Fear and regret.
Doubt and overwhelming guilt.
Today there is a difference though. Today my heart makes a permanent home for these feelings instead of the temporary bunkers of the past two years. Acceptance is almost relieving because I can ease up a little on being goalie.
It’s cold today. Frigid and gray. I can see each normally invisible exhale from my nose and mouth in front of me. Last winter wasn’t this cold, not for this long. I crunch across half ice half snow sidewalk and see man helping another jumpstart his car. My guts are on fire all of a sudden and I don’t know why right away.
But then I’m there, sitting on the side of the road with a dead car battery, one morning in winter 2007.
I wasn’t on the side of just any road, I was parked on my block, in front of my very own apartment. I called E who was inside getting read for work, well within full anxiety mode, clomping around the apartment in his boots, the ones that still let him ride his bike to work even in the snow. E loved riding, but not so much that he loved riding in the snow. It had been two full years since he was able to step foot onto a subway car, no sign of this changing.
He suggested I needed cables and someone who would jump me. I was confused for a moment, but then realized – yes – he was telling me to hold out for the kindness of strangers. Him. Of all people. If anyone preached about despising humanity on a daily basis more that E, they were probably in a padded room.
But I didn’t have cables, they were at the metal shop where he last used them on a motorcycle.
So I trekked over to the gas station and bought a new set. I call on the way home, thought maybe he could call the shop boys to come help since he’d just rescued Chris on the Williamsburg Bridge the other day when he neglected to read his gas gauge properly.
“You want their help? Call them yourself.”
So I did. Chris and Franky were on their way. No questions asked.
I sat outside flabbergasted. I couldn’t understand how E could know I needed help just outside our door and could not find it in himself to give it. Not in the smallest capacity even.
A little while after I called the boys, E came outside. I was glad to see him, but couldn’t help thinking he was just saving face – with me and with the boys. It felt like betrayal. Too little too late.
I crunch further away from the car jumpers and make my way through a slippery crosswalk.
I realize I am in the same position I was that day. Perhaps an even better one since my solitude is clear each morning when I wake up. I have no one to let me down anymore. And the realization now is that the person I had to count on in those moments was gone long before I moved out.
