In This Fairytale

I found that on Google Images somewhere, enlarged it, and put it on the cover page of the fairytale I wrote for Joe. It was an image I felt he might like, one that would speak to him. It was 2010, the year our daughter was born and we moved in together. I called it, “The Incredibly True and Rigorous Adventures of Spirit and Flesh”- Spirit Jones and Flesh Robinson being the names of the two protagonists. Other characters included matchmaker Chance Ramirez, neighbors Chaos, Discordia, Furious Pain the singer, and Precious Heart the newborn. It was well written for someone who doesn't really write fantasy/fairytales. It was tongue-in-cheek, with inside-jokes or references, and a degree of corniness but I got my point across. I was aiming for cleverness, for larger-than-life-ness, trying to convey my sincerity, vulnerability, but still being witty or “cute", appealing to his mind, imagination, whimsy, and heart. It was important to me that he liked it, the only person it was meant for. He did. He liked the other one I wrote shortly afterwards which was more erotic in nature, this being the image I found and chose for the cover

We were strained romantically though. Trust was waning, "walls" were up, doubt, jealousy, inadequacy pervaded….

As I get older I keep accumulating more and more years that feel like "only yesterday", more and more moments frozen in time until it's just all one big "yesterday". 2010 has a certain look and feel to it for me. It's the year I lived with Joe in the three floor walk-up on 52nd Street, the overhead 7 train a block away. It was a nice little apartment with its railroad layout, clean, white walls that he didn't want to contaminate with too many pictures or frames because who knew how long we’d be there for and then we'd have to re-plaster them... I remember the morning vlogs I made of myself and the kids almost daily and would email to him while he was at work. The children shows and songs that played over and over again, me not reporting to work after I’d been so used to doing that and how weird that felt sometimes. The growing urgency inside propelling me to find a nearby therapist that accepted my insurance so that I can get counseling. Again.
Joe and I seem to get along better when we’re not a couple and sometimes it has tricked us into thinking, “Wouldn't it be nice if we got back together? We'll do it differently this time!" At times we felt as destined as Chai Wallah and Latika- "it is written" and all that good stuff...

I remember looking into his eyes in the Long Island backyard of his aunt's house in ’08 while Alex played between us thinking, what are we doing, how did it end up like this, we’re supposed to be the ones together, I was supposed to have his child! Why am I always making such wrong decisions in love?! 

The text he sent me in '09 pleading for us to try to work it out (again) because with me is "where (he) belongs".  It broke my heart enough to end it with my boyfriend at the time and fumble back to him.  Again.
"I don't know Joe, maybe we should just let time tell" I offered, meaning let's let "nature", (such a ubiquitous thing), take its course.
"Why don't we tell?" he counter-offered, meaning, instead of having time and randomness dictate things for us.
That was the line that did it for me. Just like back when we first started going out, we were on the phone, and I brought up the concept of letting nature take its course when it came to bigger, grander things like stem cell research, his passion for genetic engineering, immortalizing mortality, things like that. Things up his alley and so not up mine.
"This is me letting 'nature' takes its course." His natural interest to alter, challenge, and probe. Well. I couldn't argue with that. It was very much like him, part of his appeal to someone like me I guess, who is more go-with-the-flow. Here was someone wanting to take the reigns in Life.
He once compared us to a sailor and a mermaid- no matter how into each other we are, we really don't fit or cannot be in the other's world for too long. 

Reflecting on that, later on in the week I drew this:

He liked it. I like it too. 

Writing about him and me is a  challenge. There are years and years of backstory, layers of emotions and 'who did what to whom', plus as I mentioned before in the previous blog, he's a private person. But I needed to write something it seems, and what I get from the analogy he calmly came up with rather recently is that yes, we are not exactly made for each other. He's not gonna pull an Allen Bauer living under the sea with Madison like at the end of Splash, I'm not Princess Ariel ready to trade in my voice for some legs like in The Little Mermaid and that, I guess, is that.
We're on good, decent terms now, co-parenting best we can in our separate homes. Life falls into place and we adjust. We move on with other partners, we try to make it work and last. We grow up and out. We put any loving positive energy we ever held for each other into our little girl and forge ahead. Word.

Precious Heart.