In which I’m using technology and almost giddy with relief about it.

Truck returned from Indy yesterday. He and AmmZon have gone to an appointment, but before they split he set up his laptop and told me to use it all I want. So I’m sitting in the livingroom and I’m on the Internets. (So dumb that ‘net access can make me feel so happy. I love the Internet! The Internet is my boyfriend!)

Gorgeous and Rockstar introduced me to some friends of theirs Friday night. The husband runs a dot-com out of his house and is looking for 2nd tier tech support. He said things like, “Do you know Linux? Yeah? And DNS and Bind? You know cPanel? Because that’s the interface I use.” I practically got weak-kneed discussing the job with him, because the answers to all those questions is an emphatic YES. I got his email address and will be sending him a resume tout suite.

Good news out of the way, I’m now going to tell you all what a wicked fucking coward I am. Fortunately, many of you’ve been reading the ‘box long enough to realize this is par for the course and I won’t be melting any innocent neurons.

Friday night I met Bread at the Hideaway. After sitting in the bar, we went outside and stood awkwardly in the parking lot while Bindu snuffled around and we talked. I can’t trace the discussion with any fidelity, but he laid out his committment to making it work and reiterated his understanding of the things I’ve been telling him. He even agreed to settling on one of those shades of grey between the two points he’d been clinging to before and made an actual compromise. We ended the conversation with an agreement: the next day, I’d move into my own room at the farm. We hugged and parted.

I went and bought cigarettes, and then decided I wanted one more drink before calling it a night. I stopped in at the Dead Cock, and that’s where Gorgeous introduced me to dot-com. I drank one of those absurd concoctions you see people drinking in bars sometimes, a blue thing called a Normal. (They’re really good, if you like froofy drinks.) I chatted with the Corbinator for awhile, and later I talked with Leroy. I went to bed feeling excited about the possible employment prospect — not because I expect to get this particular job, but because it seems my ritam is working again and I may end up actually manifesting a job I want to do — but totally inert about the agreement I’d struck with Bread.

The next day I did this and that, nothing noteworthy really, besides lying in the room that AmmZon’s graciously letting me crash in with the door shut and letting my mind spin. I did not feel excited about going home. I did not feel relief. I did not feel dread. I felt nothing at all… until the time started to get closer. Then I started to freak out. (We’d agreed that I’d roll out there late Saturday afternoon, after I got some errands run and had packed up my shit.) I texted him and said it would be another couple hours. I thought some more. I started to feel freaked out, uncomfortable, lost and confused, and even more depressed.

I started having panic attacks. (Not full-blown ones, but the kind where I suffer hours of imbalanced physiology and fear and physical discomfort and a nagging suspicion that I’m about to suffer a lethal heart attack. It still astonishes me that I can walk around and interface with people and that they can’t tell that I’m about to die. It’s weird. Weird, weird, weird.) I finally let the knowledge surface: I did not really want to move back out to the farm. I really did not want to. I’d agreed out of a mix of exhaustion and a shameful egoistic desire to appear to be reasonable: I’d accused him of being unable to compromise, and when he offered me something that seemed like an olive branch I felt compelled, I guess, to accept it.

Truck and AmmZon invited me to watch Freaks and Geeks with them — Truck’s got the whole series on DVD. It was getting late. I’d said I’d call Bread, I should have called by then: I was in full-on flake mode and feeling the dread and shame of it. I was feeling awful with some evil form of nauseating quasi-stage fright, with a dose of adrenaline and some food poisoning mixed in for color.

So I did a mind-bogglingly lame thing: I texted him and said that I was sorry but I just couldn’t do it, I’m too whacked out, I wasn’t coming.

I texted him. I have now earned my place in the Crazy, Cruel, Mean Bitch from Hell hall of fame. (I saw a commercial the other day for an episode of Sex & the City where someone breaks up with Carrie via Post-It note. At least a Post-It note is handwritten.)

Between our last two talks he’d thought, and thought hard. He’d become resolute and strong instead of hurt and stubborn. He’d spoken eloquently about our similarities — specifically in the areas of our shared flaws, like selfishness and stubbornness — and reminded me of the length of road we’d already travelled together. He’d talked about the tools we possess, tools like love and intelligence, and how they could be combined with a willingness to work that mght quite possibly produce a resurrection. He’d let go of his innate desire to get his own way because he’d realized that he couldn’t just will me to be the happy woman he was once married to, and offered a compromise for both of us: I’d get my way because I’d have my own room and he’d not enter if I was there with the door closed, and he’d get his because at least I’d be in near enough proximity for us to have an ongoing dialogue toward salvaging the mess.

He was trying, and when he asked me if it would be an acceptible compromise I found myself saying yes, because all I want when I’m around him is to ease him.

He didn’t text back or call. I was in pain for about an hour, like my chest was being slowly shredded with a dully serrated pastry knife. It sucked. I feel like a piece of shit. A weak, cowardly piece of shit who couldn’t say no when she should have, and who couldn’t even call to tell the man she’d been with for seven years that she was a piece of shit.

I’m ashamed — it’s like a form of drunkard’s remorse, only deeper and more sore — but I just couldn’t go. He’s like a super-heavy object around which my emotional gravity gets distorted and dense; I’ve rewired myself over the years to crave his comfort, and in his profound discomfort his pain hurts me. Being around him so frequently in the past week has, to coin a phrase, fucked up my shit. I need more space, I require more time, I am just. Not. Ready. I’m empty now, I have nothing of value to offer anyone. I can barely take care of myself. I’m fucking shell shocked. I have nothing to offer, no matter how hard someone needs something from me. Even if I love him.

Truck and AmmZon are back, and there’s a discussion of food. AmmZon wants curry, which I’m teaching her to make sans recipe, so I’m off to the kitchen. After that, though, I have a computer at my disposal (!!) and a stack of want-ads with jobs in them, not to mention the dot-com guy, that, even though they don’t know it, are breathlessly awaiting the arrival of my resume via email.