Processing In Real Time
An adapted attempt to work through the loss of a relationship and the sudden change of course it provides my life
The following was adapted from a stream-of-consciousness journal entry on 2/17/2024 while I was drinking alone at a local bar.
The bouncer took my identification way more seriously than I’ve experienced in many years. I’ve always looked younger than my age, but I’m 32 now and it feels pretty obvious that I’m over 21.
He looked back and forth between me and my picture at least five times before saying “You’ve changed up your look quite a lot, man.” I assumed he meant the weight I have lost since the picture was taken but he didn’t accept that excuse.
“Yeah, the weight but you’ve also grown the mustache, the glasses look good, it’s a good look. Congratulations.”
I thought it was one of the weirdest interactions I had ever experienced before the incessant question appeared while I was in the bathroom. “When did I update my license last?”
Fumbling through my pockets mid-stream and bravely pulling the ID from the pouch behind my phone without dropping it in the toilet to confirm — five months before we matched on Tinder.
He wasn’t wrong either — we’ve both “changed up our looks” quite a lot in the five years we’ve been together.
When we met, I wasn’t even on my last job in tech sales yet. I had never tried psychedelics and would have never believed I could accomplish something like making a career out of typing words into a computer.
Hell, I still considered myself a Christian back then, holding on to the title like a pacifier I had long outgrown. It’s also worth mentioning here that I don’t think I could have accomplished anything I have done so far without you and nothing about our time together feels “wasted.”
Our only goal throughout this relationship — the one we repeat in times of crisis and joy — is to help each other be the most complete individuals we can be. I have never wanted to feel like a person completes me and I don’t want to be that for someone else.
But what happens when we find our complete selves together, only to discover they’re incompatible romantically?
Surely I couldn’t blame you for having to reconsider when I feel like lifetimes separate who I am from who I was.
You’re turning my dating app profile over in your hand like the bouncer with my ID. Looking suspiciously for the similarities. “This looks nothing like you,” you say to your fiancé, life partner, and roommate. “You’ve changed up your look quite a lot.”
The reason why we parted
Ain't that hard to find.
I was always workin'
And you never had the time.
The reason why we parted
Ain't that hard to see.
But I was never sure
If I left you or you left me.
But like leaves and kings,
All things must fall.
No diamond ring
is gonna cut through it all.
-Josh Ritter, leaves and KingsThis is one of roughly 8 songs I’ve learned in the 14 or so years I’ve had a ukulele — most of them are Josh Ritter. Something about his lyrics always speak to me and this song has been ringing in my head since she told me she didn’t want to work on it anymore.
I think she’s sick of hearing me play it but I enjoy playing songs I know a lot more than learning new ones. Whether her irritation with the song is real or something I’m placing on her, I mostly play alone in the apartment with the windows and doors shut these days.
The funny thing is, I think I’ve actually gotten better from the days when I would proudly, poorly play on the balcony and let the neighbors judge as they will. Then again, I’m also in the best shape of my life and hate how I look so, MAYBE, it’s not about the ukulele.
In The Good Guys, Ryan Reynolds’ character explains that his wife “used to say I hit nails in halfway and stop.” It feels odd that this is the line that sticks out to me most from a movie full of one-line zingers but I think about it in relationship to music a lot.
In my defense, I am a true musical idiot. When I was 7, my mom bought me a guitar for Christmas after the incessant begging from me to join school band or get me an instrument of any kind. I was hungry for music back then and I didn’t keep quiet about it.
The guitar was a big deal. We were always told that “Santa was going to be light on presents this year” but credit card limits and good old capitalism always brought more gifts than my mom could actually afford to us.
For a few days, I played roughly as well as a 7-year-old without lessons — or a willing adult to sit down and explain how guitars even really worked — could. I banged away on it in and strummed it poorly without any notion of what a chord, note, harmony, or rhythm could have been.
The point is, I broke a string pretty quickly and my mother told me it was unreplaceable.
“I looked into it,” she told me. “Guitar strings cost like $100 so we can’t afford them.” My musical dreams were dead-on-arrival and the guitar gathered dust until she pawned it or we sold it at a yard sale sometime later.
I was 17 when I found out she was wrong — I had bought a guitar at a yard sale for $50 and thought to myself “my god, the strings alone!” After one of them broke, I thought my dream was over again but I decided to drive to guitar center and do my due dilligence first.
I made the clerk repeat himself when he told me the price (“Wow, they’ve really gone down!”) and restrung the whole guitar that night for under $15.
I was probably 21 or older when I recounted this story out loud and finally realized that she lied because I was annoying her.
People get sad when I share this story about my mom but I found it hilarious when I first discovered it. She’d been dead for a few years by that point and I’d come to terms with loving her for who she was instead of wishing she’d been who I really needed at the time.
Anyways, I blame her for my lack of rhythm — in more ways than one. I used to clap silently in church to not throw everyone off and I do whatever the social equivalent is to that as a result of annoying her all the time as well.
The point is, I speak in parables and metaphors a lot and I realize that’s an odd way to grapple with emotions and life but it’s how my brain works. At the edge of the over-complicated language is a profound loneliness and a desire to bring others in here with me.
Hi, this is what it’s like in my brain 24/7 and it’s not always very fun. Better buckle up, buddy, cause things almost always get worse before they get better.
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