giovedì, dicembre 19, 2013

Relative time and feelings

Dear oh dear, Christmas is depressing here, with the heat and the cultural vaccuum and the lack of my family. We're closer to the F-word's family, which frankly makes it worse. His father and stepfather nearly broke up a few weeks ago, which will make the Christmas dinner a rip-roaring good time this year. It's frightening when people of a certain age stay with partners I assume are far more trouble than they're worth - if I was the F-word's stepfather, I would have been out of there years ago; how could solitude be any worse than having a, well, a bit of a massive douchebag for a partner? Does the spectre of solitude get so frightening as you age that you tolerate being served spaghetti shittingnese every night until one or the other of you is carted off to the old age home or the grave? What a dreadful thought.

I can't answer those questions, lucky me. I've never had to choose between a douchebag and solitude as a gay man in my mid-fifties. As a straight woman in her mid-twenties, which is the last time the choice presented itself, it was a no-brainer. Though in retrospect it did take a good half-year, maybe more, to pull a trigger I knew full well needed pulling. Maybe that's what really changes over the decades - maybe it's not that you develop a need for companionship at any cost when your senior years become visible over the horizon.

Maybe in fact the reality is that time moves a lot faster when you're in your fifties, and before you know it the death-throes of a relationship that would only last a few months in your youth stretch out to years, and you don't really notice because you're so much busier than a person in thier mid-twenties; work, kids, grandkids, some big stupid fucking house to take care of, some massive fucking jerk-off lawn to mow, increasing health problems, your own slow physical deterioration, etc. etc. I'm also guessing that kids change your emotional outlook a lot; I've been lucky to have a lot of love all my life, but my feelings for Godzila make everything else look a little grade-school, so maybe when you have a bunch of kids and grandkids you just don't spend as much time thinking about your own unhappiness and how to remedy it.

I don't know. I'll talk to the F-word's stepfather and get back to you.