14

 

Here is the story of my epiphany, brought to me by my husband Cal.

My Cal.

I thought he would stop me from being alone in my own head.

I pinned that expectation on another collection of cells who was just as lost and hopeless and confused at finding themselves in the unexpected state of being conscious as I was. And in there was my mistake, my huge steaming train wreck.

I used to believe that in life there was one man meant for one woman in a cosmic sense with me drawn to him and him to me by a great big movement of energy or the plan of the universe or the patterns of the stars.

I had high and secret ideals about love and I never told them to anyone so no one knew I had them.

Cal was my confirmation.

I used to believe that we, a little fringed-off species, isolated lumbering hunks of flesh, could truly know one another purely and selflessly.

Whatever that was supposed to mean.

I believed in love as an abstract concept, as an ideal, as the be-all and end-all goal that it was touted to be, as some kind of great curing resting place, the end point toward which the mass thoughts and life choices of a planet filled with tiny people sluggishly moved.

All that was really there was a game of evolution.

That was another cultural misstep in the wiring of my brain.

But I was very young when I met Cal.

It was a long time since I had swallowed shit like that.