The Wool Over My Eyes

The worst moment in any relationship comes long after the relationship has ended. It's not the fight that makes you realize that it's over. It's not the hurt look she gives you that says she won't keep trying. It's not even the apathetic look that tells you that she's over you. For me, the worst moment is when the break-up has lasted longer than the relationship, and I'm still heartbroken. We were together for 16 months. We split up 16 months ago. How am I supposed to justify still thinking of her?

Heaven always seemed a strange concept for me. After my grandmother died, I decided to find religion. I had stowed it in the back of my mind. Scratch that, it had always been there. It was the monthly visit to church my mother insisted on, if not for God then at least for the company and community of the friends she never felt she saw often enough. My mind always wandered while listening to the priest. My mental Tourette's would kick in, and my thoughts would wander to the most inappropriate thing I could think of. "Fuck God", my 11 year old mind would think. And I would instantly regret it, and fear the repercussions. What if that was what sent me to Hell? I never thought so much about God or Jesus, they were after all just characters in a book. What interested me was what affected me; Heaven and Hell. This is where my dead grandmother comes in. I was told, in what I realize now was well-meaning and horribly misleading consolation, that I would see her again in Heaven. Would she look like she did when she passed, I asked myself and no one else. Or would she take the form of the vibrant young woman she was before the cancer started eating away at her? Maybe she was even younger, younger than I ever saw her. Would I recognize a 30-year old version of my grandmother? It seemed obvious at the time that I was simply not smart enough to understand the concept of Heaven. It seems equally obvious now that the concept is so poorly thought out and fantastically false that even an 11 year old could dismantle the logic of it. Imagine what'll seem obvious on my death bed.

How much of what I've done can I stand by and say that I don't regret? If I were to put a number to it, I suppose it would be somewhere between 1% and 99%, depending on the perspective. There is the 1% that I know I'll never be ashamed of, like my daughter. She is my safety net in case I set fire to an entire city and kill millions of innocent people. She'll still be pure and perfect enough to justify my existence. My 1%. Then there is the other 1% that no goodness will make up for. The horrible, life-destroying, keep me awake at night, tear away at my dreams, bring me down regardless of the situation, constant kick to the stomach shame that can't be outrun and can't be ignored and can't be hidden. I don't blame her for the cynicism she instilled in me, but I do blame myself my pay it forward-attitude I decided on 16 months ago. I slept with a married woman who had two children. I promised her gold and green forests, and broke her away from a good man. Painfully dull, like the end of a baseball bat, but not a bad person. This took 3 weeks, and before the season had time to change I had left her in disgust. She had a house she couldn't afford and couldn't afford to sell, because it was the only thing keeping her children sane. The humorless Joe Nobody moved into a shitty loft apartment and saw his kids every other weekend. I had spread the disease and didn't feel any better. Misery loves company but she's a terrible host.

Priests probably hear a lot of strange questions, and I can imagine that the best ones come from children. "Do you have to cut your nails in Heaven?" I was pretty happy with that one, and it evoked a smile from the father. He didn't know. Do you get older? Does time stand still? Can you do whatever you want? What does eternity feel like? If you die without ever having been married, can you find someone in Heaven? If Grandpa remarries, which wife will he spend eternity with? I like his new wife and all, but what about Grandma? She'd be pretty lonely if she had to be all alone forever, I'd bet. That thought kept me up for a couple nights. I hoped there wasn't a heaven. That would be really scary.