened to also be sick that week, but that major player here was this very blog. She stumbled upon this thing most likely by following comments on Adam's Italy blog (not a big deal as I did originally gave her the address, but she told me she couldn't deal with the rules, and would therefore not read it). She most likely did what most people would do, and searched her name to see if I'd written about her, which of course I have. She found the old entry about herself, and focused in on a very specific portion of it.

I wrote about Paul, very briefly. Keep in mind that this was about a year and a half after he'd gone. My observation sounded cold,

"She has experienced shit, and her life is so empty, that it almost makes me angry. Paul died, and killed a large portion of her. The bags under her eyes are my monument to him, and they will seemingly never let me forget him or his impact on her. If I were to want her to love me, I am not sure that I'd ever be convinced that I had 100% of her. She belongs to him still, and I do not know how to help her let go; I'm not sure if she's ready to yet.
It was always understood (by her and I) that she and Paul would end up together after he cleaned up."

Now, to me, this doesn't sound as bad as I suppose it might to someone else. What I meant at the time was that Paul had become such a big part of her life, and with him gone, she didn't know how to refill that void yet. There is an interesting phenomenon to mention now. In some clinical studies, scientists looked at hibernating animals in order to understand the relationship between calories, fat, metabolism, exercise, and obesity. Basically, a hibernating animal is a very obese form of its normal self. The animal puts on a tremendous amount of weight in anticipation of a cold hard season that would yield an insubstantial amount of food to continue daily living. The weight is in the form of fat (brown fat, I believe), and it serves as an energy source for the animal, who then enters a state of something sleep-like wherein they can dramatically reduce their energy requirements. This reduction is generally attributed to the drastic lowering of core body temperature and the slowing down of all bodily functions. Blah blah blah, we all know how hibernation works, I guess. Anyways, scientists would take an animal who was in the midst of hibernation and then surgically remove a portion of their fat. Now, I'm not sure what I would have expected to happen, but what happened was certainly unexpected. The animal regenerated the lost fat to compensate. Considering that no additional food was going IN to the animal, it's baffling to try to figure out how they managed to regenerate fat to replace that which was removed. The point of this, though, is that when an important part of them was removed without their permission, they were able to replace it with something just as valuable that ultimately may save their life.

Erin is a hibernating ground squirrel, and Paul was forcibly removed by a curious surgeon. Her self has since regrown and recouped, in a way that ultimately saved her life. While once she was cold inside and her heart was beating very slowly, she is now gallivanting about the meadow with a thousand acorn-producing trees in each direction. The piece of her that was taken has not prevented this from happening.

To continue, Erin must have read the various parts of that post in which I extol her virtues and proclaim undying secret love for her. I wonder why I don't feel more embarrassed about this? I mean, she must have put the pieces together to understand that nothing has really changed, right? I think so, at least.

On Friday night, I had my bike and a jones for some trouble. I laced up and hopped on the light rail in to Phoenix. I rode in to downtown, where I got off and rode over to her (parents') house. I texted her, "Can you come outside for a minute?" and waited about for about ten. No answer, so I called her. She woke up and came outside to talk. We talked lightly for a minute or two to lighten up the mood or something? We hadn't spoken for like two weeks now, right? Then I just launched in to it and asked her what was going on. Laundry list. I hurt her with the stuff that I'd said. She didn't understand why I didn't just say it to her. She always comes to me with her problems, and maybe she should start to distance because she won't always be able to do that. A few others. Nothing that really surprised me, I guess. I apologized, because I think this was largely misunderstanding. She can't tell if I'm writing facetiously sometimes or not. Fair enough. I almost spilled guts when I started to tell her about how she had confused with me a few things, but it just didn't feel right yet.

Eventually, it became time to leave. I made motions to this effect, and she said that she would walk me to the light rail stop, which was right near her (parents') house. She was barefoot, but insisted that it wasn't a problem. We walked and talked and it was cute. Got to the light rail, bought a ticket, sat down. We continued to talk. Light rail arrives, but there appears to be approximately three crap loads of people on it, and no more bike hooks open, so I say that I'll just ride to the next stop and catch a less busy one. We start walking back to her house then, since I'm not going to get straight on a train. I don't remember when or how, but she offers to drive me home. I sort of felt like riding actually, but the night seemed unfinished, so I said okay. Drive home is light, but fun still. At the apartment too soon.

An interesting exchange occurred at the apartment. She had stopped the truck, but it was still running. We had a moderately awkward, "okay, well, I guess, goodbye then?" sort of moment happening, so I said, "Do you want to come in?" I was almost joking, but not really. Then, in a tremendous mindfuck, she thinks about it for a seconnnnnnnnnnnndddddddddddddddddd that lasted what God considers to be eternity. She eventually declined, due to lack of privacy, sort of? I mean, I don't think she was even considering the extrapolated extreme ending that is implied by my question, but it's fun to live in fantasies, isn't it? It feels like being a goldfish. You live in a fish tank with a castle and a rock and a seaweed thing. When finally someone introduces another goldfish to your tank, it is the beginning of an epoch. A new era of existence that surpasses your three month memory. Something better than a new castle, or a piece of coral, or a diver guy with a treasure chest that floats bubbles to the top of your tiny world. You can't ignore it when God puts a new colored rock there, but after three months, you forget why the rock was interesting in the first place. You always have someone to swim in circles with, though.

As for love:
"If you have it, you don't need to have anything else, and if you don't have it, it doesn't matter much what else you have."
-Sir James M. Barrie

Don't Forget

"The mere athlete becomes too much of a savage, the musician is melted and softened beyond what is good for him. The two should therefore be blended in the right proportion." -Plato