bobby the barrel racer

i talk to him tonight because
i am diverting the thoughts of unworthiness
you gave me during those fights
we had while the children cowered
in the next room. at first he's playing coy
but somehow the talk turns from politix
into manic depression, bipolarism. he tells me
his tale which mirrors ours but only lasted
12 years. she was the abuser, the one who blew
up after x months of remorse "i should have been
the wife" he says, "she beat on me, it ws like
a flip of the way it usually is". immediately i grok
his norm. but do i? she controlled him
worse than you controlled me, but eggshells are eggshells
and walking on them because of something i said
to you was the thing that crippled
me, footbound as a china girl. dealing with a mental
disorder makes one stronger or
whatever.
detached perhaps. bobby says "i hate animals." and i'm all like
huh? n he's like "well hate isn't exactly what i mean
i mean i hate what they do to you" and i'm all like say wha?
n he's like "i mean you get attached to them
and you love them, like my kids had this dog and it just
hurt so much to see the pain they were in
when it got hit by a car" and i'm like yeah but
n he goes "well, i mean, i'm a horse person
and i made my life about horses, married two horse
women, i'm good with horses but i only kept
them because the women wanted them. they
will always put their horses before a man you know
not many men will put up with that, they say 'it's
the horse or me' and then later when they're
walking down the road with their bags is when they regret. but
not me, i built the horse farm out of pristine
country and i built if for them, for my first wife
who died then for my second, i could care less
about horses or animals or anything that you get attached
to and it dies." so i ask him have you ever heard of zen?
n he's like no, not really and i tell him
of the zen masters and the samuari and later of the old
man and the horse and in between i threw in the joke
of god, the jew and the lottery. for some reason
i want the man to find this love he's so scared
to reach out for, like maybe it's payback
or justification or hope that even though you
could never stand the fact that you settled for me
how worthless i was to what your ideal should be
and i can barely stomach the fact that i lived
in such toxicity for so long, still i feel like the only way
to ever balance it out is for all the chemicals to just
get along being catalysts, get all molecular and explore
new compounds. transforming from the hurting vibes
into something akin to peace. gawd, i'm such a pacifist
no wonder i caved to your every whim, modified my
desires, turned myself into the very thing
i ran from in my teens. because you let me stick around.
bobby says 'the one thing i learned from the domestic
violence class that really hit home is
it's not my fault. her anger is not my fault'.
and i am freed by that thought, somewhat, that it's ok
to let go of the blame for another's choices, another's actions
even if you've pledged your life to them but most especially
if you haven't. the only person you can be held responsible for
is yourself. and by extension, the behaviour of your children.
that's it. after the age of reason, everyone needs to fend
for themselves. so i don't exactly blame you for the lost time
or the lost lives or the lost dream that was never mine but
i do let you take on whatever truth you can summon
from the whole debacle. it was a time of growth and stunting.
it was a time of birth and running. i dunno, you and i
had nothing in common but a desire to not be lonely
and i didn't know it because i didn't know myself.
i just wish the whole thing was done with the knowlege from
lessons i'm only now learning. n bobby says yeah
i know what you mean, but i still don't want to get back
out there in that minefield. i only have so much left to lose.