Today makes thirty days since I returned from England. Thirty days sounds like a long time, a period during which one could get all sorts of important things done, but it isn’t, and I didn’t. The days rolled by like something that rolls. They are rolling still. They roll well, these days that are circular, that end and begin in the same place, my bed. Christmas rolled, New Year’s rolled, my ex-girlfriend’s birthday, January eleventh, it rolled, too. I called her to wish her a happy birthday, but she didn’t answer her phone, which makes sense. I don’t think we’re speaking anymore. If I called her right now I do not expect she would answer. If she did answer I would be so surprised I probably wouldn’t be able to think of anything to say. Really, there wouldn’t be anything to say, because I wouldn’t be calling for any reason other than to confirm that we aren’t speaking. And we aren’t.
But for most of those thirty days we were. In fact, if I were to make a list of the things I did most frequently during that time, talking with her would be at the top:
#1. Negotiate end of relationship with ex-girlfriend
That was my month in a nutshell. But the rest of the list, if it existed, would read something like:
#2. Drink until obnoxious or catatonic, at
a) cave-like dive bars
b) scenester clubs in San Francisco
c) home
#3. Watch football on TV
#4. Read about obscure historical events on Wikipedia
#5. Put on “Mars” by Fake Blood and dance around my bedroom
But such a list does not exist, could not exist, because it fails to account for the things that really happened to me over the past month: things that are beyond physical, that took place in the country inside me. My heart has been breaking for half a year; see it splitting; now it is broken. And the days roll by, and I can’t see how any of it matters.
